Biblical Bread
This week I am teaching a course in the summer session at Yale Divinity School on bread in history, focusing on biblical and theological tradition. As well as considering a variety of biblical texts (more on that in another post maybe) we are baking breads that, if not necessary completely authentic (probably an illusory quest) then at least illustrate some of the key issues that faced producers, eaters, and those who wrote about these issues in the ancient Mediterranean world. In a paper I gave at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual meeting in 2014, I suggested that for eaters in most places and periods relevant to biblical literature and to ancient Christianity and Judaism, there were three factors that made bread more or less desirable, and an indicator of one's status and wealth (or lack thereof): color (refinement, bolting of the flour etc.), grain, and fermentation or leavening. In this week's course we are dealing with the last two issues in a variety of...
