Did Protestants get “Thine is the Kingdom etc…” from the Didache?

Question

So, I was writing an answer to a question a few minutes ago, and I was going to smugly tell all you Protestants that your "thine is the Kingdom" doxology is so non-Biblical, it's apocryphal.

Well, it is apocryphal, but if anything it's anachronistically apocryphal as no Protestant between the time of the Reformation, whenever that was, and the time of Martin Van Buren's presidency, whenever that was, would have had access to said tidbit of apocryphal lore.

The problem is, it's SOOO nearly verbatim.

...for Yours is the power and the glory for ever. Didache Chapter 8

as opposed to

for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory, now and forever.

Catholic's have a similar doxology said during Mass, in English it's:

...the kingdom the power and the glory are Yours now and forever

and I always console myself when praying with Protestants that I'm not doing anything unTraditional in saying their doxology (any more than I am in saying trespasses instead of debts).

But, how did it come about, and what, if anything does the English version of the Protestant ending to the Lord's Prayer have to do with the Didache?

Answer 1

In the record of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, the additional phrase appears in the 1611 edition of the KJV, the Tyndale Bible, and, it appears, in the German Luther Bible of 1545.

I can't read German, except for "Amen", but it looks like it's there.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. Matthew 6:13 KJV

And leade vs not into teptacion: but delyver vs fro evell. For thyne is ye kyngedome and ye power and ye glorye for ever. Amen. Matthew 6:13 Tyndale, 1525

Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Übel. Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit. Amen. Matthew 6:13 German Luther Bible, 1545

These translations are at the very beginning of the Protestant Reformation, and Tyndale's even predates it a bit.

This phrase does represent a variant in the Greek Manuscripts, but the origin is in the Greek.

So, this doesn't come from the Didache, but from Matthew's Gospel.

Answer 2

Sort of? Strictly speaking it comes from the medieval manuscripts which the reformation theologians inherited, but it is not quite that simple.

The text is clearly missing from the most ancient manuscripts of Matthew, but it was present in the Renaissance. Someone in some scriptorium added that passage at a later date. On the other hand, we know that the Didache clearly included that doxology in the first (early second?) century. We also know that the Didache influenced the earliest Christian liturgies.

It is my interpretation that the text originally comes from the Didache but was added to Matthew. It seems likely that this was probably the honest mistake of a scribe remembering how it was said in Mass and writing that part from memory instead of sticking to the page.

FWIW, the doxology is found in the Liturgy of St. James, the oldest complete liturgy available to us today:

Our Father, which art in heaven: hollowed be Your name...

For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

But it is not in the Tridentine Mass, nor is it in the Ambrosian Rite.