Lead Us Not Into Temptation

 

The words "Lead us Not Into Temptation" From the Lord's prayer, presents trouble for Pope Francis. He states that the translation makes it sound as if God is the one leading us into temptation. I've said this prayer since I was knee high to a tadpole and I never looked at it this way. However, here are a few excerpts from the story according to World Catholic Report

Pope Francis said that “lead us not into temptation” is a poorly translated line of the Our Father.

“This is not a good translation,” the Pope said in the video, published Dec. 6. “I am the one who falls, it’s not (God) who pushes me toward temptation to see how I fall. A father doesn’t do this, a father helps us to get up right away.”

He noted that this line was recently re-translated in the French version of the prayer to read “do not let me fall into temptation.”

The Latin version of the prayer, the authoritative version in the Catholic Church, reads “ne nos inducas in tentationem.”

The Pope said that the one who leads people into temptation “is Satan; that is the work of Satan.” He said that the essence of that line in the prayer is like telling God: “when Satan leads me into temptation, please, give me your hand. Give me your hand."

It further states...

"According to the French episcopal conference, the decision to make the change was accepted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in June 2013.


The new translation, released Dec. 3 to mark the first day of Advent and the beginning of the new liturgical year, now reads “ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation,” meaning, “do not let us fall into temptation,” versus the former “ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,” or “lead us not into temptation.”

I take issue with this. I get what he's trying to say, but I think he's wrong. We are going by our Church's Mother tongue which use to be Latin before Vatican II decided every church had their own tongue which was to be spoken in their own language and we no longer focused on the teaching of Latin.

The translations of the Lord's Prayer were translated from Greek (which was translated from Christ's language of Aramaic) to Latin. 
Some say the translation is faulty and the Greek translation (which is "And let us not be led into temptation" should be the replacement.

I respectfully disagree that it was a misleading translation. Great care was taken with The translation process. et ne nos inducas in tentationem (Lead us not into temptation) is a literal translation of the Greek version, given to us by St. Jerome. (click the name to learn more about this Saint)

To understand the translation, let us understand St. Jerome. He was highly intelligent, a historian, and a trilinguistic. He was a holy man and the father of the standard Latin translation of the bible that has held for 1600 years. He, in fact, is the patron saint of archeologists, bible scholars, librarians and translators. He studied himself under the renowned theologian, St. Gregory. St. Jerome could understand Greek, Hebrew and Latin. He could also read Aramaic, but could not speak it well. 

There were early translations from Greek to Latin, before St. Jerome, but they missed the mark. Since Latin was becoming far more widely spoken and understood than Greek, they needed a proper, and accurate translation, and that is when St. Jerome came into the picture. He also took it upon himself to translate the old Testament from Hebrew into Latin.

St Jerome is credited with RESTORING the New Testament to it's original Greek state in his Latin Translation from the Old Latin translations which were deemed inadequate. In fact, many have stated you can see the Greek influences in the Latin Vulgate.

So the actual translation is not misleading or faulty. The accepted Latin translation is as close as literal as the language can get. St. Jerome worked on the thought of, "not word for word, but sense for sense". This is now called the Dynamic equivalent. The DE is used when the readability of the translation is more important than the preservation of the original grammatical structure. Meaning, the words may not translate exactly grammatically, but the spirit is the same. So "Lead us not into temptation" is the same as "let us not be led into temptation".

I never grew up thinking God led me to sin. But I understood there'd be trials, tribulations and tests (which would include temptations from the evil one). We were taught to understand that we are praying for deliverance from those tribulations and tests.

We must also consider that languages evolve and temptation may have had a different meaning that it does now, or (more likely) may have had more than one meaning. Most Apologists believe that temptation meant "Test" or tribulation in this sense. Thus making it "please do not put us to the test, instead deliver us from evil."

Just like Adam and Eve, God sometimes puts our faith and obedience to the test, and the evil one takes advantage. So the translation in Greek (let us not be led) and Latin (Lead us not into) are both valid in this sense when you understand the meaning behind it.

A lot of people accuse this of being an English translation problem since many languages use a form of "Let us not be led." That is not true.

The 1600 year old Lord's Prayer in the St. Jerome Latin is the first known use of the phrase "Lead us not", and all Roman Catholic churches used it, all across the world.

That is until Vatican II when the masses began to be said in the tongue of whatever country. Even then, many used a translation of the Latin prayer in their own language until modern times. Like the French who only this month changed the words from "lead us not" to "let us not be led".

So it is not an "English" problem... it is a lack of proper theological education problem.

Whichever the Pope chooses, I will continue to pray it as it's always been prayed, only I prefer to pray it in Latin. There used to be a time when every Catholic church in every country across the world spoke one language in Mass, Latin. Prayed as one unit, spoke with one voice. All around the world we prayed the same words, together.

Now we speak in thousands of different languages, some of whom do their own translations. It is no longer a single unified Church in Christ.

I don't feel we need a better translation, we need better teachers to explain these questions. We should also return to a unified, one Church way again, where we are all speaking the same language with the same translation and interpretations, in one voice.

I will always prefer the Traditional Latin Mass for this reason.

We need to stop dumbing down our religion and smartening up the Faithful. Instead of watering things down so people don't have to actually LEARN something, make them educate, make them get involved. TEACH them.

If Catholicism was being properly taught to our children, not only at Catholic schools or CCD, but at home... this wouldn't be an issue now.

When I taught CCD, the kids told me they weren't even going to church. The parents were using CCD as daycare. Other than that, they never went to church, never talked about God at home. The parents felt it was our responsibility to impart thousands of years of theology on kids 1x a week for a few months a year. Parents hold responsibility for their child's eternal soul and it's just not being done and now we have this. Changing prayers because the Pope can't answer the simple question as to "why it is this way". instead of teaching, change it... right? (sarcasm)

I again blame Vatican II for trying to water the religion down. When we lose our traditions, when we move to the modern, we put our own conveniences before God, and this is what you get. That's a blog for another time however.

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For more information on the Latin Bible and St Jerome:

Further Reading:

St Jerome and the Latin Bible

Et Ne Nos Inducas in Tentationem

St Jerome the Bible Translator

The Vulgate

Biography of St. Jerome