{"id":267,"date":"2020-10-28T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=267"},"modified":"2020-12-07T20:29:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T01:29:32","slug":"daily-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/28\/daily-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Bread"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A feature film proved to be the ultimate recruiting tool for archaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of fans of Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em> (1981) dreamed of becoming the next Indiana Jones \u2013 the fedora-wearing, bullwhip-cracking adventurer who fends off scheming Nazis, slithering snakes, and ancient curses to recover the world\u2019s most priceless artifacts.

Real-life archaeology is considerably less dramatic. 

In 1897, two British excavators made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.  It was just outside the village of Oxyrhynchus (oxy-RINK-us<\/em>), not far from the Nile River about 160 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.  It wasn\u2019t an ancient pyramid or sphinx or temple.  It was a garbage dump \u2013 the place where villagers deposited their trash and emptied their wastebaskets some 18 centuries ago.

The Oxyrhynchus dump has turned out to be a treasure trove of ancient writings.  During the last 123 years, diggers have uncovered more than one million fragments of papyrus.  Most of them are exceedingly small \u2013 about the size of a cornflake, like the one pictured above.

Rather than dodging boulders and snagging golden idols, the typical work of archaeologists is to sit for hours in a library, painstakingly examining such tiny remnants.  To date, only 1-2% of the Oxyrhynchus papyri have even seen the light of day.  The rest are sitting in file cabinets, waiting to reveal their secrets. 

As it turns out, a fragment scrutinized in 1925 by a Swiss professor named Albert Debrunner resolved one of the Bible\u2019s enduring mysteries. 

It concerns the only adjective in the Lord\u2019s Prayer \u2013 the Greek word epiousion<\/em>, which modifies the word \u201cbread.\u201d  Jesus teaches his followers to pray, \u201cGive us this day our <\/strong>daily<\/u><\/strong><\/em> bread.\u201d<\/strong>  That\u2019s how most scholars, at least, have translated Jesus\u2019 simple request.    

But is \u201cdaily\u201d the true meaning of epiousion<\/em>? 

The problem is that until 1925 no one had ever seen that word in all of ancient Greek literature, except in the New Testament books of Matthew and Luke.  Speculation had been rampant.  Some of the church\u2019s greatest thinkers had suggested that Jesus was telling his followers to pray for a special kind of bread \u2013 presumably a super-spiritual heavenly substance.   One scholar proposed \u201cangel\u2019s food.\u201d  Almost everyone, at least, agreed on this: Jesus surely wasn\u2019t telling us to ask God for good old regular bread, the kind you stick in the toaster and slather with marmalade.

The Oxyrhynchus fragment changed all that. 

Here, at last, was the word epiousion<\/em>.  It was on an ancient Egyptian grocery list that included chickpeas and straw.  Contextually, the word means \u201cjust enough for today.\u201d  Jesus is indeed telling us to ask God for the bread we need to stay alive \u2013 but only the sustenance we need for the next 24 hours. 

In the ancient world, bread was the <\/em>pivotal, indispensable food item.  The availability of bread meant the difference between life and death. 

The mention of \u201cdaily\u201d bread \u2013 the nourishment we need just for today \u2013 surely reminded his original listeners of God\u2019s special provision for the people of Israel during their 40 years of wilderness wanderings between Egypt and the Promised Land.  Shortly after dawn each morning (except on the Sabbath), thin flakes of a bread-like substance appeared on the ground. 

The Israelites never did come up with a name for this free meal.  In Hebrew, the words \u201cWhat is it?\u201d are ma<\/u> nah<\/u>.  <\/em>Thus the word \u201cmanna\u201d literally means, \u201cwhattyacallit.\u201d  For four decades they gathered whattyacallit<\/em> for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

There was always enough \u2013 but just for that day. 

If manna appears to have the makings of a fairly boring diet, author John Ortberg reminds us, \u201cIt was by all accounts an amazing product.  It tasted like wafers made with honey.  It was apparently a very versatile food.  The Israelites were told to bake what they wanted to bake, boil what they wanted to boil, lay aside that which they wanted to eat raw.  It sounds a little like Bubba in the movie Forrest Gump <\/em>describing the infinite variety of ways in which you could fix shrimp.  \u2018Baked manna, boiled or barbecued manna, manna-on-a-stick, manna burgers, manna-salad, manna-cotti, manna-banana cream pie\u2026\u2019\u201d 

All washed down with a glass of manna-schewitz, no doubt.

The request for daily bread comes down to trust. 

How would you feel if you caught your children or grandchildren smuggling food into their rooms \u2013 maybe a handful of Cheerios or a pancake or a slice of toast \u2013 and you subsequently learned they were doing this because they were afraid they might not get breakfast tomorrow morning?  Just in case you let them down, they had better take care of themselves.  

You would feel heartbroken.  You would certainly not feel trusted. 

So what\u2019s happening in the Lord\u2019s Prayer? 

Jesus is telling us, \u201cEven if you feel as if you\u2019re in some kind of wilderness right now, you can trust your Father.  He loves you.  Your Abba will come through.\u201d

He\u2019ll provide everything you need for today.

No more. 

But definitely no less.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A feature film proved to be the ultimate recruiting tool for archaeology. Thousands of fans of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) dreamed of becoming the next Indiana Jones \u2013 the fedora-wearing, bullwhip-cracking adventurer who fends off scheming Nazis, slithering snakes, and ancient curses to recover the world\u2019s most priceless artifacts. Real-life archaeology is considerably less dramatic.  In 1897, two… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89,88,87],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archeology","tag-epiousion","tag-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}