The Disciples’ Prayer

Several people have been blogging about a book that I mentioned when I read a draft of it about a year ago. The book is by Jeffrey Gibson, and the title is The Disciples’ Prayer: The Prayer Jesus Taught in Its Historical Setting. Jim Spinti offered some brief thoughts on the book, and Loren Rosson offers a fuller review of the book’s key arguments.

Here’s the endorsement that I provided to the publisher:

“One could be forgiven for thinking that, when it comes to such familiar and oft-studied words as those of the Lord’s Prayer, little new could be said, and any new proposals would most likely be wrong, if not indeed far-fetched. Yet in his book, The Disciples’ Prayer, Jeffrey Gibson not only offers new and compelling interpretations of the prayer and its background but even suggests that the very designation we have been using for the prayer is off target and has led to us misunderstanding it in important ways. As if that weren’t enough, he manages to do this with a focus that is exegetical and scholarly, and yet also keeps an eye on what it means for Christians to actually pray this prayer. Gibson’s book may revolutionize not just New Testament scholarship’s understanding of this famous prayer, but the prayer life of the contemporary church as well.”

Of related interest, discussion continues here on the blog about something that is not a translation of the Lord’s Prayer, but claims to be.