Prayer of Manasseh
OrMan is a redirect to this article. For other meanings, see Orman.
The Prayer of Manasseh, Prayer of Manasseh, or Prayer of Manasseh (scholarly abbreviation OrMan, from Latin Oratio Manasse) is a late Old Testament scripture.
This prayer, originally written in Greek and consisting of 15 verses, is a confession of sins originating in Hellenistic Judaism, written between the 2nd century B.C. and the 1st century A.D. and first attested in the 3rd century. It is put into the mouth of King Manasseh; the reason for this is the repentance of this king narrated in 2 Chr 33:11-19 EU, and a note of his prayer (2 Chr 33:12 f. 18 f.). Besides the Greek version of the Septuagint, a different Syriac version is handed down in the Didaskalia Apostolorum.
Among the written finds from the Dead Sea is a Hebrew prayer of Manasseh, which, however, has to do with the Oratio Manasse only insofar as it documents the literary preoccupation with the figure of Manasseh. A Hebrew prayer of Manasseh was found in the Cairo Geniza, which represents a late translation from the Greek.
In the text-critical Septuagint edition by Alfred Rahlfs (1st edition 1935, revised 2008) it is listed as the 12th chapter in the Book of Odes, thus following the Codex Alexandrinus. In various Vulgate manuscripts, Manasseh's prayer has been placed in 2 Chr 33 or else listed as a postscript to the 2nd book of Chronicles. The prayer was translated into Old Syriac, Old Slavonic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Coptic and Armenian.
The first German translation is found in Luther's Ein kurz Unterweisung, wie man beichte soll, from 1519 and probably goes back to Georg Spalatin. Luther inserted Manasseh's prayer behind the Apocrypha as a closing prayer at the very end of the Old Testament.
In the Orthodox liturgy it appears as a sung prayer in the Apodeipnon (Compline).
