This is the Factual Question forum and asking about a mythological event is not an FQ topic.
Many people believe the mythological event was historical, or at least based on something historical. Asking about that is an FQ. Even if the answer is “it never happened”.
Sure it is- I can ask “In the Greek Myths, how many women did Zeus seduce or rape?” and get a factual answer. Not that we think Zeus was real, but what the Myths say.
It is already stale and never goes bad. We are still using some matzoh we bought in a five pound lot nearly two years ago and it is indistinguishable from the fresh kind. Although we will buy some fresh for this Passover.
If there actually was such an order, it came from God. If He wanted us to know His intentions, He would have told us. If it’s just a myth, then the question is meaningless.
“When you’re a god you don’t need reasons”
- Terry Pratchett
You leave out a third option - someone who wasn’t a deity ordered the Israelites to not leaven their bread (for some reason) and that order has been mythologised into an order from a deity.
If you assume the events in question have a historical basis - and I do appreciate the evidence for that is thin at best - this third option seems plausible. Religious leaders do have a propensity for insisting their orders are orders from a deity.
Another possibility was that they up and left in a hurry, and the only bread practical to take with them was the unleavened kind - “we only had unleavened bread” morphing into “we only made unleavened bread” as the story repeated. And since God wanted them to leave, then God intended them to make it that way. Or they took the harvest festival bread that was always made that way for that feast day on God’s orders, except this time it became travelling rations.
Plenty of roon for speculation.
I’ve only had matzoh in ball form in chicken soup. I had heard it described as like a saltine cracker without the salt - is that close? A cracker will go soft if exposed to humidity, is matzoh more stable than that?
Unleavened bread does not have to be dry and stale, but if you want it to have a shelf life of decades, you need to bake it and keep it dry.
Here is a 150-year-old hardtack biscuit; I’d still eat it, it’s fine (though note the comment about worms, if they get exposed to humidity and so on):
Matzos seem to be impervious to humidity. They’re very dry and hard - whereas, saltines are more delicate in texture (and, BTW, saltines are leavened with yeast).
The soft matzos only keep for about a day unless frozen
Matzo that’s not kept dry will go stale. That being said, I’m eating some of last spring’s matzo with cheese right now, for lunch.
Did someone say “hardtack”?
Left Babylon in a hurry? I guess it’s possible, although all indications are the return was a leisurely affair over nearly a century.
A matzoh is much stiffer than a saltine. I guess it might go soft in a very humid environment but with modern air conditioning that does not seem to be a problem.
Ancient matzo was soft and round, like pita. Crisp matzo is a more recent invention.
The “Hillel sandwich” served at the Seder would historically have been more like a burrito.
Prior to the late 18th century, all matzah was soft and relatively thick, but thinner, crisper matzah later became popular in parts of Europe due to its longer shelf life. With the invention of the first matzah-making machine in France in 1839, cracker-like mass-produced matzah became the most common form in Europe and North America and is now ubiquitous in all Ashkenazic and most Sephardic communities.
I feel short changed. A wrap would be way better.
They modified the exodus-from-Egypt dry menu for the return from Babylon? Maybe because there they were by the waters.
You mean the leeks.
