Most people love the smell and taste of fresh-baked bread. I will usually only eat bread that I have baked myself because I find my loaves and rolls to be superior to anything bought from the store, as I am only using simple and pure ingredients. There is also a satisfaction I get out of the process of preparing the yeast with warm water and sugar, then adding salt and flour, kneading it all together, letting the dough rise, and then getting it ready for the oven in a variety of ways, depending on the desired outcome. I often make cinnamon raisin bread and soft pretzel rolls, which are far better than any jewish bagel.
However, there is now a trend to demonize bread, with “wheat belly” and “grain brain” on everyone’s minds. Yes, most bread products these days are not very healthy, but no, the solution is not to cut out any trace of wheat and instead eat lots of animal fats, as the paleo people would have you believe. The baking of bread has been with us since the dawn of civilization and it served our ancestors rather well. In fact, the use of flour likely gave “rise” to civilization, as it eventually made the hunter-gatherer lifestyle obsolete, as men and their grains became “domesticated”. There is archaeological evidence that shows flour was used by our ancestors in Europe around 30,000 years ago. It may have only been unleavened bread originally, but many different forms of bread arose from our culinary creativity.
The history of bread is a long and complex one, so let’s just skip to the hearth of the matter. For many people, bread was a gift from “God” (or a god), and its preparation was considered holy. However, some of this “holy bread” is not likely something you would want to try, as is the case with Ezekiel’s bread, which was baked over human excrement:
And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it. And your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from day to day you shall eat it. And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from day to day you shall drink. And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.
Bread was not just an important ingredient in the Old Testament, but was used a number of times in the New Testament as well. In fact, Jesus warned about consuming the leaven (risen bread) of the jewish lawyers and priests.
Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
~Matthew 16:6
He was likely using bread as a metaphor for how these jews have given rise to an unhealthy product, but who knows, maybe he was simply warning about Ezekiel’s poop bread. Or maybe jews were baking their bread with the blood of gentile children even back then. What is interesting to me is that Jesus would also use leavened bread to describe the kingdom of heaven:
Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
~Matthew 13:33
This metaphor seems to be about how the kingdom of heaven (besides sounding warm and fluffy) is constructed by simply kneading in a little yeast, which will eventually cause the whole mixture to rise. What I find even more interesting is that Jesus, the risen savior, would come to be eaten by his followers as unrisen bread. I ate the tasteless wafers every Sunday as a child. Robert Reyvolt, very familar with old Catholic teaching, says that Christ is consumed in this way because risen bread is often associated with impure doctrine (ie. the leaven of the Pharisees). I can understand this reasoning, but I think most folks would enjoy it more if their savior’s body was more like a ciabatta. Also, isn’t it pretty interesting that Jesus is said to the be the Logos (the word), which is read. Therefore, Jesus is consumed by being read and by being bread.
In The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Philip K. Dick argues that the bread sacrament was originally a psychedlic loaf:
They made mushroom bread out of it. They made a broth from it and drank the broth; ate the bread, drank the broth. That’s where the two species of the Host come from, the body and the blood. Apparently the anokhi mushroom was toxic but the Zadokites found a way to detoxify it, at least somewhat, enough so it didn’t kill them. It made them hallucinate.
An interesting theory, but maybe Dick was just a little too focused on drugs.
The idea of consuming one’s god in the form of bread is not exclusive to Christianity. For example, there is Osiris:
During the Festival of the Resurrection of Osiris, bread was baked in the shape of the god and distributed to worshipers. Similar to Christians eating the Body of Christ in the form of bread, the sacred ritual climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the Eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man. Since the ancients believed that humans were whatever they eat, this sacrament was, by extension, able to make them celestial and immortal. (source)
Another example could be the consumption of gingerbread men at the festival of Saturnalia (Christmas time), which celebrates the god who was said to devour his sons.
There is much that can be learned from the names (logos) we have for things, so let’s take a cursory look into how some different kinds of bread are labelled by people around the world. Pan is at the root of the word for bread in many languages (think panini or Panera), while also being the name of the wild European goat god. In India there is a particularly delicious bread called na’an, which can be phonetically found at the beginning of the name for Shiva’s great bull, Nandi. Maybe you think there is something there, or maybe not, but the last example I will give should be very telling; the religious bread of the jews is known as challah bread, containing the exact name of the Semitic god Allah.
One final story I will relay about the relationship between God and bread, which I find to be very interesting, is how in the ancient creation story of the Yezidi people, it was wheat that God commanded Adam not to eat, saying nothing about abstaining from apples.
Then he commanded Gabriel to escort Adam into Paradise, and to tell him that he could eat from all the trees but not of wheat. Here Adam remained for a hundred years. Thereupon, Melek Ts asked God how Adam could multiply and have descendants if he were forbidden to eat of the grain. God answered, “I have put the whole matter into thy hands.” Thereupon Melek Ts visited Adam and said “Have you eaten of the grain?” He answered, “No, God forbade me.” Melek Ts replied and said, “Eat of the grain and all shall go better with thee.” Then Adam ate of the grain and immediately his belly was inflated. But Melek Ts drove him out of the garden, and leaving him, ascended into heaven. Now Adam was troubled because his belly was inflated, for he had no outlet. God therefore sent a bird to him which pecked at his anus and made an outlet, and Adam was relieved. (source)
Adam was only able to create a brood after eating bread, and “coincidentally” the Dutch word for bread is brood.
Hopefully this exploration has provided some food for thought.
Let us break bread, then let us rise up!
Source Article from http://renegadetribune.com/the-bread-of-god/
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