Pope Francis thinks the church should tweak the translation of the “Our Father” to clear up the confusion around the phrase “lead us not into temptation.”

“That is not a good translation,” the pope said in a interview on Wednesday night with Italian television.

A possible alternative is the phrase “do not let us fall into temptation,” which is currently used by the French church. In his interview, Pope Francis suggested that phrase could be adopted more widely.

The Italian bishops’ television channel, TV2000, has been broadcasting a series of conversations between the pope and a Catholic prison chaplain looking at the Lord’s Prayer line by line. The episode broadcast Dec. 6 focused on the line, “Lead us not into temptation.”

The line is found in both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Thomas Stegman, S.J., a Biblical scholar at Boston College, says the original Greek is the same in both cases.  

The Greek verb for lead is “eisphero” and the original Greek word for testing or temptation is “peirasmos.”

“One consideration is: how to understand peirasmos?” Father Stegman said by email. “It can refer to testing (in the sense of determining one’s character) or to tempting (in the sense of enticing one to sin).”

Father Stegman pointed out that Biblical scholar Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., in Sacra Pagina, “proposes the petition refers to ‘the final, eschatological testing through which all must pass.’ He refers to the notion of God as one who tests or tries as found in passages such as Pss 11:5 and 26:2.

“The pope’s recommendation, in my opinion, is not only theologically sound but also exegetically defensible.”

“However, if one understands peirasmos as enticement to sin, then the pope’s recommendation, in my opinion, is not only theologically sound but also exegetically defensible,” Father Stegman said.

He points out that James 1:13 “makes clear that God does not tempt. God cannot be tempted with evil, nor does God tempt anyone. Enticement to sin comes from own’s own desires.”

Meanwhile, in 1 Corinthians (10:13), Paul “insists that God does not allow one to be tempted beyond one’s strength, and also provides the way to escape,” Father Stegman said.

“That text might seem to imply that God tempts, but what lies behind is the conviction that God controls everything,” he added. “The logic of the Pauline text is that God helps in time of temptation, but certainly does not lead to sin.”

French-speaking Catholics in Benin and Belgium began using a new translation of the line at Pentecost last June. The common Spanish translation already is “no nos dejes caer en la tentacion” or “do not let us fall into temptation.”

The Italian bishops’ conference in 2008 adopted a new translation of the Bible; for the Lord’s Prayer both in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, they chose “do not abandon us in temptation,” although they did not order the change in liturgical use.

“The one who leads us into temptation is Satan,” the pope said. “That’s Satan’s job.”

Pope Francis told Father Pozza, “I’m the one who falls. But it’s not (God) who pushes me into temptation to see how I fall. No, a father does not do this. A father helps us up immediately.”

“The one who leads us into temptation is Satan,” the pope said. “That’s Satan’s job.”

The Greek word peirasmos first appears in Luke in 4:13, in a phrase referring to Jesus’ temptation by the evil.

“That could be a significant datum for interpreting Luke 11:4,” Father Stegman said. “The other uses can be taken as testing or temptation.”

He pointed to other uses of the phrase in Luke: “In 8:13 in the explanation of the parable of the sower in connection with the seed thrown on the rock (i.e., shallow soil), those with no root fall away in time of temptation/testing. In 22:28, at the last supper, Jesus commends the apostles for staying with him in his trials; and in 22:40, 46 (garden), Jesus exhorts the apostles to pray that they not “enter (eiserchomai) into temptation/testing.”

“The latter two instances imply, at least to me, that the prayer is to be protected (by God) from something,” he said.

Matthew’s version of the Our Father is longer than the one found in Luke. The version in Matthew includes the line “deliver us from evil,” or tou ponerou in Greek.

Father Stegman says this latter phrase is ambiguous: “It can mean ‘evil’ or, giving the definite article emphasis, ‘the Evil One.’

“If the latter, that would, to my mind, bolster Francis’s point,” he said. “That is: praying that we be delivered from Satan and his wiles would be the explanatory petition following ‘lead us not into temptation.’ Or, as Francis is suggesting: ‘Let us not fall into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.’”

This story includes updates and reporting from Catholic News Service.