Where the manuscripts differ · Matthew 6:13
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory"
The ending everyone says out loud is missing from the earliest manuscripts of Matthew — but it is not a modern flourish either: the church was already praying a doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer by around AD 100.
Almost every congregation that prays the Lord's Prayer aloud finishes with these words. Then someone reads Matthew 6 from a newer Bible, stops at "deliver us from evil," and the room keeps going for another line. It is a small, jarring moment, and it deserves a real answer.
The manuscript picture is fairly clear. The oldest Greek copies of Matthew end the prayer at "deliver us from evil." So does the Latin Bible that shaped Western Christianity for a thousand years — which is why Roman Catholic worship historically did not include the ending while Protestant worship did.
Now the warm part, which is usually left out. A very early Christian handbook called the Didache, written around the end of the first century or the start of the second, gives the Lord's Prayer for daily use — and it too closes with a doxology, in a shorter form. So the practice of ending the prayer with praise is genuinely ancient. It is older than most of the manuscripts we are comparing. The evidence does not suggest someone invented a pious ending in the Middle Ages; it suggests the church prayed the prayer this way from very early on, and the way the church prayed it eventually got written into the page.
What the manuscripts actually show
| Witness | Date | What it reads here |
|---|---|---|
| The earliest Greek manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Bezae | 4th–5th centuries | The prayer ends at "deliver us from evil." |
| The Latin Vulgate tradition | 4th century onward | No doxology — the standard Bible of the Western church ended the prayer without it. |
| The Didache | about AD 100 (surviving in later copies) | Gives the Lord's Prayer with a closing doxology in a shorter form, without the full three-fold "kingdom, power, and glory." |
| The Byzantine majority of Greek manuscripts | 9th–15th centuries | "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." This is the reading behind the KJV. |
| Early expositions of the Lord's Prayer by Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian | 3rd century | Walk through the prayer petition by petition and say nothing about a closing doxology — striking silence from writers whose whole purpose was to explain the prayer line by line. |
The case each way
That it belongs in the text
The doxology is in the large majority of Greek manuscripts and has been prayed by most of the church for most of its history.
Its language is thoroughly biblical — it echoes David's prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:11, "Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory" — which is what you would expect from a Jewish teacher closing a prayer.
Jewish prayers of the period regularly closed with praise, and a prayer ending on the word "evil" is liturgically awkward. Some argue Jesus would naturally have finished with blessing.
That it came later
The earliest and most independent Greek witnesses lack it, and so does the Latin tradition — agreement across families that rarely agree.
The wording varies among the manuscripts that have it: some shorter, some longer, some with "Amen," some without. Growth of that kind points to a phrase entering from use rather than being copied from an original.
Third-century writers expounding the prayer clause by clause never reach a final clause of praise.
Luke's version of the prayer (Luke 11) has no doxology in any early witness, which fits Matthew ending at "evil" as well.