Epiousios
Encyclopedia
Epiousios is a Greek
word used in the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer
, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew
(Matthew 6:11
) and the Gospel of Luke
(Luke 11:3). The word is not found elsewhere in Classical Greek literature. The term was rendered as cotidianum ("daily") in the Vetus Latina
and revised to supersubstantialem in the Vulgate
, albeit only in Matthew's version. In English
the typical translation is nevertheless "Give us this day our daily bread."
. For Christians, this is not just a quibble over an isolated phrase. Christians believe that the Lord's Prayer was instituted by Jesus
for the use of his disciples, so they want to be as faithful as they can be to the original words of Jesus. Beyond that, subtle differences among various translations of this prayer become larger differences when the various translations are used to generate theology. The words Jesus used to teach his followers to pray reveals something of how he viewed himself, God, and the earthly life of his followers.
Epiousios is an example of how the translation of one word can make a significant theological difference: if the phrase "ton arton hēmōn ton epiousion" (τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον ) is translated into English as "our daily bread", this imparts to the reader that Jesus wanted his followers to ask God for the means to survive physically, one day at a time. If, on the other hand, it is translated as "our bread for tomorrow", Jesus is saying that we should pray for our future needs rather than our present needs. A third possibility is "our necessary" or "our essential bread". A fourth possibility, opposed to the second, and argued by McCulloch in his Christianity (at 89) is that, as the Kingdom of God on Earth is imminent any provisions set aside for tomorrow (ie when they will not be of any more use) should be had today.
The foregoing translations imply ordinary bread that we eat every day to sustain our bodies; a fourth possibility, "our bread for the age to come", implies a spiritual bread or nourishment. Still other translations would focus attention beyond ordinary bread and onto the Eucharist
: epiousios has also been translated as supersubstantial or as something having to do with the very essence of things rather than their tangible nature, or as "supernatural".
It has been proposed that "ho artos hēmōn ho epiousios", whatever it may mean, was used as a name for the Eucharist by the earliest Christians, even before the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life were written. If we take the sacramental use of this phrase as being its primary meaning, this would indicate that the Gospel authors used epiousios with a specific meaning in mind: "our eucharistic bread"; however, there is too little actual evidence to indicate that the sacramental meaning of the phrase was in fact its seminal use, and this was not the only phrase used to describe the eucharistic feast.
(a Greek phrase meaning 'a word used only once') - a word used only in Christian circles and lacking meaning outside of a eucharistic context.
It was only in the twentieth century that a single additional use of the word seemed to be discovered. The document in which it was found is a 5th century CE shopping list, identified as Sammelbuch
5224,20. The word epiousios is written next to the names of several grocery items. This seems to indicate that it was used in the sense of "enough for today", "enough for tomorrow", or "necessary". However, the papyrus containing the shopping list went missing for many years, until it was discovered in 1998 at the Yale Beinecke Library. The original transcriber, one A. H. Sayce, was apparently known as a poor transcriber, and re-examination of the papyrus found "elaiou" (oil) but not epiousi.... So there seems indeed to be no other occurrence of the word in Greek literature.
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
, edited by Bauer
, Arndt, Gingrich
, Danker, University of Chicago Press, the standard lexicon for NT Greek, while noting historical interpretations and modern opinions, concludes that Origen
was probably correct that the term was coined by the evangelists (Danker, the current editor, was familiar with the papyrus history above). It lists four possible translations: 1. deriving from Epi and Ousia
: necessary for existence, in agreement with Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome
and others; 2. one loaf of bread is the daily requirement; 3. for the following day; 4. deriving from epienai: bread for the future. In Jerome's translation, made in 405 A.D. we read (Mat 6:11): "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread" ("panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie").
The word or prefix epi occurs over 300 times in the Gospels. Most often it means above, over, on, upon, besides, or in addition to. In a number of contexts it is translated into Latin as super. For example where epi appears in the Greek NT we read in the Vulgate: (Mt 14:25) 'ambulans super mare' 'walking upon the sea'; and (Mt 18:13) 'quia gaudet super eam magis quam super nonaginta novem' 'he rejoiceth more over that, than over the ninety-nine'; and Lk 1:35 'Spiritus Sanctus superveniet te' 'The Holy Spirit will come upon thee'.
'Ousios [ousia] means being, substance, essence or nature. The Council of Nicea in 325 AD used the term homoousios - from homos, same, and ousia, essence - to mean of one essence or substance. Hence homoousios in Latin is consubstantialis.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the literal translation of epiousios is super-substantialis or in English, super-essential. In 1551 the Council of Trent described the Holy Eucharist as supersubstantial bread.
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
word used in the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...
, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
(Matthew 6:11
Matthew 6:11
Matthew 6:11 is the eleventh verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse is the third one of the Lord's Prayer, one of the best known parts of the entire New Testament...
) and the Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
(Luke 11:3). The word is not found elsewhere in Classical Greek literature. The term was rendered as cotidianum ("daily") in the Vetus Latina
Vetus Latina
Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Biblical texts in Latin that were translated before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christians. The phrase Vetus Latina is Latin for Old Latin, and the Vetus Latina is sometimes known as the Old Latin Bible...
and revised to supersubstantialem in the Vulgate
Vulgate
The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...
, albeit only in Matthew's version. In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
the typical translation is nevertheless "Give us this day our daily bread."
Meaning
Epiousios has no direct or simple English translation (although see super-essential below) and there have been several interpretations of its meaning throughout the history of ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. For Christians, this is not just a quibble over an isolated phrase. Christians believe that the Lord's Prayer was instituted by Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
for the use of his disciples, so they want to be as faithful as they can be to the original words of Jesus. Beyond that, subtle differences among various translations of this prayer become larger differences when the various translations are used to generate theology. The words Jesus used to teach his followers to pray reveals something of how he viewed himself, God, and the earthly life of his followers.
Epiousios is an example of how the translation of one word can make a significant theological difference: if the phrase "ton arton hēmōn ton epiousion" (τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον ) is translated into English as "our daily bread", this imparts to the reader that Jesus wanted his followers to ask God for the means to survive physically, one day at a time. If, on the other hand, it is translated as "our bread for tomorrow", Jesus is saying that we should pray for our future needs rather than our present needs. A third possibility is "our necessary" or "our essential bread". A fourth possibility, opposed to the second, and argued by McCulloch in his Christianity (at 89) is that, as the Kingdom of God on Earth is imminent any provisions set aside for tomorrow (ie when they will not be of any more use) should be had today.
The foregoing translations imply ordinary bread that we eat every day to sustain our bodies; a fourth possibility, "our bread for the age to come", implies a spiritual bread or nourishment. Still other translations would focus attention beyond ordinary bread and onto the Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
: epiousios has also been translated as supersubstantial or as something having to do with the very essence of things rather than their tangible nature, or as "supernatural".
It has been proposed that "ho artos hēmōn ho epiousios", whatever it may mean, was used as a name for the Eucharist by the earliest Christians, even before the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life were written. If we take the sacramental use of this phrase as being its primary meaning, this would indicate that the Gospel authors used epiousios with a specific meaning in mind: "our eucharistic bread"; however, there is too little actual evidence to indicate that the sacramental meaning of the phrase was in fact its seminal use, and this was not the only phrase used to describe the eucharistic feast.
No other uses
A common way to infer the unknown meaning of an ancient word is to look at all of the various contexts in which that word is used in ancient writings. For epiousios, however, this method is difficult to apply, because the word is not found anywhere else in Greek or Hellenistic literature. Its use was long thought to be restricted to the two versions of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and Luke. This would have made it a hapax legomenonHapax legomenon
A hapax legomenon is a word which occurs only once within a context, either in the written record of an entire language, in the works of an author, or just in a single text. The term is sometimes used incorrectly to describe a word that occurs in just one of an author's works, even though it...
(a Greek phrase meaning 'a word used only once') - a word used only in Christian circles and lacking meaning outside of a eucharistic context.
It was only in the twentieth century that a single additional use of the word seemed to be discovered. The document in which it was found is a 5th century CE shopping list, identified as Sammelbuch
Friedrich Preisigke
Friederich Preisigke was a German Egyptologist and papyrologist.-Life:Born in Dessau, he attended the Cathedral gymnasium at Brandenburg an der Havel, later became a clerk in the German Post Office and in 1897 he was appointed director of the telegraph lines in Berlin...
5224,20. The word epiousios is written next to the names of several grocery items. This seems to indicate that it was used in the sense of "enough for today", "enough for tomorrow", or "necessary". However, the papyrus containing the shopping list went missing for many years, until it was discovered in 1998 at the Yale Beinecke Library. The original transcriber, one A. H. Sayce, was apparently known as a poor transcriber, and re-examination of the papyrus found "elaiou" (oil) but not epiousi.... So there seems indeed to be no other occurrence of the word in Greek literature.
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
Bauer lexicon
The Bauer-Danker Lexicon is among the most highly respected dictionaries of Biblical Greek. The author of the German original is Walter Bauer...
, edited by Bauer
Walter Bauer
Walter Bauer was a German theologian and scholar of the development of the early Christian churches.-Life:...
, Arndt, Gingrich
F. Wilbur Gingrich
F. Wilbur Gingrich was an educator, scholar of Biblical Greek and Christian layman who spent his entire career working with students at Schuylkill and Albright Colleges. He published many books and articles in his lifetime including the definitive translation of a Greek-English lexicon of the New...
, Danker, University of Chicago Press, the standard lexicon for NT Greek, while noting historical interpretations and modern opinions, concludes that Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
was probably correct that the term was coined by the evangelists (Danker, the current editor, was familiar with the papyrus history above). It lists four possible translations: 1. deriving from Epi and Ousia
Ousia
Ousia is the Ancient Greek noun formed on the feminine present participle of ; it is analogous to the English participle being, and the modern philosophy adjectival ontic...
: necessary for existence, in agreement with Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome
Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
and others; 2. one loaf of bread is the daily requirement; 3. for the following day; 4. deriving from epienai: bread for the future. In Jerome's translation, made in 405 A.D. we read (Mat 6:11): "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread" ("panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie").
The word or prefix epi occurs over 300 times in the Gospels. Most often it means above, over, on, upon, besides, or in addition to. In a number of contexts it is translated into Latin as super. For example where epi appears in the Greek NT we read in the Vulgate: (Mt 14:25) 'ambulans super mare' 'walking upon the sea'; and (Mt 18:13) 'quia gaudet super eam magis quam super nonaginta novem' 'he rejoiceth more over that, than over the ninety-nine'; and Lk 1:35 'Spiritus Sanctus superveniet te' 'The Holy Spirit will come upon thee'.
'Ousios [ousia] means being, substance, essence or nature. The Council of Nicea in 325 AD used the term homoousios - from homos, same, and ousia, essence - to mean of one essence or substance. Hence homoousios in Latin is consubstantialis.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the literal translation of epiousios is super-substantialis or in English, super-essential. In 1551 the Council of Trent described the Holy Eucharist as supersubstantial bread.