The Jewish Blessing over Bread and the Interpretation of the Manna in Judaism and Christianity

Leonhard, Clemens

Abstract

The paper examines the core text of the rabbinic pre-prandial blessing over bread “[… God], who brings forth bread from the land”. The blessing differs from other blessings over food in its formulation and significance. According to Tosefta Brakhot 4.1, its performance releases bread (food) for human use (consumption). The phrasing of the blessing resembles Ps 104:13f. However, its imagined context rather aligns with the cessation of the gift of Manna to Israel. Following the first Pesaḥ in the Promised Land, the people of Israel ate bread (from grain) that “came forth from the land” instead of bread that came “from heaven”. Early Christianity understood the consecration of bread as the function of its celebration of the Eucharist. From late Antiquity on, Christian theologians interpreted the Eucharist as fulfilling the Old Testament’s typology of the Manna. This paper poses and refutes the working hypothesis that the rabbinic blessing sets Jewish, profane, non-Manna bread apart from Christian sacred, Manna-like Eucharistic bread. Two arguments are put forward. First, Early Christian interpreters of the Manna avoid Eucharistic overtones and prefer an allegorical explanation of the Eucharist as God’s word, Jesus’ message, etc. Second, and following this first observation, the hypothesis faces a serious chronological discrepancy. When Christians developed the Manna-Eucharist typology, the rabbinic blessing over bread had already been well-established for at least two centuries. This paper concludes that the formulation and function of the blessing over bread do not stem from Jewish-Christian polemics regarding the religious significance of bread.