showbread

Showbread (), in the King James Version shewbread, in a Biblical or Jewish context, refers to the cakes or loaves of bread which were always present, on a specially-dedicated table, in the Temple in Jerusalem as an offering to God. An alternative, and more appropriate, translation would be presence bread, since the Bible requires that the bread be constantly in the presence of God (). The twelve loaves were ritually consumed in the presence of God each week by the Aaronic priesthood ().

==Biblical references== thumb|right|upright=1.2|Illustration of the temple priests replacing the showbread each week Within the Torah, the showbread is mentioned exclusively by the Priestly Code and Holiness Code, but certain sections of the Bible, including the Books of Chronicles, Books of Samuel, and Books of Kings, also describe aspects of them. In the Holiness Code, the showbread is described as twelve cakes baked from fine flour, arranged in two rows on a table; each cake was to contain "two tenth parts of an ephah" of flour (; approximately 5 pounds or 2 kg). The biblical regulations specify that cups of frankincense were to be placed upon the rows of cakes, and the Septuagint, but not the Masoretic Text, states that salt was mixed with the frankincense; the frankincense, which the Septuagint refers to as an anamnesis (a hapax legomenon), constituted a memorial (azkarah), having been offered upon the altar to God ().