“... The next part of the teaching in the Didache is the giving of the Lord’s Prayer. It is well known that the version of the prayer given here is extremely close to that of Matthew, and is certainly far closer to the Matthean version than to the Lucan version. Further, the Didache shares with Matthew in the same context a warning not to pray like the ‘hypocrites’ (cf. Matt. 6. 5). At one level, there is clearly a strong case for arguing that the Didache is closely related to Matthew’s gospel. How close, of course, is another matter. As with the command about baptism, the specific prayer here was presumably one that was prayed— regularly—by Christians in the communities of both Matthew and the Didache. Hence any version of the prayer that is presented in either text is likely to have been influenced by the form in which the prayer was actually prayed in the community/ies to which each writer belonged. One does not need to resort to dependence on, and/or knowledge of, a written gospel text such as the gospel of Matthew to explain the text of the Didache here. Some have referred to differences between the versions of the prayer in the Didache and in Matthew, arguing that these show that the Didache cannot have copied from Matthew. For example, the Didache has a doxology at the end of the prayer (though so also do some MSS of Matthew); in addition, there are some fairly small differences between the two texts: for example, in the opening phrase, the Didache refers to our Father in ‘heaven’ (singular), whereas Matthew has ‘in the heavens’ (plural); the Didache speaks of forgiving our ‘debt’ (singular), whereas Matthew has ‘debts’ (plural); the Didache speaks of ‘we forgiving’ others’ debts in a present tense, whereas Matthew has a perfect tense. On the other hand, no one has ever pretended that the Didache was, or was trying to be, a perfect scribal copy of the text of Matthew! In fact, the differences are for the most part extremely small, and can be explained perfectly adequately while still positing a close relationship between the two versions of the prayer. ...”