A Word Jerome Found
Jerome says he found another word.
In his commentary on Matthew 6:11, Jerome reports another reading. The Gospel “according to the Hebrews” had mahar (מָחָר) in place of supersubstantial bread.1 He glosses the word as crastinum, meaning “of tomorrow.”
That report is small, but it is not trivial.
Jerome knew the normal Latin tradition. He also knew the difficult Greek word epiousios (ἐπιούσιος). Yet here he says that an Aramaic or Hebrew Gospel tradition pointed somewhere else.
The source is lost. Modern scholars often classify this witness more narrowly as the Gospel of the Nazarenes. Jerome connects it with Jewish-Christian communities using a Semitic Gospel tradition.2
That distinction matters, but it should not distract from the point. The witness is fragmentary, mediated, and late. It is also direct evidence that some early Christians did not hear the prayer as routine daily provision.
Both truths have to stay visible. The mahar (מָחָר) reading is not strong enough to rewrite the Lord’s Prayer by itself. It is strong enough to prove that “daily bread” was not the only imaginable path.
Related sections: What The Claim Can Bear; Tomorrow Not Daily.
Footnotes
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Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 6:11, on the petition panem nostrum supersubstantialem. Primary source; collected in Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, rev. ed., 1:162-163. ↩
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Secondary source: Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, rev. ed., vol. 1, treats the bread fragment under the Gospel of the Nazaraeans fragment tradition. Ehrman and Pleše print the same fragment cluster in The Apocryphal Gospels, 207-209. ↩