Pondering the Mysterious Word in the Lord’s Prayer No One Can Agree how to Translate

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | June 20, 2013 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[MHGinTN]

'Father, give us this day the life which is supersubstantial to the life of our natural world and mere physical state of existence.' Jesus exhibited this Life when He resurrected from death of the body. He Lives by That Life, the supersubstantial Life which flows from an alive Spirit to the behavior mechanism and body physical.

Jesus taught His disciples that a human spirit can be active but lack 'aliveness'. His comment to aloow 'the dead go bury the dead' IMHO was a significant clue that a youngman could be alive in body and behavior mechanism but lacking Life in his spirit. And that is the natural state of humankind since Adam sold out his posterity. But Jesus, as God with us, has redeemed Adam's posterity, and that 'soterizing' goes all the way back to Adam, if each individually believes on Him Whom God has sent to redeem us.

What Adam lost was the supersubstantial Life which set Adam and Eve apart from all other life on Earth, a Life status which can be restored through The Grace of God in Christ, reconciling us to Him.

[metmom]

Romans 8:10-1110 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

[MHGinTN]

Eggs Ackley.

[Fedora]

What Stingray says is also how Liddell and Scott explain the derivation of the root word: from "he epiousa [hemera]" (vs. ousios as Msgr. Pope has it) where hemera is the word for "day" and epi is from the prefix for "on"/"upon"/"at the time of"/etc. (depending on the case and context). If you follow the first link I gave (to Strong's commentary on epiousa), it relates the etymology to epieper and gives several occurrences of the latter with multiple lexical references.

[larryjohnson]

From: HUGO(Larry's friend, a Lutheran scholar) Subject: Re: Pondering the Mysterious Word in the Lord?s Prayer No One Can Agree how to Translate Date: Thursday, June 27, 2013 3:29 PM  Epiousion. The writer is correct. There is no really adequate explanation of its meaning, and so it is debated from time to time. But some decades ago it was finally found among some papyrus manuscripts uncovered in Egypt--used as stuffing for a crocodile, if I remember right. The papyrus was a menu, probably from an ancient restaurant. So that seems to indicate that the translation "daily bread" is not far off. Of course, the English translation depends upon ancient translations in the Latin Vulgate, Syriac and other early versions of the Bible, and the men who translated them presumably knew it from daily use, even though it never found its way into lexicons or dictionaries. At least this is what I remember from Seminary days. Hope it helps. Hugo