Showbread (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Showbread, in the King James Version: shewbread, in a biblical or Jewish context, refers to the cakes or loaves of bread which were always present on a specially dedicated table, in the Temple in Jerusalem as an offering to God. An alternative, and more appropriate, translation would be presence bread, since the Bible requires that the bread be constantly in the presence of God. There is evidence of Jewish groups around the turn of the common era, such as the Qumran community at the Dead Sea, and the Therapeutae in Egypt, which seem to have regarded themselves as part of the main Jewish body worshipping at the Jerusalem temple, despite being geographically isolated from it, and, in the eyes of later Jewish thought, theologically distinct from it. There is dispute among scholarly groups as to whether the Qumran community was identifiable with the Essenes, but scholars do generally agree that there was an association between the Essenes and the Therapeutae.