121
and Lk. πι.
σήμερον 12. Kal ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ” ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς 3 (not
ound in
Greek literature). r Rom. iv. 4.
So most modern editors.
Christians put for ἐπιούσιος Mahar = crastinum. (Jerome comm. in Mt.) The Curetonian Syriac has words mean- ing, ‘‘ our bread continual of the day give us”. The Egyptian versions have similar readings. The old Latin ver- sion has quotidianum, retained by Jerome in revision of L. V. in Lk. xi. 2, while supersubstantialem is given in Mt. vi. 11. The testimony of these early versions is important in reference to the primitive sense attached to the word. Still the question remains: How account for the coinage of such a word in Greck- speaking circles, and for the tautology : give us to-day (orjpepov, Mt.) or daily (τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν, Luke), the bread of to-morrow? In his valuable study on ‘“‘The Lord’s Prayer in the early Church” (Texts and Studies, 1891), Principal Chase has made an important contribution to the solution of this diffi- culty by the suggestion that the coinage was due to liturgical exigencies in con- nection with the use of the prayer in the evening. Assuming that the original petition was to the effect: ‘to us give, of the day, our bread,” and that the Greek equivalent for the day was 4 ἐπιοῦσα, the adjective ἐπιούσιος was coined to make the prayer suitable at all hours. In the morning it would mean the bread of the day now begun, in the evening the bread of to-morrow. But devotional conserva- tism, while adopting the new word as convenient, would cling to the original “of the day’’; hence σήµερον in Matt. and τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν in Luke, along with ἐπιούσιος. On the whole the temporal meaning seems to have the weight ot the argument on its side. For a full statement of the case on that side vide Lightfoot as above, and on the other the article on ἐπιούσιος in Cremer’s Bib. Theol., W. B., 7te Aufl., 1893.
Ver. 12. Fifth petition. ὀφειλήματα, in classics literal debts, here moral! debts, sins (ἁμαρτίας in Lk, xi. 4). The more men desire God’s will to be done the more conscious they are of shortcoming. The more conscious of personal short- coming, the more indulgent towards the faults of others even when committed against themselves. Hence the added