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Bible Dictionaries
Oven
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or OVEN (κλίβανος).—In the reference to fuel for the village oven (Matthew 6:30, Luke 12:28) the term ‘grass’ is used 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 employed 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 the bread cakes (Genesis 18:6, 1 Kings 17:12; 1 Kings 19:6). An improvement upon this is seen in the small villages, where the conditions of life are more stationary. The hollow is deepened a little more, and covered with large pebbles in order to retain the heat, and the bread is either laid upon these after the 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 plaster. The same kind of fuel is laid as before on the pebbles at the bottom, and the thin cakes are fired by 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 cushion-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 fired, it is placed upon the pile of bread on her other side. This is the ordinary oven for home-made bread in the villages, the tannûr of the OT and the simpler form of the klibănos of the NT. In the warning of Leviticus 26:26, the predicted scarcity of fuel and flour would be such 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 flour to make a baking to be done by one of them, and then receive by weight the share of bread belonging to each.
(3) The final form is that of the baker’s oven. The ordinary village usually has one of these, in which baking is done on three or more days of the 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 high, and eight feet broad, built in the bake-house. The pebbles of the primitive form are represented by a pavement of squared stone along the length and breadth of the semi-cylindrical vault. Upon it is laid fuel of the same kind as before, with an addition of thicker twigs and pieces of cleft wood, and the fire is kept up until sufficient heat has been produced. The hot ashes are then brushed off and banked up on each side, and the bread is laid on this cleared space of the hot stone pavement (Isaiah 44:19, Jeremiah 37:21). The heat is considerably greater than what is needed for the more gradual firing of our larger European loaf, and the Oriental oven thus became the emblem of vehement desire (Hosea 7:6-7) and the indignant anger of God (Psalms 21:9).
G. M. Mackie.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Oven'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/o/oven.html. 1906-1918.
