The Lord’s Prayer in Didache 8.2

The Didache contains many parallels to the Synoptic Gospels, but only two are identified explicitly as Jesus tradition: an isolated proverb in 9.5 (“For also the Lord has said about this, ‘Do not give what is holy to the dogs’”), and the Lord’s Prayer in 8.2, which will be the topic of the discussion below.

The following synopsis displays the Lord’s Prayer as found in the Didache with its parallels in Matthew and Luke:

. . .

Did. 8.2 for the power and the gory are yours forever

In some later MSS only:

Mt. 6.13X [for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever]

. . .

The oral-liturgical use of the Lord’s Prayer in its early Christian setting explains some details from the above synopsis that otherwise seems puzzling. First, it accounts for the small differences between the Didache and Matthew: neither the Didachist nor Matthew corrected the text of the other, but each used the form of the liturgy current within their own community. The survival of minor differences in the Didache’s form of the prayer even after Matthew became an authoritative Gospel attests to the persistence of oral tradition within liturgical settings. Second, a liturgical use explains why Did. 8.2 concludes with a doxology (“for the power and the glory are yours forever”) but the original text of Matthew’s prayer does not: the Didache is an instrument of the liturgy, so one would expect the inclusion of a doxology at the conclusion of this prayer as with its other liturgical prayers. Matthew belongs to a different genre, so its prayer did not originally include a doxology. The prayer liturgical use impacted the history of Matthew’s text of the prayer, however, via the addition of a variety of doxologies to early manuscripts of the Gospel.