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It was an oral history in one language, written down into another by low quality scribes, then translated a couple more times.
Which is why it's always hilarious people say they have to take any translation literally.
But you don't understand! This translation was divinely inspired! Every other one is an act of heresy and blasphemy!
Catholics go one step further. Both the translation and the tradition of interpreting the translation is divinely inspired. Protestants sometimes vaguely point to something like that but most realize that if they follow the logic train of sacred tradition they should be Catholic or Orthodox.
The book was produced by the tradition. If the tradition is junk, then why would the book not be junk too?
This is one thing that atheists often get wrong about Catholicism. Catholics don't believe sola scriptura, the Protestant principle that all Christian tradition is to be rooted in the text of the Bible. Thus, "Bible contradictions" and the like are not rebuttals to Catholic views the way they are to "fundamentalist" Protestant views.
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Evangelicals are all about that inspired, literal, complete, and inerrant word of God stuff. 99% of all evangelical churches have that as a mission statement on their website.
Unless they realize that each new interpretation is Divinely inspired. In which case the most recent one is the truest, Tradition is dead, and also the Divine changes Her mind a lot.
The Jehovah's Witnesses have an update process they call "progressive revelation" so that they can keep retconning their doomsday prophecies.
"This translation was divinely inspired."
"Oh, dope, so you're gonna sell all your stuff and give the money to the poor?"
"Okay, listen..."
It's a two-thousand-year-long multilingual game of Telephone. How much is it even possible is left from what was originally written? (And none of it contemporary to when it supposedly happened.)
Textual critics are fairly confident that a fair amount of the texts of the New Testament were reliably copied until we get to the first extant manuscripts, and for the stuff that is very obviously messed up, they have a decent set of analytical tools that help them retroject the likeliest original wording. Not perfect, but decent.
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That's not how translation works though. The modern translations come directly from the original Greek and Aramaic.
The texts travelled all over the East and into Europe. So we can compare them. They were very clearly written in their time.
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Greek guy here.
Επιούσιος (e-pi-u-si-os) is a composite word (you can make an astronomical number of composite words in Greek if you want to express a new concept, such as tele-phone) and in this sentence it means that which will nourish us for the day. So daily is quite fitting here.
So it's more like "our day's worth of bread" than "the bread we eat every day"?
"I'd like my daily ration today". Sounds bitchy like that.
If the word was missing from the sentence, then it could be translated as "Give us today our bread and forgive our sins.....".
Instead, with the word added, it can be translated as "Give us today the bread we need for the day and forgive our sins..... ".
I guess the significance of the word is in not being greedy and asking from God only what you really need instead of what is "owed" to you?
Nourishing makes sense... Particularly in a context similar to edifying.
epiousion was greek for sliced
It means "pan-fried, with an egg in the middle", you dolt!
YOU FUCKING HEATHEN
IT MEANS DIPPED IN EGG THEN PAN FRIED
ANYTHING ELSE IS BLASPHEMY AND YOU WILL BURN FOR ETERNITY
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Hence the common phrase, best thing since epiousion bread. I thought it was obvious, I guess I'm the only one that drew the conclusion
And we've been comparing how good other things are to it ever since
I'm fluently bilingual in English and Spanish, and I grew up going to a Spanish speaking Presbyterian church. The kids in my high school taught me that "pan" (the spanish word for "bread") was slang for "pussy", so everytime my grandpa (the pastor) recited the Lord's prayer, I always had a huge smile on my face thinking about him asking God to give us our daily allowance of pussy.
That's hilarious. It makes sense for pan just to be a shortened 'panocha'.
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I can't argue the classical Greek etymology, but the argument about redundancy flies in the face how I was taught the Lord's prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread" ~= "Give us our bread today as you do every day".
I always took it as sort of like the amount of bread you need every day being "daily bread" and getting it every day.
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Now it occurs in a post on lemmy
And so shall it echo across the fediverse, amen
I have only this moment realised that the prayer is referencing the xtian communion giving of bread symbolism, and not just randomly demanding food as if the writer was hungry
Is it, though? Or is it saying "Give us our basic staple needs"? It would be useful if a theologian could chip in on the dates, but I suspect this prayer predates bready communion
From my brief and poorly remembered Christian education, there were at least 3 occasions where the Big J handed out food and drink, and made explicit connection between his god powers, and the catering. So the idea was there in some form from at least the writing of the gospels. But yeah, it would be good to hear from someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Historically? All of this is at least disputed. Within the church canon? "[Jesus] broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said 'Take this, all of you and eat it, for it is my body, which will be given up for you.' When [the last] supper had ended he took the cup. Again he gave thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said 'Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For it is my blood, the blood of the new covenant which will be shed for you and for all so that sin may be forgiven."
Theologically speaking it's not a matter of debate at all that communion predates Christ's death and therefore the founding of the Church or the establishment of the Lord's prayer.
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If I remember correctly, there's a group of scholars that translate it as "appropriate."
Fun story! They came to that conclusion because they discovered a text which had what they believed was another very similar word ("epiousi") that, in context, meant "necessary" or "enough for now." That text was a shopping list.
Then the text got lost for a long time, and when they found it again, new eyes on it realized that they'd misread the word, so it was back to square one.
Some denominations, Eastern Orthodox in particular, do translate it as "our needed bread, give us today"
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"How do you like your bread?"
"Appropriate"
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Let me tell you, 10 year old me in catholic school really thought he was on to some comedy gold when he realized this day and daily was some confusing shit.
Nobody ever laughed. Turned out, I'm not really funny.
The daily translation also makes the term redundant, with "this day" already making clear the bread is for the current day
Yes, but it doesn't make it clear that it is something you receive every day. If I say "give us our pizza today" it doesn't imply that I have a daily pizza party (I don't, just a silly example).
Why don't you?
Cowardice, Fear, and Self-Loathing.
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I think I'll stick to 'fresh' or 'sourdough' as alternatives from now on
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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