I'm sorry, this intellectual dishonesty.
Why so aggressive? Calm down and read my posts again. It's not dishonest to suggest that there's more to an issue than what Wandile has to say about it.
My next post conclusively proved it was unleavened. The jewish historian Flavius Josephus actually lived during the second temple period and in his accounts of the time, with regards to the show bread , he explicitly says it was unleavened.
OK. Not that Josephus is infallible, but based on what you quoted, OK.
Secondly the Talmudic Jewish source and the Jewish encyclopedia too explicitly say it was unleavened.
You quoted the Jewish Encyclopedia thusly:
"Mention is made of the showbread in the story of David's adventure at Nob. Ahimelek, the priest, at David's request, gave him the "holy" bread, that is, the stale loaves that had been taken away and replaced by "hot" ones (I Sam. xxi. 4-6; comp. Matt. xii. 4; Luke vi. 4). In Solomon's Temple provision was made for the proper exhibition of the loaves (I Kings vii. 48; comp. II Chron. iv. 19, xiii. 11). not explicitly stated to be so, these cakes were most probably unleavened. It is true they were not offered upon the altar, from which leaven was scrupulously excluded (Lev. ii. 11); but, as most holy, they were carried into and exposed in the inner sanctuary, and therefore the supposition that the use of leaven in them was prohibited carries a high degree of probability" http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13611-showbread
I have bolded and underlined places where it seems clear to me that what is offered is a
high likelihood, but not an explicit certainty (as you would have me believe), that the showbread was unleavened. All I'm saying is that "probably unleavened" is not the same as "definitely unleavened, and you're an idiot if you think otherwise".
But right before the part you quoted, we read:
According to I Chron. ix. 32, the sons of the Kohathites had charge of the baking and setting in order of the "bread of the row," as the Hebrew describes it. It would thus seem that the preparing of these cakes involved certain information which was kept as a secret by this priestly set.
If the preparation of the loaves was a closely guarded priestly secret, this seems to underscore that the "high probability" of the bread being unleavened is just that: a probability and not an infallible certainty. Unless Josephus was a priest, I'm not sure how certain he could be...and if his certainty was undeniable, why the debate within the sources?
Thirdly it is guaranteed that the showbread was unleavened because the bread in the inner sanctuary was banned, by God in the bible, to be leavened in any form , as the Jewish encyclopedia and various other Jewish sources make note of this.
The prohibition was of leaven, not of leavened bread. That said, those sources argue that leavened bread was probably not used out of respect for that prohibition,
even though the showbread was not actually offered within the sanctuary, but only carried in and exposed. Read your own citations closely.
Further the bread was meant last for a week and be eaten on the following Sabbath. It would be wiser to use unleavened bread which took longer to rot and stayed fresh longer than leavened bread.
It might be wiser, but these things don't necessarily operate on the principle of what is practical.
If you think I'm some anti-RC Orthodox who wants to trash the tradition of using unleavened bread for the Eucharist, you are sorely mistaken. Were I to do that, I'd have to condemn my own Orthodox brethren. But there is a tradition in the Fathers of interpreting the ἄρτος/ἄζυμος distinction as leavened/unleavened, and I can't imagine that these words have as much of a semantic range as, for example, Christological or Trinitarian terms. I don't see a reason to reject their distinction by appealing to "ἄρτος is generic bread" argumentation as if that settles the matter definitively.
As an example:
Why do we offer leavened bread, and not unleavened bread (pathiro), like the ignorant and foolish Armenians do*? We call it bread (lahmo), [because] it is made from leaven, [that is] life. [But] pathiro is from dead things, that is from the flour and water alone. Whenever the Scriptures speak of bread (lahmo), it means leavened (hmiro) bread, not unleavened bread (pathiro). Instead of bread (lahmo), Moses used (pathiro) in his offerings, because he administered it prefiguratively. Christ did not say "I am the (pathiro) which descended from heaven", but rather "lahmo of life". Paul called the body lahmo, not pathiro (cf. I Cor. 10.16-17, 11:23). "The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven (hmiro) which a woman took and hid in three seahs (Mt. 13.33, Lk. 13.21). [This] hmiro is the Word [of God] who kneaded himself in the three families of Noah and enleavened them with true faith. Moses also offered leavened bread (lahmo hmiro) at the feast of Pentecost: "Two cakes of barley shall be baked with leaven" (cf. Lev. 23.17).
St Dionysius Bar Salibi, Commentary on the Eucharist, 6.8
*Though St Dionysius was in full communion with the "ignorant and foolish Armenians", he is known to be harshly polemical towards them when their customs differ from the rest of the Orthodox (or really any time he got a chance). Historians feel this has less to do with matters of faith than with his capture and imprisonment in 1156 at the hands of the Armenians, who pillaged a town under his episcopal jurisdiction.
Finally, I don't think you answered this question of mine:
Regarding Exodus 25:30 ... Again, in ancient Koine Greek artos doesn't mean "leavened bread", it just means "bread". In the Old Testament the "showbread" of the Temple is referred to as "artos", despite being unleavened.
You've claimed that ἄρτος is a generic word for bread, and not specifically "leavened" bread. Yet, in all instances you brought up except Ex. 25.30, it was modified with ἄζυμος so that we were clear on the fact that "unleavened" bread was being spoken of. What is the word for "leavened" bread, if not ἄρτος? Surely there is such a word for when we want to be certain that we are speaking of "leavened" bread?