bread & meat

In our adult Sunday School class, when looking at a passage of Scripture, generally but not always from one of the four lectionary readings for the day, it’s not unusual for me to tell the folks and discuss an original word, Hebrew if it’s an Old Testament passage, (and maybe what the Septuagint writers did with it when translating the Hebrew into the koine spoken Greek of the day, and the implications of that and its being brought into Christian scripture and tradition); Greek if the reading we’re looking at is from the New Testament, and the meanings of that key word. 

I don’t do it to show off my brilliance in languages, which would be a lie, because I’m just doing what any one of them could do if they were leading the class. My knowledge in those languages is that I’ve done some preparation for today’s class and done whatever research I need to do for the instant situation. So I tell them the word of interest in the original language, and its derivation, uses and possible meanings, to free our minds from our, likely unconscious, preconceptions that what the translated into English word means to them is the same as what the original author meant; usually an invalid assumption or preconception, and people are surprised.

Paul’s frequent use of the word “justified” for example, everyone in class won’t likely have the same sense of what “justified” means, so it’ll be important to get everyone on the same page about such a key word in order intelligently to discuss the reading and know what Paul is talking about. 

Or maybe in an Exodus reading, to clarify that manna from heaven may not signify a delicious treat but “yuck! what is it?” of something they pick up off the ground and, maybe, blow off the ants, or if it’s gone soggy pick off the bugs, before, even if it’s gross, they eat it because they are starving (I mean, in wartime, downed pilots may catch kill and eat rats uncooked if hungry enough, to survive). And maybe mention manna’s likeness to the yucky wafers we use for Communion. I don’t know why we have to use dry (or disgustingly stale if they’re not warmed in a toaster oven beforehand) wafers when the gospels say Jesus used ἄρτος, which is ordinary table bread, whether he was feeding at the Last Supper, or feeding the five thousand, or breaking bread with the two men on the road to Emmaus that evening, or cooking a breakfast of fish and bread on the beach that morning by the Sea of Galilee. 

Well, actually I do know why, it’s because we imagine, though it’s not the way John has it, that the Last Supper was the Passover, when they would have been breaking ἄζυμος unleavened bread. But even though all three Synoptics mention before the Last Supper that the feast of ἄζυμος was coming up, all three, including Matthew who was writing to Jewish Christians, say Jesus broke ἄρτος (it was accusative, direct object, he took ἄρτον) at the Last Supper. Matthew was using Mark, but as a Jew, if he “realized” Jesus was breaking unleavened bread he would have corrected Mark and said it was ἄζυμος, but he didn’t. Sometimes we are in the grip of Tradition when we ought to stop, look and listen. Like the Pope did in considering what Jesus most likely meant us to understand when he said, according to Matthew and Luke, the Greek phrase that we translate “lead us not into temptation”. The intent and sense, situation and mind of the original author must be considered, so “let us not be led into temptation”.

Bread, btw, can mean food in general not just the bakery product the word means to us. Same with the word meat, which, especially in the English of the KJV era, can mean not just animal flesh, but whatever is being eaten.

Just so, a friend taught me that for scrumptious meatloaf, one only needs to go to The Craft Bar at Pier Park North. The second time I went, Linda and I both had meatloaf and brown gravy over mashed potatoes, and the side of collards. OMG it's good.

Jiminy, I’ve wandered. But my original point holds, so I don’t have to apologize.

T