# Talk:Salt

This sentence is marked as needing a better source:

In the Middle East, salt was used to ceremonially seal an agreement, and the ancient Hebrews made a "covenant of salt" with God and sprinkled salt on their offerings to show their trust in him.
There is wording about sprinkling grain offerings with salt, in Leviticus 2:11-13 (and a covenant is mentioned), but the text does not give any reason why salt was used in this context.  The phrase "covenant of salt" also occurs elsewhere, e.g., in 2 Chr 13 (in reference to an entirely different covenant), but again there is no detailed explanation of what the salt signifies.  In the absense of any reliable source for the interpretation, I propose that we de-editorialize the content as follows:

In the Middle East, salt was used ceremonially, e.g., the ancient Hebrews made a "covenant of salt" with God, sprinkling salt on their grain offerings to him.
It's _interesting_ to speculate about why the salt was used and what it meant, but this is an encyclopedia and as such not the correct venue for such speculation.  The mere fact that salt was used, does seem germaine to the article, as it is an indicator of salt's cultural importance. --Jonadab, 2021 Nov 3

Second to last sentence in second to last paragraph of first section: "such as sea salt and table salt, which latter usually contains" -> "such as sea salt and table salt, the latter of which usually contains" (bolding mine) ReidLeek (talk) 16:57, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for picking that up. HiLo48 (talk) 22:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I have just rewritten a paragraph about uses in the Bible and in Christianity in the "In religion" section. The edit itself is here: Special:diff/1235024798 and the old and new versions are added below for reference.
First of all, the paragraph said that there are 35 verses mentioning salt in the Hebrew Bible, sourced to a search results page in an online version of the King James Version. This is problematic for several reasons: the Hebrew Bible and the KJV are not the same text; there is an implied claim that the English word "salt" is represented in exactly 35 verses in the Hebrew source text; carrying out a text search and presenting the result is original research. 
Secondly, the inclusion of multiple Bible verses with details about book, chapter and verse came across as WP:UNDUE, especially as there is an article about Salt in the Bible. I removed one of the instances and the mentions of specific chapters and verses; I think the remaining mentions are relevant because they cover different uses of the term.
Thirdly, the paragraph combined the salt-in-the-Bible discussion with a discussion of uses in Christian rites. I split the paragraph, since only the New Testament instance is specifically relevant to Christianity.
I also intend to merge content from Thursday salt into the Christian rites paragraph (which is why I started looking at it more closely). --bonadea contributions talk 10:29, 17 July 2024 (UTC) 

Great change! Suriname0 (talk) 14:37, 17 July 2024 (UTC)


### Salt