He says these colossally stupid things and yet the problem is that millions of Catholics don't know even Latin, much less Koine Greek (the original language of the New Testament). There are several sorts of translation issues that one can have with the Bible, but this passage has none of them. Just to be thorough, let's review:
- There are scribal errors in the Bible. This is the inevitable result of the process of having a text that was copied down in many languages in many countries by hand over two millennia. For example, in Genesis, the Masoretic Text and the Vulgate have God blessing the third day twice but not the second day, while the Septuagint has each day blessed once. It's likely that the Masoretic Text springs from an early error that the Septuagint sources didn't make, though Kabbalists and other Jewish mystics will try to spin this fact into a story about how 2 is the number of division and God could not bless division without a harmonizing third principle. Some Christian mystics then go on and say this relates to the Trinity. In my opinion, the Septuagint is probably right, the days each got blessed once. Similarly, in some versions of Revelation, the "number of the Beast" is listed as 616, rather than 666. This is an extreme minority position and has been discarded as an error.
In this case, pulling out the handy Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, I can see that this passage is uniform in all versions of the Gospels. In other words, there are no scribal errors noted for this passage, no variants. "Lead us not into temptation" is not replaced with anything else in any version. The only variant in the phrase is that some texts add the later "for the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are Yours, now and forever" at the end after "but deliver us from evil".
- There are passages that are problematic in translation. One such passage is the statement in the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be bornανωθεν. In the original Greek this can mean both "again" or "from above" or "from on high". There is an ambiguity about the statement and we can argue about how best to translate this very difficult word, given that it doesn't correspond directly to an English word.
In this case, we don't have this problem. εις- as a prefix means "into" (as does the corresponding Latin in- ), and the verb used in Greek, αγειν, means "to lead" or "to guide", just as its Latin cognate, ducere. The words are not difficult or complicated words and their meaning is not the subject of disputes.
- There are passages where scholars suggest that the authors of the Greek original text made a translation error from the original Aramaic of Christ. This is extremely difficult to detect as there is no extant Aramaic work. To even speculate about translation errors is to start on dangerous ground because it is a hypothetical of a hypothetical. However, there are nonetheless a few points where it seems that perhaps there was a translation error from Aramaic to Greek. For example, when Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 19:24), we know that the Aramaic wordgamlameans both a camel and a type of heavy nautical rope used on seafaring ships in the Mediterranean. The passage seems to make more sense in this light: it's easier to put a giant nautical rope (as opposed to a thread) through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. However, even in this case, because there is no Aramaic original, we can't conclusively say anything, but merely speculate that it is a likely error.
In this case, there is no error that scholars have been able to point to that would lead to this sort of supposed and hypothetical mistranslation. The only Aramaic New Testaments, the old Syriac fragments and the Syriac Peshitta, use the exact same language as the Greek with the exact same meaning.
- There are passages that have been translated from earlier liturgical languages into English with less than perfect accuracy. One example of this is the correction that Benedict XVI recommended for the Creed, where Christ is no longer spoken of as being "one in being with the Father" but rather "consubstantial with the Father". The latter means of one nature, the former is slightly more vague. In this case, the problem is that English doesn't have easy words that would convey the Latinconsubstantialisor its cognate, the Greekομοουσιος. The attempt at translating the Creed into English immediately following Vatican II sought to make the language easy to understand for the laity. However, Benedict XVI worried that the phrase was too vague and misunderstood.
In this case, the phrase is neither vague nor difficult to translate into English from earlier liturgical languages. The phrase is nearly identical to the Latin and Greek without losing any meaning.
Because none of the abovementioned issues can be identified, labeling the rendering of the Lord's Prayer in its current state as a "translation problem" is beyond that of a simple error. It's an intentionally misleading, weaselly thing to do. It is a perversion of the very words of Christ to suit an ex-janitor from Argentina who spouts off without thinking in his infinite stupidity.
That, my friend, is the very definition of heresy. He is choosing his own preferences over those of Christ and the Holy Church. He is choosing his own language over the words of Christ and the Holy Church. He is doing this and misleading the Faithful.
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*