Intertextual Bible, “‘The Lord’s Prayer’ is a Jewish Prayer” (8.29.26), intertextual.bible. Accessed 10/16/26.
Referring to God as Father is often assumed to be Jesus’ own innovation, and sometimes a daring one. However, this use develops substantially throughout the Second Temple period and continues in the synagogue today in forms such as Avinu Malkenu, “our Father, our King.” In the tannaitic texts of the second century, the phrase ‘father in heaven’ nearly always appears as ‘his,’ ‘your,’ or ‘their’ father in heaven. The few occurrences of ‘our father in heaven’ are not direct addresses to God in prayer and the plural liturgical address enters the standard rabbinic texts only in the late talmudic or post-talmudic period. One of those early occurrences comes near the end of the tractate Sotah in the Mishnah, where a bleak reflection on the generation before the messiah ends with the question of whom there is left to rely on.
The father language in both prayers reflects on an older, common, tradition. In the exodus narrative God calls Israel his son and his firstborn, a description that points forward to Israel’s election and to the covenant rather than back at any failure. God is the father of the people, the one who gave them their existence, and the relationship describes Israel as a whole before it describes any individual within it. The Hebrew Bible itself rarely turns this into direct address and keeps the fatherhood figurative, and in later liturgy our “father” refers to the ancestors rather than to God. Both prayers take a large step forward, and interestingly both make it plural.
