Hot Cross Buns

[Ben C. Smith]

Ancient representations of bread:

[Secret Alias]

Here is the Konija relief:

[Secret Alias]

So some authority claims that the twice scored bread was so done so as to break open into quarters. I think I've seen a show about this on TV.

[Secret Alias]

Here it is explicitly in a cookbook:

Use a knife to score the dough with a cross so that the baked bread will divide easily into quarters. https://books.google.com/books?id=hI8C1 ... 22&f=false

[Secret Alias]

It must have been common practice long before Christianity which only later became a specific symbol of the religion. I just imagine bakers making hundreds of loaves quickly going 'tak, tak' with their knives on the unleavened loaves. Totally unconsciously.

[Secret Alias]

... but then again a loaf preserved at Pompeii shows that twice scored wasn't always the case:



http://ridiculouslyinteresting.com/2013 ... t-pompeii/

[Secret Alias]

Maybe it was only twice scored because these were small loaves (why would you put four scores on a cupcake sized loaf?)

[DCHindley]

I'm not sure what to make of it, but this actually surprised me!

D. Jason Cooper, Mithras, p. 142

Murals showing the communion show bread being used, and that bread is sometimes in the form of wafers or small cakes with a cross on them.

D. Jason Cooper, Mithras, p. 143

Other representations of the Sacred Meal of bread and wine show more detail. In the Konjic relief for instance. the Pater and the Heliodromus partake of wine and small cakes or loaves of bread marked with a cross.

I don't know enough about art in antiquity or ancient iconography to rule out the simplest possible explanation -- that this was just a commonplace (??maybe??) for representing bread in art.

Bread was frequently baked in the form of a small bun maybe a half foot (1/6 meter) wide with a knife cut from side to side and top to bottom. It was just the way bread was baked, to be divided into four quarters. I do not think that the " + " that the cuts made need represent the Christian "Cross".

DCH

[Ulan]

I agree with what has been said about the bread.

Aside from that, there's also the aspect that artists were most probably not working only for a specific faith, which means that artworks for different customers had the tendency to look similar.

[Peter Kirby]

I do not think that the " + " that the cuts made need represent the Christian "Cross".

FWIW, ... I also do not think anyone said that it did.