G. Wauchope Stewart.
OVEN
PALESTINE
293
OVEN (K\i^a.vos). — In the reference to fuel for tlie village oven (Mt 6*^, Lk 12^) the term 'grass' is usetl generally for any wild produce of the fields, including thorns and thistles.
The Bible references to the baking of bread correspond to the three principal methods now em- ployed in Palestine. (1) The simplest is that in use among the Bedouin or migratory Arabs of the desert. It is to make a slight hollow in the ground at the tent door, and burn upon it dry grass or twigs until sufficient hot ash is made for the baking of tile bread cakes (Gn 1S^ 1 K IT^- 19"). An im- provement upon this is seen in the small villages, where the conditions of life are more stationary. The hollow is deej^ened a little more, and covered with large pebbles in order to retain the heat, and the bread is either laid upon these after tiie ashes have been brushed aside, or, without removal of the ashes, the bread is laid upon a convex metal disc or griddle slightly raised above the fire-place. (2) The next stage of advance is seen in the large, pot-like hole dug in the ground, and lined with a smooth coating of i)laster. The same kind of fuel is laid as before on the pebbles at the bottom, and the thin cakes are fired bj' being placed for a minute on the hot concave surface of the oven. The work of baking is done by a woman who sits beside the oven, and from time to time adds a few handfuls of fuel. She has on one side the tray of dough from which she tears out a small piece, and after rolling it out into a thin cake she distends it still further by slapping it over one arm and then over the other. She then lays it upon a circular cusliion-like pad kept for the purpose, and thus applies it to the plaster surface of the pot oven. As each loaf, about a foot and a half in diameter and of wafer-like thinness, is rapidly firetl, it is placed upon the pile of bread on her other side. Tliis is the ordinary oven for home-made bread in tiie villages, the tannur of the OT and the simpler form of tiie klibdnos of the NT. In the warning of Lv 26-", tiie predicted scarcity of fuel and Hour would be sucii that ten women in one cluster or section of the village houses, instead of using in turn the same oven for their separate households, would have to unite their little stock of Hour to make a baking to be done bj' one of them, and tiien receive by weigiit tiie shave of bread belong- ing to each.
(3) The final form is that of tiie bakers oven. The ordinary village usually has one of these, in whicli baking is done on three or more days of tiie week, and the towns are furnished with a larger number in daily use on account of the increased
demand. The oven recess, instead of being a hollow in the ground, is now a vault about twelve feet long, four feet higli, and eight feet broad, built in the bake-house. Tiie peljbles of tlie primitive form are represented by a pavement of squared stone along tiie length and breadtii of the semi- cylindrical vault. Upon it is laid fuel of the same kind as before, Mith an addition of thicker twigs { and pieces of cleft wood, and the fire is kept up until sufficient heat has been produced. The hot aslies are then bruslied otf and banked up on eacli i side, and the bread is laid on tiiis cleared space of I the hot stone pavement (Is 44^'', Jer 37"-'). The ' lieat is considerably greater than what is needed j for tlie more gradual firing of our larger European 1 loaf, and the Oriental oven thus became the eni- I biem of veiiement desire (Ho T"- ') and the indig- j nant anger of God (Ps 21^). G. M. Mackie.
OWNER (Kvpios). — The word is found only once in the AV ( Lk 19^ ' The owners said (to the dis- ' ciples). Why loose ye the colt? '). Luke alone indi- cates that there was any question a.sked when the disciples prepared to take the colt away. Probably the answer which the disciples were instructed to give (' The Lord hath need of him." Lk 19^i-*^j was a prearranged sign lietween the owners and Jesus. Elsewhere in the Gospels the frequency of the occurrence of the word ' owner " is concealed from readers of the English versions by its translation as 'lord' (see art. LORD). ' Lord' (Ki'pios) has the sense of ' oAraer ' in the phrases ' the lord of the vineyard ' (Mt 20« 21^» i Mk 12^ ; Lk 20"). In the phrases, ' the servant is not above his lord ' (Mt lO--*), • the servant showed his lord these things ' (Lk 14-1), < tlie loj.^i of tiiat servant' (Lk 12^'-), the relationship is that of master (ov\Tier) and slave (SorXos). By translating SoOXos as 'servant," the fact is concealed fi'om English readers that slavery was an institution in the social life of the Jews. It was not so common among tiiem as among the Greeks and Romans, and the condition of the slave in the Jewish social economy was much hapjiier than in the Gentile world. The teiTible punishment mentioned in Lk 12*"' ('the lord of that servant . . . will cut him in sunder [5ixoTou.e~iv'\. and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers') is probably taken from the punishments wiiicii were practised in the Gentile world. It is, however, mentioned as a punisiiment in He IF'. On the diflerent inter- pretations of Lk 12^ see Godet, ad loc, and Meyer on Mt 24=^ See also art. SERVICE.