Luke 9:16-17

3 d. Luke 9:16-17. The Repast.

The pronouncing of a blessing by Jesus is an incident preserved in all four narratives. It must have produced a special impression on all the four witnesses. Each felt that this act contained the secret of the marvellous power displayed on this occasion. To bless God for a little is the way to obtain much. In Matthew and Mark, εὐλόγησε, He blessed, is absolute; the object understood is God. Luke adds αὐτούς, them (the food), a word which the Sinaïticus erases (wrongly, it is clear), in accordance with the two other Syn. It is a kind of sacramental consecration. John uses the word εὐχαριστεῖν, which is chosen, perhaps, not without reference to the name of the later paschal feast (eucharist). The imperfect ἐδίδου in Luke and Mark is graphic: “He gave, and kept on giving.”

The mention of the fragments indicates the complete satisfaction of their hunger. In John it is Jesus who orders them to be gathered up. This act must therefore be regarded as an expression of filial respect for the gift of the Father.

The twelve baskets are mentioned in all the four narratives. The baskets belonged to the furniture of a caravan. Probably they were what the apostles had provided themselves with when they set out. The number of the persons fed is given by Matthew and Mark here. Luke had mentioned it already in the 14th verse, after the reply of the disciples; John a little later (Luke 9:10), at the moment when the companies were being seated. What unaccountable caprice, if these narratives were taken from each other, or even from the same written source!

The criticism which sets out with the denial of the supernatural is compelled to erase this fact from the history of Jesus; and this miracle cannot, in fact, be explained by the “hidden forces of spontaneity,” by the “charm which a person of fine organization exercises over weak nerves.” It is not possible either to fall back, with some commentators, on the process of vegetation, by supposing here an unusual acceleration of it; we have to deal with bread, not with corn; with cooked fish, not with living creatures. The fact is miraculous, or it is nothing. M. Renan has returned to the ancient interpretation of Paulus: Every one took his little store of provisions from his wallet; they lived on very little. Keim combines with this explanation the mythical interpretation in two ways, imitation of the O. T. (the manna; Elisha, 2 Kings 4:42), and the Christian idea of the multiplication of the Word, the food of the soul. With the explanation of Paulus, it is difficult to conceive what could have excited the enthusiasm of the people to the point of making them instantly resolve to proclaim Jesus as their King! The mythical interpretation has to contend with special difficulties. Four parallel and yet original narratives wonderfully supplementing each other, a number of minute precise details quite incompatible with the nebulous character of a myth (the five loaves and the two fishes, the 5000 persons, the ranks of fifty, and the companies of a hundred, the twelve baskets), all these details, preserved in four independent and yet harmonious accounts, indicate either a real event or a deliberate invention. But the hypothesis of invention, which Baur so freely applies to the miracles recorded in the fourth Gospel, finds an insurmountable obstacle here in the accounts of the three other evangelists. How is criticism to get out of this network of difficulties? When it has exhausted its ingenuity, it will end by laying down its arms before the holy simplicity of this narrative.