How Should We Translate The Lord’s Prayer

How Should We Translate The Lord’s Prayer 

by
Rev. David A. Fisher 

“Therefore, you shall pray in this way: Our Father, who is in heaven: May your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come. May your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth. Give us this day our life-sustaining bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But free us from evil. Amen.” - Matthew 6:9-13 (Douay-Rheims Version) 

The “Our Father”, or Lord’s Prayer is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The above translation of Matthew’s Gospel is from the Douay-Rheims Version of the Bible in English language. This translation of the Bible into English was in response to the Protestant project which eventually became known as the King James Version. This translation was carried out by English Catholics in exile, living in Douay and Rheims, with the New Testament being published in 1582. Being revised in 1752 and producing an American Edition in 1899, the Douay-Rheims Version of the Bible, enjoyed the status of being the official Catholic Bible in English well into the 20th century. Having been a translation from St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible and not from the original Biblical languages lead to the decline of its status with the English translations of the New American Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition and others. However, the above passage from Matthew, opens our eyes to a significant question of translation; we see here not the usual “give us this day our daily bread”, rather we read “give us this day our life-sustaining bread”. 

The Koine Greek word in question is epiousious as it is used in its adjectival form epiousion. This word is found only twice in the Bible, that being in the Lord’s Prayer or “Our Father” of Matthew and Luke. Even more significantly it has never been found in any other Greek writing in history, Christian or pagan. Therefore, most scholars believe, as did the early Church Father Origen, that it was created by the Gospel writers to serve as an adjective for the word “bread”. 

A survey of the Fathers of the Church, many of whom were well schooled in Greek such as St. Jerome, or whose native language was Greek, are in disagreement as to the meaning of this word. Origen in his work, On Prayer, 27.2, and St. Cyprian in his work, Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer,18, both felt that that the bread referred to is Christ himself, the “Bread of Heaven”, the Eucharist. While St. John Chrysostom in his Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 19.5, felt that it referred to the daily bread we need to sustain our bodies and life on earth. St. Jerome interestingly translates epiousion in both ways; in translating the Our Father in Luke’s Gospel into Latin he uses the word quotidianum, meaning “daily bread”, which has become the traditonal word used in the Latin Liturgy, but for Matthew’s Gospel he uses the word supersubstantialem, meanng supersubstantial bread, or the Eucharist. 

Our Lord of course would have recited the Our Father in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and while we do not know the exact words he used, the Gospel writers chose this compound of epi (for) and ousia (essence, being) to reflect the meaning/translation of the actual Aramaic or Hebrew used by Jesus himself. The Maronite biblical scholar, Msgr. Paul Feghali remarked that, “this word (epiousious-epiousion) has two transla- tions; in some Eastern Christian Churches they say “for tomorrow” {Heavenly, Eucharis- tic Bread} and in the Latin Church “today” {Daily Bread}. We cannot take one meaning and abandon the other” (personal correspondence, 2017). This both/and position rather than an either/or answer is reflected in The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
"Daily" (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of "this day,” to confirm us in trust "without reservation." Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epiousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us. Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: "this day" is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. (CCC, 2837). 

In the final analysis the “Our Father” is an all-encompassing prayer. Since Jesus taught us to pray this way, it sums up our total relationship and dependency upon God. Without God our daily lives are empty of the bread of living and without God our desire for the eternal, heavenly bread is lost.