The Lord's Prayer and other prayer texts from the Greco-Roman era

About this book

This first publication to emerge from the Society of Biblical Literature's seminar group on prayer in the Greco-Roman period includes, in addition to the editor, contributions by Barbara E. Bowe, Barbara E. Reid, Agneta Enermalm-Ogawa, Mark Harding, Mark S. Kiley, and Steven F. Plymale. The opening chapter addresses some of Joachim Jeremias's contentions concerning Luke's shortened version of the Lord's Prayer. Linguistic and thematic affinities between the Matthean version of the Lord's Prayer and the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount are then considered, as is the Prayer of Simeon and its relation to the sanctioning power of prayer texts in Luke-Acts. After revisiting Jesus' transfiguration experience to determine what really happened, the book turns to the prayers and benedictions in Josephus's Antiquities and to the long prayer that concludes 1 Clement. An exhaustive bibliography on the Lord's Prayer and other prayer texts from the Greco-Roman period comprises the second half of the book. Beginning with a stylistic and genre analysis, the bibliography lists general studies, Hebrew Bible, Jewish texts, New Testament, early Christian texts, magical texts, Gnostic, Hermetic, Manichaean, and Madaean texts, and papyri and inscriptions.