Chili

Nice passage. Notice "a man from Baal" bringing "firsts fruits" to "the man of God." First fruits are religious indoctrinations from the soul to the conscious mind. The servant was doubt, no doubt, and the remainder will be the many questions that come afterwards. "Set out" means "entered the race" after the gift of discernment first convicted them as sinners (Gal. 2:17). Fitheenth day is mid-way in the second chance on life = after rebirth and hence their departure from Egypt towards the promised land as saved-sinner. That is the exactly reason why Jesus had to die and told us to do the same for which reason he reminded us all in Jn.6 about the journey described here. That is exactly what is wrong here. The bread came to Moses and he was to distribute it among his people which would make it second hand to them. Isn't that much like trying to feed the same oats to a horse twice? And this was the beginning of slavery."I'll say" and their complain was for good reason.Because you are the one who deserves a millstone around your neck.Nothing has changed and if things go wrong don't blame Billy Graham but blame it your own faith in the Lord.Stand fast in your promise of salvation and reclaim it by will if you have to.Renewed hope and wishfull thinking.The point here is that if the bread does not become the body of Christ you will not know the Lord.Instead they received fear and oblivion but not even Morning Star to announce a new day.And how much we "need" will depend on the strenght of the wine of Gods wrath we drank that was poured in the cup of his anger.If you are not allowed to ponder the aftertaste of Gods wrath he is asking for you to have a lobotomy and I can't blame them for questioning their destiny at about this time in life. But I agree, it takes courage to deny your faith. This reminds me of the prevailing spirit of Laodicea (Rev.3:14-19)."None" on the sabbath is bad news for that should be the holy day where the previous six day come to fruition and therefore evening will not follow on that day. The seventh day is the completion of Israel and so the Lord is telling Moses that they will never complete te race they started when they left Elim in Egypt. Patient endurance is introduced here.Bittersweet.And now he wants your money on top of it all.
Sorry about this folks but that is how I see it.

the_cave

Why do you ask, Vork?

Uh, isn't the traditional interpretation much more mundane and sensible?

I have always assumed this was a reference to the twelve apostles and the seven deacons. Though let me be more accurate:

There was (either actually or mythically, or somewhere inbetween take your pick) a mass feeding by Jesus and his disciples. This became a gospel element--perhaps it was in one of the original gospels (the "signs" gospel, for example).

Except it got re-told different ways, once with twelve baskets at the end, another time with seven.

At any rate, the bread that was broken--which must somehow refer to early eucharistic practices--was gathered up again into 7 or 12 baskets. This represents the gathering of the leadership of the community under the authority of 12 (or 7) leaders, the apostles (and/or the deacons).

Robert Price suggests that there may have been a tradition that there were seven disciples, which, if there was such a tradition, may help explain the discrepancy in the different retellings (and/or it may even explain the tradition of the 7 deacons.)

That's it. The 5 and the 5,000 or 4,000 are less important details. "5,000" may simply have represented "a very big number", so there were 5 loaves in the story simply to represent "see? only one loaf per thousand." The 4,000 may simply have been an accidental error in the retelling of the tale.

The point of the story was that many people were fed by little food--food which represented the mystical body of Jesus. Those that were fed became led by the apostles (however many there were).

Clivedurdle

I thought that type of thing was not some Markian writing habit, but an attempt by someone to translate - to explain to people with a different main language.

The earlier comments about the loaves going to the priests and laity and the two stories being different sides of the same coin makes sense.

It probably is another example of how the chosen people now includes the whole world, illustrated by an allusion to temple practice.

The word Timaeus is very interesting - maybe it is an indirect reference to Plato.

Vorkosigan

<red face, mumble> Didn't know the traditional interpretation. <scuffs ground with foot>

See? I have never been a Christian as an adult, so was never taught this stuff. The TWELVE is clearly either an Israel reference or an apostle reference, but the FIVE threw me, and for the seven lots of things suggested themselves, from seven Churches in Asia to some arrangement of seven apostles.

Naw, I don't buy that. The whole thing is a creation of Mark based on the Elijah-Elisha tales, which direct his narrative:

Mark 6:30-44/2 Kings 4:38-44
a desert with no food available/a place with a famine
people who recognize Jesus come from all over/Elisha is meeting the prophets
two kinds of food inadequate (loaves and fish)/two kinds of food inadequate (loaves and grain)
disciples protest food is not enough/protests food is not enough
Jesus blesses the food/Elisha relates the word of the lord
And they all ate and had 12 baskets of leftovers/they ate and had some left over,
feeds 100/feeds 5000

Other OT relations... "Green grass" may refer to Psalm 23:2, while Exodus 18:25 may be the source of the division into "companies." (this is the first example of the miracle in Mark 6)

Robert Price suggests that there may have been a tradition that there were seven disciples, which, if there was such a tradition, may help explain the discrepancy in the different retellings (and/or it may even explain the tradition of the 7 deacons.)[/quote]

I don't like Price's analysis here.....

Maybe not accidental. I've come to have a certain respect for Markan error.

That's an excellent interpretation.

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

I thought of the seven deacons but dismissed it because they appear in Acts; it can't be said that Mark knew about them.

How traditional is it anyway? Can you quote a patristic writer on that?

As for the five, Vork, Irenaeus was able to come up with a lot of things with symbolism of five:

Adv. Haer. 2.24.4. But that this point is true, that that number which is called five, which agrees in no respect with their argument, and does not harmonize with their system, nor is suitable for a typical manifestation of the things in the Pleroma, [yet has a wide prevalence,186 ] will be proved as follows from the Scriptures. Soter is a name of five letters; Pater, too, contains five letters; Agape (love), too, consists of five letters; and our Lord, after187 blessing the five loaves, fed with them five thousand men. Five virgins188 were called wise by the Lord; and, in like manner, five were styled foolish. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord when He obtained testimony189 from the Father,-namely, Peter, and James, and John, and Moses, and Elias. The Lord also, as the fifth person, entered into the apartment of the dead maiden, and raised her up again; for, says [the Scripture], "He suffered no man to go in, save Peter and James,190 and the father and mother of the maiden."191 The rich man in hell192 declared that he had five brothers, to whom he desired that one rising from the dead should go. The pool from which the Lord commanded the paralytic man to go into his house, had five porches. The very form of the cross, too, has five extremities,193 two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails. Each of our hands has five fingers; we have also five senses; our internal organs may also be reckoned as five, viz., the heart, the liver, the lungs, the spleen, and the kidneys. Moreover, even the whole person may be divided into this number [of parts],-the head, the breast, the belly, the thighs, and the feet. The human race passes through five ages first infancy, then boyhood, then youth, then maturity,194 and then old age. Moses delivered the law to the people in five books. Each table which he received from God contained five195 commandments. The veil covering196 the holy of holies had five pillars. The altar of burnt-offering also was five cubits in breadth.197 Five priests were chosen in the wilderness,-namely, Aaron,198 Nadab, Abiud, Eleazar, Ithamar. The ephod and the breastplate, and other sacerdotal vestments, were formed out of five199 materials; for they combined in themselves gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen. And there were five200 kings of the Amorites, whom Joshua the son of Nun shut up in a cave, and directed the people to trample upon their heads. Any one, in fact, might collect many thousand other things of the same kind, both with respect to this number and any other he chose to fix upon, either from the Scriptures, or from the works of nature lying under his observation.201 But although such is the case, we do not therefore affirm that there are five Aeons above the Demiurge; nor do we consecrate the Peptad, as if it were some divine thing; nor do we strive to establish things that are untenable, nor ravings [such as they indulge in], by means of that vain kind of labour; nor do we perversely force a creation well adapted by God [for the ends intended to be served], to change itself into types of things which have no real existence; nor do we seek to bring forward impious and abominable doctrines, the detection and overthrow of which are easy to all possessed of intelligence.

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Jesus, Peter. What great stuff! I gotta get in the habit of looking at the Patristic fathers when I ask questions like this.

Mark has a thing for fives -- five conflict stories in Mark 2-3, two sets of five miracle stories, etc. Hmmmmm....could just be love of the number.

Chili

Or maybe it is because the pagan perspective cannot be entertained by the divine which begins at 6. In that case is it a narrative discipline by the author.

the_cave

Well, alright, let be back off slightly--I think this is a traditional interpretation...or it's been my understanding for a while that this is a traditional interpretation...I certainly can't believe I made it up!

Ah, seven churches in Asia, good point. I admit the seven kind of threw me for a long time, but it seemed fairly clear that the twelve baskets had something to do with the apostles. I also admit maybe it took me a while to put it all together. Also, now that I think of it, since, as you note, it is obviously an echo of the feast of manna during the exodus, the twelve baskets also represent the twelve tribes (which the apostles of course are also supposed to represent.)

Well, now it's my turn to be skeptical! Though I am somewhat interested in your project.

Yes, it's rather imprecise. I don't know what I believe of it. Price certainly has unusual ideas, but I often find the connections far less obvious than he makes them out to be.

Vorkosigan

I've got an incomplete list here, which I have recently updated. It probably won't be too clear, because the matching verses aren't in there, and the level of detail is still too low, and it is hard to see the skeleton of the thing spring out at you. This one has the framework in order, but has a lower level of detail. But you can see the structure of the gospel more clearly. There's some more parallels at the level of intermediate structures that I have to put in.

I was thinking about this passage (the Sanhedrin Trial) all yesterday, because it sits at a critical juncture between the Elijah-Elisha cycle, which Mark has been following, and Daniel 6, which he will pick up. The key to understanding it is to see that it is a doublet of Pilate's trial. Since Pilate's trial is founded on Daniel 6, but the Sanhedrin Trial has no higher-level structure controlling the flow of the narrative, it is obvious that the latter must double the former, not vice versa. It seems to me that AMark invented this trial to bridge the gap between his two superstructures. He'd got the meal, and the arrest was obvious, but how to get from the arrest to Pilate?

The interesting thing is that this dual superstructure of Elijah-Elisha cycle for the miracles/sayings on one hand, and Daniel 6 for the death/resurrection, corresponds to the "Galilean tradition" and the "Jerusalem tradition," what Crossan calls the LIFE and DEATH tradition, respectively, plus Q. This strongly suggests that the apparent problem resolving them is not a problem of history, but of the way Mark's gospel is constructed. In other words, the LIFE/DEATH traditions are literary artifacts.

Harold Liedner has found a superstructure for this in the Flaccus story from Philo, but I have not mapped out those structures yet. That would bridge this gap of dinner-arrest-trial, which would put part of my thesis in doubt. If Q existed that would be a strike against it as well. But personally I no longer have any doubt that Q is an artifact of NT scholar assumptions, as well as the desire to have an "independent" source for Jesus. Prediction: as the pendulum swings against John's indepedence, the defense of Q will become more and more shrill, and more and more conservatives will swing over to it.

Vorkosigan

pierneef

The Jesus Seminar has classified these passages as "Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later different tradition.....We would not include this item in the primary data base (of authentic or possible sayings by Jesus)"

The saying they conclude is simply Mark's invention and was taken over by Matthew but excluded by Luke.Mark had a predisposition to present the disciples as dense and obtuse, a view that Luke did not share. Mark is acting as commentator hinting at dire events to come, which the disciples seem incapable of comprehending.

Given that it is an interpolation, it isnt very significant or interesting.