# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S151
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Original Form of the Small Catechism, etc. 151

“Lord, your God, am a jealous God”; the word “mighty” was first added by the 1599 edition.

In the explanation of the Second Article, all earlier editions read: “has redeemed, purchased, won, and from all sins”; by contrast, the Book of Concord reads: “has redeemed, purchased, and won from all sins,” which, as Lic. Schneider remarks, merely weakens the forceful expression of the original. Most later catechisms omit the “and” altogether and have the entirely arbitrary text: “redeemed, purchased, won, from all sins,” etc.

The so-called introduction to the Lord’s Prayer, as well as its explanation, is absent from the first edition of the Small Catechism; both first appear in the 1531 edition.

The explanation of the First Petition originally reads: “to this help us, dear Father in heaven”; by contrast, the Book of Concord has (through a misunderstanding of Luther’s language): “Help us to do this.”

The Second Petition consistently reads: “Thy kingdom come,” which is now commonly changed to: “may Thy kingdom come to us,” or: “may Thy kingdom come within us.”

Regarding the explanation of the Fourth Petition, it should be noted that in his 1518 work on the Lord’s Prayer,*) Dr. Luther still interprets bread spiritually as the Word of God, particularly because of the little word “our”: “namely, that we do not ask for ordinary bread, which the heathen also eat and which God gives to all people without their asking, but for our bread, we who are children of the heavenly Father.” (Walch VII, 1189.) After 1522, however, Dr. Luther adheres to the correct interpretation as bodily bread, which, remarkably enough, is already found in the Weißenburg Catechism from the ninth century.

The Fifth Petition originally reads: “and forgive us our debt, as we forgive our debtors.”

The Seventh Petition reads: “but deliver us from evil,” although Dr. Luther says in his Large Catechism: “In Greek this little passage reads: ‘Deliver or preserve us from the evil or malicious one,’ and it looks precisely as though he were speaking of the devil”; but Dr. Luther did not wish to confuse the people by replacing the word that had been customary until then with another, even if more correct; only from 1584 onward does “from the Evil One” appear in some catechisms.

For the same reason, Dr. Luther omitted the conclusion, or doxology: “For Thine is the kingdom,” etc.; for these words were not added to the Lord’s Prayer, of which we still have a remnant in the old Communion liturgies, according to which the pastor sings the Lord’s Prayer only as far as the words: “deliver us from evil.” Those words Dr.

*) This is the tract distributed by the New York Tract Society under the title One of the Few Writings Authored by Luther.