Epiousios

Epiousios (Ancient Greek: επιούσιος) is a unique 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) in their original language. As no small challenge with respect to translation, the word epiousios is not found anywhere else in the original scriptures of the Bible, nor, moreover, anywhere else in all of ancient Greek literature. It appears in the Bible in an adjectival form, epiousion:[1]

Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον[2]
(Interlinear: "The -- bread -- of-us -- - -- epiousion -- give -- us -- today")[3]
"Give us today our epiousios bread,"
Matthew 6:11[4]

While epiousios is often substituted by the word "daily," all other New Testament translations from the Greek into "daily" otherwise reference hemeran (ἡμέραν, "the day"), which does not appear in this usage.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

Via linguistic parsing, Epiousios is translated as supersubstantialem in the Vulgate (Matthew 6:11) and accordingly as supersubstantial in the Douay-Rheims Bible (Matthew 6:11):

"Give us this day our supersubstantial bread."

From the New American Bible Revised Edition:

"Give us today our daily bread: the rare Greek word epiousios, here daily, occurs in the New Testament only here and in ⇒ Luke 11:3. A single occurrence of the word outside of these texts and of literature dependent on them has been claimed, but the claim is highly doubtful. The word may mean daily or "future" (other meanings have also been proposed). The latter would conform better to the eschatological tone of the whole prayer. So understood, the petition would be for a speedy coming of the kingdom (today), which is often portrayed in both the Old Testament and the New under the image of a feast (⇒ Isaiah 25:6; ⇒ Matthew 8:11; ⇒ 22:1-10; ⇒ Luke 13:29; ⇒ 14:15-24)."[16]

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us."[17]

Regardless of the lack of true correspondence-of-meaning, in the current era the word epiousios is nonetheless most often translated into English as "Give us this day our daily bread."

Translation and interpretation

Without reference except to the preceding words ("Give us today..."), Epiousios was rendered as quotidianum ("daily") in the Vetus Latina, a collective term for various "Old Latin" Bible translations and interpretations of the original Greek. Being multiple, uneven-quality writings which resulted in no single, uniform Bible compilation, in the year 382 A.D. Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the so-called Vetus Latina. By the 13th century the result of Jerome's efforts became known as the Vulgate, which became during the 16th century the Catholic Church's officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible.

In his years-long undertaking of translating the New Testament from Greek into Latin, Jerome further analyzed the original Greek word epiousios and linguistically parsed it to mean supersubstantialem ("super-substantial"). While he went with this meaning in Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer in the Vulgate, this was not done in Luke's, where the "cotidianum" (daily) usage from various Vetus Latina interpretations was retained.

The translation of supersubstantial bread[18] has also been associated with the eucharist, as early as in the time of the Church Fathers[19] and later also by the Council of Trent (1551).[20]

The resulting, wide-ranging difference with respect to the actual meaning of the very unique word epiousios is discussed in detail in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. Specifically and more fully, an inclusive approach is taken toward tradition as well as a literal one for meaning:

"Daily" (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of "this day," to confirm us in trust "without reservation." Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us. Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: "this day" is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day.[21]

In 1979, the Nova Vulgata (Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio), also called the Neo-Vulgate, became the official Latin edition of the Bible published by the Holy See for use in the contemporary Roman rite. It is not an edition of the historical Vulgate, but a revision of the text intended to accord with modern critical Hebrew and Greek texts and produce a style closer to classical Latin. The Nova Vulgata retains the same correspondence-of-meaning for epiousios in the Lord's Prayer contained in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke as in the Vulgate, i.e., supersubstantialem and cotidianum.

The Old Church Slavonic canon translates epiousios variously as насѫщьнъі ("supersubstantial") or наставъшааго дьне ("for the coming day").[22]

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,[23] edited by Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Danker, University of Chicago Press, while noting historical interpretations and modern opinions, states that Origen was probably correct that the term was coined by the evangelists.[24] It considers four 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.

Status as hapax legomenon

The word epiousios is only found in the two versions of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and Luke, not appearing anywhere else in known ancient Greek literature. This makes epousios a hapax legomenon – a Greek phrase meaning 'a word used only once'. The meaning of any such word is often difficult to determine, as cross-references and comparisons with other usages aren't possible, with the only alternative being to parse the word according to its sequence of letters and alternate sub-meanings. In the case of this word, epiousios has the form of a compound word: ἐπί is the Greek word for "above" or "beyond," while οὐσία translates to "being" or "essence."

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.[25][26] 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.[27] The original transcriber, A. H. Sayce, was apparently known as a poor transcriber, and re-examination of the papyrus found "elaiou" (oil) but not "epiousios". Furthermore, the document was reassessed to date from the first or second century CE.[27] Therefore, there seems indeed to be no other occurrence of the word in Greek literature.

See also

References

  1. ↑ for "epiousion" being the adjectival form of "epiousios", see: https://books.google.com/books?id=VhaeqyhMjHgC&pg=PT54&lpg=PT54&dq=epiousios+epiousion+adjective&source=bl&ots=dAixOMx2f_&sig=-9v4tc3twwjlObPDqzbe9yPNtXw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj86qrAsLfMAhWCOSYKHSsiBEoQ6AEISDAH#v=onepage&q=epiousios%20epiousion%20adjective&f=false
  2. ↑ http://www.greekbible.com/index.php
  3. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/6-11.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVF.HTM
  5. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/6-11.htm
  6. ↑ The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, 1993, The United Bible Societies, (basis: UBS4 Greek text), page x of Introduction
  7. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/20-2.htm
  8. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/luke/9-23.htm
  9. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/acts/6-1.htm
  10. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/acts/17-11.htm
  11. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/acts/17-17.htm
  12. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/acts/19-9.htm
  13. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/2_corinthians/11-28.htm
  14. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/hebrews/3-13.htm
  15. ↑ http://biblehub.com/interlinear/hebrews/10-11.htm
  16. ↑ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/_PVF.HTM#MJF2
  17. ↑ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s2a3.htm
  18. ↑ E.g., in Richard Challoner's 1750 revision of the Douay Bible: "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread". Quoted in Blackford Condit's The History of the English Bible, A.S. Barnes & Co.: New York, 1882. p. 323.
  19. ↑ Ratzinger, Joseph (2007). Jesus of Nazareth. Doubleday. p. 154. ISBN 978-1-58617-198-8.
  20. ↑ Trent, Session 13, Chapter VIII)
  21. ↑ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s2a3.htm
  22. ↑ Hauptová, Zoe, editor (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského (Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae), Prague: Euroslavica
  23. ↑ Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Danker, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. University of Chicago Press (the Bauer lexicon)
  24. ↑ "Let us now consider what the word epiousion, needful, means. First of all it should be known that the word epiousion is not found in any Greek writer whether in philosophy or in common usage, but seems to have been formed by the evangelists. At least Matthew and Luke, in having given it to the world, concur in using it in identical form. The same thing has been done by translators from Hebrew in other instances also; for what Greek ever used the expression enotizou or akoutisthete instead of eistaota dexai or akousai poice se?" (Origen, On Prayer) Chapter XVII, "Give us today our needful bread")
  25. ↑ F. Preisigke, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten 1.5224:20
  26. ↑ Flinders Petrie Hawara p. 34)
  27. 1 2 Discussion on the B-Greek mailing list. Tue Jun 7 15:43:35 EDT 2005
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