16 ms·

Epiousios

538 points by benbreen 5y ago

kgeist 5y ago
The Old Church Slavonic Bible (translated by 10 century Byzantine scholars) uses a word which now means "vital, necessary, important" in modern Russian, and is widely used to this day.
- pvg 5y ago
  10 century Byzantine scholars 9th century and not Byzantine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Church_Slavonic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Church... but by that point, at least according to the article, the meaning was already unclear
  - kgeist 5y ago
    >Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. OK, 9th century, not 10th. >but by that point, at least according to the article, the meaning was already unclear Well, the article mostly mentions Catholic Church and the problems translating the Vulgate. The same Vulgate which gave us "horned Moses" and other mistranslations. I thought maybe the Orthodox church has no trouble with the word.
    - pvg 5y ago
      The translations were almost certainly not personally done by them. That's the purpose of the Preslav School in the linked wikipedia thing. Well, the article mostly mentions Catholic Church and the problems translating the Vulgate. I guess I see a papally-commissioned translator's difficulty with this 500 years before OCS translation as evidence it was already confusing then. "horned Moses" is a sort of layering of confusions over time. Maybe I'm putting too much stock in the pope!
  - dmix 5y ago
    The language itself > is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th-century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (in present-day Greece).
- panzerklein 5y ago
  It's насущный, right?
Schwolop 5y ago
As an Aussie with Greek friends, I choose to treat this exactly as per the colloquial meaning of 'minimum', as in "minimum chips". :-)
saketmehta 5y ago
Hear me out… could this be a typo?
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I would think so (that is to say a misspelling, not a typo as it wasn't typed), but on the other hand misspelling generally look like another word that fits in the context, but nobody seems to be suggesting a better word that looks like epiousios to put in its place.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  Then the question would be, a typo for what? Given that scholars have been studying this word for 1600 and coming up with various theories, if a typo was a plausible theory, they would have already thought of that. Scholars do some pretty intense analysis of this stuff. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75 about how differences between different scrolls are tracked.
- deleted 5y ago
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strenholme 5y ago
I translate this as “divine” when I recite the Lord’s prayer: “Give us this day, our divine bread” As per the linked article, that’s as reasonable of a translation as anything else.
- AnthonBerg 5y ago
  Very much so: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dyew- https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-E...
srcreigh 5y ago
Maybe it's not so difficult to translate. Fr Lawrence Farley [1] notes that 1) the word was used in other historical writings than the Bible and 2) that the closely related word `epiouse' is used in Acts 16:11 which reads "We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the next day, to Neapolis." As with many things relating to the Bible or Christianity, it can be helpful to search for what the Orthodox church says about it. [1]: https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/the-lords-prayer-give-us-this-day-our-daily-bread https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/the-lord...
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Generally, wouldn't a religious organization be a biased source? They use religious texts to derive power, establish a narrative, and influence people's actions.
  - ezekiel68 5y ago
    You have an interesting point. However, if a biased, power-hungry organization says that the temperature outside at a certain time & location is 27° C and that really is the temperature there, the bias and ambition are less relevant.
  - mlang23 5y ago
    Indeed. Its a clear case of trusting the cat to keep the cream. But most poeple dont seem to notice, which is indicative for how strong the illusions the churches have created are.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - gmoot 5y ago
    I reject this blanket characterization of religious organizations, but anyway the Eastern / Greek Orthodox Church is interesting here because it descends directly from the original Greek speaking Christians in the Eastern Roman empire when the Bible was written. It's like asking a Jew about translating the Torah - it's about historical continuity and subject matter expertise.
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rsj_hn 5y ago
Absolutely fascinating. But after reading the entire article, I still don't have a clear understanding of what "supersubstantial" means.
- lgeorget 5y ago
  In the Catholic rite, the bread _becomes_ the body of the Christ during Eucharist, a process known as _transubstantiation_ (meanwhile in protestant liturgy, it _contains_ the body of the Christ, a process known as _consubstantiation_). In any case, the bread is more than just bread, it's the symbol of the sacrifice made by the Christ to save Humanity and renew the alliance made with God. I think (I'm not a doctor of canon law by the way) that's what it means: the bread beyond its substance.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - thyrsus 5y ago
    The Catholic theological tradition holds that the "form" remains bread, but the "substance" becomes God. It is explicitly not a symbol, it is God. Many of the laity don't understand this or, even if they do, do not think it a necessary article of faith.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      They understand it is one of those things that matters only to theologians, and even then only in conflicts with other theologians.
    - prometheus76 5y ago
      This reminds me of a phrase I've heard many times, but I don't know the origin. "Protestants believe Eucharist is symbolic. Catholics believe the Eucharist is real. Orthodox Christians believe the Eucharist is real because it's symbolic." The word "symbol" originally meant "where two things come together" as in, two rivers joining into one river. Many Protestants believe that the Eucharist is only a token or reminder of Christ. The Catholics have developed the idea that it materially changes. The Orthodox believe it changes into the Body of Christ, but not in a way you could physically measure. I'm not a theologian and this is my poor layman's understanding.
dmix 5y ago
Off topic but I just noticed there are no spaces between words in the old Greek papyrus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75?wprov=sfti1 https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-YQMdlv22BA8jnWvqncastzGgv2nqihP_V-k6NMsKgIF3sVGbPSPXkUYZlmfFZm7h7bXN_fBKvP44tpGb1kbs8N6H6TqdE-h https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-YQMdlv22BA8jnWvqnca... I’m curious how much more difficult it would be to learn to read in a largely illiterate world without many documents around. While having the additional burden of identifying words within one long string of characters. Google tells me it’s called Scriptio Continua and the first documents to use spaces and punctuation were later Bibles. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua?wprov=sfti1 https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua?wprov=sf... I know it’s common in some Asian languages but their character systems account for it better.
- gmoot 5y ago
  Yeah, no punctuation at all and not even lower case letters! Modern texts have all these things inserted by editors, it does indeed sound much harder to have to learn without these extra aids.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - 5040 5y ago
    Modern Japanese is interesting here. It also doesn't make use of spaces, capitalization, or much of punctuation for that matter.
- tragomaskhalos 5y ago
  Harder certainly, but fluency in the language obviously helps, and inflectional endings and - to a lesser extent - common prefixes will certainly help to delineate word boundaries. And the sort of reading that we are used to today - taking in a page of text via a quick scan - was afaik unknown then, where the mode was to read aloud, at a correspondingly slower pace (although I find this unconvincing for very literate individuals)
- 5y ago
anm89 5y ago
I'm a bit confused here. I self admittedly an extremely amateur history buff but my impression was that Greece had completely declined by 200 ce when they are claiming this papyrus originated from. why would a text even exist at all on the subject of Christ from that Era in Greek. Wouldn't all of the relevant texts have been in Latin at that point? honestly asking. I'm not supposing I have a good grasp on the history here.
- gmoot 5y ago
  The common language was Greek, even though the Romans were in charge. Greek spread through the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Latin never supplanted it.
  - fourtrees 5y ago
    Yup, the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire used Greek as a lingua franca.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      rather, as an actual and official first Lingua
- mistercheph 5y ago
  Like Latin, Greek was a language whose use extended far past the decline of its birthplace. We do not have extensive contemporary sources for the Gospels. All we have are copies produced much later. This word is found in authoritative sources for the text of the new testament, which is written in Koine Greek.
- NobodyNada 5y ago
  The entire New Testament was originally written in Greek during the late 00’s/early 100’s. The papyrus mentioned in the article is a copy of Luke’s gospel dated to about 200 AD, but the original manuscript was written closer to 100 AD [0]. We have fragments of and references to the book of Luke from earlier than 200, but the copy from 200 is the first fragment containing the Lord’s Prayer and that unknown adjective. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke
christmm 5y ago
could machine learning help?
cblconfederate 5y ago
Interesting, i ve been saying that prayer as a kid and i always thought that the word meant something like "vital, substantive", but that's based on my modern interpretation of the word
Christopgr 5y ago
In modern Greek it's not a word we use a lot, but we do have a phrase where it's used exclusively and that is: "He fights to earn the epiousios" In that context epiousios means the bread of each day and by extension the absolutely necessary (commodities) for human living. https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%22%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82+-%CE%B1+-%CE%BF%22&dq= https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/l... https://ikypros.com/53875/%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%82/%CF%84%CE%AF-%CF%83%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B5%CE%B9-%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82/ https://ikypros.com/53875/%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CE%BC%C...
- dustintrex 5y ago
  But is that a reference to the Bible? "To earn (my/your) daily bread" is a set phrase in English and many other European languages (French pain quotidien etc) as well.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - Christopgr 5y ago
    Unfortunately, I am not versed in linguistics, but I would suppose so, because its etymology [1] based on the words where it's derived from would mean "I am on something" in a literal or more metaphorical sense (could also be used as "I'm focused on something") and it's also widely used almost everyday in the "everyday's bread" way in our most common prayer (we used to sing that every morning at school) while also never being used in any other context except for my first post's phrase. [1] https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%BC%CE%B9 https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%B9%C...
    - imarg 5y ago
      This prayer or rather the use of epiousios in this prayer and its appearance only in this prayer and how it should be translated is exactly the topic of this discussion.
imarg 5y ago
As a Greek myself I never really thought much about this word. Yes, it is not common but I thought I understood this. After reading the linked article I am not so sure anymore and I am not really sure how I would translate it. I cannot translate it to English in a single word but the way I understand it would be "what is needed, no more, no less" (which is also mentioned in the article). I found two greek sources that seem to agree with me [1], [2]. Especially in the first it gives also as synonym the word "daily". However it also mentions that in the biblical context although it is widespread understood as "necessary" the correct interpretation (of the whole phrase) is rather "give us today the bread of tomorrow". So, as a conclusion, I guess even as a Greek I am as much confused as all these scholars that try to translate it! [1] https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82 https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8... [2] https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%22%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82+-%CE%B1+-%CE%BF%22&dq= https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/l...
- jordigh 5y ago
  I generally distrust modern Greeks' knowledge about Ancient Greek. For example, beta has changed pronunciation, becoming something like English v instead of English b like it was originally, but most modern Greeks will vehemently deny that the pronunciation has changed. We have good evidence that it used to be like English b (voiced bilabial plosive): https://www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm https://www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm That's just one example. Native speakers are usually the worst at understanding and explaining their own language.
  - cgio 5y ago
    I will disagree. I cannot see how a native speaker can be the worst at understanding their own language. Your own language is the one you understand best, and even though that is not directly the opposite statement, for your statement to be correct it would mean that statistically native speakers are of inferior understanding compared to others. When you take that to apply for all languages you would end up with a paradox. You give an example based on pronunciation, which does change for all languages, so I would not take knowledge of history of pronunciation to have anything to do with the instinctive understanding of concepts in your mother tongue. Now on the second part, I.e. the ability to explain, I would think it’s related to understanding, but it is more nuanced as it also has to do with knowledge of the language in which the explanation is articulated. —-edit to add comment on pronunciation of β On the specific pronunciation subject, I am no expert in the matter but I do wonder how that reconciles with the fact that the letters μπ make the sound b in Greek and that combination of letters is not modern but has been in Ancient Greek words too, such as in εμπνέω.
CDokolas 5y ago
This is an interesting source of info: https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BC%90%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82 https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BC%90%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%...
WriterGuy2021 5y ago
The function of this adjective seems to be the augmentation of "bread" so that it is interpreted as food to feed the spiritual mission of Christians. The day is to be food for their stated higher spiritual purpose. Clearly, this word means something like "higher-purpose" or something like that. I think most Christians interpret "Give us the day our daily bread." correctly because the whole prayer is about living a pious life. Even if "daily" doesn't exactly mean what the original text meant, I think the context flavors it well enough.
- AnthonBerg 5y ago
  Well put. I see it too. Indeed it is epiousios to see the spiritual essence “over nature” (supra-natural / super-natural). The inner, spiritual world that we can witness in our witnessing of nature. Martin-Löf comes to mind: https://github.com/michaelt/martin-lof/blob/master/pdfs/A-path-from-logic-to-metaphysics-1991.pdf https://github.com/michaelt/martin-lof/blob/master/pdfs/A-pa... (It’s funny and beautiful that we’re now building all the most interesting programming languages on top of Martin-Löf’s intuitionistic type theory. – At least in my opinion.) It is epiousios to use the word “daily” as a translation of “epiousios”. Isn’t it also a common pattern in religious texts the metaphor that the soul is a light? – and the first light man knew certainly was the light of day. As well as metaphors like a life being like a year with its seasons and its finality? And a life like a day? And indeed metaphor is itself epiousios. Bread is metaphor. Metaphor can certainly be spiritual sustenance. And indeed the prayer itself is exactly that. Or rather, it isn’t, but it can be seen that way. Or rather, it can’t actually be seen that way, but we can certainly find beauty in interpreting it that way. From a beautiful, beautiful paper on the substrate of human cooperation – neural mechanisms, namely in the prefrontal cortex: Zoh, Y., Chang, S.W.C. & Crockett, M.J.: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective. ACNP journal Neuropsychopharmacology* (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01092-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01092-5 / https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5 ‘Relative to other species, humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate—we are willing to incur personal costs to benefit others, including strangers, and people who we will never meet again. These abilities are thought to arise from complex systems of shared moral intuitions about what is “right” or “good” that are culturally transmitted across space and time.’ Along with such things as comfort, solace, hope, and understanding. In the form of metaphor. Shared metaphor. Our shared, daily, divine, epiousios bread. If we choose to receive it that way. Supplementary content: https://twitter.com/kristleifur/status/1429177064205258758?s=21 https://twitter.com/kristleifur/status/1429177064205258758?s...
raptorraver 5y ago
At least st. Cyprian (died 258) [1] understands epiousious meaning the holy communion. (Source: my friend who has studied theology focusing to early church fathers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian
ggm 5y ago
The range of interpretation, and inferred belief in the meaning, as a function of religious belief and action is a classic example of how fraught "the word of gXd" is, subject to translation/transcription error. If a word only exists once in the source text, and in the corpus of contemporary(*) documents, inferred meaning has to be highly conjectural. [*] contemporary being also subject to some discussion given the highly approximate nature of document ageing. If the other uses are as little as 50 years after, how strongly would you agree with the meaning, as opposed to documents 50 years prior? Imagine you're in the future, and discover terms of art in contemporary computing like "bus" and then your point of reference is henceforth set by ICT, and not by mechanised transport, or even electrical engineer because you don't find the dual-meaning of bus-bars, and bus (vehicle) which informed this choice.
- deleted 5y ago
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- bobthechef 5y ago
  > If a word only exists once in the source text, and in the corpus of contemporary(*) documents, inferred meaning has to be highly conjectural. Maybe, but you've got a body of tradition to lean on. You cannot interpret text, perhaps especially Christian texts, without drawing on tradition. This is a major flaw in sola scriptura and hence the reason why over forty thousand Protestant sects exist in the US alone. Without that continuous tradition, you have to reach for some other hermeneutic, some other interpretive lens, likely you're own undisciplined and unacknowledged implicit one of the day.
  - ggm 5y ago
    > sola scriptura Right. But, this is the world we live in: people who insist on literal meaning of text, often inferred from an english gloss of a greek gloss, back to documents where (as in this case) the word is not able to be defined, because it's the only instance of the word in the corpus at this time. If you put the faith "to the test" of reasoned meaning, you're a long way off a sola scriptura reservation.
bjarneh 5y ago
It seems Greek is Greek, even to the Greeks...
- aduitsis 5y ago
  Greek here, I nearly spit my coffee with this :).
streamofdigits 5y ago
Reminds me of how Western academics had an easier time deciphering Mayan script when they actually talked to the Mayans that survived colonization
ncmncm 5y ago
The real question, to me, is why the early church elders thought that their parishioners would have any idea what the word meant. My guess is the word was inserted deliberately to mystify. It wouldn't be the first time.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  > It wouldn't be the first time. Examples? I contest this notion because the development of doctrine is toward greater clarity. It may be the case that there is a more complex meaning to be considered that resists easy understanding. A movement toward clarity may lead to more and not less to consider. Consider John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." What is "Word"? You really only begin to appreciate the meaning in the original Greek, "Logos". And that by itself can be contemplated inexhaustibly. So this suspicion that it was an exercise in obscurantism is unsubstantiated.[0] If this is a neologism, then it suggests that no existing Greek word was able to fully articulate the intended meaning. It may have tried to capture a meaning available in Aramaic [1] [0] Not a fan of Karl Rahner, but I think his characterization of "mystery" as "inexhaustible intelligibility" is much more accurate that the modern implication that mystery is impenetrable obscurity. On the contrary, it is penetrable, but inexhaustible. And that would agree, I think, with the notion of the Beautific Vision. [1] https://catholicexchange.com/our-supersubstantial-bread https://catholicexchange.com/our-supersubstantial-bread
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    You have provided your own examples. "Development of doctrine" seems to refer to events in a time necessarily much later than its original composition.
    - bobthechef 5y ago
      I'm not sure how I provided examples of mystification. Rather, whatever the merits of my particular example, I think I rather argued against the idea that "epiousios" was intended to obscure and to obfuscate rather than to clarify by arguing that this would go against the development of doctrine which tends toward greater clarify, not obscurity. I'm making two points: against mystification by virtue of the development of dotrine and for the idea that the term may have been coined to express something Greek had no word for. Don't confuse the two. In any case, the lack of examples and explanation to support the claim that mystification is a practice in this context is conspicuous. It smells of prejudice, frankly.
geraneum 5y ago
In Persian we have an old word which is even used today called “Roozi”. It is a combination of “Rooz” + “i”. The main part translates to “day” and this word refers to what you need to live for a day. It’s also used in prayers which asks God to provide us with what we need to live for the day. This word instantly reminded me of that but I don’t know if they are conceptually related or not.
- gremloni 5y ago
  Interesting, that’s in Hindi too. Probably straight from Persian.
- thisistheend123 5y ago
  We can find its reference in 'navroz' as well. I guess, the 'roz' comes from 'Rooz'.
  - geraneum 5y ago
    Exactly, that’s it. Also the first part “nav” or “no” means “new”. So the compound noun means “new day” which marks the first day of spring.
PanosJee 5y ago
New CNCF project?
riofoxx 5y ago
T.o a.s.s.i.s.t y.o.u i.n t.r.a.d.e.s f.o.r b.e.t.t.e.r i.m.p.r.o.v.e.m.e.n.t on c.r.y.p.t.o.c.u.r.r.e.n.c.y W.h.a.t.s.A.p.p (+13052395906)
bobthechef 5y ago
If “epi” is above and “ousia” is essence, then this leads me to think: what is above essence? A Thomistic reading would suggest that the only remaining principle above essence is existence. So something like bread of existence/bring? This does sound like “bread of life”. Some may argue that the Greeks had no “concept” of existence qua existence, but they also didn’t have this word either, hence the neologism. And it would not be a strong objection: the Thomistic understanding of transsubstantiation also came later, but is the accepted view of the Catholic Church.
- chippy 5y ago
  something that's more than just being essential for the body?
ttctciyf 5y ago
Given the literal translation: > The bread of-us the epiousion give us today And the sense of "epi" as in "outside" like epicentre and epidermis, could this be as simple as > Give us our daily crust of bread I wonder?
sramsay 5y ago
The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (who has translated the New Testament) has suggested "bread adequate for the day's needs:" "'Daily bread,' admittedly, is almost accurate enough, though the phrase would better be rendered 'bread adequate for the day's needs'; but I doubt most of us quite hear the note of desperation in that phrase 'τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον'—the very real uncertainty, suffered every day, concerning whether today one will have enough food to survive." But this in the context of a larger argument, in which the Lord's Prayer is presented quite specifically as a prayer intended to be uttered by the destitute. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-prayer-for-the-poor/ https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-prayer-for-the-p...
avnigo 5y ago
I don't understand what the confusion is all about. Isn't it pretty clear cut from the etymology of the word what it means? I interpret epiousios to mean, 'that which is of substance', or just 'substantial', from the epi- prefix and the root word 'ousia'. In Modern Greek, the word 'epiousio' (missing the final -s, in the nominative neuter singular) just means 'the crux of the matter', or more simply just 'that which is relevant'. I get that the connotation of epiousios may be closer to sustenance in that passage, but I don't see where 'daily' comes from. The last word of that phrase is 'σήμερον', which means 'today' -- is that where the confusion is coming from? What am I missing here?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Yup, the "daily" part is a bit obscure and the Wiki article doesn't explain it very well. It turns out that it's inferred, by analogy with the fact that 'daily' was very commonly implied in similar contexts. It's a natural analogy if you think 'epiousios' relates to something like "necessary sustenance".
  - joeberon 5y ago
    Yeah, it makes sense to me to translate "sustenance bread" as "daily bread"
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Have you heard of the Arian heresy [1]? It was THE major debate in the early church and it was centered on whether Jesus and god were the same substance (Homoousia) or somehow on a different level (as advocated by Arius). The Nicene Creed (325 AD) established homoousia as a necessary principle on being Christian. This was very political — the emperor Constantine got personally involved. So, in the context of this recent event, imagine Jerome translating the lord's prayer and dealing with a word that appears to imply multiple levels of substance. Rather than encouraging more heresies, he used a colloquial translation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy
    - 5y ago
m000 5y ago
Why try to find a super-deep meaning in something that is straightforward and makes perfect sense in its literal interpretation? Even if it is an hapax legomenon. It's ironic that Occam was a theologian, and yet very few of his colleague have heard of Occam's razor.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Why is this of interest to so many people on Hacker News? I'm fascinated by that.
- KoftaBob 5y ago
  Lots of history/etymology nerds?
- throwaway20371 5y ago
  I'm a simple man. I see article says "We don't know what this ancient word means", I upvote.
5040 5y ago
This is my favorite example of this sort of thing (Source: Appendix II - λυκάβαντος: when the wolf comes?' in Elisabeth Irwin's 'Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation) At Odyssey 14.158–64 and 19.303–7, the disguised Odysseus swears oaths, amounting to prophecy, to Eumaeus and to Penelope, respectively, that Odysseus’ return is imminent. [...] These passages are famous for the controversy surrounding the meaning of the critical phrase τοῦδ' αὐτοῦ λυκάβαντος: λυκάβας is a term otherwise unattested in Homer and one that does not resurface until some few centuries later, glossed by the less enigmatic term, 'year'. [...] None of the arguments proposed for the ‘true’ etymology are fully convincing: the origins of λυκάβας are alternatively proposed as pre-Greek—quite possibly related to the prehellenic name of the Attic mountain λυκαβηττός—or even Semitic. The first half of the word has been alternatively derived from 'light' or 'wolf', and the second from βαίνω ('to walk') so rendering the phrase 'when the wolf walks' or 'when the light goes'. [...] Here one might return to the phrase itself, and not its disputed etymology, but its possible folk etymologies. For the scholiasts the association of the word with year came from a connection with the wolf, λύκος, which they justified by the supposed amazing cooperative power of wolves who, each grasping in their jaws the tail of the wolf in front, were said to form a chain to cross rivers, a sequence that is said to evoke the motion of time as sequential units (ὥσπερ καἰ ἐπὶ τοῦ χρόνου, 'as also in the case of time'). The explanation is fanciful, but at least points to a tradition of associating the word more distinctly with 'wolf' rather than 'light'.
_0ffh 5y ago
FWIW I side with the "perpetual" (or one of various approximate synonyms) faction that cites the Syriac translation from Aramic. I think that, firstly, it makes sense to see "always-being" as a kind of superlative of mere "being". And secondly, it seems plausible that one might arrive from "always-being" via "being-at-all-days" or "being-everyday" to the common "daily" translation.
canadaduane 5y ago
I wonder if it has a corollary in the Buddhist concept of "impermanence." Ephemeral, momentary, "in the now". Give us this day our impermanent bread.
- Natsu 5y ago
  If anything, it should have literally the opposite meaning. Part of the idea of what it represents in the Eucharist is that it endures when the world passes away.
NKosmatos 5y ago
That's one of the things I like about HN :-) The variety and range of different subjects being posted. I'm casually reading why we can't go faster than light, contemplating about Roko’s Basilisk or how to use a Raspberry for a strange project, and here comes along the definition of a Greek word (with a surprising number of comments and points).
beeforpork 5y ago
C'mon guys, it means 'cromulent', of course.
f3rnando 5y ago
Nowadays we call it "dope". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dope
- f3rnando 5y ago
  Theres also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Harold_A._Abramson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_dieth... but this one you dont really need it everyday in the desert/dessert.
mannykoum 5y ago
As a Greek who's lived abroad and has taken a jab at a bunch of different languages, I always talked to my friends about how easy it is to understand most Greek words even if I've never heard of them before. Yes, there are a lot of etymological roots that change + exceptions but it is a lot simpler to make out (or make up) words than it is with other languages. Especially, ones that have a complex genealogical history like English. For example, chicken, turkey, poultry, bird are all different in English but in Greek you can find the word for bird in all of them (κοτόπουλο, γαλοπούλα, πουλερικά, πουλί). Btw this is also why I think that Greek is a relatively easy language to learn (but there isn't much material to get people started unfortunately :( ) TIL that a word I've been hearing and saying since I was 5 does not mean what I thought it meant and it's still baffling me haha made my day really

538 points by benbreen 5y ago

The Old Church Slavonic Bible (translated by 10 century Byzantine scholars) uses a word which now means "vital, necessary, important" in modern Russian, and is widely used to this day.

pvg 5y ago
10 century Byzantine scholars 9th century and not Byzantine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Church_Slavonic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Church... but by that point, at least according to the article, the meaning was already unclear
- kgeist 5y ago
  >Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. OK, 9th century, not 10th. >but by that point, at least according to the article, the meaning was already unclear Well, the article mostly mentions Catholic Church and the problems translating the Vulgate. The same Vulgate which gave us "horned Moses" and other mistranslations. I thought maybe the Orthodox church has no trouble with the word.
  - pvg 5y ago
    The translations were almost certainly not personally done by them. That's the purpose of the Preslav School in the linked wikipedia thing. Well, the article mostly mentions Catholic Church and the problems translating the Vulgate. I guess I see a papally-commissioned translator's difficulty with this 500 years before OCS translation as evidence it was already confusing then. "horned Moses" is a sort of layering of confusions over time. Maybe I'm putting too much stock in the pope!
- dmix 5y ago
  The language itself > is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th-century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (in present-day Greece).
panzerklein 5y ago
It's насущный, right?

Schwolop 5y ago

As an Aussie with Greek friends, I choose to treat this exactly as per the colloquial meaning of 'minimum', as in "minimum chips". :-)

saketmehta 5y ago

Hear me out… could this be a typo?

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I would think so (that is to say a misspelling, not a typo as it wasn't typed), but on the other hand misspelling generally look like another word that fits in the context, but nobody seems to be suggesting a better word that looks like epiousios to put in its place.
Thorrez 5y ago
Then the question would be, a typo for what? Given that scholars have been studying this word for 1600 and coming up with various theories, if a typo was a plausible theory, they would have already thought of that. Scholars do some pretty intense analysis of this stuff. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75 about how differences between different scrolls are tracked.
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strenholme 5y ago

I translate this as “divine” when I recite the Lord’s prayer: “Give us this day, our divine bread” As per the linked article, that’s as reasonable of a translation as anything else.

AnthonBerg 5y ago
Very much so: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dyew- https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-E...

srcreigh 5y ago

Maybe it's not so difficult to translate. Fr Lawrence Farley [1] notes that 1) the word was used in other historical writings than the Bible and 2) that the closely related word `epiouse' is used in Acts 16:11 which reads "We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the next day, to Neapolis." As with many things relating to the Bible or Christianity, it can be helpful to search for what the Orthodox church says about it. [1]: https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/the-lords-prayer-give-us-this-day-our-daily-bread https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/the-lord...

CameronNemo 5y ago
Generally, wouldn't a religious organization be a biased source? They use religious texts to derive power, establish a narrative, and influence people's actions.
- ezekiel68 5y ago
  You have an interesting point. However, if a biased, power-hungry organization says that the temperature outside at a certain time & location is 27° C and that really is the temperature there, the bias and ambition are less relevant.
- mlang23 5y ago
  Indeed. Its a clear case of trusting the cat to keep the cream. But most poeple dont seem to notice, which is indicative for how strong the illusions the churches have created are.
- deleted 5y ago
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- gmoot 5y ago
  I reject this blanket characterization of religious organizations, but anyway the Eastern / Greek Orthodox Church is interesting here because it descends directly from the original Greek speaking Christians in the Eastern Roman empire when the Bible was written. It's like asking a Jew about translating the Torah - it's about historical continuity and subject matter expertise.

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rsj_hn 5y ago

Absolutely fascinating. But after reading the entire article, I still don't have a clear understanding of what "supersubstantial" means.

lgeorget 5y ago
In the Catholic rite, the bread _becomes_ the body of the Christ during Eucharist, a process known as _transubstantiation_ (meanwhile in protestant liturgy, it _contains_ the body of the Christ, a process known as _consubstantiation_). In any case, the bread is more than just bread, it's the symbol of the sacrifice made by the Christ to save Humanity and renew the alliance made with God. I think (I'm not a doctor of canon law by the way) that's what it means: the bread beyond its substance.
- deleted 5y ago
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- thyrsus 5y ago
  The Catholic theological tradition holds that the "form" remains bread, but the "substance" becomes God. It is explicitly not a symbol, it is God. Many of the laity don't understand this or, even if they do, do not think it a necessary article of faith.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    They understand it is one of those things that matters only to theologians, and even then only in conflicts with other theologians.
  - prometheus76 5y ago
    This reminds me of a phrase I've heard many times, but I don't know the origin. "Protestants believe Eucharist is symbolic. Catholics believe the Eucharist is real. Orthodox Christians believe the Eucharist is real because it's symbolic." The word "symbol" originally meant "where two things come together" as in, two rivers joining into one river. Many Protestants believe that the Eucharist is only a token or reminder of Christ. The Catholics have developed the idea that it materially changes. The Orthodox believe it changes into the Body of Christ, but not in a way you could physically measure. I'm not a theologian and this is my poor layman's understanding.

dmix 5y ago

Off topic but I just noticed there are no spaces between words in the old Greek papyrus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75?wprov=sfti1 https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-YQMdlv22BA8jnWvqncastzGgv2nqihP_V-k6NMsKgIF3sVGbPSPXkUYZlmfFZm7h7bXN_fBKvP44tpGb1kbs8N6H6TqdE-h https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-YQMdlv22BA8jnWvqnca... I’m curious how much more difficult it would be to learn to read in a largely illiterate world without many documents around. While having the additional burden of identifying words within one long string of characters. Google tells me it’s called Scriptio Continua and the first documents to use spaces and punctuation were later Bibles. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua?wprov=sfti1 https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua?wprov=sf... I know it’s common in some Asian languages but their character systems account for it better.

gmoot 5y ago
Yeah, no punctuation at all and not even lower case letters! Modern texts have all these things inserted by editors, it does indeed sound much harder to have to learn without these extra aids.
- deleted 5y ago
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- 5040 5y ago
  Modern Japanese is interesting here. It also doesn't make use of spaces, capitalization, or much of punctuation for that matter.
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
Harder certainly, but fluency in the language obviously helps, and inflectional endings and - to a lesser extent - common prefixes will certainly help to delineate word boundaries. And the sort of reading that we are used to today - taking in a page of text via a quick scan - was afaik unknown then, where the mode was to read aloud, at a correspondingly slower pace (although I find this unconvincing for very literate individuals)
5y ago

anm89 5y ago

I'm a bit confused here. I self admittedly an extremely amateur history buff but my impression was that Greece had completely declined by 200 ce when they are claiming this papyrus originated from. why would a text even exist at all on the subject of Christ from that Era in Greek. Wouldn't all of the relevant texts have been in Latin at that point? honestly asking. I'm not supposing I have a good grasp on the history here.

gmoot 5y ago
The common language was Greek, even though the Romans were in charge. Greek spread through the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Latin never supplanted it.
- fourtrees 5y ago
  Yup, the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire used Greek as a lingua franca.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    rather, as an actual and official first Lingua
mistercheph 5y ago
Like Latin, Greek was a language whose use extended far past the decline of its birthplace. We do not have extensive contemporary sources for the Gospels. All we have are copies produced much later. This word is found in authoritative sources for the text of the new testament, which is written in Koine Greek.
NobodyNada 5y ago
The entire New Testament was originally written in Greek during the late 00’s/early 100’s. The papyrus mentioned in the article is a copy of Luke’s gospel dated to about 200 AD, but the original manuscript was written closer to 100 AD [0]. We have fragments of and references to the book of Luke from earlier than 200, but the copy from 200 is the first fragment containing the Lord’s Prayer and that unknown adjective. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke

christmm 5y ago

could machine learning help?

cblconfederate 5y ago

Interesting, i ve been saying that prayer as a kid and i always thought that the word meant something like "vital, substantive", but that's based on my modern interpretation of the word

Christopgr 5y ago

In modern Greek it's not a word we use a lot, but we do have a phrase where it's used exclusively and that is: "He fights to earn the epiousios" In that context epiousios means the bread of each day and by extension the absolutely necessary (commodities) for human living. https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%22%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82+-%CE%B1+-%CE%BF%22&dq= https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/l... https://ikypros.com/53875/%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%82/%CF%84%CE%AF-%CF%83%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B5%CE%B9-%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82/ https://ikypros.com/53875/%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CE%BC%C...

dustintrex 5y ago
But is that a reference to the Bible? "To earn (my/your) daily bread" is a set phrase in English and many other European languages (French pain quotidien etc) as well.
- deleted 5y ago
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- Christopgr 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I am not versed in linguistics, but I would suppose so, because its etymology [1] based on the words where it's derived from would mean "I am on something" in a literal or more metaphorical sense (could also be used as "I'm focused on something") and it's also widely used almost everyday in the "everyday's bread" way in our most common prayer (we used to sing that every morning at school) while also never being used in any other context except for my first post's phrase. [1] https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%BC%CE%B9 https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%B9%C...
  - imarg 5y ago
    This prayer or rather the use of epiousios in this prayer and its appearance only in this prayer and how it should be translated is exactly the topic of this discussion.

imarg 5y ago

As a Greek myself I never really thought much about this word. Yes, it is not common but I thought I understood this. After reading the linked article I am not so sure anymore and I am not really sure how I would translate it. I cannot translate it to English in a single word but the way I understand it would be "what is needed, no more, no less" (which is also mentioned in the article). I found two greek sources that seem to agree with me [1], [2]. Especially in the first it gives also as synonym the word "daily". However it also mentions that in the biblical context although it is widespread understood as "necessary" the correct interpretation (of the whole phrase) is rather "give us today the bread of tomorrow". So, as a conclusion, I guess even as a Greek I am as much confused as all these scholars that try to translate it! [1] https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82 https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8... [2] https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%22%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82+-%CE%B1+-%CE%BF%22&dq= https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/l...

jordigh 5y ago
I generally distrust modern Greeks' knowledge about Ancient Greek. For example, beta has changed pronunciation, becoming something like English v instead of English b like it was originally, but most modern Greeks will vehemently deny that the pronunciation has changed. We have good evidence that it used to be like English b (voiced bilabial plosive): https://www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm https://www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm That's just one example. Native speakers are usually the worst at understanding and explaining their own language.
- cgio 5y ago
  I will disagree. I cannot see how a native speaker can be the worst at understanding their own language. Your own language is the one you understand best, and even though that is not directly the opposite statement, for your statement to be correct it would mean that statistically native speakers are of inferior understanding compared to others. When you take that to apply for all languages you would end up with a paradox. You give an example based on pronunciation, which does change for all languages, so I would not take knowledge of history of pronunciation to have anything to do with the instinctive understanding of concepts in your mother tongue. Now on the second part, I.e. the ability to explain, I would think it’s related to understanding, but it is more nuanced as it also has to do with knowledge of the language in which the explanation is articulated. —-edit to add comment on pronunciation of β On the specific pronunciation subject, I am no expert in the matter but I do wonder how that reconciles with the fact that the letters μπ make the sound b in Greek and that combination of letters is not modern but has been in Ancient Greek words too, such as in εμπνέω.

CDokolas 5y ago

This is an interesting source of info: https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BC%90%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82 https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BC%90%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%83%...

WriterGuy2021 5y ago

The function of this adjective seems to be the augmentation of "bread" so that it is interpreted as food to feed the spiritual mission of Christians. The day is to be food for their stated higher spiritual purpose. Clearly, this word means something like "higher-purpose" or something like that. I think most Christians interpret "Give us the day our daily bread." correctly because the whole prayer is about living a pious life. Even if "daily" doesn't exactly mean what the original text meant, I think the context flavors it well enough.

AnthonBerg 5y ago
Well put. I see it too. Indeed it is epiousios to see the spiritual essence “over nature” (supra-natural / super-natural). The inner, spiritual world that we can witness in our witnessing of nature. Martin-Löf comes to mind: https://github.com/michaelt/martin-lof/blob/master/pdfs/A-path-from-logic-to-metaphysics-1991.pdf https://github.com/michaelt/martin-lof/blob/master/pdfs/A-pa... (It’s funny and beautiful that we’re now building all the most interesting programming languages on top of Martin-Löf’s intuitionistic type theory. – At least in my opinion.) It is epiousios to use the word “daily” as a translation of “epiousios”. Isn’t it also a common pattern in religious texts the metaphor that the soul is a light? – and the first light man knew certainly was the light of day. As well as metaphors like a life being like a year with its seasons and its finality? And a life like a day? And indeed metaphor is itself epiousios. Bread is metaphor. Metaphor can certainly be spiritual sustenance. And indeed the prayer itself is exactly that. Or rather, it isn’t, but it can be seen that way. Or rather, it can’t actually be seen that way, but we can certainly find beauty in interpreting it that way. From a beautiful, beautiful paper on the substrate of human cooperation – neural mechanisms, namely in the prefrontal cortex: Zoh, Y., Chang, S.W.C. & Crockett, M.J.: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective. ACNP journal Neuropsychopharmacology* (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01092-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01092-5 / https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5 ‘Relative to other species, humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate—we are willing to incur personal costs to benefit others, including strangers, and people who we will never meet again. These abilities are thought to arise from complex systems of shared moral intuitions about what is “right” or “good” that are culturally transmitted across space and time.’ Along with such things as comfort, solace, hope, and understanding. In the form of metaphor. Shared metaphor. Our shared, daily, divine, epiousios bread. If we choose to receive it that way. Supplementary content: https://twitter.com/kristleifur/status/1429177064205258758?s=21 https://twitter.com/kristleifur/status/1429177064205258758?s...

raptorraver 5y ago

At least st. Cyprian (died 258) [1] understands epiousious meaning the holy communion. (Source: my friend who has studied theology focusing to early church fathers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian

ggm 5y ago

The range of interpretation, and inferred belief in the meaning, as a function of religious belief and action is a classic example of how fraught "the word of gXd" is, subject to translation/transcription error. If a word only exists once in the source text, and in the corpus of contemporary(*) documents, inferred meaning has to be highly conjectural. [*] contemporary being also subject to some discussion given the highly approximate nature of document ageing. If the other uses are as little as 50 years after, how strongly would you agree with the meaning, as opposed to documents 50 years prior? Imagine you're in the future, and discover terms of art in contemporary computing like "bus" and then your point of reference is henceforth set by ICT, and not by mechanised transport, or even electrical engineer because you don't find the dual-meaning of bus-bars, and bus (vehicle) which informed this choice.

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bobthechef 5y ago
> If a word only exists once in the source text, and in the corpus of contemporary(*) documents, inferred meaning has to be highly conjectural. Maybe, but you've got a body of tradition to lean on. You cannot interpret text, perhaps especially Christian texts, without drawing on tradition. This is a major flaw in sola scriptura and hence the reason why over forty thousand Protestant sects exist in the US alone. Without that continuous tradition, you have to reach for some other hermeneutic, some other interpretive lens, likely you're own undisciplined and unacknowledged implicit one of the day.
- ggm 5y ago
  > sola scriptura Right. But, this is the world we live in: people who insist on literal meaning of text, often inferred from an english gloss of a greek gloss, back to documents where (as in this case) the word is not able to be defined, because it's the only instance of the word in the corpus at this time. If you put the faith "to the test" of reasoned meaning, you're a long way off a sola scriptura reservation.

bjarneh 5y ago

It seems Greek is Greek, even to the Greeks...

aduitsis 5y ago
Greek here, I nearly spit my coffee with this :).

streamofdigits 5y ago

Reminds me of how Western academics had an easier time deciphering Mayan script when they actually talked to the Mayans that survived colonization

ncmncm 5y ago

The real question, to me, is why the early church elders thought that their parishioners would have any idea what the word meant. My guess is the word was inserted deliberately to mystify. It wouldn't be the first time.

bobthechef 5y ago
> It wouldn't be the first time. Examples? I contest this notion because the development of doctrine is toward greater clarity. It may be the case that there is a more complex meaning to be considered that resists easy understanding. A movement toward clarity may lead to more and not less to consider. Consider John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." What is "Word"? You really only begin to appreciate the meaning in the original Greek, "Logos". And that by itself can be contemplated inexhaustibly. So this suspicion that it was an exercise in obscurantism is unsubstantiated.[0] If this is a neologism, then it suggests that no existing Greek word was able to fully articulate the intended meaning. It may have tried to capture a meaning available in Aramaic [1] [0] Not a fan of Karl Rahner, but I think his characterization of "mystery" as "inexhaustible intelligibility" is much more accurate that the modern implication that mystery is impenetrable obscurity. On the contrary, it is penetrable, but inexhaustible. And that would agree, I think, with the notion of the Beautific Vision. [1] https://catholicexchange.com/our-supersubstantial-bread https://catholicexchange.com/our-supersubstantial-bread
- ncmncm 5y ago
  You have provided your own examples. "Development of doctrine" seems to refer to events in a time necessarily much later than its original composition.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    I'm not sure how I provided examples of mystification. Rather, whatever the merits of my particular example, I think I rather argued against the idea that "epiousios" was intended to obscure and to obfuscate rather than to clarify by arguing that this would go against the development of doctrine which tends toward greater clarify, not obscurity. I'm making two points: against mystification by virtue of the development of dotrine and for the idea that the term may have been coined to express something Greek had no word for. Don't confuse the two. In any case, the lack of examples and explanation to support the claim that mystification is a practice in this context is conspicuous. It smells of prejudice, frankly.

geraneum 5y ago

In Persian we have an old word which is even used today called “Roozi”. It is a combination of “Rooz” + “i”. The main part translates to “day” and this word refers to what you need to live for a day. It’s also used in prayers which asks God to provide us with what we need to live for the day. This word instantly reminded me of that but I don’t know if they are conceptually related or not.

gremloni 5y ago
Interesting, that’s in Hindi too. Probably straight from Persian.
thisistheend123 5y ago
We can find its reference in 'navroz' as well. I guess, the 'roz' comes from 'Rooz'.
- geraneum 5y ago
  Exactly, that’s it. Also the first part “nav” or “no” means “new”. So the compound noun means “new day” which marks the first day of spring.

PanosJee 5y ago

New CNCF project?

riofoxx 5y ago

T.o a.s.s.i.s.t y.o.u i.n t.r.a.d.e.s f.o.r b.e.t.t.e.r i.m.p.r.o.v.e.m.e.n.t on c.r.y.p.t.o.c.u.r.r.e.n.c.y W.h.a.t.s.A.p.p (+13052395906)

bobthechef 5y ago

If “epi” is above and “ousia” is essence, then this leads me to think: what is above essence? A Thomistic reading would suggest that the only remaining principle above essence is existence. So something like bread of existence/bring? This does sound like “bread of life”. Some may argue that the Greeks had no “concept” of existence qua existence, but they also didn’t have this word either, hence the neologism. And it would not be a strong objection: the Thomistic understanding of transsubstantiation also came later, but is the accepted view of the Catholic Church.

chippy 5y ago
something that's more than just being essential for the body?

ttctciyf 5y ago

Given the literal translation: > The bread of-us the epiousion give us today And the sense of "epi" as in "outside" like epicentre and epidermis, could this be as simple as > Give us our daily crust of bread I wonder?

sramsay 5y ago

The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (who has translated the New Testament) has suggested "bread adequate for the day's needs:" "'Daily bread,' admittedly, is almost accurate enough, though the phrase would better be rendered 'bread adequate for the day's needs'; but I doubt most of us quite hear the note of desperation in that phrase 'τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον'—the very real uncertainty, suffered every day, concerning whether today one will have enough food to survive." But this in the context of a larger argument, in which the Lord's Prayer is presented quite specifically as a prayer intended to be uttered by the destitute. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-prayer-for-the-poor/ https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-prayer-for-the-p...

avnigo 5y ago

I don't understand what the confusion is all about. Isn't it pretty clear cut from the etymology of the word what it means? I interpret epiousios to mean, 'that which is of substance', or just 'substantial', from the epi- prefix and the root word 'ousia'. In Modern Greek, the word 'epiousio' (missing the final -s, in the nominative neuter singular) just means 'the crux of the matter', or more simply just 'that which is relevant'. I get that the connotation of epiousios may be closer to sustenance in that passage, but I don't see where 'daily' comes from. The last word of that phrase is 'σήμερον', which means 'today' -- is that where the confusion is coming from? What am I missing here?

zozbot234 5y ago
Yup, the "daily" part is a bit obscure and the Wiki article doesn't explain it very well. It turns out that it's inferred, by analogy with the fact that 'daily' was very commonly implied in similar contexts. It's a natural analogy if you think 'epiousios' relates to something like "necessary sustenance".
- joeberon 5y ago
  Yeah, it makes sense to me to translate "sustenance bread" as "daily bread"
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Have you heard of the Arian heresy [1]? It was THE major debate in the early church and it was centered on whether Jesus and god were the same substance (Homoousia) or somehow on a different level (as advocated by Arius). The Nicene Creed (325 AD) established homoousia as a necessary principle on being Christian. This was very political — the emperor Constantine got personally involved. So, in the context of this recent event, imagine Jerome translating the lord's prayer and dealing with a word that appears to imply multiple levels of substance. Rather than encouraging more heresies, he used a colloquial translation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy
  - 5y ago

m000 5y ago

Why try to find a super-deep meaning in something that is straightforward and makes perfect sense in its literal interpretation? Even if it is an hapax legomenon. It's ironic that Occam was a theologian, and yet very few of his colleague have heard of Occam's razor.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Why is this of interest to so many people on Hacker News? I'm fascinated by that.

KoftaBob 5y ago
Lots of history/etymology nerds?
throwaway20371 5y ago
I'm a simple man. I see article says "We don't know what this ancient word means", I upvote.

5040 5y ago

This is my favorite example of this sort of thing (Source: Appendix II - λυκάβαντος: when the wolf comes?' in Elisabeth Irwin's 'Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation) At Odyssey 14.158–64 and 19.303–7, the disguised Odysseus swears oaths, amounting to prophecy, to Eumaeus and to Penelope, respectively, that Odysseus’ return is imminent. [...] These passages are famous for the controversy surrounding the meaning of the critical phrase τοῦδ' αὐτοῦ λυκάβαντος: λυκάβας is a term otherwise unattested in Homer and one that does not resurface until some few centuries later, glossed by the less enigmatic term, 'year'. [...] None of the arguments proposed for the ‘true’ etymology are fully convincing: the origins of λυκάβας are alternatively proposed as pre-Greek—quite possibly related to the prehellenic name of the Attic mountain λυκαβηττός—or even Semitic. The first half of the word has been alternatively derived from 'light' or 'wolf', and the second from βαίνω ('to walk') so rendering the phrase 'when the wolf walks' or 'when the light goes'. [...] Here one might return to the phrase itself, and not its disputed etymology, but its possible folk etymologies. For the scholiasts the association of the word with year came from a connection with the wolf, λύκος, which they justified by the supposed amazing cooperative power of wolves who, each grasping in their jaws the tail of the wolf in front, were said to form a chain to cross rivers, a sequence that is said to evoke the motion of time as sequential units (ὥσπερ καἰ ἐπὶ τοῦ χρόνου, 'as also in the case of time'). The explanation is fanciful, but at least points to a tradition of associating the word more distinctly with 'wolf' rather than 'light'.

_0ffh 5y ago

FWIW I side with the "perpetual" (or one of various approximate synonyms) faction that cites the Syriac translation from Aramic. I think that, firstly, it makes sense to see "always-being" as a kind of superlative of mere "being". And secondly, it seems plausible that one might arrive from "always-being" via "being-at-all-days" or "being-everyday" to the common "daily" translation.

canadaduane 5y ago

I wonder if it has a corollary in the Buddhist concept of "impermanence." Ephemeral, momentary, "in the now". Give us this day our impermanent bread.

Natsu 5y ago
If anything, it should have literally the opposite meaning. Part of the idea of what it represents in the Eucharist is that it endures when the world passes away.

NKosmatos 5y ago

That's one of the things I like about HN :-) The variety and range of different subjects being posted. I'm casually reading why we can't go faster than light, contemplating about Roko’s Basilisk or how to use a Raspberry for a strange project, and here comes along the definition of a Greek word (with a surprising number of comments and points).

beeforpork 5y ago

C'mon guys, it means 'cromulent', of course.

f3rnando 5y ago

Nowadays we call it "dope". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dope

f3rnando 5y ago
Theres also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Harold_A._Abramson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_dieth... but this one you dont really need it everyday in the desert/dessert.

mannykoum 5y ago

As a Greek who's lived abroad and has taken a jab at a bunch of different languages, I always talked to my friends about how easy it is to understand most Greek words even if I've never heard of them before. Yes, there are a lot of etymological roots that change + exceptions but it is a lot simpler to make out (or make up) words than it is with other languages. Especially, ones that have a complex genealogical history like English. For example, chicken, turkey, poultry, bird are all different in English but in Greek you can find the word for bird in all of them (κοτόπουλο, γαλοπούλα, πουλερικά, πουλί). Btw this is also why I think that Greek is a relatively easy language to learn (but there isn't much material to get people started unfortunately :( ) TIL that a word I've been hearing and saying since I was 5 does not mean what I thought it meant and it's still baffling me haha made my day really