Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Our Father Which Art in Heaven

November 12, 2009

This famous New Testament prayer is also known in Russian as Молитва господня ‘the Lord’s Prayer’. The last word is a possessive adjective from the word for ‘lord’: госпОдь, гOспода, vocative гОсподи, from which we get the words for ‘sir’, ‘ma’am’, and ‘gentlemen’. The word is a compound of an old root meaning ‘guest’ and one meaning ‘potent, powerful’. The powerful guest is the lord. (The meanings ‘guest’ and ‘master’ get mixed up.) This is a hint, too, of the pre-Christian bases of religious terminology in Russian.

Here is the text of the Pater noster from the Old Russian Ostromirovo evangelie, 1056.
Отче наш иже еси на небесех,
да святится имя Твое,
да придеть Царствие Твое,
да будеть воля Твоя,
яко на небеси и на земли,
хлеб нашь насущный даждь нам днесь,
и остави нам долгы нашя,
яко и мы оставляем должником нашим,
и не введи нас в напасть,
но избави ны от неприязни.

Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed by 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 debts
as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.

The language is already clearly Old Russian and not Old Church Slavonic. You will see some of the features of the Old Russian dialect here, mixed in with the evident Church Slavonicisms.

The verb ‘be’ is, in OCS and is OR, conjugated: есмъ, еси, естъ ‘I am, you are, he/she/is.’ Да with the 3rd person means “let X happen, may X occur.”

Святится ‘be sanctified’ is from the adjective святой ‘holy’, also to be seen in the personal names Святогор, Святополк; the former is the name of a famous Russian folk hero and shows the pre-Christian meaning of this word: ‘powerful, mighty’. The church changed the meaning to coincide with Latin sanctus.

Даждь ‘’give’ is an old imperative from this ancient athematic verb; днесь ‘today’ is the genitive of ‘day’ with the demonstrative pronoun, дьне–сь, ‘of this day’, just like contemporary Russian сего–дня ‘to-day, of the day’. Isn’t it satisfying to see the analysis of this word you learned in 101?

Долгы нашя ‘our debts’ is interesting as it shows that the velar still retained hard vs. soft distinctions before the high vowel; in contemporary Russian we have to say долги and the hard variety долгы cannot occur. The demonstrative pronoun is the accusative plural of a soft stem, with the Slavonic я instead of jat’ (see my previous blog on Tsar of All the Russias.)

Temptation is напасть, ‘trap’. The last line has the ancient acc. ны ‘us’, and also the interesting translation of ‘evil’: неприязнь ‘the umpleasant, the enemy, the evil nature’. Greek has tou ponerou, ‘the evil one’, the devil (genitive).

The following version from the Russian Slavonic Bible has a lot of modern Russian in it, as you can se.

Отче наш, сущий на небесах!
да святится имя Твое;
да приидет Царствие Твое;
да будет воля Твоя и на земле, как на небе;
хлеб наш насущный дай нам на сей день;
и прости нам долги наши, как и мы прощаем должникам нашим;
и не введи нас в искушение, но избавь нас от лукавого.

Ибо Твое есть Царство и сила и слава во веки. Аминь.

Note прости нам долги наши ‘forgive us our debts’, which is fully modern. The last lines have искушение ‘temptation’ and избавь нас от лукавого ‘deliver us from the clever/insidious/evil one’, very close to the Greek.

You can also find a number of faky Slavonic-style versions, with the Church Slavonic-style alphabet and totally unreal spellings. The Slavonic serves the eccesliastical mood, just as we old Anglo-Saxon conservatives hearken back to the days of the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and, for Catholics, the Latin mass. In the Russian church the old language is still there to ease the spirit — somewhat dressed up, painted and perfumed, but still there for us.

gmc