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This essay is an attempt to explore different contexts of the phrase “you are the salt of the earth” found in Matt 5:13, one of the most confusing expressions used in the whole of the New Testament. The author deals with its original meaning, exposing in the process the earliest layers of transmission of Jesus’ sayings. Versed in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus combined the meanings of MLḤ in Exod 30:35 (incense salted is potent/good/pure/holy) with that in Isa 51:6 and Jer 38:11–12 (something MLḤ might vanish away/wax old/become rotten) and put it in a new context. Jesus’ pun – loaded with multiple layers of meanings and shades of meanings – was lost in translation as simply “salt.”

This note proposes a new hypothesis that ἐπιούσιος of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 was an attempt to translate adequately rōzīq/g, the Middle Iranian loan word in Jesus' Hebrew / Aramaic, whose meaning was ‘nourishment provided by God's mercy day to day’, and not merely ‘daily [bread], needed for the day/for today’.