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
For clarification: Do you believe in the Real Presence, or the ‘symbol’ interpretation of Holy Eucharist?
thanks...
If you are overly concerned with arcane Aristotelian concepts you ought to reject St . John’s use of the word Logos too. The word Epiousious is a hapax legomenon and was never used before Matthew 6:11 and is used in no other context in Greek literature. Had Jesus meant simply bread He would have said “artos”.
While it is good to look to the Early Church Fathers guidance in determining what was meant by the Gospels citing a single writing of a single Early Church Father is not conclusive proof. Rest assured that St. John Chrysostom did believe in the Real Presence. Here is but one example from one of his homilies:
“We behold in the Eucharist the one who is beheld in heaven.
Christ gave his flesh to eat in order to deepen our love for him. When we approach him there should be a burning within us a fire of live and longing. This food strengthens us; it emboldens us to speak freely to our God; it is our hope, our salvation, our light and our life. If we go to the next world fortified by this sacrifice we shall enter sacred portals with perfect confidence, as though protected all over by armor of gold.”
“But why do I speak of the next world? Because of this sacrament earth becomes heaven for you. Throw open the gates of heaven – or rather, not heaven, but of heaven of heavens-look through and you will see proof of what I say. What is heaven’s most precious possession? I will show you it here on earth. I do not show you archangels, heaven or the heaven of heavens, but I show you the very Lord of all these. Do you not see how you gaze, here on earth, upon what is most precious of all? You not only gaze on it but touch it as well. You not only touch it, but even eat it and take away with you to your homes. It is essential therefore when you wish to deceive this sacrament you cleanse your soul from sin and to prepare your mind.”
Additionally, many of St. John Chrysostom’s contemporaries taught similarly:
"Give us this day our supersubstantial bread. The bread which is of the common sort is not supersubstantial. But the Bread which is holy, that Bread is supersubstantial, as if to say, directed toward the substance of the soul. This Bread does not go into the belly, to be cast out into the privy. Rather, it is distributed through your whole system, for the benefit of body and soul." – St. Cyril of Jerusalem
"He (Jesus) called it bread indeed, but He called it epiousion, that is, supersubstantial. It is not the bread that passes into the body but that bread of eternal life, which sustains the substance of our souls. Therefore, in Greek it is called epiousios." St. Ambrose -Bishop of Milan from 374 to 397
“”If Jesus Christ, yielding to your prayer, grants me the favor and it is His will, I shall, in the subsequent letter which I intend to write to you, still further explain the dispensation which I have here only touched upon, regarding the New Man Jesus Christ--a dispensation founded on faith in Him and love for Him, on His Passion and Resurrection. I will do so especially if the Lord should reveal to me that you--the entire community of you!--are in the habit, through grace derived from the Name, of meeting in common, animated by one faith and in union with Jesus Christ--who in the flesh was of the line of David, the Son of Man and the Son of God--of meeting, I say, to show obedience with undivided mind to the bishop and the presbytery, and to break the same Bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death, and everlasting life in Jesus Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch
If you study the writings and teachings of the Early Church Fathers that immediately followed the Apostles and those that preceded St. John Chrysostom you will find that they all unanimously believed in the Real Presence
Peace be with you.