Word Pictures in the New Testament - David Cox

Word Pictures in the NT [Matthew: Chapter 6].
is the original to which Matthew has made additions: "The
tendency of liturgical formulas is towards enrichment rather than
abbreviation." But there is no evidence whatever that Jesus
designed it as a set formula. There is no real harm in a
liturgical formula if one likes it, but no one sticks to just one
formula in prayer. There is good and not harm in children
learning and saying this noble prayer. Some people are disturbed
over the words "Our Father" and say that no one has a right to
call God Father who has not been "born again." But that is to say
that an unconverted sinner cannot pray until he is converted, an
absurd contradiction. God is the Father of all men in one sense;
the recognition of Him as the Father in the full sense is the
first step in coming back to him in regeneration and conversion.
{Hallowed be thy name} (\hagiasth•t• to onoma sou\). In the Greek
the verb comes first as in the petitions in verse 10. They are
all aorist imperatives, punctiliar action expressing urgency.
6:11 {Our daily bread} (\ton arton h•m•n ton epiousion\). This
adjective "daily" (\epiousion\) coming after "Give us this day"
(\dos h•mŒn s•meron\) has given expositors a great deal of
trouble. The effort has been made to derive it from \epi\ and
\•n\ (\ousa\). It clearly comes from \epi\ and \i•n\ (\epi\ and
\eimi\) like \t•i epious•i\ ("on the coming day," "the next day,"
Ac 16:12). But the adjective \epiousios\ is rare and Origen
said it was made by the Evangelists Matthew and Luke to reproduce
the idea of an Aramaic original. Moulton and Milligan,
_Vocabulary_ say: "The papyri have as yet shed no clear light
upon this difficult word (Mt 6:11; Lu 11:3), which was in all
probability a new coinage by the author of the Greek Q to render
his Aramaic Original" (this in 1919). Deissmann claims that only
about fifty purely New Testament or "Christian" words can be
admitted out of the more than 5,000 used. "But when a word is not
recognizable at sight as a Jewish or Christian new formation, we
must consider it as an ordinary Greek word until the contrary is
proved. \Epiousios\ has all the appearance of a word that
originated in trade and traffic of the everyday life of the
people (cf. my hints in _Neutestamentliche Studien Georg Heinrici
dargebracht_, Leipzig, 1914, pp. 118f.). The opinion here
expressed has been confirmed by A. Debrunner's discovery (_Theol.
Lit. Ztg_. 1925, Col. 119) of \epiousios\ in an ancient
housekeeping book" (_Light from the Ancient East_, New ed. 1927,
p. 78 and note 1). So then it is not a word coined by the
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