Lord’s Prayer was meant not only as a model for proper prayer, but as a formula, a token of recognition—which is the way in which the church has used it down the centuries. The construction of the Lord’s Prayer can be seen at a glance: 1. The address is followed by: 2. two short petitions in the second person singular (the two ‘thou’ petitions), in parallelism; 3. two longer petitions in the first person plural (the two ‘we’ petitions), in parallelism; 4. the short closing petition. The address πάτερ
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