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AP Photo/A.M. Ahad
UK News

Christian scholar responds to Pope's comment about altering Lord's Prayer

by Cara Bentley

Pope Francis said the Lord 's Prayer should be changed so that it doesn't suggest God leads us into temptation.

The Pope said it is a mistranslation and that "let us not fall into temptation" would be better.

He said in an interview: "The French have modified the prayer to 'do not let me fall into temptation', because it is me who falls, not the Lord who tempts me to then see how I fall".

Premier spoke to Dr Pete Williams, Principle of Tyndale House and New Testament scholar, to find out whether the claim of a mistranslation was true.

Dr Williams said: "I think it's 'do not lead us', 'do not bring us' into temptation. It's using that active language of God. It doesn't have to imply that God's a mean person who pushes otherwise good people to do bad things."

"He [Pope Francis] rightly points out that we're led by our own sin, it's not God that pushes us...but let's leave the translation as it is and trust the ordinary people to do that thinking themselves."

He also pointed out that the Pope wasn't making a statement but that it was a response to a question asking: "Does God lead us into temptation?"

In terms of the precise verse from Matthew 6:13, Dr Williams said: "I just think from the point of the view of the Greek and also the whole way this has been translated through the ages, he's wrong in saying the translation is wrong.

"The great thing about this is that it's been translated by loads of people in loads of different countries over loads of year and there is a convergence of translation on this".

When asked how Christians should respond to claims of mistranslation, Dr Williams replied: "When we have translations today, they're not taken through thousands of step before they get to us - you can get the Greek text, get the Hebrew text very easily online and have a stab at it yourself."

Listen to Premier's Eno Adeogun speaking to Dr Pete Williams here:

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