Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

And what about a secure basis for life? Anyone who wants to know what it was like for Jesus’ disciples would do well to read the Our Father. It is not a prayer for everyone. It is a prayer for Jesus’ disciples and followers. It is their prayer. It distills the whole of what moves them.

In the fourth petition the disciples (in the usual translation) ask for their “daily bread.” This petition in particular seems to suggest that it is a prayer suitable for anyone. After all, people need bread, daily sustenance, always and everywhere in the world. And yet in that respect the fourth petition of the Our Father is much more concrete and situation-bound.

First, we must observe that “give us today our daily bread” is simply an attempt at translation of Matthew 6:11. Where our Bibles read “daily,” the Greek has epiousios, a word that is not attested anywhere in pre-Christian Greek literature. So we must reconstruct what it might mean.

There is much in favor of the suggestion that epiousios does not mean “daily” in a general sense but much more precisely bread for the coming day, the day after this one. In that case epiousios would be derived from epienai (cf. Acts 7:26; 16:11; 20:15; 21:18). Then Jesus’ disciples would be praying in the Our Father solely for bread for that evening and the next day. (In Israel the “following” day begins in the evening, when it grows dark.) Why do the disciples pray only for bread for the next day, for tomorrow?

They do so simply because they are traveling through the land with Jesus and in the morning they do not yet know whether anyone will take them in that evening and give them something to eat! Therefore they have to pray to their Father in heaven—since they have left their earthly fathers—for their bread for the next day. They cannot undertake to plan or set aside for the future. They have no time for it. But they may and should pray for bread for one day.

So nothing is prepared in advance for the long haul. The eschatological situation is so acute, the current preaching so primary that planning is impossible. The view barely extends to the next day. So we can describe the original meaning of the bread petition as follows: “Grant that today we will meet people who will take us into their houses and give us something to eat tonight so that our lives, our food are secured for one more day.”

More than that is impossible, but more is not necessary, because Jesus’ disciples are surrounded and sustained by the parental care of God. So their situation corresponds to that of Israel in the Old Testament wilderness narratives. With its exodus Israel abandoned the things that sustained its life in the Egyptian welfare state. A new social order of mutual solidarity was to be begun. In the extraordinary situation of the wilderness God fed his people with manna—according to Exodus 16—but the Israelites were not allowed to store up the manna. Except for the day before the Sabbath they could only gather what they needed for a single day. Exodus 16:4 speaks of the ration for the coming day. It is possible that epiousios is an attempt at a corresponding allusion to Exodus 16:4 in Greek.

But however things developed linguistically, we have a hard time imagining that Jesus could have formulated the petition for bread for the coming day—that is, for only one day—without having the manna story in mind. He knew that his disciples, who were now preaching the reign of God throughout the land “like sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt 10:16) were, like Israel in the past, in a basically impossible wilderness situation. Moreover, the fourth petition of the Our Father corresponds in part to Jesus’ injunction in Matthew 6:34: “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Light Luggage

But it is not only the fourth petition of the Our Father that illuminates the absence of a settled school on the rabbinic model. The so-called equipment rule in Luke 9:3 // Matthew 10:9-10 // Mark 6:8-9 also reflects the itinerant existence of Jesus and his disciples. The disciples are sent out without money, a sack for provisions, a second tunic, a staff, even without sandals.

Many interpreters assert that this harsh and radical equipment rule is about the theme of “modesty of needs” or “humility.” Jesus’ disciples in that case, in their lack of any concern for their own needs are to surpass even the Cynic-Stoic itinerant philosophers, who did wear their philosophers’ cloaks, always had a begging sack with them, and maintained an emergency ration of bread. But is that really the case?