{"id":419,"date":"2014-10-13T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/?p=419"},"modified":"2014-09-30T04:26:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T04:26:39","slug":"matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If Jesus\u2019 description of flamboyant, hypocritical praying sounds like grand theatre, that\u2019s because it probably was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd when you pray,\u201d Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, \u201cdo not be like the <em>hypocrites<\/em>, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners <em>to be seen by men<\/em>\u201d (italics mine).<\/p>\n<p>Although some Jewish prayers (such as the Amidah) included standing, most did not. Thus, Bible scholars tell us that this word picture of Christ likely hearkens to Greek-influenced performance art of the time. The Greek word we translate as \u201chypocrite\u201d in Matthew 6:5 is one that was typically associated with a career actor, or more literally, \u00a0a \u201cplay-actor.\u201d In Greek culture it also carried the meaning of a \u201cpretender\u201d or \u201cexpounder of dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This play-actor theme continued Christ\u2019s earlier sentiments about \u201cacts of righteousness\u201d done as performance art (see 6:1-2), and it would have been readily familiar to Jesus\u2019 audience. Only a few miles north of Nazareth, in nearby Sepphoris, Herod Antipas had built a large, Greco-Roman style theatre with seating for a whopping 2,500 people. Antipas\u2019 father, Herod the Great, had also built similar theatres in Jerusalem and Jericho<\/p>\n<p>So, when Jesus labeled religious narcissists who stood and prayed in public as \u201chypocrites,\u201d his audience would have pictured the theatre in Sepphoris (or Jerusalem or Jericho), and seen a vain, preening actor, standing center stage, delivering a sloppy soliloquy in hopes of applause.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/workscited.html\">Works Cited<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>[BKB, 121-122]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u2126\u2126\u2126<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"About: Bible Study Nerds\" href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/about-for-bible-study-nerds.html\">About: For Bible Study Nerds\u2122<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"About: Mike Nappa\" href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/about-mike-nappa.html\">About: Mike Nappa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2014 to present by\u00a0<a title=\"Nappaland Communications Inc. official website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nappaland.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nappaland Communications Inc<\/a>. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Jesus\u2019 description of flamboyant, hypocritical praying sounds like grand theatre, that\u2019s because it probably was. \u201cAnd when you pray,\u201d Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, \u201cdo not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men\u201d (italics mine). Although some Jewish&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":571,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[181,16,180],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalcommentary","category-matthew","tag-hypocrites","tag-jesus","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary) - For Bible Study Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary) - For Bible Study Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If Jesus\u2019 description of flamboyant, hypocritical praying sounds like grand theatre, that\u2019s because it probably was. \u201cAnd when you pray,\u201d Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, \u201cdo not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men\u201d (italics mine). Although some Jewish&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"For Bible Study Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-13T12:00:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-30T04:26:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mike Nappa\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary) - For Bible Study Nerds","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary) - For Bible Study Nerds","og_description":"If Jesus\u2019 description of flamboyant, hypocritical praying sounds like grand theatre, that\u2019s because it probably was. \u201cAnd when you pray,\u201d Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, \u201cdo not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men\u201d (italics mine). Although some Jewish&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html","og_site_name":"For Bible Study Nerds","article_published_time":"2014-10-13T12:00:55+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-09-30T04:26:39+00:00","author":"Mike Nappa","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html","name":"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary) - For Bible Study Nerds","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-10-13T12:00:55+00:00","dateModified":"2014-09-30T04:26:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#\/schema\/person\/a0ce37903172885871b0c504c6694575"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/10\/matthew-65-15-prayer-cultural-commentary.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Matthew 6:5-15; Prayer (Cultural Commentary)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/","name":"For Bible Study Nerds","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Mike Nappa","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#\/schema\/person\/a0ce37903172885871b0c504c6694575","name":"Mike Nappa","description":"Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist at FamilyFans.com, a bestselling author\u2014and a notorious Bible Study Nerd. He's a former youth pastor who shepherded kids on staff at Chuck Swindoll's church in Southern California\u2014and he's a bestselling and award-winning author with more than a million copies of his books sold worldwide. Plus, he holds a degree in Christian Education with an emphasis in Bible Theology. So, you know, he\u2019s got that going for him. Mike is also a pop culture dork who watches too much TV, reads too many comic books, utters too many bad words, laughs at all the wrong jokes, and often gets in trouble because he says whatever he happens to be thinking at the moment\u2014like quoting an R-rated movie in the middle of a sermon. Yeah, he\u2019s a mess (just like you!), but he kind of likes it that way. Most of all, Mike Nappa loves Jesus, and he figures that covers over a multitude of sins. Learn more at nappaland.com\/mikenappa.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.biblestudynerds.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/author\/mnappa"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}