Artos and Azumos

In English the word “bread” covers almost everything that comes out of an oven, from a soft loaf to a flat cracker. The Greek of the New Testament is more exact. It has one word for ordinary bread and another for unleavened bread, and its writers used them with care. When we want to know what Yeshua took in His hands at the Last Supper, the word each writer chose gives a precise answer.

Artos and Azumos

The first word is artos ἄρτος ar'-tos. It is the common, everyday word for bread, the bread of an ordinary meal. In ordinary use it means bread made with leaven, the kind of bread a household baked and ate on any day of the year. It can name any loaf, and that is why, when the Greek Bible speaks of unleavened loaves, it adds the second word, as in artous azumous, “unleavened loaves” (Exodus 29:2 in the Greek translation of the Torah). Its plural is artoi, breads or loaves.

The second word is azumos ἄζυμος ad'-zoo-mos. It is a technical word that means “without leaven.” It is built from the Greek word for leaven, zyme ζύμη dzoo'-may, with a prefix that means “not,” so that its very shape says “unleavened.” It is the word for the flat bread made without leaven, the bread the Jews call matzah. Its neuter plural, ta azuma, “the unleavened things,” is also used as the name of the Feast of Unleavened Bread itself.

The two words are not loose synonyms that a writer might swap for the sake of variety. If a Gospel writer wanted to say that bread was unleavened, he had to choose azumos. If he meant ordinary bread, he chose artos. The language gave him both, and the line between them was the line the Torah drew so firmly for the days of the feast.

Hebrew draws the same line with its own pair of words. Leavened food is chametz, and the flat bread without leaven is matzah. When the Torah commands “unleavened bread” for the seven days, the word is matzot, the plural of matzah. Greek-speaking Jews of the first century had azumos ready for exactly this purpose.

You can see how ordinary artos is from the places where Yeshua uses it of everyday life. He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), and the Greek is ton arton, the bread of each day. Answering the tempter, He quoted the Torah: “Man shall not live on bread alone” (Matthew 4:4), and the word is again artos. This is the bread of the household table, the bread people ate every day of the year.

When the Feast Is in View

The Gospel writers show that they knew the difference. When they speak of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they use azumos exactly. Matthew’s account of the last week is a clear example. He dates the disciples’ question about where to make ready by the name of the feast.

Matthew 26:17 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Yeshua and asked: "Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?"

In Greek the opening words are te de prote ton azumon, “now on the first of the unleavened.” The word ton azumon is the genitive plural of azumos. Matthew does not write “the first day of bread” or use some general word for the season. He uses the technical term, the name of the festival of unleavened bread, with full precision. He knew what the word meant and how it was used.

Mark and Luke date the same scene by the same name.

Mark 14:12 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed, His disciples said to Him: "Where do You want us to go and prepare for You to eat the Passover?"

Luke 22:7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.

How can the day on which the disciples went to prepare be called “the first day of Unleavened Bread,” when the Torah begins the unleavened bread with the evening of the fourteenth? The answer lies in the two ways of counting a day that we met in Chapter 4. A person’s “today,” from rising in the morning to sleeping at night, holds two biblical days. In AD 33 the daytime of the lived day of March 30 was the twelfth of Nisan, and in it the disciples were sent and finished the preparation (Matthew 26:19; Luke 22:13). When its afternoon was over and evening came, the thirteenth began, and that evening the supper was eaten. The Gospels name that lived day, its daytime the twelfth and its evening the thirteenth, “the first day of Unleavened Bread.”

Mark does the same when he dates the plot against Yeshua, “Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away” (Mark 14:1), and in Greek the word is ta azuma. Luke does the same: “Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approaching” (Luke 22:1), in Greek he heorte ἑορτή heh-or-tay' ton azumon. The next chapter gathers these verses and others like them. Whenever the feast and its unleavened bread are in view, the writers reach for azumos.

To the people of that day, these were not four different feasts. “The first day of Unleavened Bread,” “the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed,” the coming of the Passover feast, and “the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover” were all ways of naming one and the same season. Nor was it an age in which each person kept the feast as he pleased. It was an age that held to the written word so strictly that its leaders put Yeshua Himself to death on the ground of it.

John 19:7 The Jews answered him, "We have a nomos νόμος nom'-os(law), and by that nomos(law) He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God."

In such an age the words that named the feast were used with care, and they must be read as its people used them. A reading that sets aside the life of that time and measures the Gospels by the habits of our own day will go astray at exactly this point.

The Bread at the Table

Now turn from the date of the disciples’ question to the table itself. Matthew has just used azumos for the feast. A few verses later, he tells how Yeshua took bread at the supper.

Matthew 26:26 While they were eating, Yeshua took bread, and having given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: "Take, eat — this is My body."

The Greek reads labon ho Iesous ton arton, “Yeshua took bread.” The word is arton, a form of artos. Matthew, who has just written ton azumon for the feast, does not write azumos here. He writes artos, the ordinary word for ordinary bread.

If Matthew had wanted his readers to understand that the bread at the table was unleavened, he had the word in front of him. He had used it a few lines earlier. He chose instead the word that means common bread, the kind of bread a household ate on an ordinary evening, the kind of bread that was about to be cleared out of every house in Jerusalem.

What English Hides

Most English versions translate both words with the same English word, “bread,” and add “unleavened” only where the Greek uses azumos. A reader of English sees “Yeshua took bread” and pictures whatever bread he imagines a Passover table to hold. The plain word passes without notice, and a difference that a reader of Greek would see at once is easy to miss.

The YLV keeps other words of this family visible. Where Paul speaks of leaven, it gives the Greek word with its meaning, “zyme(leaven, corruption)” (1 Corinthians 5:6), so that the reader can see the root that azumos denies. Once you know that the Greek has two words for bread, the question becomes simple. Which word did the writers use for the bread of the Last Supper? The answer is not a matter of opinion or of church tradition. It is written in the Greek text, open to any reader who checks it.

Matthew used artos. That is one witness. But the case does not rest on Matthew alone. Mark, Luke, and Paul each told of the same moment, and each of them had the same choice to make between the two words. The next chapter calls all four witnesses to the table.