Epiousion

Epiousion (ἐπιούσιον) is a Koine Greek adjective used in the Lord's Prayer verse "Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον" ('Give us today our epiousion bread'). Because the word is used nowhere else, its meaning is unclear. It is traditionally translated as "daily", but most modern scholars reject that interpretation. The word is also referred to by the form epiousios. Since it is a Koine Greek dis legomenon (a word that occurs only twice within a given context) found only in the New Testament passages Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3, its interpretation relies upon morphological analysis and context. The traditional and most common English translation is daily, although most scholars today reject this in part because all other New Testament passages with the translation "daily" include the word hemera (ἡμέρᾱ, 'day'). The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that there are several ways of understanding epiousion (which the Catechism calls epiousios), including the traditional 'daily', but most literally as 'supersubstantial' or 'superessential', based on its morphological components. Alternative theories are that—aside from the etymology of ousia, meaning 'substance'—it may be derived from either of the verbs einai (εἶναι), meaning "to be", or ienai (ἰέναι), meaning both "to come" and "to go". The word is visible in the Hanna Papyrus 1 (P75), the oldest surviving witness for certain New Testament passages. Epiousion is the only adjective in the Lord's Prayer. It is masculine, accusative, singular, agreeing in gender, number, and case with the noun it qualifies, ἄρτον, arton ("bread"). In an interlinear gloss: In the 20th century, another supposed instance appeared to come to light. In an Egyptian papyrus dated to the 5th century CE which contains a shopping list, a word transcribed as epiousi was reported as being next to the names of several grocery items. This seemed to indicate that it was used in the sense of "enough for today", "enough for tomorrow", or "necessary".