There is a song by the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra that can teach us a lot about how to read parts of the Old and New Testaments. For on one level, Ojalá que llueve café is a joyful and upbeat song and that could simply be heard as a charming and enchanted tour of Dominican food. In it, Luis Guerra sings "May it rain coffee in the countryside...a whole torrent of yucca and tea... May Autumn bring, instead of dry leaves, salted pork and a newly planted field of sweet potatoes and strawberries."
With his soft yet insistent voice, and through the song's energetic beat, Luis Guerra offers a vision of miraculous abundance - downpours of cheese, honey, and hills of wheat - images that are almost biblical in nature. Further, this song is a kind of prayer. While the first word of the song, "ojalá", is regularly translated as "may it be", this doesn't quite convey the depth of this Spanish word of hope. Better to note that ojalá is one of those many Spanish words that reflect Arabic's profound influence on the language, and that ojalá has its roots in "O Allah." To begin a song with "ojalá", then, is to give expression to more than just a hope. It is a calling out to God. "O God, let it rain down coffee in the countryside..."
For all its positive vision of miraculous food pouring down, however, this song is widely understood to be a song about hunger and the struggle to survive. This strikes me as an important point for understanding some of the biblical imagery of miraculous abundance of food. In the award-winning music video for Ojalá, Luis Guerra's words about freshly planted fields of sweet potatoes and strawberries are overlaid by occasionally graphic images of Dominican children and gaunt elderly turning beautiful black eyes toward the sky in the hopes of a downpour of food. The song concludes with a haunting refrain hoping to God that it will rain down coffee "so that the people in the countryside don't have to suffer so much", naming specific villages Luis Guerra is wanting this for, hoping for a day that "the children may sing."
The first time I heard Ojalá que llueva café, I was struck by how similar Luis Guerra's vision of a downpour of coffee, yucca, plantains, and grain sounded to some of the ways the Old and New Testament use talk about food. When we hear about manna falling from heaven (Exodus 16:1-36; Numbers 11:1-9), or the specificity of the wandering Israelites' longing for the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, and garlic of their Egyptian enslavers (Numbers 11:5), or of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand with just a few loaves and fishes (Matt 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14), I now hear Luis Guerra's prayer for the Dominican countryside in the background. These biblical images are on the one hand miraculous and highly specific visions of abundance, yet like his song the background melody is that of hunger.
It is easy to forget the interpretive power of an empty stomach, especially for those of us who have never experienced food scarcity or a prolonged period of unwanted hunger. Yet in doing so, we may be missing some of the deepest resonances of the recurring, miraculous images of food and meals. How would we read the scriptures differently if we took into account that these texts are for and often are about hungry people? What would this mean in terms of how we worship and even pray?
For instance, the Lord's Prayer. Embedded within the prayer is Jesus' request for God to "give us this day our daily bread", a line that is so simple and central to Christian faith, so well-known and oft-repeated, that it surely doesn't need reinterpretation and reimagining today. And yet, despite its familiarity, this petition represents a bit of a linguistic mystery.
The difficulty occurs in the seemingly untranslatable Greek word 'epiousios', a word that is translated as 'daily' but isn't exactly that. In fact, 'epiousios' doesn't appear to occur anywhere else in Greek literature outside the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is likely a Greek neologism for a word that was first authentically uttered by Jesus in Aramaic. Like a copy of a copy, the English 'daily' is a faulty translation of a Greek word that was trying to approximate a word or phrase that may itself have been new or unusual in Aramaic.
So what would a correct rendering of 'epiousios' line be? While this is being debated among linguists and biblical scholars, two plausible renderings of this phrase are "Give us this day an extra portion of bread" and something along the lines of "Give us bread for today and for tomorrow."1 Since I am neither a linguist nor a biblical scholar, I will avoid going down the well-worn path of trying to determine which of these is exactly right. I am, however, interested in trying to grasp the deeper meaning of these two interpretations, the spirit of the words. I believe this requires thinking along the same lines of Ojalá que llueve café and recognizing this petition was first spoken in a landscape marked by recurring daily hunger, with the threat of famine looming on the horizon.
What does it mean to ask God for "an extra portion of bread" or "bread for today and tomorrow" in a community that knows well the contours of hunger?
The meaning and impact of words has a great deal to do with the context they are said in. I've heard the Lord's prayer said before meals by people in collars and tuxes, at banquets and reception dinner tables where it seemed that no one attending had ever had to worry about where their next meal was coming from. I've also had the opportunity to say those same words in spaces such as homeless shelters and at a house for undocumented refugees, where the people gathered around the table had most certainly experienced food insecurity and a period of persistent hunger. The very same words -- and particularly this petition for daily bread -- landed differently depending on the stomachs of the people in the room. How could they not?
Therefore, when trying to grasp what these other translations actually mean, it's worth taking a moment to consider the stomachs of its first speakers and hearers. Were their stomachs full or were they empty? Were most getting enough to eat on a regular basis or were most constantly worried about their next meal? Reflecting on these questions has added a new dimension to this petition for bread, and even to the Lord's Prayer itself, for me.
As described below, there is significant evidence that Jesus, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and many in the first Christian assemblies were teetering at the edge of subsistence, nutritional deficiency, and regular and persistent hunger. While there were strategies for mitigating the impacts of food shortages caused by weather and political calamity, it's nevertheless thought to be the case that the region of Galilee experienced famines - periods of extreme scarcity of food - approximately every twenty years, meaning that the memory and threat of a season of severe hunger was never too far away. It is likely that many who would have first heard Jesus' petition for "an extra portion of bread" or "enough bread for today and tomorrow" were regularly struggling with food insecurity, shortages, and that they had shared memories of times in their communities when hunger became starvation. How might this have influenced their hearing of this petition?
What follows is a meditation, then, about the awkward and unfamiliar translation embedded in the Lord's Prayer. As it turns out, Jesus wasn't just praying for 'daily bread' but quite literally for something more. My focus here is primarily on the material - droughts and hunger, recurring famines, and the kind of bread people eat as a source of calories and bodily nourishment - but this isn't intended to deny that asking for bread within the Christian context has many additional layers of meaning as well. I am going to juxtapose socioeconomic information from biblical scholars and early church historians and a study on semi-starvation. Actual scholars may wince at the liberties I take here...which is why I'd never call this scholarship. Instead this is a form of spiritual wrestling, an attempt to understand the deeper significance of this still unfamiliar phrase, and to begin to integrate it into my own outlook.
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As rare examples in Greek literature in which it is "the poor, the ill-educated, and the disreputable whose encounters with God are most vividly described", the sayings and stories within the Gospels oftentimes presume an intimate knowledge of the experience of poverty in their listeners.2 It is worthwhile, then, looking at how wealth and poverty, abundance and scarcity, was structured in the Roman Empire and in the region where Jesus' ministry took place, particularly with an eye toward hunger.
The Roman Empire was primarily an agrarian subsistence economy, wherein the majority of production was for self-sufficiency and was therefore kept out of the markets and money economy. The Roman socioeconomic hierarchy was one of stark inequality with an imperial & aristocratic elite (1-3%), a middle group with moderate surplus resources (7-15%), and a vast group of "the poor" who were either stable near subsistence (22-27%), at subsistence (30-40%), or below subsistence and therefore lacking necessary food, shelter, and clothing (25-28%).3 It is estimated, then, that 75-90% of the Roman world lived close to subsistence level -- near, at, or below -- and were struggling for survival and sustenance on a daily basis.4 As such, this vast group of "the poor" was particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, including droughts resulting in periodic food shortages and disease.
For that 75-90%, then, "life expectancy was low (life expectancy at birth was somewhere between twenty and thirty and probably closer to twenty). Nutritional deficiencies were widespread."5
These figures are thought to apply to the Roman Empire generally. When looking more closely at where and when Jesus' ministry took place, early church historian Helen Rhee describes a region undergoing additional socioeconomic pressures that had the "the firm imprint of feudalism." Overpopulation and over-cultivation of the land, natural disasters, as well as increasing tributes and tithes all combined to force "the already poor majority into the arduous struggle for unfortunate survival in a highly stratified society."6
Survival often hinged on whether or not people had any form of access to land. In Remember the Poor, Bruce Longnecker states that while some of this struggling majority would have been fortunate enough to own their own small farms, a significant number would have been tenant farmers renting their land "from 'absentee landlords' (often at exorbitant cost and for short periods of time), or were slave-tenants tasked with the responsibility of extracting the yields of the land for the landowner." 7 In the lead up to the first century, a growing number of tenant farmers faced the bitter task of working the very land they once owned, having been pushed by increasing tithes, taxes, and other socioeconomic pressures, into having to sell their ancestral lands and now sending surpluses to the landowner who lived in urban areas. 8 Day laborers faced an even harsher lot, for "when workers were 'a dime a dozen', there was little to prevent the urban elite from maximalizing the percentage of their 'top-slice' by exploiting their rural workers, through the assistance of a business manager, and to the point of leaving them with nothing more than the bare resources needed for the most basic form of living - a case of 'living just enough for the city'."9
Droughts, political instability, and warfare made this situation ripe for famine. "In the biblical traditions, famine is placed among the most well-known ills together with pestilence and sword in a kind of negative triad," writes Morten H. Jensen, in a fascinating exploration of the climate, agricultural, and political conditions of first-century Galilee.10 He describes the delicate balance of the right levels of precipitation needed to yield crops in this region, how severe hunger was caused by a confluence of factors including drought and political instability, as well as the indelible impression made by recurring famines on the biblical tradition:
"The Hebrew Bible is replete with references to famines-at the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph (Gen 12:10; 26:1; 41:54; 43:1), under David and Solomon (2 Sam 21:1; 1 Kgs 8:35-40), in the days of Elijah and Elisha (1 Kgs 17:1-24; 2 Kgs 4:38; 8:1-3), and others. Often God is described as the protector against famine (Ps 37:19; Ezek 34:29) or as the one inflicting famine as punishment (Lev 26:26; Deut 28:22-24; 32:24; 2 Sam 21:1; 1 Kgs 17:1; Ps 105:16; Isa 14:30; 51:19; Jer 11:22; 14:11-18; 24:10; 42:13-17; Amos 4:6-8; 8:11-14; Sir 39:29 and others). Nehemiah 5:1-5 is especially interesting, describing the people's complaints about being forced to mortgage fields, vineyards, and houses in order to acquire grain during the famine (5:3)."11
While the New Testament refers to it less frequently, famine appears as a threatening image in apocalyptical material (Mark 13:8; Rev 6:8; 18:8), in references to famines in the Hebrew Bible (Luke 4:25; Acts 7:11), in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:14) and the hunger that led to Barnabas and Paul's famine relief visit (Acts 11:27-30).12 Outside the biblical texts, there is historical evidence of four or five droughts and actual famines during just before and during first century c.e. "The known famines of 25/24 b.c.e., 38/39 c.e., 45/46 c.e. (besides the local famine in Jerusalem in 69 c.e.) cohere well with modern data, which indicate that famine occurs as regularly as every twentieth year."13
Robin Osborne writes in Poverty in the Roman World that "times of dearth divided communities between those who had and those who had not managed to fill their storehouses" and that urban dwellers fared especially poorly. The price of food inevitably soared during times of scarcity as landowners refused to release surpluses of grain from their storehouses into the urban markets. "It was in such times that individuals were no doubt tempted to sell themselves or their children into slavery - a practice legislated against by Solon in Athens but still encountered by Augustine."14
Yet urban poverty was widespread and harsh even in times of plenty. Roman laws prohibited the homeless from camping in the tombs of the aristocracy, and there are vivid descriptions of the poor creating lean-tos against walls, including how those were cleared periodically.15 Bruce Longnecker describes cities as "death traps at the best of times" but especially for unskilled laborers who had to "resort to banditry, beggary, prostitution, and the like, in order to forgo the inescapable grip of poverty."16 17
What comes into focus through these studies is a situation in which the vast majority of the poor were struggling on a day-to-day basis for survival. Even when one wasn't living in a state of persistent hunger, the shared cultural memory of a time of famine would not have been too far off. For those living on this knife-edge, "for long stretches, some might have survived at subsistence level, at times getting the odd bits of good luck to provide them with a thin cushion against the harsh realities of life, and at other times dropping below subsistence levels temporarily, only to pull themselves out of what was all-too often the inevitable end."18
In contrast to the richly-robed images of Jesus and his followers that adorn many of our churches' stained-glass windows, Jesus and his disciples (Matt 8:20), the Jerusalem Church (Romans 15:26; Gal 2:10), Pauline communities (1 Cor: 26-27; 2 Cor 8:1) belonged to the "lower socioeconomic stratum and 'the poor' in varying degrees; and they regularly described experiencing oppression and maltreatment by the rich and powerful in one way or another (cf. Luke 12:11-12; Acts 4:1-3; 8:1-3; 12:1-4; 2 Cor. 11:23-27; Heb. 10:32-34)."19 This means that it is very likely that Jesus himself, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and many in the first Christian assemblies would have struggled with getting enough to eat on a recurring basis, and that many in the first Christian communities would have had a direct experience of, as well as a shared cultural memory of, a period of prolonged hunger in their lives.
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Hunger and the memory of hunger must surely have influenced how the biblical stories and references to food were heard and understood. To try to understand just how this might be the case, it's important to consider what a period of prolonged hunger does to a person's body, how hunger has the power to reshape a person's psyche and worldview, and also what is needed to recover from a period of semi-starvation. For it is one thing to say that many in the first Christian assemblies would have had a direct experience of prolonged hunger in their lives, and it is another to begin to unpack what that means. To do this, I want to look at some of the insights from the first scientific study on semi-starvation conducted in the waning days of World War II.
In the 1940s, a groundbreaking -- and profoundly moving -- study now called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment examined the physiological and psychological effects of semi-starvation. Led by Ancel Keys, this study sought to provide insights on how to feed and rehabilitate the emaciated civilians of previously German-occupied Europe.20 Basic questions were unknowns at this point, including how many calories a starved person actually needed in order to recover. These unknowns made the planning and logistics of the rehabilitation efforts incredibly challenging to realize effectively.
To find the answers to these questions, thirty six male conscientious objectors, primarily from the Peace Church traditions, volunteered to participate in this semi-starvation study. Many of these conscientious objectors cited wanting to contribute to the anti-fascist effort as their reason for participating in this severe experiment. Over the course of the study, participants lost approximately 2.5 lbs per week until most had lost fully 25% of their original body weight. Movingly, reductions and additions in calories were made using single slices of bread. As bread slices and calories decreased, participants rapidly developed "sunken faces and bellies, protruding ribs, and edema-swollen legs, ankles, and faces" and other problems such as anemia, neurological deficits, and skin changes.21
Food also became a ritualized obsession and the center of their lives. One study participant, Richard Willoughby, was interviewed in his eighties and recalled how 'eating became highly ritualized' and another, Harold Blickenstaff, described how "food became the one central and only thing really in one's life."22 This in and of itself strikes me as having fascinating implications for the role of food in religious traditions.
One finding from the 3-month rehabilitation period proved especially important in the development of the postwar relief plan, and also has special resonance in light of the usage of 'epiousios' in the Lord's Prayer. Keys and his colleagues discovered that the semi-starved participants continued to physically deteriorate even when returned to their previously normal levels of caloric intake. In order for the tissues that were destroyed in starvation to begin to be rebuilt, they found "no appreciable rehabilitation can take place on a diet of 2000 calories a day. The proper level is more like 4000 daily for some months." In other words, the semi-starved participants needed at least two days' worth of bread in order to begin to recover - that is, enough bread for both today and tomorrow.
This knowledge was absolutely critical for organizing the logistics of the post-war relief efforts. Knowing that starving populations needed twice as many calories as normally would be allotted in a day in order to begin to recover ultimately influenced how food was distributed. For me, anyway, it also brings me back to some of the rooms where I've been - rooms of where the "permanently homeless" and recently arrived refugees have been gathered for a meal - and makes me think about what it means to ask God for an extra portion, or for today and tomorrow's portion now.
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In late March, as the infection and mortality rates of Covid-19 steadily increased and the situation in my home city of New York became especially dire, I found myself fervently hoping that this virus would somehow 'pass over' my friends and family. This prayer for a 'pass over' emerged spontaneously as the full weight of what was taking place began to become clear. It occurred to me then that as a result of Covid-19, I "knew" at a much deeper level what Passover meant than I had just a few weeks prior. This was not an intellectual shift but a bodily one, the sort of knowing that comes from having lived through a very particular experience.
Similarly, I'm wondering if part of the difficulty of interpreting 'epiousios' is that its significance is wrapped up in the experience and fear of periods of persistent hunger, and is one of the many instances in which full stomachs do not allow us to grasp the fullest meaning of the Gospel text. It matters, I think, that Jesus' words were spoken, heard, and repeated by people who experienced recurring hunger and for whom the memory of famine loomed large.
There are many translations of the word 'epiousios' with multiple schools of thought and theology backing different iterations. One of my favorite attempts is from the Latin Vulgate in the late sixteenth century which translated epiousios as 'supersubstantial." This particular interpretation is used today by some more conservative-minded Roman Catholics who suggest Jesus was clearly referring to the Eucharist. Nevertheless, "give us this day our supersubstantial bread' never quite caught on.23
As I am not a linguist or biblical scholar, I can only offer a reflection on context and the interpretive power of hunger. Personally, I think it's worth pausing and thinking about bread and hunger and empty stomachs before leaping too far into the realm eschatological theology. What does it mean to ask God for daily bread? Or for enough bread for today and tomorrow? Or for tomorrow's bread, today?
Biblical scholars, early church historians, and historians of Rome offer insights into the day-to-day poverty and persistent hunger that Jesus and his early followers would have directly experienced or teetered just on the edge of. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment suggests that a period of semistarvation is a profoundly transformative experience, one that reshapes both the body and mind and from which a person doesn't easily recover. Bearing these things in mind allows me, at least, to begin to grasp something like the spirit of the phrase, and I feel more empowered to think of other ways of conveying this line's deeper significance as hunger -- including children's hunger -- increases across the country.
Abba, give us today's bread and a second helping too. Give us both today and tomorrow's bread, but give it to us now. Give us the promised bread of tomorrow, but give it to us today...
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1 MacCullough, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 89.
2 McCullough, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 77.
3 Rhee, Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity, Loc 80
4 Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation, pages 5 and 11
5 Poverty in the Roman World, Robin Osborne, Cambridge University Press. Page 4
6 Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Loc 1001
7 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 23.
8 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 24-25
9 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 24-25
10 JENSEN, MORTEN H. "Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus." Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 131, no. 2, 2012, pp. 307-324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23488227. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020. Pages 319-320
11 JENSEN, MORTEN H. "Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus." Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 131, no. 2, 2012, pp. 307-324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23488227. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020. Pages 320
12 JENSEN, MORTEN H. "Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus." Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 131, no. 2, 2012, pp. 307-324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23488227. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020. Pages 320
13 JENSEN, MORTEN H. "Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus." Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 131, no. 2, 2012, pp. 307-324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23488227. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020. Page 323
14 Poverty in the Roman World, Robin Osborne, Cambridge University Press. Page 5
15 Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. 443-444
16 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 25
17 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 26
18 Longnecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 25
19 Rhee, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation. 35
20 Leah M. Kalm, Richard D. Semba, They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1347-1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347
21 Leah M. Kalm, Richard D. Semba, They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1347-1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347
22 Leah M. Kalm, Richard D. Semba, They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1347-1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347
23 McCullough, Diarmaid. Three Thousand Years of Christianity. Page 89
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