The Mystery of Christ's Daily Bread

Mat 6:11 Give us this day our daily bread.

Here, we confront one of the mysteries of the gospels. The word translated as "daily" is epiousios, which is only used in the Gospels, once here in Matthew and again in Luke's version of the Lord's prayer. It is thought to mean "sufficient for this day" but it takes a fair about of work to parse it to get to that meaning. It looks like it might be related to epiousa, which means "to come on, to approach" and is translated in the Bible as "next" and "next day."

It is one of those words to lead us to think that both Matthew and Luke used a common Greek source for Christ's words. I wish the people who publish the Hebraic Roots Version of the Bible, who maintain that the original Greek was based upon many Hebrew words offered a good word here, but they don't. They come up with "continual" as a translation, but they don't explain how or why. I will bet money there is some word, maybe Aramaic or Hebrew that is the real base for this word.

A more typical word for "daily" would be hêmerousios from Hemera, the goddess of the day. "Hemero-" is a common prefix meaning a day's supply of something. It is also the presumed base for the term used for "this day"semeron, which means this very day or today.

Words, aside, Christ clearly says that we should ask God for our nourishment, but this is more than physical nourishment. The first mention of bread in the Gospels is Christ saying that we do not live be bread alone. Among the last mentions is Christ offering bread to his disciples as his flesh. The transformation of seeds, to wheat, to flour, to bread, to flesh, to spirit is one of the overarching themes of the Gospels. It is one of Christ's prime examples of the type of evolution he describes.

When Christ instructs us to ask the father for our bread, we are clearly asking for more than what we need to sustain physical life. We are asking for what sustains spiritual life as well.