Can you explain why the "Early Church Fathers", or the early Christians for that matter, would have used a completely different word for "bread" than the one used by Jesus Christ in the Lord's Prayer as well as the other references to it throughout Scripture? The Greek word is "artos" and it means: food of any kind; food composed of flour mixed with water and baked; loaves which were consecrated to the Lord; of the bread used at the love-feasts and at the Lord's Table. As to Jerome's translation from Greek to Latin (the Vulgate), he may have tried to insert Catholic understanding for the word, but even in the Douay-Rheims Bible, the word is STILL translated as "bread" (see Luke 11:3). It would not be the only mistake Jerome made. But, besides all that, the word JESUS used is no different than all the other 400+ times the word "bread" was used throughout Scripture. I don't disagree that the bread used in the observance of the Lord's Supper is regarded as "set apart", but it remains bread, nevertheless. Even the "shewbread" used in the Jewish Temple used the common word in Hebrew (lechem) for bread.
Perhaps the same dynamic happened with the early use of the word "presbyteros", meaning Elders. The Greek word sympresbyteros, meaning "a fellow elder" is used in I Peter 5:1 and is the only time that word is used. But the root word for elder is "presbyteros".
The word episkopē is used for bishop or bishoprick (Acts 1:20, I Tim.3:1) and it means "Overseer" or one who has oversight as elders or "visitation". Another word, episkeptomai, is also used in several places to mean "visit" or "visitor". In Acts 6:3, it is translated as "to look out for" and was used by the Apostles when they called together the disciples and said, "Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.". The Apostles appointed men to take over for them in the sense of some of their duties so that the Apostles could devote their time to prayer and the ministry of the word. Verse 5-6 says, after prayer and agreement, "And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid [their] hands on them.". The word, Episcope, that Roman Catholics interpret to mean "priest", did NOT have that meaning until much later.
”Can you explain why the "Early Church Fathers", or the early Christians for that matter, would have used a completely different word for "bread" than the one used by Jesus Christ in the Lord's Prayer as well as the other references to it throughout Scripture?”
There are two renditions of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospels; Matthew 6:9-13 and the shorter version in Luke 11:2-4. Since both are different the logical conclusion is that no ONE form of the two versions records the ipsissima vox Jesu (exact words of Jesus). It is likely that the prayer was given in Aramaic and that the Greek versions were attempting to give the intent of the prayer.
Being neither a fluent speaker of Aramaic or Koine Greek I can’t comment on the idiomatic practices and conventions of the first three centuries only to say that the word translated “Artos” is used allegorically to mean food, the necessities of life, wisdom, the living bread and the body of Christ. It is always a challenge and often points of disagreement to determine when the word is literal and when it is allegorical. As these forums demonstrate daily there is no universally accepted “obvious.
When we read the earliest Greek manuscripts (Codex Sinaiticus, AD 325) we see the use of Epiousion to describe the nature or substance of the bread. Early Christians associated this with the Eucharist. The Eastern Catholics still use this Greek version in their liturgy. The Coptics use the phrase "bread of tomorrow".
All of this points to the need for an extra-biblical sources to understand the “simple and clear” Scripture. We Catholics believe that Jesus gave the Church with its Magisterium to satisfy this need. Non-Catholics seek to satisfy that need with a variety of sources, not all honest or reliable.