ELI5: Why are people referred to as “Salt of the Earth” as a positive when from what I’ve heard salting the earth is bad and prevents crops from growing?
ELI5: Why are people referred to as “Salt of the Earth” as a positive when from what I’ve heard salting the earth is bad and prevents crops from growing?
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“Salt of the Earth” references Jesus Sermon the Mount. There are many interpretations of it., one is that Salt in ancient times was valuable, so being ‘Salt of the Earth’ could have meant that the people had value.
“Salt of the Earth” is a biblical saying referring to people whom he was describing as pure, valuable, and resistant to corruption. It does not refer to salting literal dirt, and it was a much stronger allusion in its time, where salting food was among the primary methods of keeping it good.
It’s a biblical figure of speech. The exact meaning isn’t know but one theory is it’s referencing rock salt caves where people would store meat so that the rock salt would also season the meat.
I think it means that ideally Christians should be good people and help those around them and therefore spread Christianity like salt spreads flavor and improves the taste of the food it touches.
It’s an American expression to describe some who is the opposite of Hoighty Toighty, overly fancy or just plan stuck up.
Salt is part of the earth like dirt is on the ground. It is everywhere taken for granted yet omnipotent. People described as being salt of the earth means they are unpretentious, grounded and will probably not lie to you.
You don’t need to salt your food to keep it edible, so it’s lost it’s meaning.
You know the whole “salt the doors/a circle to keep out demons” thing? It’s because, when salt preservation was critical to safe food, salt was strongly associated with purity. It was precious and pure, not only incorruptible but actively fought corruption.
“Salt of the earth” is comparing faithful, pure people to that image of salt.
Combine that with a lot of Christ’s rhetoric around the meek, working people vs the rich, braggards/performatively religious types, etc… and it’s often carried through that these were quiet, working folks on top of their piety.
Perhaps the phrase would be better understood as “salt from the earth”. It definitely should not be understood as having any relationship to salting soil.
“Salt of the earth” would imply salt extracted from a salt mine: crystalline sodium chloride, likely deposited in an ancient seabed that evaporated away, leaving large salt deposits. That’s how we get things like (legitimate, rather than faked) “Himalayan pink salt”; it isn’t “sea salt”, but rather mined rocks made of salt with trace impurities turning it pink.
Pure salt was extremely valuable in the ancient world, as salt was one of the few preservation methods that would essentially always work if done correctly, and good sources of salt were much harder to come by. At some points in the past, people were outright paid in salt, hence the phrase “worth one’s salt”, meaning, their labor is worth paying a good wage for. (This is where we get the term “salary” by the way; it comes from the Latin salarium, itself derived from sal, salt.)
So salt had associations of purity, cleanliness, great value, and preservation/resistance to corruption. Hence, for Jesus to call those who fully followed his teachings “salt of the earth” meant they were pure salt, freshly extracted from a mine, ready to be put to use preserving and purifying the world through their deeds.