Snarkberry:
Bill, this has nothing to do with Christianity. This discussion is about rational thought and literary criticism. The field of battle just happens to be a couple of verses in Scripture (which is where Adam chooses to forego rational thought). (Of, course, I noticed that you still waded in with an opinion a couple of posts later < eg >.)
I never did find a “Full Life Study Bible” at Border’s this afternoon. I did find about seven other study bibles and (surprise!) every one of them (including the Scofield, the Nelson, and the Harper-Collins) said basically that while there are many instances in the New Testament where yeast/leaven is used as a metaphor for a corrupting influence, in the case of Mt 13:33 this was clearly not true–that the verse meant that the kingdom of heaven would grow from a small, insignificant object to a very large thing. (A couple of sources mentioned that the “three measures” would equal about fifty pounds of flour.) Coupled to the preceding parable about the miniscule mustard seed becoming an enormous shrub, this seems to make sense.
I was amused to discover that the MacKenzie Study Bible specifically had a statement (paraphrased here) that a few people, noting that leaven is often used as a symbol of corruption, have distorted the words of Jesus to mean that leaven in this verse represents corruption in the kingdom of heaven.
I had initially accused Adam of making up whatever he wanted the verse to say. I must now retract that accusation: there are people who say the same thing that he does. Of course, that leaves us with the fact that Adam will parrot whatever strange belief that those people hold, even when his/their interpretation is a violation of the text that they are reading.
Adam can try to claim two contradictory meanings if he wants, but it only proves the point of this whole thread.
The verse said that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven. If leaven is a symbol of evil, the only logical conclusion is that Jesus meant that the kingdom of heaven is like an evil thing. All the talk of “hiding” the leaven or anything else is irrelevant. There is no possible reading of the words in the text of that verse that can avoid equating the kingdom of heaven and leaven. If leaven must be evil, then the kingdom of heaven must be evil.
As another interesting sidelight, most of the commentaries pointed out that the reason that bread containing leaven or honey in the OT could not be sacrificed, was that the Jewish people recognized that there was “life” in the fermentation process. It was wrong to burn a living thing. (In holocausts, the sacrificial animals had to have been cleanly killed before the holocaust consumed them). In other words, the reason for not burning/sacrificing leavened bread was not because it was evil, but because it contained life.
No one denies that leaven is, indeed, used as a metaphor for evil in several places. Every legitimate scholar notes that the use of the leaven/evil metaphor is dependent on context.
Tom~
