Originally Posted by OBW
While you did give something to think about, here are the first things that came to my mind:
1. The "bread of life" is not about fermentation. It is about the nutritional content that sustains life.
Sounds reasonable but completely untrue. When you make bread you learn very quickly that you are dealing with something that is alive. If I used tap water (that had chlorine) it would affect my bread, if the temperature was not right, it would affect my bread, etc. Ultimately I learned the most important thing was to have fresh flour. If you buy store bought flour it is white, but the flour I would buy would be freshly ground and then air shipped to me. It would be yellow, but would become rancid in a very short period, and you would get flies. The reason corporations push white flour bread is because it is "dead". Dead bread has a long shelf life. Dead flour doesn't go rancid. So I must completely disagree with you on this point, you sound like someone who has no experience whatsoever in making leavened bread.
2. If Exodus called it "unleavened" bread then by what account do you end up with leaven in it? It would then be leavened bread rather than unleavened bread.
I thought I explained this very clearly. In the account in Exodus it says that the bread was unleavened because they didn't have time to let the bread rise. As I said in my previous post, you do not need to add store bought leaven to bread to have leavened bread. Just by mixing the ingredients up in a wooden bowl the bread becomes leavened. If you don't wish to take my word for it consult with an expert. If necessary I can quote from my own cookbooks. So unleavened bread in Exodus means that the bread had been baked before it had risen. Again, think, do you really think in Egypt at the time that people went to the store and bought leaven and put it in their bread?
3. Not all seed is grain. The parables that mention seed are referring to what grows up, not what you can do with it after it is harvested.
What are you talking about? You can make flour out of any seed. What is the purpose of planting grain if you are not going to harvest it for food?
4. So you are suggesting that the problem with the Pharisees' teaching was what they got out of "chewing" on the word? When I read the passage in context, it would seem that it was that it was about what they added to it, not what they got out of it, that was the problem. In effect, they were adding to the Word rather than simply taking from it.
No, what I am suggesting is that the term "leaven of the pharisees" refers to the teaching of the pharisees. No doubt the pharisees did read the Bible and other books to arrive at their teachings. So if the pure word of God in the analogy is the flour, the yeast would be the pharisees, and the product that they produce is referred to as "leaven of the pharisees".
I honestly believe that the whole "leaven is bad" comes from a kind of reading in which a term is expected to have a constant meaning throughout scripture. So let's take the example of "flesh." In the gospels, this word is used quite consistently by Jesus to refer to his body, both literally and metaphorically, and is pretty consistently positive. Yet Paul uses the term "flesh" almost exclusively with reference to our old nature and therefore something negative. Both are right because both have a context and provide more than hints at what is being discussed.
Some of your statements about bread/leaven in your four points needs information not available to the listener of the day, or that would not be the first thought on the subject. So let's talk about them in that light.
1. I will agree that adding leaven makes bread more palatable. Whether it changes the nutritional value of the bread, I am not qualified to say. But if "the entire concept of bread of life is completely wrapped up with leaven" then I would think that we have found another clearly positive point relating to leaven.
I do agree with this. I have explained earlier, few Bible students would be willing to receive this word, so I have been very leery to even mention this to others. When you make leavened bread you are working with something that is alive and everything you do is with that in mind. The water you use, the flour you use, even the salt. Likewise you learn some sweeteners have more life power than others (honey, molasses instead of white sugar). Modern corporations try to push dead bread on people because it is more cost effective for them. Now I am sure that anyone who makes leavened bread learns these lessons, and that includes the Israelites.
2. While man may have generally understood that there was something still around that could add leaven to bread, the point of the unleavened bread in general was not about something evil, but about not taking the time for dough to rise before hitting the road, probably with quickly-baked bread to eat on the road. Yet the ritual that they were required to observe required that they effectively cleanse their houses of leaven for the passover.
Among modern Jews this generally refers to cleansing the house of things that have been leavened, like bread, not about removing yeast (not many people have yeast in their house, if they do it is generally in a small box in the refrigerator and can easily be thrown away). What the Israelites probably did was to have a small cup of sour dough on the hearth which they threw away. One way to make leavened bread is to use sour dough, when you are about to bake the bread you take a small chunk and put it back in the cup. However, it does make sense to make a new sour dough starter every year.
It was not just about hiding it, but to the extent possible, to clean it out. Sort of like a good washing from ceiling to floor. Doing more than just scraping that wooden bowl. Still, there is no certainty that there was anything about evil presumed in that process unless we conclude that for the journey from Egypt to the promised land there was going to be no significant amount of flour taken along, and no stopping to grow wheat or other grain for a few weeks or even months. Seems they were starving until the arrival of the manna. So it is possible that leaven was pointless for the journey, and might have represented something of Egypt being brought along. But that is not stated to be true as far as I know.
And there is at least one sacrifice in which leavened bread is used, so its offering to God is not entirely disdained. But it has its purpose.
Yes, the whole concept of leaven is very hard to understand. It seems intimately tied to sin in this analogy and yet it also seems intimately tied to the bread of life. However, what the Passover is really saying is that every year you need a fresh start with your leaven, throw out the old leaven and start fresh. If leaven really signified sin then why do Jews eat leavened bread for the whole year? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees may just mean it is time to throw out last years sour dough and start a new batch. Like new wine and new wineskins.
But further to all of this, while the average person in the time of the passover, as well as in the time of Christ, knew that leaven altered the bread. And they had learned that two risings were preferable to only one. But start talking about a living organism eating the carbs and you would have been taken to the the edge of town and stoned as some kind of sorcerer (a little over the top, but I think you understand). The point is that you cannot presume that our knowledge about leaven and the fermentation process can be attributed to the people who were listening to Jesus speak.
Anyone who makes bread learns very quickly that the bread is alive. Every time you make bread (which was probably several times a week for the Israelites) the recipe is the same yet the results are not. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the bubbling of the bread is from a living organism. You are experimenting with a living organism two or three times a week, I am sure they figured this out. My feeling is they had a much better understanding of what Jesus meant by "bread of life" than people who never made bread and ate wonder bread their whole life.
If you believe that this is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke, then you must presume that he didn't intend it for the audience to whom he directly spoke, but was hoping that it would be one of the few out of many sayings that got recorded so that the more knowledgeable minds of centuries later could understand it.
On the contrary, it wasn't until I started to make bread using sour dough as my leaven (pan au levain is bread that uses sour dough as the leaven) that I understood what Jesus was saying. Soon I was taking great pains to make my bread more "alive". I put thermometers everywhere, people in the house were instructed not to let a draft in when I was working as though the bread were a delicate baby, I was airlifting in flour, using bottled water, etc. You could never have taught me this from a book, I saw the results with each batch.
I have a difficult time accepting that Jesus did not speak to them in the way they would understand and instead said nonsense to them for our benefit centuries later.
Me too. Unfortunately we seem to disrespect our elders and think they knew less than we did.
3. This kind of thinking is Lee's "God never uses a metaphor in other than one way" error. Of course it is not just his error. He has some company in this error.
No its not.
Instead, each metaphor is a statement concerning a specific thing. It has a purpose that is directly linked to the words used. The parable about the scattering of seed is about the nature of the soil rather than much about the seed. The parable of the weeds is about how you deal with certain kinds of problems within the community of believers. The parable of the mustard seed says that you should expect the kingdom to start small (one man?) yet grow more like a special example than some other plants. The parable of the leaven says something about the kingdom permeating and changing the world. The catch of fish speaks of the gospel attracting many but not keeping everything that was attracted. (And for you died-in-the-wool Calvinists, maybe it is much more complicated than "once saved, always saved.")
Really, you are saying that the writers of the Bible could not put together a single paragraph? I find this thinking highly disrespectful, if I were Matthew I would be extremely insulted that people would think I couldn't put together Chapter 13 around a single theme.
To argue that because of a link between seed and dough (assuming the right seed) that the two metaphors must align is nonsense.
To not consider that two sentences in the same chapter and in virtually any grammatical style in the same paragraph are not linked is idiocy.
Each metaphor stands alone to say something specific.
Who made up this rule?
Unlike Lee's kind of "take each metaphor and milk it for every possible thing that every related aspect of the whole example could mean" theology. The parable of the seed is about soil. The parable of the mustard seed is about growth. The parable of the leaven is about the power of the kingdom to change everything. The parable of the catch of fish could be about putting in the net to fish and being willing to start with more than is ultimately "caught."
Nothing forces seed to become dough just because it could. That is to interject something not stated and require an understanding that makes the plain reading of the parable strained (at best).
Respectfully disagree.
4. This notion of the Pharisee's leaven being the result of "chewing on the word" creates an inference not made.
"Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" -- this inference is also in Matthew. "You search the scriptures" spoken to the Pharisees in the book of Matthew. Clearly Matthew has already made it clear that we should eat the word of God, and that the Pharisees were searching the scripture. We are in chapter 13, it is absurd to think you have to read this chapter and exclude everything that Matthew has spoken previously. You would never read another book that way.
Leaven is something added. It is something that alters what it is added to. So it seems most directly to suggest that it is about what the Pharisees added to the word to arrive at their additional laws and regulations. Given Jesus' other comments in various places concerning this group, he seems to think their pronouncements are quite difficult to bear. Yet the "yoke" of Jesus is light. And while some may say that leaven makes bread more palatable, I doubt that was the intent here since the result was that so much of the Jewish population was willing to be considered sinners by the Pharisees. They couldn't do it. It was too hard.
This is not the first mention of leaven in the Bible, if it were then we might be forced to make these conjectures. But since leaven has been mentioned in a very powerful way in the Passover, so much so that all Jews would have their thinking of it colored by that yearly practice, I think that must define leaven. Clearly, to the Jews leaven could not be seen as something bad because all of their bread was leavened, except for one week in the year. Interestingly, when you make a new batch of sour dough it takes a week. Also, the sour dough is not going to be the same everywhere, it depends on the particular yeast in the air. So by cleaning out the old leaven you allow for a new batch of yeast. I think the meaning should be that, clean out the old and bring in the new.
In summary (don't you wished this had come earlier?) I find most of the old ways of thinking about these particular parables to be strained relative to their context and their actual words. Each has a specific thing to say about a small portion of truth, not some overarching thing to say about everything because there is a commonality of terms, like "leaven." You have to read it where it is first. Only if it is meaningless or clearly referring beyond itself do you reach out to other passages. I don't find these lacking.
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