Give us this day our supersubstantial bread

Latin Learning Latin
1

I’ve only recently discovered that Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Mt.6:11), is not the Vulgate version as till now I’d assumed it was. Instead of quotidianum the Vulgate has supersubstantialem. (And I know why, but never mind that.) So if only the Church had adopted the Vulgate (as it did everywhere else but here?), Christians would be praying “Give us this day our supersubstantial bread.”

For the upcoming season of jollity and mirth I just wanted to share that.

2

Michael, since you are debating Lk 2:14 in the Koine subforum, the verse is translated as

Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis

by the Stridonite saint. I’m glad that it never made it into the liturgy and, at midnight Mass, Father will intone Gloria in excelsis Deo (at least where the old Latin Mass is preserved).

3

Thanks Roberto. Where else is the Vulgate passed over in favor of the Old Latin, do you know? In liturgical passages, evidently; and nowhere else? And there because the earlier version was already too well entrenched? I was surprised because I’d always thought the Church (after some initial resistance) officially adopted the Vulgate. I guess I could look these things up but I’m a lazy sob. I looked up Jerome’s Matthew commentary and that was enough.

4

Yes, the Vetus Latina was kept in the liturgy: in many antiphons, introits, graduals, etc.
They would use the Gallican psalter, but they maintained the old antiphons along with it. However, before Vatican II, in several places they even retained different psalters (see the Wikipedia article).

5

Thanks for the super substantial response!

6

My pleasure.
You probably already know that ἐπιούσιον in Lk 11:3 is translated with quotidianum.

7

Yes, it’s an interesting inconsistency. I’ve come across various attempts at explanation, the least bad of them implying that Jerome found theological justification for his differentiation in the slightly different wordings (pres. vs. aor. imperative in particular). Which would be crazy. Can he really have thought that epiousion in the one version meant something completely different in the other? I like to think there’s a simpler explanation.