epaurion

ἐπαύριον is a compound of ἐπί with the adverb αὔριον, attested from the classical period onward and ordinary in the Koine of the documentary papyri, where Moulton and Milligan gather parallels for the temporal formula. In the New Testament it occurs seventeen times and always in the same shape: the feminine article τῇ with ἡμέρᾳ ellipsed, giving τῇ (δὲ / οὖν) ἐπαύριον, an adverb governed by the article and functioning as a dative of time. The distribution is narrative throughout: Matthew once (27:62), Mark once (11:12), John five times, Acts ten times. Luke's Gospel avoids it entirely, and it never appears in the epistles or Revelation, which fits its role as a chronological connective with no semantic content of its own. Within Acts, Luke alternates it with τῇ ἑξῆς (G1836), τῇ ἐπιούσῃ (G1966) and τῇ ἑτέρᾳ, apparently for stylistic variation rather than for any distinction of sense; BDAG treats the group as equivalent. The Septuagint uses the same expression regularly for Hebrew מִמָּחֳרָת (H4283), the adverbial "on the morrow" of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, so the New Testament usage stands in continuity with translation Greek as well as with the papyri. Two exegetical discussions attach to particular occurrences without touching the lexical sense. First, the repeated τῇ ἐπαύριον of John 1:29, 1:35 and 1:43, taken with the "third day" of John 2:1: Brown and others read the sequence as a deliberately counted opening week, and the argument turns on how the days are numbered, not on what the adverb means. Second, Acts 20:7, where an assembly on "the first day of the week" precedes a departure τῇ ἐπαύριον: whether Luke reckons by the Jewish evening-to-evening day (placing the gathering on Saturday night) or by the Roman midnight-to-midnight day (Sunday night) is weighed at length by Bruce and by Barrett, and there too the question is calendrical convention rather than lexicography. Every major lexicon gives a single sense.