The second chapter of Leviticus gives a sort of list of the different kinds of bread and cakes in use among the ancient Israelites. This is done incidentally for the purpose of distinguishing the kinds which were and which were not suitable for offerings. Of such as were fit for offerings we find— I. Bread baked in ovens (Lev. ii. 4); but this is limited to two sorts, which appear to be, ist., the bread baked inside the vessels of stone, metal or earthenware, as already mentioned. In this case the oven is half filled with small smooth pebbles, upon which, when heated and the fuel withdrawn, the dough is laid. Bread prepared in this mode is necessarily full of indentations or holes, from the pebbles on which it is baked ; zd, the bread pre pared by dropping with the hollow of the hand a thin layer of the almost liquid dough upon the out side of the same oven, and which, being baked dry the moment it touches the heated surface, forms a thin wafer-like bread or biscuit. The first of these Moses appears to distinguish by the characteristic epithet of fa of holes ; and the other by the name of thin cakes, being, if correctly identified, by much the thinnest of any bread used in the East. A cake of the former was offered as the first of the dough (Lev. viii. 26), and is mentioned in 2 Sam. vi. 19, with the addition of ' bread,'—perforated bread fl n). Both sorts, when used for offerings, were to be un leavened (perhaps to secure their being prepared for the special purpose) ; and the first sort, namely, that which appears to have been baked inside the oven, was to be mixed up with oil, while the other (that baked outside the oven), which from its thin ness could not possibly be thus treated, was to be only smeared with oil. The fresh olive oil, which was to he used for this purpose, imparts to the bread something of the flavour of butter, which last is usually of very indifferent quality in Eastern countries.
II. Barad baked in a pan-1st, That which, as before described, is baked in, or rather on, the tajen. This also as an offering was to be unleavened and mixed with oil. 2d, This, according to Lev. ii. 6, could be broken into pieces, and oil poured over it, forming a distinct kind of bread and offer ing. And in fact the thin biscuits baked on the tajen, as well as the other kinds of bread, thus broken up and re-made into a kind of dough, farm a kind of food or pastry in which the Orientals take much delight, and which makes a standing dish among the pastoral tribes. The ash-cake answer ing to the Hebrew 'rigglah is the most frequently employed for this purpose. When it is baked, it is broken up into crumbs, and re-kneaded with water, to which is added, in the course of the operation, butter, oil, vinegar, or honey. Having thus again reduced it to a tough dough, the mass is broken into pieces, which are baked in smaller cakes and eaten as a dainty. The preparation for the Mosaical
offering was more simple ; but it serves to indicate the existence of such preparations among the ancient Israelites.
III. Bread baked upon the hearth—that is to say, baked upon the hearth-stone or plate covering the fire-pit which has already been mentioned. This also was to be mixed with oil (Lev. ii. 7).
As these various kinds of baked breads were allowed as offerings, there is no question that they were the best modes of preparing bread known to the Hebrews in the time of Moses ; • and as all the ingredients were such as Palestine abundantly pro duced, they were such offerings as even the poorest might without much difficulty procure.
Besides these there are two other modes of pre paring bread indicated in the Scriptures, which cannot with equal certainty be identified by reference to modern usages.
One of these is the ?np) nikuddim oft Kings xiv. 3, translated craaknels' in the Authorized Version, an almost obsolete word denoting a kind of crisp cake. The original would seem by its etymology (from speckled, spotted), to denote something spotted or sprinkled over, etc. Buxtorf (Lcx. dald. et Talm.) writes under this word : Orbiculi parvi panis instar dimidii ovi, Teranzoth, c. 5 ;' and in another place (Spit. rad. Hebr. p. 554), Et bucellata, s Reg. xiv. 3, gum biscocta vulgo vocant, sic dicta, quod in frusta exigua rotunda, quasi puncta conficerentur, aut quad singulari fonna interpunctarentur.' It is indeed not improbable that they may have been a sort of biscuit or small and hard baked cakes, calculated to keep (for a journey or some other purpose), by reason of their excessive hardness (or perhaps being twice baked, as the word biscuit implies). Not only are such hard cakes or biscuits still used in the East, but they are, like all biscuits, punctured to render them more hard, and sometimes also they are sprinkled with seeds ; either of which circum stances sufficiently meets the conditions suggested by the etymology of the Hebrew word. The existence of such biscuits is further implied in Josh. ix. 5, 12, where the Gibeonites describe their bread as having become as hard as biscuit (not `mouldy,' as in the Authorized Version), by reason of the length of their journey.
The other was a kind of fancy bread, the making of which appears to have been a rare accomplish ment, since Tamar was required to prepare it for Amnon in his pretended illness • (2 Sam. xiii. 6). As the name only indicates that it was some favourite kind of cake, of which there may have been different sorts, no conjecture with reference to it can be offered. See Hezel, Real-Lexicon, art. Brod ;' Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins ; and the various travellers in Palestine, etc., particularly Shaw, Niebuhr, Monconys, Russell, Lane (Modern Egyptians), Perkins, Olin, etc., compared with the present writer's personal observations.—J. K.