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To: Cronos; Springfield Reformer
"So, SR, do read rather than excerpting."

One only needs a single excerpt from Matthew 6:11 to accept the Real Presence:

"Ton arton hêmôn ton epiousion" (Give us today our supersubstantial bread).

Peace be with you.

386 posted on 07/04/2012 10:20:56 AM PDT by Natural Law (Jesus did not leave us a Bible, He left us a Church.)
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To: Natural Law

NL, I love your spirit, bro, but there’s no lexical basis for granting epiousion (“daily”) in Matt 6:11 any special status as a word expressing arcane Aristotelian categories of substance versus accidence. In most any modern standard translation, it reads:

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

Greek Scholar AT Robertson notes that:

“The word occurs also in three late MSS. after 2 Maccabees 1:8, tous epiousious after tous artous. The meaning, in view of the kindred participle (epiouse¯i) in Act_16:12, seems to be “for the coming day,” a daily prayer for the needs of the next day as every housekeeper understands like the housekeeping book discovered by Debrunner.”
Robertson’s Word Pictures.

Furthermore, we have Chrysostom drawing roughly the same conclusion:

What is “daily bread”? That for one day. For because He had said thus, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” but was discoursing to men encompassed with flesh, and subject to the necessities of nature, and incapable of the same impassibility with the angels:—while He enjoins the commands to be practised by us also, even as they perform them; He condescends likewise, in what follows, to the infirmity of our nature. Thus, “perfection of conduct,” saith He, “I require as great, not however freedom from passions; no, for the tyranny of nature permits it not: for it requires necessary food.” But mark, I pray thee, how even in things that are bodily, that which is spiritual abounds. For it is neither for riches, nor for delicate living, nor for costly raiment, nor for any other such thing, but for bread only, that He hath commanded us to make our prayer. And for “daily bread,” so as not to “take thought for the morrow.” Because of this He added, “daily bread,” that is, bread for one day. (Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily XIX).

The idea of a sufficient daily ration is compatible with the use of “epi” as a feature of some terms of measurement, as in measuring up to or over a limit. Furthermore, this complies very nicely with Jesus being the manna from Heaven, which was not supplied all at once, but was given according to the daily ration.

Therefore, using Occam’s razor, we find no need to go to an anachronistic reading of the term, which transubstantiation certainly would be. Transubstantiation is not an overabundance of substance generally, as Jerome’s “supersubstantial” would natively imply, but a miraculous swap of one substance for another with no change to the accidents (appearances). There is no net gain of substance. If anything, that would be Luther’s consubstantiation. Thus, the two meanings are incongruous.

So, unfortunately for transubstantiationists, the search for a reliable Biblical basis for their late and novel doctrine must continue, as the translation here probably really is just as it seems, “daily bread.” Sorry.

Peace,

SR


396 posted on 07/04/2012 1:17:16 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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