Bread

Bread is the staple food made from grain flour and water, usually baked, and in Scripture it names both literal food and, by extension, whatever sustains life. The text presents it first as ordinary provision: Abraham's guests are fed with unleavened bread baked in haste (Genesis 19:3), and Paul describes God as the one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food (2 Corinthians 9:10). Linguistically, the Hebrew word for bread, lehem, commonly stands for food in general, which is why the same term can cover a loaf, a meal, or a livelihood.

Scripture also uses bread as a measure of scarcity and dependence. God threatens to break "the staff of bread," so that ten women bake in one oven and the people eat and are not satisfied (Leviticus 26:26); the psalmist calls anxious labor "the bread of toil" (Psalms 127:2), and Isaiah speaks of "the bread of adversity and the water of affliction" (Isaiah 30:20). Against that, Isaiah 55:2 contrasts bread that does not satisfy with what God freely gives. In the teaching of Jesus, bread becomes a central image of the kingdom and of himself: a woman hides yeast in three measures of meal until all is leavened (Matthew 13:33), and in the farewell meal Jesus takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and says, "Take, eat; this is my body" (Matthew 26:26). The Gospel of John records the claim, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35), with the bread of God described as that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33).

Historically, bread was the basic food of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, baked daily in small household ovens, and leaven was a lump of fermented dough kept back to raise the next batch. Acts 20:7 records disciples gathered "to break bread" on the first day of the week, a phrase whose precise reference is debated among historians and exegetes: it may denote a shared meal, the Lord's Supper, or both together. The accounts of the institution in the Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 11:23 became the basis for the church's practice of using bread in the eucharistic meal.

Christian traditions read the eucharistic bread differently. Catholic and Orthodox teaching holds that the bread becomes the body of Christ (transubstantiation is the Catholic formulation; Orthodoxy speaks of change without defining the manner), Lutherans confess the real presence "in, with, and under" the bread, and Reformed and Baptist traditions generally treat the bread as a sign and seal of Christ's body received by faith. John 6 is read sacramentally in some traditions and as a call to faith in others. Interpretive suggestion: the breadth of the imagery — daily food, affliction, and the person of Christ — is what allows these readings to coexist in the tradition's vocabulary.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.