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| Salt and Bread |
I likely have heard the things written below about salt sometime before in some homily or sermon but over time I have forgotten it, so it is good to be reminded of these Biblical truths. Yesterday’s Gospel reading for Daily Mass was Mark 19:41-50. The account of salt in verse 50 is duplicated in Matthew 5:13 and Luke 14:34-35. But St. Mark includes a prefatory addition in verse 49 which really struck me:
Everyone will be salted with fire.
I looked this verse up in my several editions of the Latin Vulgate and in my Greek New Testament. The Vulgate edition from around the time of the Council of Trent in the 1500s expands this verse somewhat (numbering it as verse 48):
Omnis enim igne salietur, et omnis victima sale salietur.
For everyone will be salted with fire, and every victim salted with salt.
I did not find this addition – and every victim salted with salt – in my Greek New Testament (where here the text is in verse 49):
πας γαρ πυρι αλισθησεται.
Everyone for fire shall be salted.
So I wondered why the addition appears in the Latin Vulgate form the Council of Trent. The answer is that the version of the Greek New Testament used by the translators at the Council of Trent was the 1550 Stephanus New Testament and it has the addition which modern Greek texts omit:
πας γαρ πυρι αλισθησεται και πασα θυσια αλι αλισθησεται.
Everyone for fire shall be salted and every sacrifice to salt shall be salted.
Then I wondered from where this addition came. A little research showed that it comes from Leviticus 2:13 which Jesus’ disciples, being devout Jews, would have known straightaway:
Quidquid obtuleris sacrificii, sale condies, nec auferes sal foederis Dei tui de sacrificio tuo: in omni oblatione tua offeres sal.
Whatsoever sacrifice thou offerest, thou shalt season it with salt, neither shalt thou take away the salt of the covenant of thy God from thy sacrifice. In all thy oblations thou shalt offer salt.
The sacrifices being spoken of here are cereal or grain offerings. Grain was used to make bread. And who is the Bread of Life but Jesus Christ Himself? He is the Bread we offer at the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist – the very Flesh we consume at each Holy Communion. This is a very important thing to understand. This is why St. Ignatius of Antioch said in his letter to the Romans:
I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.
This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote in Romans 12:1:
Obsecro itaque vos fratres per misericordiam Dei, ut exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam viventem, sanctam, Deo placentem, rationabile obsequium vestrum.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, through the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service.
Thus, Jesus tells us in Mark 9:49:
Bonum est sal: quod si sal insulsum fuerit, in quo illud condietis? Habete in vobis sal, et pacem habete inter vos.
Salt is good. But if the salt became unsavory; in what will you season it? Have salt in you, and have peace among you.
The reason why Jesus uses this allusion to salt derives from the aforementioned Levitical practice of applying salt to grain offerings. There is an interesting note on this in my NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible that may assist in further understanding the use of salt in grain offerings, and once again this would have been immediately recognizable to the audience to whom Jesus was speaking:
Salt was the finest preservative in antiquity, and it symbolized permanence and preservation. Salt was probably used in the covenant ceremony in which Israel celebrated its unbreakable covenant with God. The salt that accompanied many Israelite sacrifices was used physically in the seasoning of the elements, but it also symbolically contributed to the quality of the covenant relationship between humanity and God. In antiquity, parties who shared salt (here the Lord and the Israelites) were united by mutual obligations. Thus, a letter from Neo-Babylonia refers to a tribe’s covenantal allies as those who “tasted the salt of the Jakin tribe.” Similarly, the Greeks salted their covenantal meals, and in Ezra 4:14 those who tasted the salt (the literal Hebrew) of the Persian king’s palace were bound by loyalty to him.
Since human allies establishing a covenant would commonly share a meal featuring salted meat, it would make sense for the salt in Israelite sacrifices to serve as a reminder of the covenant between God and Israel. Because salt was employed as a preservative, its use in a covenantal context also emphasized the expectation that the covenant would last for a long time, a meaning attached to salt in Babylonian, Persian, Arabic and Greek covenant contexts. Because salt inhibits the leavening action of yeast, which represented rebellion, salt could additionally stand for that which prevented rebellion. An additional explanation for the appropriateness of salt in connection with the covenant is found in its association with agricultural infertility: in a Hittite treaty, the testator pronounces a curse: if the treaty is broken, “May he and his family and his lands, like salt that has no seed, likewise have no progeny.”
St. John Chrysostom, one of 36 Doctors (or Teacher) of the Church, Bishop of Constantinople in the later 4th and early 5th centuries AD, provides commentary in chapter 10 of homily 15 on the Gospel of St. Matthew.
Now then, after giving them due exhortation, He [Jesus] refreshes them again with praises. As thus: the injunctions being high, and far surpassing those in the Old Testament; lest they should be disturbed and confounded, and say, How shall we be able to achieve these things? hear what He says: You are the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). Implying, that of absolute necessity He enjoins all this. For not for your own life apart, says He, but for the whole world, shall your account be. For not to two cities, nor to ten or twenty, nor to a single nation am I sending you, as I sent the prophets; but to earth, and sea, and the whole world; and that in evil case. For by saying, You are the salt of the earth, He signified all human nature to have lost its savor, and to be decayed by our sins. For which cause, you see, He requires of them such virtues, as are most necessary and useful for the superintendence of the common sort. For first, the meek, and yielding, and merciful, and righteous, shuts not up his good deeds unto himself only, but also provides that these good fountains should run over for the benefit of others. And he again who is pure in heart, and a peacemaker, and is persecuted for the truth's sake; he again orders his way of life for the common good. Think not then, He says, that you are drawn on to ordinary conflicts, or that for some small matters you are to give account. You are the salt of the earth.
What then? Did they restore the decayed? By no means; for neither is it possible to do any good to that which is already spoilt, by sprinkling it with salt. This therefore they did not. But rather, what things had been before restored, and committed to their charge, and freed from that ill savor, these they then salted, maintaining and preserving them in that freshness, which they had received of the Lord. For that men should be set free from the rottenness of their sins was the good work of Christ; but their not returning to it again any more was the object of these men's diligence and travail.
Do you see how by degrees He indicates their superiority to the very prophets? In that He says they are teachers, not of Palestine, but of the whole world; and not simply teachers, but awful ones too. For this is the marvelous thing, that not by flattering, nor soothing, but by sharply bracing them, as salt, even so they became dear to all men.
Now marvel not, says He, if leaving all others, I discourse to you, and draw you on to so great dangers. For consider over how many cities, tribes, and nations, I am to send you to preside. Wherefore I would have you not only be prudent yourselves, but that you should also make others the same. And such persons have great need to be intelligent, in whom the salvation of the rest is at stake: they ought so much to abound in virtue, as to impart of the profit to others also. For if you do not become such as this, you will not suffice even for your own selves.
Be not then impatient, as though my sayings were too burdensome. For while it is possible for others who have lost their savor to return by your means, you, if you should come to this, will with yourselves destroy others also. So that in proportion as the matters are great, which you have put into your hands, you need so much the greater diligence. Therefore He says,
But if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men (Matthew 5:13).
For other men, though they fall never so often, may possibly obtain indulgence: but the teacher, should this happen to him, is deprived of all excuse, and will suffer the most extreme vengeance. Thus, lest at the words, When they shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you, they should be too timid to go forth: He tells them, unless you are prepared to combat with all this, you have been chosen in vain. For it is not evil report that you should fear, but lest ye should prove partners in dissimulation. For then, You will lose your savor, and be trodden under foot: but if you continue sharply to brace them up, and then are evil spoken of, rejoice; for this is the very use of salt, to sting the corrupt, and make them smart. And so their censure follows of course, in no way harming you, but rather testifying your firmness. But if through fear of it you give up the earnestness that becomes you, you will have to suffer much more grievously, being both evil spoken of, and despised by all. For this is the meaning of trodden under foot.
Conclusion: The depths of Sacred Scripture cannot be fully plumbed without a knowledge of the historical and cultural background surrounding the text, and without reading and studying the commentary of the early Church Fathers.
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