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Comment by Christopgr | Hacker News Reader

In modern Greek it's not a word we use a lot, but we do have a phrase where it's used exclusively and that is:

"He fights to earn the epiousios"

In that context epiousios means the bread of each day and by extension the absolutely necessary (commodities) for human living.

https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/l...

https://ikypros.com/53875/%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CE%BC%C...

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I'm pretty sure we took that from the New Testament though.

I'm an atheist but I know this prayer by heart. I must have heard it hundreds of times. Its sound is deeply ingrained in me, even if its meaning is vague when it comes to that one word (and others... "εισενέγκεις"? wut)

Besides, when I was a kid I thought the prayer is talking about a guy called Amin who's cunning ("ο πονηρός Αμήν"). I just learned the words by heart, I didn't now what they meant.

I'm pretty sure we took that from the New Testament though. Other way round I would expect.

He probably means that the word itself would not be used in that phrase, had it not be used in the testament first. It is used in that everyday phrase merely copying (and referring to) the New Testament, without the speakers necessarily having full awareness of its true meaning.

Apologies for sidetracking from the main subject of the thread but are you referring to me as "he"? If so, can I ask why?

I am not a native English speaker. I am a Greek speaker, and there is no equivalent to the gender-neutral "they", you have to choose "he" or "she" and "he" is the most usual choice. So, here I let my native-tongued thinking interfere with the ideal English interpretation of what I had to say. And, I did not read your username :)

Conjecture: a downvote can also mean "does not add to the discussion", where 'the discussion' is the original topic.

Counterpoint: I see many threads that get off-topic from the original post, and yet downvotes for them seem…random. Some off-topic sub-threads become lengthy and lively.

Colour me "confused".

Thanks for clarifying. I'm a native Greek speaker too.

I'm sorry, is this serious? I get downvoted because I ask why I was called "he" by default, as if we're all guys here, and I ask in the most polite way possible?

Oh well, I suppose I'll start calling everybody a "she" by default, then.

When in doubt, offend everyone by assuming "it".

Presumably they didn't read your user name...

Sorry, did I make a mistake? Isn't the Lord's Prayer in the New Testament?

No, you didn't make a mistake. The Lord's Prayer is Jesus' answer to the question "how do we pray?"

From my understanding and reading, the word's exact meaning seems somewhat ambiguous, but may be estimated from the context of the surrounding verses. So, I think the intent was partially conveyed, but without other primary sources it's difficult to have an absolute degree of precision.

This is why I think the argument you made is the most-likely-to-be-correct argument (contemporary use being influenced by the NT). It's also why I'm not sure there's any debate to be had here, nor why the question to you was raised. The Wikipedia article is quite clear that no other ancient texts from that time period contain the word.

So what do scholars do? The best they can!

But is that a reference to the Bible? "To earn (my/your) daily bread" is a set phrase in English and many other European languages (French pain quotidien etc) as well.

Hmm, Europe was dominated by Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. I can't imagine why a memorable turn of a phrase attributed to the most important figure in the most important text of that religion would ever become a set phrase in those languages but not in the languages of countries where Christianity was never dominant. /s

You might be surprised how many of the common aphorisms you use every day come from the Bible. Ever gone the extra mile? Moved mountains at the eleventh hour to get to the root of the matter? Ah well, no rest for the wicked, it's like the blind leading the blind.

Unfortunately, I am not versed in linguistics, but I would suppose so, because its etymology [1] based on the words where it's derived from would mean "I am on something" in a literal or more metaphorical sense (could also be used as "I'm focused on something") and it's also widely used almost everyday in the "everyday's bread" way in our most common prayer (we used to sing that every morning at school) while also never being used in any other context except for my first post's phrase.

[1] https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%B9%C...

This prayer or rather the use of epiousios in this prayer and its appearance only in this prayer and how it should be translated is exactly the topic of this discussion.

Definitely, and that's not surprising - many set phrases have their etymology in the Bible, due to its historical role not only in religion but also in how language and literacy was being taught over the last two millenia; and the phenomenon of set phrases being shared among many European languages (especially those which are not directly related, e.g. romance and germanic and slavic) is very common specifically for biblical expressions.

Yes, an enormous amount of western culture is derived from or influenced by Christianity and the Bible, due to the extremely long timeframe that it was integral to the culture (of Europe and the Middle East and Ethiopia). The other languages took the phrase from the Bible and translated it.

The article points out that this word is effectively a hapax legomenon in Ancient Greek. It only shows up in this NT context, and not elsewhere. We can speculate about what it means from the surrounding text-- it appears to modify "bread"; its morphology-- it decomposes nicely into "over" + "being, essence"; and its parallels in other sources, but we'll never be sure what it means. It might just as well be a prayer for being sustained in abundance, and this might even be expected since people in the time of Jesus thought that the end times were at hand, and with those the "world to come" where the righteous would be rewarded. But even that is speculation.

I have heard this phrase (daily bread) compared to the story of God providing manna (something flaky, often compared to flour & bread) for food in Exodus 16. In that story, the Israelites were instructed to only collect the manna for each day. If they tried to keep some for the second day, it would become rotten. This meant they were reliant on God's provision each day.

In the same way, this prayer may be about provision of bread enough for today, of sufficient/satisfactory quantity, no more than we need (per Exodus), just what we need right now. You'd obviously then want to pray this each day, and rely on God's provision daily. So daily isn't a transliteral interpretation but more a descriptive one

Bread has a special place in Christian symbolism because of the Eucharist. The bread of the Eucharist is called "the body of Christ." The ritual associates material nourishment and spiritual nourishment. Epiousios must be related to this idea...that our days are to be used to fuel our spiritual life. I don't think the word is used in the same secular sense as your case.

I agree.

Philo of Alexandria was the most influential Jewish-Greek theologian in the first century AD; it was he that originally introduced the idea that Logos is the son of the One god. (That, ostensibly, is how Apollos of Alexandria was able to preach accurately about the logos without knowing about Jesus, Acts 18:24-25)

In the Platonizing esoteric context of Philo, it seems straightforward to view epi-ousia as a kind of "soul" bread. That is, we should pray for the nourishment of our soul.

Soul, in the Platonizing context of Philo, is the noetic realm of mathematics and ideas—and typically placed above the material realm. The question of materialism vs epi-materialism is still a vibrant debate; Max Tegmark, Karl Popper and Roger Penrose for instance, advocate for the meaningful existence of non-material being. For instance, that the concept of a sphere exists universally, not merely through human conception.

Puts another spin on "soul food", too.

I'm not a linguist and I don't even know any greek (other than the alphabet I've memorized once), but if "epi" means "above" and "ousia" means "essense", then the meaning of "epiousios" trivially follows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousia

The article addresses that, and suggests the problem is that in most contexts 'epi' loses the i in compound form, e.g. eponym.

If you take the Bible at face value, then Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer before he gave the last supper (and long before it was ritualised later), so it doesn't quite follow.

> If you take the Bible at face value, then Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer before he gave the last supper (and long before it was ritualised later), so it doesn't quite follow.

Except that in the Old Testament there was manna:

> Manna (Hebrew: מָן‎ mān, Greek: μάννα; Arabic: اَلْمَنُّ‎; sometimes or archaically spelled mana) is, according to the Bible, an edible substance which God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert during the 40-year period following the Exodus and prior to the conquest of Canaan. It is also mentioned in the Quran three times.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna

God (YHWH) feeding his people was a concept that the Jewish people of Jesus' time would be very familiar with. Bread was quite sacred even in the Old Testament, as the Ark of the Covenant contained, in addition to the Ten Commandment tablets (as we learned from Indiana Jones), there was manna as well:

> And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept.

* Exodus 16:33–34

There was also to be cereal offerings/sacrifices made in the Temple:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_offering

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dough_offering

See also unleavened bread during the Passover:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover#Matzah

Dr. Brant Pitre has a book called Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist; presentation:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P45BHDRA7pU

For anyone wondering if Manna was related to the Mana found in a lot of fantasy game (most notably Magic! The Gathering), it is not, I just looked it up.

Mana is a Melanesian word for some sort of spiritual life force!

Manna is literally Hebrew for "What is it?" It's basically the equivalent of calling it "Whatsit" bread, which might be a better translation anyway.

Fair enough, good point.

Why not? He didn’t have to be understood at the time the prayer was taught. That is, it would become understood only later. The prayer acquires more depth in retrospect. The apostles didn’t understand many things Jesus had told them until later.

Right, it can't just be about the last supper. But we do know that Jesus was teaching about participation in a non-material world; then, perhaps, the prayer was to remind that bread is not just for our ousian body but for our epiousian soul.

Presumably, all that Jesus does is a reinforcement of the self-same Logos. There's a lot of repetition of the same principles across different contexts.

This makes a lot of sense. The wiki article begs the question, why not the same etymological analysis for the prefix 'epi' for the Epiphany/Επιφανεια? Επι+φανεια = epi + appear. Of course, adding prefixes to established word changes each words meaning, but if epi were to mean super/supra, it would mean that for each word -and, it clearly does not of Epiphany.

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