The Lord’s Prayer in the context of Jewish mentality of the Matthew’s targeted readers

Mirosław Rucki

Wrocław

Abstract

Catholic Church promotes the dialogue with Judaism and encourages interfaith meetings aimed to mutual understanding and friendship. Obviously, prayer is and should be the main integrating factor, and the Lord’s Prayer fits the best to such a⁠ task. It was formulated in the context of Jewish mentality and prayer tradition and rabbis in general do not object its content. In the paper, the comparison of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s version with standard prayer book of today’s Jews is presented. It reveals how Christians may deepen their understanding of the familiar prayer with unfamiliar meaning, and how Jews may see the “Jewishness” of the very roots of Christian prayer and belief.

Keywords:

The Lord’s Prayer, the dialogue with Judaism