On Prayer 27.1 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Koetschau 2:363–364

„Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον, “ ἢ ὡς ὁ Λουκᾶς· „τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δίδου ἡμῖν καθʼ ἡμέραν.“ ἐπεί τινες ὑπολαμβάνουσι περὶ τοῦ σωματικοῦ ἄρτου λέγεσθαι εὔχεσθαι ἡμᾶς, ἄξιον αὐτῶν τὴν ψευδοδοξίαν διὰ τούτων περιελόντας παραστῆσαι τὸ ἀληθὲς περὶ τοῦ ἐπιουσίου ἄρτου. λεκτέον οὖν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὅτι πῶς ὁ λέγων δεῖν αἰτεῖν ἐπουράνια καὶ μεγάλα, οὔτε ἐπουρανίου ὄντος τοῦ εἰς τὴν σάρκα ἡμῶν ἀναδιδομένου ἄρτου οὔτε μεγάλου αἰτήματος τοῦ περὶ τούτου ἀξιοῦν, ὡσπερεὶ κατʼ αὐτοὺς ἐπιλαθόμενος ὧν ἐδίδαξε προστάττει περὶ ἐπιγείου καὶ μικροῦ ἔντευξιν ἀναφέρειν τῷ πατρί;

English · Claude translation

“Give us today our daily bread,” or as Luke has it, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Since some suppose that we are told to pray for bodily bread, it is right to remove their false opinion by the following and to set forth the truth about the daily bread. We must say to them: how can he who says we must ask for heavenly and great things, as though, on their view, he had forgotten what he taught, command us to offer a petition to the Father about something earthly and small, since neither is the bread that is distributed into our flesh heavenly, nor is it a great request to ask for it?

About this passage

Source

Koetschau 2:363–364 · Paul Koetschau, ed., Origenes Werke 2: Buch V–VIII gegen Celsus, Die Schrift vom Gebet, GCS 3 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899), 297–403 · Greek text: P. Koetschau, Origenes Werke 2 (GCS 3, 1899), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Koetschau, GCS 3. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Koetschau, GCS 3; made independently of existing English translations. No public-domain English translation exists; reviewed against the Greek.

Scripture

Matt 6:11 · quotation, high confidence
Luke 11:3 · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Prayer

Notes

Translation notes

The quotations are Matt 6:11 and Luke 11:3; the argument appeals again to the unwritten saying in 2.2 and 14.1. “Daily” renders ἐπιούσιος, whose meaning Origen discusses in 27.7–9.

Cite this passage

Origen, Or. 27.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-oratione/27/1/).

Plain text

Origen, Or. 27.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-oratione/27/1/).