A Prayer to Our Father

Co-authors Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson explore the Hebrew foundation of the Lord’s Prayer in their book A Prayer to Our Father: Hebrew Origins of the Lord’s Prayer.

The authors intend for this book to be very exciting.  They are excited people.  They are Hebrew nerds, and they go on a dramatically and suspensefully told quest to plumb the depths of time and manuscripts to flush out the Hebrew underpinnings of the Lord’s Prayer, or in Hebrew, the Avinu Prayer.

Gordon and Johnson do not publish anything radical, controversial, or suspect.  They back up their supsicions and hunches with adequate scholarship.  The book proves to be part theological book and part travelogue as the pair criss-cross continents and the Holy Land in search for the authentic roots of the Lord’s Prayer.

Their quest is admirable, and achieved, but its not one I really wanted to go on.  If you are a language nerd or think of reading a Hebrew dictionary or studying Hebrew as a fun and enjoyable activity, I suggest you buy this book.  You’ll enjoy it.

Myself on the other hand, the book started boring me about half way through.  I just am not interested in the peculiarities of Hebrew to Greek to English translations, and most of their insights I had read in N.T. Wright’s book The Lord and His Prayer.

The book does try to be exciting, and it deserves much credit on that point.  It just didn’t click with me. There are many books I read (and review) that people would find boring as well, so this book is in the eye of the beholder, and at $19.95 for a paperback (a high price in my opinion) I would suggest that unless you are a Hebrew nerd or transfixed by the Holy Land buy Wright’s The Lord and His Prayer instead (it’s $8 on Amazon).

A Prayer to Our Father: Hebrew Origins of the Lord’s Prayer
Hilkiah Press
Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson
$19.95 (Hilkiah & Amazon)