TIP OF THE DAY 81: Biblical prayers
I am adding these posts to the previous tip list L/V 10 Tip of the Day ;
QUESTION: How does Logos/Verbum define prayer?
SOFTWARE: Parks, Jimmy. All the Prayers in the Bible. Faithlife Biblical and Theological Lists. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2020 avoids giving a definition of prayer. It is, however, a subset of Speaking to God with additional entries for “foreign” gods and for the Magnificat and prayer given as an example, think the Lord’s Prayer a.k.a. Our Father.
ANSWER: From Hardin, Leslie T. “Prayer.” Edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.
Prayer Communication with God, primarily offered in the second-person voice (addressing God directly). May include petition, entreaty, supplication, thanksgiving, praise, hymns, and lament.
Overview
Prayer was not unique to the Israelites of the early biblical period. Many cultures in the ancient Near East offered liturgical and ceremonial prayers and petitions to their deities. However, the prayers of the Old Testament differ in many respects from those of the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures. The biblical examples of prayer portray Yahweh as a God who listens, not a deity who is distant or must be cajoled into attending the affairs of humanity.
The earliest biblical prayers stem from a conversational intimacy with Yahweh and include spontaneous and unfiltered requests. Over time, prayer evolved into more fixed and liturgical forms. The teachings about and examples of prayer in the New Testament stem from these Jewish roots, yet they contain innovations introduced by Jesus and the early Christian community. The most notable developments are prayer in the name of Jesus and the introduction of the Lord’s Prayer in Matt 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4.[1]
QUESTION: What data is collected regarding prayer?
SOFTWARE: from Parks, Jimmy. All the Prayers in the Bible. Faithlife Biblical and Theological Lists. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2020.
ANSWER: Along with the prayer itself, each prayer is annotated for the following information:
Speaker: The person or people who are giving the prayer.
Addressee: The entity to whom the prayer is addressed.
Place: The location where the prayer occurs.
Context: The context of the prayer.
Content: The content of the prayer.
Prayer Context include the following:
Communal: Non-liturgical public expression
Literary: Speech to God used as a literary or rhetorical device
Prophetic: A non-visionary oracular experience
Ritual: Part of a ritual, cultic, or other religious exercise
Solitary: Personal prayer or music expressed in private
Theophanic: A dialogue with a manifested presence of God
Other: Not otherwise categorized
Prayer Content include the following:
Affirmation: Expression of agreement
Blessing: Uses the formula “bless/blessed”
Complaint: Report of a specific grievance
Confession: Confession of faith; the speech act portion of salvation
Consecration: A kind of oath where one is set apart for divine service
Curse: Uses the formula “curse/cursed”
Imprecation: Request for justice or vengeance to come down on another
Intercession: Request on behalf of another
Lament: Expressing negative emotion
Oath: A promise, vow, covenant, or other swearing
Petition: Request for a specific consideration for oneself
Praise: Ascribing glory, adoration, worship, or recounting good deeds
Query: Request for information or direction
Repentance: Confession of sin, the speech act portion of repentance
Thanksgiving: An expression of gratitude
Other: Not otherwise categorized[2]
Notice the similarity in attributes and their values to that of the Speaking to God data.
QUESTION: List some Logos resources useful for the study of Biblical prayer?
ANSWER: These are primarily Logos rather than Verbum resources:
Elmer, Robert, ed. Fount of Heaven: Prayers of the Early Church. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022.
Hammer, Reuven. Entering the High Holy Days: A Guide to the Origins, Themes, and Prayers. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998.
Jenkins, Steffen G. Imprecations in the Psalms: Love for Enemies in Hard Places. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022.
Longenecker, Richard N., ed. Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament. McMaster New Testament Studies. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.
Richards, Larry. Every Prayer in the Bible. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1998.
Rosscup, James E. An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible: Igniting the Fuel to Flame Our Communication with God Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008. (this multi-volume resource was recommended as the primary source of all the prayers of the Bible prior to the creation of the dataset.)
QUESTION: What are the search arguments for prayer?
ANSWER: Using Lamentations 3:42-66 as an example: prayer and copying the search from the Context menu:(addressee:person:God AND content:Complaint AND content:Confession AND content:Petition AND content:Repentance AND context:Solitary AND speaker:person:"Jerusalem Inhabitants (Babylonian Exile)" AND title:topic:"The Confession of the Inhabitants of Jerusalem")
Note that while Speaking to God is available in the Bible Browser, Prayers is not.
The Concordance Guide section on the passage produced several results:
Concordance | Command
La 3:56—you heard my plea, “Do not close your ear to my cry for help, but give me relief!”
Type: Request
Verb Class: Caring and Empathizing
La 3:57—You came near when I called on you; you said, “Do not fear!”
Type: Prohibition
Verb Class: Psychological State
La 3:59—You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord; judge my cause.
Type: Request
Verb Class: Judgment
La 3:63—Whether they sit or rise—see, I am the object of their taunt songs.
Type: Request
Verb Class: Focusing and Comprehending
Concordance | Prayer
La 3:42–66—We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven. You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us, killing without pity; you have…
Addressee: God
Content: Complaint; Confession; Petition; Repentance
Context: Solitary
Speaker: Jerusalem Inhabitants (Babylonian Exile)
Title: The Confession of the Inhabitants of Jerusalem
Concordance | Speech
La 3:42–66—We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven. You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us, killing without pity; you have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. You have made us filth and rubbish among the peoples. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us; panic and pitfall have come upon us, devastation and destruction. My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of my people. My eyes will flow without ceasing, …
Content: Complaint; Confession; Petition; Repentance
Context: Solitary
Distance: Remote
Mode: Prayer
Type: Dialogue
[1] Leslie T. Hardin, “Prayer,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
[2] Jimmy Parks, All the Prayers in the Bible, Faithlife Biblical and Theological Lists (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2020).
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
Comments
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Thank you. Very helpful! I’m of the opinion that the data set is a „very good hidden“ gem of logos. I hope they would support that technology much more! May be you could continue to explain the data sets.
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I will cover all the datasets but I also want to cover all the data that is displayed - especially the data in the Factbook that people forget exists.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I sure do wish this tip came two days earlier! I spent what felt like an entire day within Logos and ChatGPT trying to figure out how to make a passage list for every prayer in the Bible. The entire time I kept thinking "I know Logos has an interactive on this, I've surely used it before", but my memory mistook me and I thought the interactive was called "Every Prayer in The Bible". The interactive is called "Speaking to God" and the resource is "Every Prayer in the Bible" 😑
That said, my passage list ended up being 627 passages, while the Speaking to God interactive yields 844 passages total and yields 283 when narrowed down to Prayer. I don't remember what I ended up using as a search to yield the 627, I typically do these searches within the context menu and copy paste them into one search, so I'm sure I missed something there. I did use the ESVCE in order to not miss any within the Deuterocanon, but I know I'm doing something wrong.
I would like to have an exhaustive passage list of every prayer in the Bible (including the Deuterocanon), is the search you mentioned in your post the way to go about that?
I tried the search:addressee:person:God AND content:Complaint AND content:Confession AND content:Petition AND content:Repentance AND context:Solitary AND speaker:person:"Jerusalem Inhabitants (Babylonian Exile)" AND title:topic:"The Confession of the Inhabitants of Jerusalem"When I enter this into a Bible search I get the error:
Unknown keyword: context. Is there something I'm doing wrong on the search?
Going into this I thought, "surely someone's done this and it's a public doc", but it appears nobody has ever shared a passage list like this, go figure. Honestly though, these are some of the best days I've had within Logos where I'm figuring something out due to necessity, and I end up finding other little gems that help me out with other searches in the future.
Thanks for this timely post. I'd love to hear your response @MJ. Smith0 -
When I enter this into a Bible search I get the error:
Unknown keyword: context. Is there something I'm doing wrong on the search ?You need to enclose the search string in () and put the keyword prayer: before the opening parenthesis.
I would like to have an exhaustive passage list of every prayer in the Bible (including the Deuterocanon)
Try the search string prayer:(addressee:person:God)
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Oh my goodness, I can't believe I made that so complicated lol.
So now, in the ESV-CE I'm yielding 1,177 results and the ESV I'm yielding 961. Awesome, thanks Graham! I'm going to delete my old Passage List, because whatever the overly-complicated search was that I did from the context menu, didn't get me what I wanted. After a cursory glance at this search, it appears to be exactly what I needed.
With that, what could I enter into the search to be able to add prayers that are addressed to someone other than God? EDIT: I should add, I triedPrayer:(adressee:*)and it yielded less results than the one you provided.0 -
With that, what could I enter into the search to be able to add prayers that are addressed to someone other than God?
You need to specify other addresses individually - a wildcard doesn't work. So, for example:
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@Graham Criddle luckily, that appears to be the only recorded prayer in the Bible to another deity. According to the All the Prayers in the Bible Concordance, there is a few mentions of prayers to other pagan deities being quoted or alluded to… I can easily add those all as a secondary passage list.
We're going to be working chronologically through all the prayers in the Bible in an upcoming Bible Study, so the timing of this post is perfect. I'd like to at least highlight some of the prayers in the Deuterocanon, but that'd likely cause an outrage in the group, so I'll put them on a separate list.
I edited my Passage List to view by chapter, to cut down the amount of entries as a good chunk of the results are in the same chapter.Thank you for your help Graham and thank you MJ for this perfectly timed tip.
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Thank you for your help Graham and thank you MJ for this perfectly timed tip
You're welcome. It's always good to hear people are actually using the tips.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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