40 Fun Facts About The Lord's Prayer

Before clocks were common, which workers recited the Lord's Prayer to time steps in their work?

Cooks used the prayer as a kitchen timer, so an old recipe might say to simmer a broth for the length of three recitations.

In the Lord's Prayer, which food do worshippers ask God to "give us this day"?

Bread here is usually read as shorthand for sustenance in general: whatever a person needs to get through to tomorrow.

In the 2002 film Spider-Man, which villain attacks Aunt May while she is saying the Lord's Prayer?

Green Goblin is Norman Osborn's alter ego, and his attack on Aunt May in the middle of her prayer leaves her in hospital.

Cliff Richard's 1999 UK number one "The Millennium Prayer" set the Lord's Prayer to which famous tune?

Auld Lang Syne first carried the prayer's words in the finale of a Christian musical, Hopes & Dreams. Cliff Richard then recorded it as a Christmas single.

In Matthew, Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer during which address that also contains the Beatitudes?

Sermon on the Mount is the name for Matthew chapters 5 to 7, and the prayer sits in the central chapter, inside a warning against praying to impress.

Which heavy metal band named a 1982 song about a condemned prisoner after a line of the Lord's Prayer?

Iron Maiden closed the album The Number of the Beast with "Hallowed Be Thy Name", written by bassist Steve Harris and later covered by Dream Theater and Machine Head.

In which Catholic devotion is the Lord's Prayer said before each set of ten Hail Marys?

The Rosary calls each set of ten a decade, opens it with an Our Father and traditionally closes it with a Glory Be.

"Baba Yetu", the Grammy-winning Civilization IV theme, is the Lord's Prayer sung in which language?

Swahili gave composer Christopher Tin his words for the first piece of video game music ever to win a Grammy, awarded in 2011.

Pater Noster, the Lord's Prayer in Latin, also names which machine with a chain of cabins like prayer beads?

An elevator of this kind, the paternoster, never stops: riders step on and off open cabins as they circle slowly up and down the building.

Which word, taken into English from Hebrew, do most Christians say at the very end of the Lord's Prayer?

Amen is commonly rendered as "so be it", which turns the whole prayer into something the speaker signs their name to.

The Lord's Prayer asks that God's will be done on earth just as it is in which place?

Heaven appears in the opening line too, where it marks the Father being addressed as distinct from human fathers on earth.

Which word ends the last request of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, a plea to "deliver us" from something?

Evil is ambiguous in the original Greek, which can equally mean "the evil one", so many modern Bibles make the line a plea for rescue from the devil.

In the traditional Lord's Prayer, what do worshippers ask God to "lead us not into"?

Temptation translates the Greek peirasmos, which can also mean a test or trial, so some read the line as a plea to be spared hard testing.

In the Lord's Prayer, what of God's is asked to "come" just before the line about his will being done?

Kingdom here also means kingship: the Greek word behind it covers both a realm and the act of reigning, a double sense the English loses.

In the Lord's Prayer, what does "hallowed" mean, an old word that also gave Halloween its name?

Holy is the sense: to hallow is to honour something as sacred, and Halloween is the eve of All Hallows, the feast of all the saints.

Which word does William Tyndale's 1526 Lord's Prayer use where the King James Bible has "debts"?

Trespasses passed from Tyndale into the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, which is why most English speakers still say it while Scottish Presbyterians do not.

The Lord's Prayer line about God's will echoes what Jesus himself prays in which place before his arrest?

Gethsemane is where, in Matthew, he prays three times and uses the prayer's own words about God's will while three apostles sleep nearby.

Right after the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, Jesus says God's pardon depends on which duty?

Forgiving others is the one request he stops to comment on: pardon people their wrongs and the Father will pardon yours, refuse and he will not.

In Luke, the Lord's Prayer answers a request to teach prayer as which preacher taught his followers?

John the Baptist evidently gave his own disciples a set form of prayer, but unlike the one Jesus taught in reply, its wording has perished.

Which everyday language of first-century Galilee do historians think Jesus used to teach the Lord's Prayer?

Aramaic was the common speech of the villages where he grew up. The prayer itself survives only in Greek, the language the Gospels were written in.

Which pope approved a new Italian wording for one line of the Lord's Prayer?

Francis had said on Italian television that the old line was a poor translation: a person falls on their own, without being pushed by God.

Which reformer's Small Catechism of 1529 asks "What does this mean?" of each line of the Lord's Prayer?

Martin Luther wrote it for the head of a family to teach at home, and under the request for food he listed clothing, shoes, house, money and faithful neighbours.

Because the Lord's Prayer is in Matthew and Luke but not Mark, scholars often trace it to which lost document?

The Q source, named from the German Quelle, is a hypothetical collection of sayings. Rival theories have Luke simply taking the prayer from Matthew.

Just before the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, where does Jesus tell his followers to go when they pray?

Their own room, with the door shut, is the place he names. The King James Bible calls it a closet, and the point is to pray where nobody is watching.

Before the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, Jesus faults which people for praying on street corners to be seen?

The hypocrites, he says, love to stand praying in synagogues and on street corners, and being noticed is the only reward they will get.

Before the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, Jesus says pagans expect to be heard in prayer because of what?

Their many words are wasted, he says, because the Father already knows what people need before they ask.

The 1963 US Supreme Court case Abington v. Schempp ended official Lord's Prayer recitation in which places?

Public schools in Pennsylvania opened each morning with Bible verses by law, and student Ellery Schempp protested in 1956 by reading from the Quran instead.

Sister Janet Mead's rock version of the Lord's Prayer lost an inspirational Grammy to which singer?

Elvis Presley won with a recording of the hymn How Great Thou Art. Mead gave her royalties from the hit's overseas sales to charity.

The nun Janet Mead, whose rock Lord's Prayer was a US top-five hit in 1974, came from which country?

Australia had never before produced a record that sold a million copies in the United States. Mead taught music at a school in Adelaide.

In 2015, UK cinemas refused a Church of England Lord's Prayer advert due to run before which franchise's film?

Star Wars was expected to draw families before Christmas, but the agency that sells cinema advertising cited its policy against religious and political adverts.

Which early Christian manual told believers to say the Lord's Prayer three times a day?

The Didache also quotes the prayer in full and gives it a short closing line of praise, the earliest added ending that can be traced.

Which early theologian from Carthage called the Lord's Prayer an epitome of the whole Gospel?

Tertullian's phrase still heads the Catechism of the Catholic Church's first article on the prayer, which calls it the summary of the whole Gospel.

Which translator coined the Latin word "supersubstantialem" for a puzzling Greek term in the Lord's Prayer?

Jerome made up the word for the job, because the Greek term appears nowhere else in ancient writing and nobody was sure what it meant.

Which parable about persistence does Jesus tell straight after the Lord's Prayer in Luke's Gospel?

The Friend at Midnight has a man knocking on a neighbour's door for three loaves until the neighbour gets up, a picture of prayer that does not give up.

Albert Hay Malotte, composer of a famous 1935 Lord's Prayer setting, also scored cartoons for which studio?

Walt Disney shorts he scored include Ferdinand the Bull and The Ugly Duckling, both Oscar winners, yet it is the sacred song he is remembered for.

Epiousios, a Greek word found almost nowhere outside the Lord's Prayer, is usually translated as what?

Daily is only a best guess: one standard dictionary of New Testament Greek calls the word "of doubtful meaning" and also offers "necessary for existence".

Which English word for glib talk comes from the Latin name of the Lord's Prayer, mumbled at speed in church?

Patter is a shortened form of paternoster and began as a Middle English verb for mumbling prayers rapidly. By 1758 the noun meant the slang of thieves and beggars, and later a salesman's spiel.

What name is given to the closing praise that Protestants, unlike Catholics, add to the Lord's Prayer?

The doxology is missing from the oldest manuscripts of Matthew. The King James translators kept it because they took a later Greek copy to be ancient.

The praise that Protestants add to the end of the Lord's Prayer echoes a prayer of which king in 1 Chronicles?

David speaks similar words in his farewell prayer, praising God for the greatness, the power and the glory as gifts pour in for the temple his son will build.

Which Jerusalem hill has a convent church displaying the Lord's Prayer on plaques in well over 100 languages?

Mount of Olives tradition links a cave there with Jesus teaching his disciples. A princess acquired the site in the 19th century and founded a Carmelite convent on it.