“Thus therefore shall you pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our supersubstantial bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen.”
The Lord's Prayer
The Our Father
The prayer the Lord himself taught — given in the Sermon on the Mount and to the disciples who asked, 'teach us to pray.' Prayed by Christians from the first century, and called by Tertullian 'an epitome of the whole Gospel.'
The prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Where it comes from
The dated sources the library holds, oldest first — in their own words.
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30
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100
The Didache
The Our Father appears in the Didache (the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," c. 100), which directs that it be prayed three times a day — the earliest witness to its use in Christian worship, and the earliest to carry a form of the concluding doxology.
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200
“For it has embraced not only the special duties of prayer, be it veneration of God or petition for man, but almost every discourse of the Lord, every record of His Discipline; so that, in fact, in the Prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole Gospel.”
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252
“Before all things, the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity would not have prayer to be made singly and individually, as for one who prays to pray for himself alone. For we say not My Father, which art in heaven, nor Give me this day my daily bread…”
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1,913
“The doxology "for Thine is the Kingdom", etc., which appears in the Greek textus receptus and has been adopted in the later editions of the "Book of Common Prayer", is undoubtedly an interpolation.”