Quote:
Originally Posted by Suannehill
By tradition and teaching...leaven is negative in both Christian and Jewish faiths.
We can't avoid leaven on this earth.
As a baker of yeast breads since a child I can tell you that yeast is everywhere. In fact, that's what sourdough bread is...wild yeast...just expose it to the air.
Vinegar is made with wild yeast from the air and don't forget our bodies, some of the most resistant infections are yeast.
So, it's easy to see positive and and negative aspects of yeast.
However, spiritually...yeast is negative.
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I don't think it's always negative. Just like birds aren't always negative.
Lee decided the parable of the mustard seed was negative because he thought birds (of the sky) were negative. But that's forcing a meaning on the verse based on another flawed concept. Birds aren't always negative (doves, eagles, sparrows). Take away the idea that birds refer to bad angels and the overwhelming import is that this is a positive parable about the growth of the kingdom from small things.
In the same, way Lee decided that leaven was always negative, and so interpreted the the parable of the leaven negatively. He used the bias against women in the LRC to strengthen this interpretation (a woman hid the leaven!) But the parable of the leaven is likely a positive parable, not a negative one.
This from Smith's Bible Dictionary:
Another quality in leaven is noticed in the Bible, namely, its secretly penetrating and diffusive power. In this respect it was emblematic of moral influence generally, whether good or bad; and hence our Saviour adopts it as illustrating the growth of the kingdom of heaven in the individual heart and in the world at large: because (1) its source is from without; (2) it is secret in its operation; (3) it spreads by contact of particle with particle; (4) it is widely diffusive, one particle of leaven being able to change any number of particles of flour; and because (5) it does not act like water, moistening a certain amount of flour, but is like a plant, changing the particles it comes in contact with into its own nature, with like propagating power.