Video iReport from a Bedouin Camp in the Sinai - 1/25/2010 2:37PM

Unleavened Bread in the Wilderness

In Exodus 12: 18-19, God tells the Israelites:  “In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.  For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses.  And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born.”  This is Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread; it remembers the exodus from Egypt.     

The desert dwellers of the Sinai have been baking unleavened bread on an earthen oven for millennia, long before the Israelites left Egypt.  The earthen oven, or taboun, is a simple construction:  a shallow hole in the ground is filled with sticks and set ablaze.  Once the fire settles, a simple metal dome is placed over the fire pit and thin, flattened dough made of wheat flour and water is placed on top of the dome.  In less than a minute—voilá—you have delicious bread!       

You may recall in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew 5: 13 that Jesus says:  “You are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”  Scholars have puzzled over this saying for centuries.  Salt is pure sodium chloride; it cannot “lose its saltiness.”  So what exactly does Jesus mean?     

The Dead Sea in southern Israel is the saltiest body of water on earth, and the salt of the Dead Sea is very different from the salt found in the world’s oceans.  97% of the salt in ocean water is sodium chloride, whereas Dead Sea salt is only 12-18% sodium chloride, with vastly greater concentrations of other minerals. An analysis of major ions in Dead Sea water yields the following concentrations: 

Major Ions of Dead Sea Water 

Ion                          Concentration (mg/L) 

Chloride/Bromide       230,400

Magnesium                45,900

Sodium                      36,600

Calcium                     17,600

Potassium                    7,800  

Magnesium is the second highest concentration in Dead Sea salt at 45,900 mg/L.  And magnesium is highly flammable, burning at a temperature of 3,100 degrees centigrade (5,610 degrees fahrenheit).  Magnesium powder is a common tool for starting emergency fires in outdoor recreation. 

When water evaporates off the Dead Sea it leaves behind “pillars of salt” (Remember the story in Genesis 19: 26 of Lot’s wife in Sodom turning into a pillar of salt?  The story takes place near the Dead Sea).  With its high magnesium content, Dead Sea salt provides an excellent means of “reheating” an earthen oven when the embers begin to die.  Toss in a little Dead Sea salt, the fire flares up, and you can cook a little more bread!  Once the magnesium burns off, though, the salt loses its ability to heat the earthen oven, and it is no good to anyone.  This is precisely what Jesus means by “the salt of the earth.”  Watch the video iReport as we visit a Bedouin family in the southern Sinai as they cook bread in an earthen oven.  And, oh my, is it tasty!