StrongerBible

epiousios

ἐπιούσιος

GreekG1967“daily, supersubstantial, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 6:11Luk 11:3
Word studyResearch-gradeeh-pee-OO-see-osadjective

What epiousios means

of the bread asked for in the Lord's Prayer: the portion for the coming day, the bread needed to live on right now

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintyContested

This word occurs only twice in the Bible, both times describing the bread in the Lord's Prayer ("give us this day our ____ bread"), and nowhere else in all of surviving Greek. Origen already noticed this around the year 233 and concluded the Gospel writers had coined it. Modern study confirms his verdict: the one supposed parallel, a household account from Egypt, turned out on fresh inspection to read "of oil," not this word at all. So we cannot look up how anyone else used it. We can only reason from how it is built and from the prayer it sits in.

The most widely held view today is that it was formed from the everyday phrase for "the coming day" (the same idiom Luke uses for "the next day" in Acts), so the petition asks for the bread of the day now arriving. A morning prayer would mean the day just dawning; an evening prayer, tomorrow. Either way it points to the very next portion a person needs, not a stockpile. This fits the manna story, where Israel could gather only one day's food at a time, and Agur's prayer for "my allotted bread, neither poverty nor riches."

Because the word is a coinage with no outside use, its exact force has been debated for nineteen centuries, and several careful readings remain alive:

  • bread for tomorrow understood as the bread of the coming age
  • bread simply needed to survive
  • the bread that is Christ himself received at the table

Those readings are laid out under the entry's disputes. What nearly all of them share is a request for dependence on God for the next stretch of life, one day at a time.

Both uses sit in the same petition, so the word carries one sense; the disagreement is about what that single sense most precisely means, not about two different uses in two different contexts.

Mat 6:11Luk 11:3

What scholars say about epiousios

ἐπιούσιος is a hapax in the New Testament (Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3; quoted again in Didache 8.2) and is unattested anywhere else in Greek; Origen (De Oratione 27) already judged it a coinage of the evangelists. The lone supposed documentary parallel, the Sayce/Preisigke reading of a Fayum account (SB I 5224.20), was challenged by Bruce Metzger (ExpTim 69, 1957-58, 52-54) and overturned by autopsy when M. Nijman and K. A. Worp (Novum Testamentum 41, 1999, 231-234) read the line as ἐλαίου, "of oil," on the rediscovered P.Yale inv. 19. Of the competing derivations, the philological majority now favors formation from the participle ἡ ἐπιοῦσα (ἡμέρα), "the coming day" (J. B. Lightfoot 1891; Colin Hemer, JSNT 22, 1984, 81-94), against the older ἐπί + οὐσία analysis, which most scholars reject on the elision rule (the expected form would be ἐπούσιος). Standard treatments: Werner Foerster, TDNT II.590-599; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. 2007) 319-321; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC) I.607-610; R. T. France, Matthew (NICNT, 2007) 247-250; John Nolland, Matthew (NIGTC, 2005) 287-290; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke X-XXIV (AB 28A, 1985) 896, 900, 904-906; François Bovon, Luke 2 (Hermeneia, 2013) 80-87; Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (1967) 98-104; Raymond E. Brown, "The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer," Theological Studies 22 (1961) 175-208; Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (2015) 159-175; Jean Carmignac, Recherches sur le "Notre Pere" (1969); Ceslas Spicq, TLNT II.50-53. Lexica decline to settle: BDAG (2000) lists four derivations and notes the papyrus parallel no longer holds; LSJ gives "for the morrow, sufficient for the day"; EDNT II.31-32 leans to "for tomorrow" with eschatological resonance.

Where scholars disagree about epiousios

How the coined word ἐπιούσιος was formed, since this decides much of its meaning. The chief options are: (1) from the participle ἡ ἐπιοῦσα (ἡμέρα), "the coming day"; and (2) from ἐπί + οὐσία, "substance / being." The standard objection to option 2 is the elision rule, by which prefixing ἐπί to a word beginning with a vowel normally drops the iota (so the expected form would be ἐπούσιος, not ἐπιούσιος); defenders of option 2 cite retained-iota counter-examples such as ἐπίορκος.

  • majorityFormed from the participle "the coming day," yielding "bread for the coming day." This is the philological majority: the morphology is regular, no elision rule is broken, and the idiom for "the next day" is well attested, including in Acts.; J. B. Lightfoot, On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament (1891) 195-234; Colin J. Hemer, "ἐπιούσιος," JSNT 22 (1984) 81-94; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. 2007) 319-321
  • minorityFormed from ἐπί + οὐσία, "substance," the basis of Jerome's Latin supersubstantialis and the later eucharistic reading. Now a minority view, rejected by most on the elision rule.; Origen, De Oratione 27; Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum I.6.11

What the petition asks for, given that the word is a coinage with no outside attestation. Several readings are held by named modern scholars; the same scholar sometimes holds two at once.

  • majorityBread for the coming day, kept to ordinary material bread: the next day's portion, asked one day at a time, without an end-time overlay.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, 2007) 247-250; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC) I.607-610
  • minorityBread for tomorrow understood as the bread of the coming age: the petition asks today for the bread of the great Tomorrow, the messianic banquet, without ceasing to mean the bread one eats tonight.; Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (1967) 98-104; Raymond E. Brown, "The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer," Theological Studies 22 (1961) 175-208
  • minorityBread necessary for existence, that is, the food simply needed to subsist, reading οὐσία in its concrete sense of livelihood and grounding the petition in Agur's prayer for allotted bread (Proverbs 30:8).; Werner Foerster, TDNT II.590-599; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke X-XXIV (AB 28A, 1985) 904-906
  • minoritySupersubstantial or eucharistic bread: the bread that is Christ himself, received at the table, dominant in the Western Catholic tradition from Jerome onward and revived in recent scholarship.; Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015) 159-175; Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum I.6.11
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Werner Foerster, "ἐπιούσιος," TDNT II.590-599theological-dictionary
  • Colin J. Hemer, "ἐπιούσιος," JSNT 22 (1984) 81-94journal-article
  • Bruce M. Metzger, "How Many Times Does ΕΠΙΟΥΣΙΟΣ Occur Outside the Lord's Prayer?" Expository Times 69 (1957-58) 52-54journal-article
  • M. Nijman and K. A. Worp, "ΕΠΙΟΥΣΙΟΣ in a Documentary Papyrus?" Novum Testamentum 41 (1999) 231-234journal-article
  • J. B. Lightfoot, "On the Words ἐπιούσιος, περιούσιος," in On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament, 3rd ed. (1891) 195-234monograph
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. 2007) 319-321commentary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC) I.607-610commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, 2007) 247-250commentary
  • John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC, 2005) 287-290commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke X-XXIV (AB 28A, 1985) 896, 900, 904-906commentary
  • François Bovon, Luke 2 (Hermeneia, 2013) 80-87commentary
  • Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (SCM, 1967) 98-104monograph
  • Raymond E. Brown, "The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer," Theological Studies 22 (1961) 175-208journal-article
  • Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015) 159-175monograph
  • Origen, De Oratione 27primary-source
  • Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum I.6.11 (CCSL 77, 37)primary-source
  • BDAG (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. ἐπιούσιοςlexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament II.50-53theological-dictionary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἐπιούσιος

accusative m s

ἐπιούσιον

Mat 6:11, Luk 11:3