DID YOU KNOW?

The Lord's Prayer as many recite it ends 'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.' In the earliest manuscripts of Matthew, is that closing line there?

The answer

The prayer in Matthew 6 originally ends at 'deliver us from evil.' The ringing doxology — 'for thine is the kingdom...' — isn't in the earliest manuscripts; it appears in later copies and became part of the spoken tradition.

Why it’s interesting

It echoes an Old Testament prayer of David (1 Chronicles 29:11), so it's an ancient and fitting close — just not part of Matthew's earliest text. Many Bibles print the prayer without it and note the ending in the margin.

Scholarly consensus

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