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"Accepting Pope Francis’ revised ‘Our Father’ would imply Jesus was wrong"
lifesitenews.com
"As the press widely reported, Pope Francis has suggested changing the text of Our Father from 'lead us not into temptation' to 'do not let us fall into temptation.'
Pope Francis told TV2000 channel that to pray that God would 'lead us not into temptation,' as Christians have prayed for two millennia, 'is not a good translation because it speaks of a God who induces temptation.' Pope Francis insists that the Our Father’s translation should be changed to render God’s agency passive regarding temptation because 'I am the one who falls; it's not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn't do that, a father helps you to get up immediately. It's Satan who leads us into temptation, that's his department.'
Pope Francis’ comments regarding the Our Father, however, are not merely esoteric issues of proper translation. Rather, Pope Francis’ remarks imply that the words of Jesus Christ themselves are objectively erroneous, and that he as pope has the power to change them.
Proper translation of the Our Father
While the original words of the 'Our Father' uttered by Jesus Christ were likely in Aramaic, we can only rely on the Divinely inspired original Greek texts of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels to know with the certainty of faith what Jesus truly said. Anyone may view these texts in interlinear translation, in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, which read identically in both Gospels as follows:
The Greek verb εἰσενέγκῃς, meaning to 'lead into,' 'carry into,' or 'bring into,' is parsed: aorist tense, subjunctive mood, active voice, 2nd person, singular. Most scholars believe that εἰσενέγκῃς is a subjunctive of prohibition, which is commonly used for negative commands in the second person. While the other petitions in the Our Father make use of the aorist imperative, rather than the aorist subjunctive, εἰσενέγκῃς is, nevertheless, indisputably an active verb.
Numerous scholars confirm this analysis. Msgr. Charles Pope writes:.. Eisenenkēs is an aorist subjunctive in the active voice. 'Lead us not' is simply the clearest and most accurate translation of me eisenenkēs. To instead render it 'do not allow us' is to read into the text an extended meaning that is not there...
Professor Tony Esolen likewise points out:... The words of Jesus are clear. The original Greek is not ambiguous. There is no variant hiding in the shelves. We cannot go from an active verb, subjunctive mood, aorist tense, second person singular, with a clear direct object, to a wholly different verb—'do not allow'—completed by an infinitive that is nowhere in the text—'to fall'—without shifting from translation to theological exegesis...
Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J. similarly explains that eisenenkēs is 'used as a polite form of a negative imperative' or also 'in a wider sense of causing someone to enter an event or a condition, as if it were a place' (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 'And Lead Us Not into Temptation,' Biblica 84 (2003) 259-273).
The Spanish translation 'no nos dejes caer en la tentación' ['don’t let us fall into temptation'] and the new French translation 'Ne nous laisse pas entrer dans l'épreuve' ['don’t allow us to enter into temptation'], which the pope prefers, in truth changes the words of Jesus. This is because the words 'let/allow' and 'fall/enter' do not occur in the Divinely inspired, inerrant Greek text. Instead, εἰσενέγκῃς in the Greek text lends strong support for the Vulgate Latin’s 'ne nos inducas in tentationem,' which retains an active sense, as well as the traditional English translation 'lead us not into temptation' and the Italian translation 'non ci indurre in tentazione,' with which Pope Francis is undoubtedly familiar.
The aorist tense in the Our Father’s Greek, moreover, conveys the sense that God’s actions to 'give,' 'forgive,' 'lead,' and 'lead' us are completed actions from His eternal perspective. Additionally, the active tense of εἰσενέγκῃς, conveyed by 'lead us not,' emphasizes a fundamental aspect of the Divine masculine character: that God is 'pure act' and creates ex nihilo without any potency.
In essence, all creation is dependent upon God, and no evil or temptation occurs without his permission. These aspects of the active Divine omnipotence, as conveyed by Jesus’ words in the Greek text, are lost in the Pope’s preferred Spanish/French renditions. Furthermore, the passive, revisionist translation also obscures any apocalyptic implications that 'lead us not into temptation' may refer to the final eschatological trial, from which we pray that God would spare us."
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