MacNazarene's - Fast Food circa 30 CE

• Posted by radar pangaean May 30, 2011 - #  - 758 views

  I'm posting this one for my more liberal Christian friends. It's another cross-post from 5+ years ago on my personal blog. It's a different reading of one of the Biblical miracle stories.
  
  

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  I consider the persona associated the the legendary figure called 'Jesus' to be an interesting study. It's extremely doubtful to me that there was a historical individual who performed every, or even any, of the specific actions as recorded to have occurred durng his ministry in the the canonical Gospels, but i suspect that these legends are based upon a less 'colorful', but actual, historical figure. I'm even less convinced of the historicity of the nativity and resurrection myths and just assume those were later additions inserted into the legend because of 'god-envy' among the early Christians.

   

  I view the canonical and obscured gospels as a set of legends that grew up around an individual that some Jewish scholars refer to as "the teacher of righteousness", and find them to contain wisdom and some good spiritual advice if not taken too literally/seriously. Overall i think the teacher of righteousness was a pretty astounding guy and i think it would have been great if his message had managed to dominate the religion named for him instead of having it be side-tracked by Saul of Tarsus into some perverted variant of Pharisaic beliefs.

   

  Most of the details found in any specific gospel fail to make it into some of the other ones. That indicates soemthing pretty specific to me about their status as a record of factual occurrences vs legends that accrued over time, but i've covered that subject already in some of my other posts. Today, i would like to provide a different slant on the "miracle of the loaves and fishes" as described in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. I think a 'miracle' may well have happened that day, just not in the way that was recorded in a few of these gospels.

   

  First, let's let the gospels speak for themselves. Here's Mark's version in Chapter 6. That's the oldest of the canonical gospels:

   

  34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. 35 And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: 36 Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat. 37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat? 38 He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes. 39 And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. 40 And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties. 41 And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. 42 And they did all eat, and were filled. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. 44 And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.

   

   

  Matthew wrote shortly after Mark apparently mostly just copying what Mark had written, but many of his versions of the stories seem to have picked up some new 'details' in the ensuing years. In chapter 14 he gives this account:

   

   

  14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick. 15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals. 16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat. 17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. 18 He said, Bring them hither to me. 19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. 20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. 21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

   

   

  It appears to me that Matthew liked this story in Mark so much that he used it twice. Biblical scolars call this framing, a technique Matthew used multiple times to provide conrast before and after a key story. In the next chapter of his gospel we get it pretty much the same.

   

   

  30 And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them: 31 Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel. 32 Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. 33 And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude? 34 And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes. 35 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. 36 And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. 37 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full. 38 And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

   

   

  I believe that most legends have some basis in fact. I also believe that a true miracle would be worthy of note by anyone writing about the person who performed it. I know all you literalists will attempt to put forth some well-used bit of sophistry to explain away the lack of this story occurring in Luke and John somehow, as well as rationalizing why Matthew would have failed to mention the 2nd occurrence, but i'll stick with Occam's Razor here and go with the more logical explanation for the various discrepancies.

   

  In my opinion, this legend probably records a more significant 'miracle' than the magic trick of multiplying some fixed number of fish sandwiches into thousands of them. Here's my explanation for a *possible* event that could have served as the real source of this later-inflated story.

   

  isn't it a bit unlikely that anyone who could manifest thousands upon thousands of loaves and fishes would need a few starter items to accomplish the task? What... "I can create food from nothingness, but i need a really good model to fous on" ??? That's the story detail that gave me a clue to what i think really happened that day.

   

  In all these variants of this event, they start off indicating that a lot of people collected around Jesus in a short time because they wanted to hear him preach. The later versions of these stories in Matthew add in lots of healing miracles along with the preaching, but the earlier version in Mark was recorded before the Jesus legends had grown to accumulate those extra miracles so it doesn't say anything about the healings. However, all of the versions of these stories share a few specific features:

   

   

• lots of people had gathered together to hear Jesus preach
• they were there long enough that they would be getting hungry
• the main disciples were concerned that there was no way to feed them
• the disciples (or someone) initially offered up a small amount of food that they had brought, presumably for themselves alone, when Jesus asked what was available
• suddenly there was more than enough food for everyone there

 

 

We have an indication of the general tone of the teachings of JC recorded in the Sermon on the Mount. His messages seemed to focus on peace, harmony, humility, generosity, and that type of theme. I think things may have gone something like this in the possible historical event which inspired the miracle story:

 

The teacher of righteousness had accrued a large following one day, but the people had come in smaller groups of people who did not know the members of any of the other groups very well. They listened to sermons about self-sacrifice and generosity for a few hours, but eventually the hours wore on and some of them became hungry. It is my guess that some groups had brought more than enough food to meet their own needs, so this wasn't an issue for them, while others had not done so. Possibly someone saw this problem and offered food to a stranger, and the teacher of righteousness then exhorted others to do so. Possibly the teacher or his disciples noted the problem first, and the teacher of righteousnes called upon those present to offer up what they had to meet the needs of their fellows there in attendance, possibly blessing those who first stepped forward to perform this act of charity. Once presented with this request from the man who had been preaching on exactly this topic for hours, the majority of the attendees were moved to share their bounty with those less well prepared and it turned out that there was enough food for everyone present.

 

Now, this isn't the way the story is presented in the book, so i understand that even considering this is off limits to a few of you. That's fine. But, as a very wise man once said: "Let those who have ears listen":-).

 

If i was the creator of the whole universe it wouldn't really be that much of a miracle for me to manifest a few brown bag lunches. In my opinion, my take on this story reflects better both on the true spiritual power and influence of the teacher of righteousness, and on the character of the people in attendance that day. I suppose that the story as told would reflect a miracle occurring that day, but isn't it a more inspiring possibility to think that on that day the words of 'Jesus' touched the hearts and minds of thousands of people who had previously been thinking only of themselves sufficiently that they were inspired to share freely with people they didn't know. In my way of thinking, that's a much better miracle.