The Feeding of the Five Thousand: John 6:1-21

The sixth chapter of John is composed of three sections: first, the miracle of Jesus' feeding the 5,000 (6:1-21); second, Jesus' sermon on the Bread of Life in the synagogue in Capernaum (6:22-51); third, his listeners' reaction to the Bread of Life sermons (6:52-71). I will devote a separate column to each of these sections. Feeding the Five Thousand (Jn. 6:1-21) To understand the first section of John 6 we need to notice the broader context of the events. The first thing to note is that this is one of the relatively few chapters where all four Gospels record the same story. Paralleling John 6:1-15, the feeding of the 5,000 is also described in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:32-44, and Luke 9:10-17. Furthermore, and rather uncharacteristically, some of the parallel incidental details are quite exact: The disciples need 200 denarii (a silver coin, about a day's wage) to buy enough food to feed the multitude (Mk. 6:37; Jn. 6:7). Only five loaves and two fish are available (Mt. 14:17; Mk. 6:38; Lk. 9:13; Jn. 6:9). There are twelve baskets remaining after the people are fed (Mt. 12:20; Mk. 6:43; Lk. 9:17; Jn. 6:13). Five thousand men are fed (Mt. 12:21; Mk. 6:44; Lk. 9:14; Jn. 6:10). Following this event, Jesus walks on the Sea of Galilee (Mt. 14:22-33; Mk. 6:45-52; Jn. 6:16-21). From the perspective of textual and literary analysis of the Gospels, this passage is very interesting since it provides such detailed parallels among the four Gospels. As I have discussed earlier, the precise nature of the relationship and possible interdependence of the four Gospels is debated among scholars, with parallels like these understood as evidence of historicity, of shared oral tradition, of literary dependence of some sort, or of outright fabrication. At its most basic level this story makes two points. First, Jesus has the miraculous power to provide food, a power attributed to God as Lord of rain and fertility in the Hebrew Bible. Second, this story highlights Jesus' compassion on the multitude by providing for their daily needs. In the Lord's Prayer (not found in John), Jesus teaches the disciples to pray to the Father to "give us our daily bread" (Mt. 6:11; Lk. 11:3). Here, Jesus, as God incarnate, miraculously provides precisely this requested daily bread. The Passover (6:4) John, however, adds two important details that shift the emphasis of this story in his Gospel. First, John notes that "the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand" (6:4), a detail not mentioned in any of the Synoptic Gospels. Now this is possibly simply a random detail, but given the fact that John pays careful attention to Jewish feasts, it is likely that John intends to make a point. If so, what is it? To answer this question we need to briefly look at the Passover Feast as celebrated in the first century. It is important to note that many of the traditions associated with the modern Jewish Passover Seder developed after the time of Jesus, while other earlier traditions have been largely forgotten or abandoned by modern Jews. The practice and meaning of Passover has thus changed through time. Here I will briefly examine only the basic meaning and practice of Passover at the time of Jesus. There were a number of key components in the first-century Passover (Ex. 12-13; Lev. 23:4-8; Dt. 16:1-8; 2 Chr. 30; 2 Chr. 35:1-19; Jubilees 49; Mishnah Pesaḥim ): Passover occurred on 14 Nissan, followed by the Feast of the Unleavened Bread (15-22 Nissan). Passover required a pilgrimage to the Temple (Dt. 16:5-8). Passover required sacrificing a lamb at the Temple at twilight (Ex. 12:1-6; Dt. 16:2, 6). Josephus claims there were over three million people who offered 250,000 sacrificed animals on Passover day, but this is probably hyperbole (Josephus, War , 2.280, 6.422-427). The first-century Passover was not fundamentally a time of family meals, but a time when several hundred thousand pilgrims brought tens of thousands of animals to be sacrificed by thousands of priests at the Temple during the few hours around sunset on the day of Passover. Passover was a feast of blood-offering. This was originally painted on the doorposts of the Israelites (Ex. 12:7), but by the time of Jesus, the Passover blood was instead poured on the altar at the Temple ( Mishnah Pesa ḥ im 5.5-8). Passover required eating only unleavened bread (Dt. 16:3-4). More of the details and specific practices of the Passover will be examined later in relation to John's Last Supper narratives. At this point, however, we need to note two Passover themes that appear in John 6: bread and blood. Passover cannot be undertaken without unleavened bread or without pouring the blood from the sacrificial lamb on the altar. The Bread and Blood of Life are two Passover symbols used by Jesus in his discourse in the follow section (Jn. 6:25-51), which I'll discuss next week. As a final observation, Passover was a time when the Jews brought food—lamb, bread, and blood— to God in his temple. In John 6, God, incarnate as Jesus, paradoxically brings the Passover meal to God's people. The Reaction of the People (6:14-15) John also uniquely adds a brief notice to this story describing the reaction of the people to this miracle. "When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, 'This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!'" (Jn. 6:14). This passage gives us the clue to John's ultimate point—that this miracle is a sign that Jesus is the Prophet like Moses described in Deuteronomy 18:15, 18. John is emphasizing that Jesus performed the same type of miracles that Moses did. Specifically John is drawing parallels to Moses, who provided miraculous manna/bread and quail/meat in the wilderness (Num. 11; cf. Elisha in 2 Kgs. 4:42-44). Here Jesus provides miraculous bread and fish. Step by step John is developing his case not just that Jesus can perform miraculous signs, but that these signs precisely parallel the types of signs that had been performed by Moses, thus showing Jesus to be the expected prophet like Moses. This miracle of feeding the 5,000 concludes in John with verse 15 where Jesus flees into "the mountain" when faced by people who want to "take him by force to make him king" (6:15). Paradoxically, this is precisely what Jesus proclaims—that he is king messiah (1:49, 12:13, 18:37). And, indeed in chapter 12:13 he accepts the mass royal acclamation that he is here avoiding. Why does he reject this acclamation at this time? It is possibly because at this point in chapter 6 "his hour had not yet come" (7:30, 8:20); while by chapter 12 his "hour has come" (12:23). It may also be, however, that Jesus is attempting to avoid an insurrection created by rebels seeking to promote Jesus as a militant messiah. In either case Jesus fled the very crowds whom he had just convinced that he was "indeed the Prophet" (16:14). As I shall discuss later, John's overall point here is that while Jesus is the true Messiah, many people were expecting a different type of Messiah. This disjunction between reality of Jesus as Messiah and the widespread contemporary expectation of a militant Messiah is part of the reason for the developing crisis that will culminate in Jesus' execution. While Jesus claims to be the Messiah, he fails in what was expected of the militant Messiah: the liberation of Israel and the reestablishment of the political Davidic kingdom. When Jesus fails to fulfill this expectation, many who initially saw him as the anointed king ultimately reject him, which helps to explain the paradox of the Messianic acclamation at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, followed by the same people rejecting him as king messiah only a few days later—a topic to which I'll return. Walking on the Sea of Galilee (Jn. 6:16-21) In this passage Jesus performs his most parodied miracle: walking on water. Like the feeding of the 5,000, this story is found in both John and the synoptic Gospels (Mt. 14:22-33; Mk. 6:45-52; Jn. 6:16-21; though only Matthew contains the story of Peter's walk). For John this passage has two meanings. First, it is simply another miracle or sign demonstrating Jesus' divinity, since walking on water is a physical impossibility. At their most basic level, all of Jesus' miraculous signs are demonstrations of his divine power and authority, and this one terrifies the disciples (6:19). It was not, however, a sign aimed at the conversion of the masses, since it was seen only by a few of the disciples who were riding in the boat. Remembering, however, that John is emphasizing in this chapter that Jesus is "indeed the prophet who is to come into the world"—that is, the prophet like Moses (Dt. 18:15, 18)—John has a more subtle point to make. While Moses never walked on water, Moses did control the waters and cause the children of Israel to miraculously cross the Red Sea (Ex. 14-15). Joshua and Elijah later performed similar miracles when crossing the Jordan River (Josh. 3; 2 Kgs. 2:8). So, just as Moses led Israel to salvation by miraculous control of the sea, so Jesus likewise miraculously crosses the sea to bring salvation to Israel. Perhaps more importantly, however, in the Hebrew Bible God is described as walking upon the sea. According to Job 9:8, God "stretched out the heavens, and walked upon the waves of the sea." The Greek Septuagint of Job 9:8 uses precisely the same Greek words found here in John 6:19: perpateō epi thalassēs. Thus, more than just imitating the miracles of Moses, when Jesus walks upon the sea he is acting just like God himself and thereby manifesting God's power. A full pdf version of this paper, with notes, can be found at: http://byu.academia.edu/WilliamHamblin/Papers/494622/John_6_1-21 or at DropBox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15865520/Enigmatic%20Mirror/EM-John%206a.pdf Updates and discussion can be followed on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/An-Enigmatic-Mirror/180889785272535