Why teaching “Our Father” was so revolutionary

Photo by Jill Sauve on Unsplash This post was not meant as a Christmas message. But this time of year is a good time to contemplate the coming of a particularly amazing baby. And like all babies, he had a father.

We are examining the Jesus Prayer, usually called The Lord’s Prayer, exploring what it can teach us from different views of who Jesus was — political rebel, great moral teacher or Son of God/Messiah/Christ. The second post in the series.

We think nothing of it now, but when Jesus taught his followers and friends to pray addressing his prayer to “Our Father” it was likely seen as strange, even revolutionary. In Jesus’ time, Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the primary language in everyday conversation. Hebrew continued to be used as a liturgical and literary language. The two languages are closely related but Aramaic is a Syriac language compared to Hebrew which is specific to the Jews. Today, modernized versions of Aramaic are spoken by about 9 million people in the Middle East.

What name did Jesus’ followers call God?

Elohim is the word usually translated as God in the Hebrew bible although it was not likely the primary name for God used in conversation. It is both a plural and singular word derived from an earlier source, Ugaritic, where it was plural and referred to a pantheon of gods. Elohim was generally understood by the Hebrews to refer to the God of gods and used more in the singular form. The most common name of God for the Hebrews and later Jews was what we refer to as Yahweh…