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ROME, June 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Dame Mary Beard, Regius Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, has cast doubt on Pope Francis’s new translation of the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer (recently adopted by the Italian Bishops Conference).

The traditional translation (which Beard says is far closer to the Greek) is ‘lead us not into temptation.’ Pope Francis has persuaded the Italian and French Bishops Conferences to replace this with ‘do not allow us to fall into temptation.’ Beard states that the traditional version is “as close as you can get to the earliest (Greek) version we have.”

On Dec. 6, 2017, Pope Francis appeared with Fr. Marco Pozza on TV2000’s weekly program “Our Father” to talk about its sixth petition: “and lead us not into temptation.” 

During the exchange on the official television network of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the Pope said the translation “and lead us not into temptation” [in Italian: “non ci indurre in tentazione”] is “not good” and should be changed.

Pope Francis said the reason he doesn’t like the traditional translation is because “it’s not [God] who throws me into temptation, in order to then see how I’ve fallen. No, a father doesn’t do this … The one who leads us into temptation is Satan. That’s Satan’s task,” he said.

Beard observes that this claim has nothing to do with the accuracy of the original version but is just another way of saying that Pope Francis does not like the text theologically. 

“‘Not a good translation’ indeed! Doesn’t say what I want it to, more like,” the Cambridge Classicist said.