The function of this adjective seems to be the augmentation of "bread" so that it is interpreted as food to feed the spiritual mission of Christians. The day is to be food for their stated higher spiritual purpose. Clearly, this word means something like "higher-purpose" or something like that.
I think most Christians interpret "Give us the day our daily bread." correctly because the whole prayer is about living a pious life. Even if "daily" doesn't exactly mean what the original text meant, I think the context flavors it well enough.
Well put. I see it too. Indeed it is epiousios to see the spiritual essence “over nature” (supra-natural / super-natural). The inner, spiritual world that we can witness in our witnessing of nature. Martin-Löf comes to mind: https://github.com/michaelt/martin-lof/blob/master/pdfs/A-pa... (It’s funny and beautiful that we’re now building all the most interesting programming languages on top of Martin-Löf’s intuitionistic type theory. – At least in my opinion.)
It is epiousios to use the word “daily” as a translation of “epiousios”.
Isn’t it also a common pattern in religious texts the metaphor that the soul is a light? – and the first light man knew certainly was the light of day. As well as metaphors like a life being like a year with its seasons and its finality? And a life like a day?
And indeed metaphor is itself epiousios. Bread is metaphor. Metaphor can certainly be spiritual sustenance. And indeed the prayer itself is exactly that. Or rather, it isn’t, but
it can be seen that way. Or rather, it can’t actually be seen that way, but we can certainly find beauty in interpreting it that way.
From a beautiful, beautiful paper on the substrate of human cooperation – neural mechanisms, namely in the prefrontal cortex: Zoh, Y., Chang, S.W.C. & Crockett, M.J.: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective. ACNP journal Neuropsychopharmacology* (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01092-5 / https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5
‘Relative to other species, humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate—we are willing to incur personal costs to benefit others, including strangers, and people who we will never meet again. These abilities are thought to arise from complex systems of shared moral intuitions about what is “right” or “good” that are culturally transmitted across space and time.’
Along with such things as comfort, solace, hope, and understanding. In the form of metaphor. Shared metaphor. Our shared, daily, divine, epiousios bread. If we choose to receive it that way.
I think most Christians interpret "Give us the day our daily bread." correctly because the whole prayer is about living a pious life. Even if "daily" doesn't exactly mean what the original text meant, I think the context flavors it well enough.