Feeding the multitude
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"The Feeding of the 5000" redirects here. For the Crass album, see The Feeding of the 5000 (album)
Feeding the multitude (also known as The miracle of the loaves and fishes) is the name of two miracles attributed to Jesus, the first of which is reported by all four of the canonical Gospels of the Christian religion (, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), while the second is reported by Mark and Matthew but neither Luke nor John. The first is the only miracle present in both the narrative of the Gospel of John and that of the Synoptic Gospels.
According to the narrative of the canonical Gospels, the first event happened after Jesus had been teaching in an area away from the towns, and insists that the people be fed where they are, rather than sending them to the nearest towns. The Synoptics state that the location was a "desert place" near Bethsaida, while John does not state a specific location, only specifying that it was very grassy.
The canonical Gospels all report that, upon investigating the provisions of the crowd, the disciples were only able to find 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and the Gospel of John adds that these came from a single boy in the crowd. The Gospels state that Jesus blessed the food, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, who distributed it to the 5000 people present, all of them being fed. The Gospels also state that after the meal was over, the disciples collected the scraps, filling 12 baskets.
The second event, according to Mark and Matthew, occurred when Jesus was teaching a crowd of about 4000 in a remote location. Like before, Jesus is described as taking the few provisions available, and giving grace, before distributing them amongst the crowd. In this event there are 7 loaves and an unspecified number of fish, and 7 baskets of scraps are collected.
Explanations in the New Testament
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is described as using the first event to illustrate a lesson to his disciples, arguing that the disciples look for him not because of the miracles, but because they ate the loaves and were filled up, and then instructing the disciples not to seek the meat which perishes but that which endures to everlasting life. This has often been interpreted as a veiled criticism by the author of John, of people who consuming the teachings of Jesus (ate the loaves) but do not value a miraculous nature of Jesus himself.
Mark, however, presents a much more esoteric explanation, implying that there is something significant about the numbers involved, that had been so carefully emphasised in the text. After the second event, modern texts of Mark state that the disciples left in a boat for Dalmanutha, but some early texts of Mark state that it was Magdala, home of Mary Magdalene, that they went to, and Matthew states that they went to the similarly named Magadan. Once there, the Pharisees are described as requesting a miracle from Jesus, but Jesus criticises the request, and states that no miraculous sign would be given to that generation. The ancient Gnostics argued that this implied that the resurrection of Jesus was a not an actual physical event, since it would otherwise clearly be a miraculous sign, but that it should instead be understood as allegory or doceticly.
Mark goes on to state that after this response, Jesus and the disciples left in a boat, and at the other side of the lake discover they have only one loaf of bread with them, to which Jesus responds watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod ([Mark 8:15]). Mark states that the disciples interpret this as criticism of them for not bringing enough bread, but Jesus soon corrects them, and criticises their lack of understanding. Jesus is then described as giving a rather cryptic explanation of the food miracles, by asking the disciples how many baskets of scraps were collected at each event, and then questioning do you still not understand?.
Meaning
The two stories of the feeding of the multitude have long been thought to have hidden meaning, particularly due to Mark's later cryptic reference to them. In early times the feeding of the 5000 with 5 loaves was interpreted as being a reference to the five books of the Torah feeding the Jews, with the 12 scraps being the 12 tribes of Israel, or more usually the 12 disciples who, after Judaism, were left over.
In view of the context of Mark's account of the first miracle, it is also possible that there is an implicit comparison with King David. David, when he first ran from King Saul, fed his small group of followers, those who acknowledged him as the rightful king, with the priest's bread, asking the priest "Give me 5 loaves, or whatever you have" (I Samuel 21:3). In Mark 6, Jesus "saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd" (Mark 6:34), and he seated them on the "green grass" (Mark 6:39) in the middle of the wilderness. Under this interpretation, Jesus would be feeding those who wanted to hear his teaching, as the new David, and yet still having enough left over for all Israel besides (12 baskets of fragments/ 12 tribes of Israel in the Old Testament/ 12 apostles as the leaders of the "New Israel" in the New Testament).
The feeding of the 4000 was historically regarded as far more cryptic, and though there was generally an agreement that the 4000 probably would represent the gentiles, since their feeding followed after the one that had strong Jewish themes, there were various different interpretations of the 7s in the narrative; for example, one interpretation had the 7 leftovers being the 7 early major Christian geographic divisions and the 7 loaves as the Jewish menorah, representing the Temple, and so the temple being superseeded by the Christian Churches. When taken along with the Israelite connections of the first miracle, the 4000 could be taken to signify people from all over the earth (the earth, in a Jewish conceptual cosmology, has 4 corners). The number 7 often bears the significance of wholeness, completeness in the Old Testament. A full week has 7 days; on the 7th day, God rests because his work is finished. Then there are 7 baskets left over, because Jesus can meet the needs not only those who have come to him here, but the whole, complete earth besides.
However, some of these interpretations were often arbitrary, and many would not be plausible at the time the Gospels were written; the Torah, for example, was at that time considered only 1 book, and was not divided into 5 until later. In consequence, there has been much speculation that the correct interpretation might be along lines similar to cryptic writings of Greek mysticism, such as Platonism. For example, there have been several attempts throughout history to regard the numbers as an instruction set for creating a mystic diagram, taking the gematria of the text into account.
More cynical and critical interpretations point out that the exact literal Greek text states only that Jesus displayed the loaves and fish, and did not give them out, suggesting that the text is a slight of hand - that the scraps were donations for the meal of the disciples themselves, and the multitude fed themselves by some other means. More curiously, although not normally translated in this manner, the word-for-word literal translation of the Greek text states that, when feeding the multitude, Jesus told the disciples give to them yourselves to eat, implying either cannibalism or an extremely allegorical narrative.
There is an increadibly similar tale told in the, pre-Christian, book of the dead, in which Horus feeds a similar number of people with a similarly small amount of bread. As a deity whose worship was centred on the Egyptian capital, Heliopolis, often known as the house of bread, which was where people would amass to obtain bread from the winter grain stores, this story isn't unusual, for Horus. This similarity is often listed as one of the many similarities between Horus and Jesus, by those who believe that parts of or the whole of the accounts of Jesus' life in the Gospels are fabrications, and derived in part by syncretism from mystery religions of the era, particularly that of Osiris-Dionysus.
The very few scholars who interpret the episode as neither allegory, nor miraculous, nor as having encoded meaning, occasionally see the second story as simply being a doubling of the first, with only a few numbers changed.
Theological motifs
The initial misunderstanding of the disciples is sometimes seenThe town of Tabgha is traditionally identified as the location of the first event.
References
- HarperCollins Bible Commentary, 2000
- Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament Doubleday 1997 ISBN 0385247672
- Kilgallen, John J. A Brief Commentary on the Gospel of Mark Paulist Press 1989 ISBN 0809130599
External links
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