Prayer of Manasseh

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The Prayer of Manasseh is a short, penitential prayer attributed to king Manasseh of Judah.

Contents

The majority of scholars believe that the Prayer of Manasseh was written in Greek (while a minority argues for a Semitic original) in the second or first century BC. [1] [2] It is recognised that it could also have been written in the first half of the 1st century AD, but in any case before the Destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. [2] Another work by the same title, written in Hebrew, was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q381:17). [1]

Origin

Manasseh is recorded in the Bible as one of the most idolatrous kings of Judah (2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chronicles 33:1–9). The second Book of Chronicles, but not the second Book of Kings, records that Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians (2 Chronicles 33:11–13). While a prisoner, Manasseh prayed for mercy, and upon being freed and restored to the throne turned from his idolatrous ways (2 Chronicles 33:15–17). A reference to a penitential prayer, but not the prayer itself, is made in 2 Chronicles 33:19, which says that the prayer is written in "the annals of the kings of Israel".

Canonicity

The prayer's canonicity is disputed. It appears in ancient Syriac, [3] [4] [5] Old Slavonic, Ethiopic, and Armenian translations. [6] [7] In the Ethiopian Bible, the prayer is found in 2 Chronicles. The earliest Greek text is the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus . [3] A Hebrew manuscript of the prayer was found in Cairo Geniza. [8] It is considered apocryphal by Jews, Catholics and Protestants. It was placed at the end of 2 Chronicles in the late 4th-century Vulgate. Over a millennium later, Martin Luther included the prayer in his 74-book translation of the Bible into German. It was part of the 1537 Matthew Bible, and the 1599 Geneva Bible. It also appears in the Apocrypha of the 1611 King James Bible and of the original 1609/1610 Douai-Rheims Bible. Pope Clement VIII included the prayer in an appendix to the Vulgate.

The prayer is included in some editions of the Greek Septuagint. For example, the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus includes the prayer among fourteen Odes appearing just after the Psalms. [6] It is accepted as a deuterocanonical book by Orthodox Christians. [9]

Liturgical use

The prayer is chanted during the Eastern Orthodox Christian and Byzantine Catholic service of Great Compline. It is used in the Roman Rite as part of the Responsory after the first reading in the Office of Readings on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (along with Psalm 51). In the Extraordinary Form, in the Roman Rite Breviary; in the corpus of responsories sung with the readings from the books of Kings between Trinity Sunday and August, the seventh cites the Prayer of Manasseh, together with verses of Psalm 50, the penitential Psalm par excellence. [10] It is used also as a canticle in the Daily Office of the 1979 U.S. Book of Common Prayer used by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and as Canticle 52 in Common Worship: Daily Prayer of the Church of England.

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Apocrypha are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word apocryphal (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings that were to be read privately rather than in the public context of church services. Apocrypha were edifying Christian works that were not always initially included as canonical scripture.

The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church. In contrast, modern Rabbinic Judaism and Protestants regard the DC as Apocrypha.

The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Septuagint</span> Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures

The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

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The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith, meaning "praised" or "Jewess", is the feminine form of Judah.

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Psalm 151 is a short psalm found in most copies of the Septuagint (LXX), but not in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The title given to this psalm in the Septuagint indicates that it is supernumerary, as no number is affixed to it. The psalm is ascribed to David. It is also included in some manuscripts of the Peshitta. The psalm concerns the story of David and Goliath.

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The Book of Odes, also known as the Biblical Odes, refers to a collection of hymns and prayers referencing the Bible and used as a part of Liturgy in some denominations. The biblical odes form the basis for the Eastern Orthodox canon sung during matins and other services.

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The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and 100 AD.

The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.

Biblical languages are any of the languages employed in the original writings of the Bible. Partially owing to the significance of the Bible in society, Biblical languages are studied more widely than many other dead languages. Furthermore, some debates exist as to which language is the original language of a particular passage, and about whether a term has been properly translated from an ancient language into modern editions of the Bible. Scholars generally recognize three languages as original biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">2 Chronicles 33</span> Second Book of Chronicles, chapter 33

2 Chronicles 33 is the thirty-third chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles the Old Testament of the Christian Bible or of the second part of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by modern scholars as "the Chronicler", and had the final shape established in late fifth or fourth century BCE. This chapter belongs to the section focusing on the kingdom of Judah until its destruction by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of restoration under Cyrus the Great of Persia. It contains the regnal accounts of Manasseh and Amon, the kings of Judah.

References

  1. 1 2 James D. G. Dunn (19 November 2003). Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 859. ISBN   978-0-8028-3711-0.
  2. 1 2 Charlesworth, James H. (2010). The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers. pp. 625–627. ISBN   9781598564907 . Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  3. 1 2 J. H. Charlesworth, The Prayer of Manasseh (Second Century B.C.-First Century A.D.). A New Translation and Introduction, in James H. Charlesworth (1985), The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2, ISBN   0-385-09630-5 (Vol. 1), ISBN   0-385-18813-7 (Vol. 2), p. 625.
  4. ↑ Syriac manuscripts are preserved in the Mediceo-Laurenziana Library in Florence, Italy (9aI) and in the Syriac manuscripts of the Didascalia Apostolorum (especially 10DI and 13 DI). There exist also a tenth-century Syriac manuscript in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad; it is Syr. MS, New Series 19, and is abbreviated 10tI.
  5. ↑ Ariel Gutman and Wido van Peursen. The Two Syriac Versions of the Prayer of Manasseh. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
  6. 1 2 NET Bible
  7. ↑ The shorter books of the Apocrypha: Tobit, Judith, Rest of Esther, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, additions to Daniel and Prayer of Manasseh. Commentary by J. C. Dancy, with contributions by W. J. Fuerst and R. J. Hammer. Cambridge [Eng.] University Press, 1972. ISBN   978-0-521-09729-1
  8. ↑ Leicht, Reimund (1996). "A Newly Discovered Hebrew Version of the Apocryphal "Prayer of Manasseh"". Jewish Studies Quarterly. 3 (4): 359–373. ISSN   0944-5706.
  9. ↑ Coogan, Michael D.; et al., eds. (2018). "The Canons of the Bible". The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version: An Ecumenical Study Bible (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1839, 1841. ISBN   978-0-19-027605-8. OCLC   1032375119.
  10. ↑ Gregory Dipipo (2017). "Actual Apocrypha in the Liturgy" New Liturgical Movement (blog).
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