Quote:

---

There is one Mandela Effect that has me perplexed though. (Sorry if I've brought this up before). It's "The Lord's Prayer". You know the line "Forgive our Tresspasses, as we forgive those who Tresspass against us?" That's not the line. I actually got chills when I looked at an old KJV bible from 1969 I got from Grandma's cellar and read the words "Forgive us our Debts, as we forgive our Debtors". I also looked up the New NJV and the American Catholic Bible (from 1970) and they both have "Debtors".


I asked Grandma to say the Lord's Prayer to me, and she said the Trespasses line. When I told her that it was actually Debtors, she actually remembers being a kid and there being a time when they sung hymns in church and she remembers the adults singing "Debtors" instead of Trespasses. She even remembers thinking at the time that they must have changed the words to better fit the song. (Her religion doesn't do confession and doesn't use the Lord's Prayer that often, so it didn't mean as much to her as it would have if she was Catholic).


I've got an explanation for that one though. It might sound a little far fetched, and maybe even a little conspiracy theoristy.... but when you apply Occam's Razor I think it makes a hell of a lot more sense than "We're living in the Matrix" or "Cern's black holes ripped the multiverse apart"....


My theory on this one is that somebody decided at some time to change the line when taught to children in CCD to Tresspasses, rather than Debtors because of the whole Jewish connotation of Debtors. Think about the time frame of it all. Before WWII erupted, and even before Jews were taken to concentration camps, there was a lot of propaganda fliers and posters going up everywhere in Germany and other European nations that were VERY antisemitic, and even made Jews look cartoonishly evil and with huge noses. Though the words "Debts" and "Debtors" don't exclusively encompass Jewish people, especially in the last 100 years, I'm sure in the minds and hearts of a lot of people in the world in the 30's and 40's they did. They definitely did when the Bible was originally written/published.


It's really not that far fetched to believe that this change in belief of the actual lines could be made over a few generations without ever changing future printings of the Bible. How many people do you know that actually read the Bible. I know Grandma hasn't. I can think of only K** S*****, possibly. I know I'm not close to the most religious person in the world, but I know for a fact that is the first time I ever actually read the words from the source. Grandma's religion didn't use the Lord's prayer much at all since they don't do confession. I assume the only branch that used it much was Catholic, and maybe the Pope in the late 30's or early 40's put out a decree to the bishops to just teach the kids the lines differently. Grandma might only remember it "Trespasses" because she's seen it said that way in movies when people were saying Confession.


(Really, when you think about how the hierarchy of the Catholic Church works, they had a much greater control on what EVERY child in their religion learned than public schools across the nation until they were federalized in the 80's and 90's).


This would also explain why Grandma remembers the adults singing the "Debtors" line when they were singing hymnals. If the Episcopalians were even given a mandate to bother teaching the Lord's prayer differently than the Book said, chances are they didn't think to change how the hymns were sung, or thought better against forcing adults to change the way they sung them all their lives (old dogs, new tricks, and all).



Nope. I don't think this is a Mandela Effect. I think what we're talking about is quite possibly the first example of Political Correctness in the history of Mankind. ??

---