SC - Byzantine Bread Stamps

[Alderton, Philippa]

Adamantius sez:

>It does seem, though, that some Greek Orthodox authorities have
> preferred leavened bread as a way to visibly distinguish their sect from
> Judaism. For whatever reason...

My thinking on that is that the Greeks and Byzantines were a lot closer to
Israel, and thus more threatened by Jewish customs- if you recall, in the
very early Christian church, there was a great amount of dissent about
whether an uncircumsized Gentile could properly be a follower of the very
Jewish Christ. I'm thinking that the farther you got from the Holy Land, the
lesser the perceived threat, so the Catholic church, being in Europe, had
more latitude emotionally to make things more like they thought the Jews
would have done, while the Greeks felt in necessary to emphasize the
differences. Perhaps a thing of, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"?

I think we might make a modern parallel with the attitude of Northern and
Southern US Americans towards US blacks and slavery. Much of the impetus
towards freedom of the slaves came from the Northerners, most of whom had
never seen a black slave, but after the freeing, when many blacks moved to
the North and were competing for jobs and livelihoods, they were treated as
intruders, worse than the Southerners had treated them. On the other hand,
in the South, most black folk are treated as people who belong there,
although the poorer whites try to emphasize their superiority by virtue of
race.

Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous