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In a previous question about the English of the KJV a link was helpfully supplied and I read the following

The vocative case is used when directly addressing a person with a noun identifying the person instead of with the second person pronoun “you.” An example is in Matthew 6:9 which says, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Today we are less inclined to say “Our Father, who ARE in heaven.” It seems more natural to say “Our Father, who IS in heaven.” The peculiarity of the KJV is based on the faithful translation of the vocative case. This is not an archaism but a faithful translation of the Greek which has the vocative case.

Like many things, I learned the words as a child and have accepted them all my life without intelligently understanding them.

I am still struggling to understand why the verb is plural and where 'art' comes from.

Nigel J
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  • I don't see why the verb would be plural either in that context. For art, scroll down to the bottom of the ODO entry: "archaic or dialect second person singular present of be". Note both second person and singular. I suppose the argument would be that one is addressing the Father in that prayer, hence something like "Our Father, You (who) are in heaven ...". – Lawrence Jan 25 '18 at 16:43
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    'art' is singular. 'Thou art' - singular. Not sure why the commenter thought it should be 'are' in modern English. – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 16:44
  • @Lawrence Oh, I see. It is the second person singular. Silly me. – Nigel J Jan 25 '18 at 16:45
  • @Mitch Yes, that is what got me flustered. – Nigel J Jan 25 '18 at 16:45
  • But the full sentence ends with 'hallowed be thy name' which sort implies that the Lord's prayer starts as though it is talking directly to someone. Which is supporting evidence that things are vocative (which doesn't really exist in English) or, rather, in English idioms the imperative. – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 16:46
  • But also, since this is a situation of translation, we would have to be well-informed about, in addition to the translated document, the language of the original and the translation philosophy of the translator. You may get some of that at https://christianity.stackexchange.org – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 16:49
  • @Mitch The vocative is is not strong in Greek either. Usually the nominative is used. – Nigel J Jan 25 '18 at 16:49
  • Oh, I get it now. The commentary is not saying it is plural it is saying instead of 'thou art' (singular you back then), it is 'you are' (singular you nowadays). But the imperative reading in modern English with 'who are' still sounds clunky, even when prepared that the sentence is supposed to be imperative. It would feel natural to say 'You, who are in heaven, may your name be blessed' – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 16:54
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    Possible duplicate of Where did the "art" in "Our Father who art in Heaven" go? See also Shouldn’t “art” be “is” in “Our Father who art in heaven”? – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '18 at 17:16
  • @FumbleFingers good find. That second one answers this and better. – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 17:21
  • @Mitch: You're quite right. I should have checked them both out properly instead of simply picking the oldest one for my closevote. – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '18 at 17:30
  • FWIW, the OE version of this passage often rendered is "Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum" which seems to militate toward art... – Rob_Ster Jan 25 '18 at 17:48
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    Duplicate accepted as answering the question. – Nigel J Jan 25 '18 at 19:44
  • @NigelJ The vocative is not strong in Greek, no, but note that it is perfectly clear here: πάτερ ἡμῶν páter hēmṓn is unambiguously vocative; the nominative would be πατὴρ ἡμῶν patḗr hēmṓn instead. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 25 '18 at 19:49

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Relevant to the verse and to the commentary, there are a few issues here:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

  • there may be a vocative case in classical Greek, but there is none in English (which has only nominative, accusative, and possessive for most pronouns, and dropping accusative for the rest of the nouns).

  • The sentence is directed at 'Our Father' so the vocative is really taken care of by the second person. So instead of the Early Modern English 'thou art' it would be in Late Modern English 'you are'. That for is both for the plural you and the singular you.

  • the 'faithful translation' is from the Greek vocative to the second person singular. It just sounds weird in that verse because it is not obvious that it is addressing 'Our father' rather than just talking about him.

As an aside, 'hallowed be thy name' is really passive subjunctive. In Modern English 'may your name be hallowed' (or 'kept holy'). Let's just say translation is not always straightforward.

Mitch
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    The sentence is directed at God, but that doesn’t make it imperative—it’s a plain present indicative. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 25 '18 at 19:42
  • @Mitch Your answer contains the root of the problem in translating Greek into English - 'is both for the plural you and the singular you'. The KJV translation distinguishes the singular and the plural, not out of any desire to be deliberately archaic, but for the sake of accuracy in translation. – Nigel J Jan 25 '18 at 19:42
  • @JanusBahsJacquet On reflection, it is actually ... plain present subjunctive ... and passive too! '...Hallowed be thy name.' or in modern English for which the subjunctive has almost entirely disappeared (but not here), 'May your name be kept holy' ('hallow' is not exactly the most common of modern words (except maybe by JK Rowling)) – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 20:54
  • @Mitch That sentence is subjunctive (or third person singular imperative—no actual way of telling which it is in English), but who art in Heaven is indicative. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 25 '18 at 20:58
  • @JanusBahsJacquet There's a third person imperative? – Mitch Jan 25 '18 at 21:02
  • @Mitch Well… there might be. Some languages have imperative forms for all three persons (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, for instance); some have for the second and third persons, but not the first (Finnish, Ancient Greek); and some have only for the second persons, using other moods to fill in for the rest (Romance languages, for instance, which use the subjunctive; most other Germanic languages do too). Since English has no morphological distinction between imperative and subjunctive, there’s no way to tell whether it belongs to the first or third group. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 25 '18 at 21:26