TWO FEEDINGS
Mark’s gospel has two versions of the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes (6:34-44; 8:1-9).
HISTORICISTS EXPLANATION
The thing that strikes us first is perhaps the suspicion that a single basic sequence was passed on intact by means of a process of oral transmission which eventually allowed many of the details to change and develop, until there were (at least) two versions circulating by the time Mark encountered the tradition. They were different enough that he decided not to risk leaving either set out. Like a modern fundamentalist faced with a set of biblical contradictions, Mark may have assumed similar events happened twice. At any rate, the mere fact of the doubling of the story chain is highly significant, since it allows us to gauge the kind of variation and evolution that was possible in the oral tradition.
SEMITISM:
Semitisms are linguistic features within the Greek texts which are dissimilar and otherwise unused in the Greek language but common and well known in the Semitic languages and translations of Semitic texts such as the LXX.
Hebrew and Aramaic use particles or prepositions to indicate the case of a noun and its function in the phrase or sentence. (unlike Greek which has an inflectional noun declension), so overuse of nouns and pronouns connected to possession, nominative, and accusative case is extremely bizarre writing in Greek but normal in NW Semitic.
Redundancy of Nominal/Accusative/Genitive phrases
-συμπόσια συμπόσια 2x in Mark 6:39-42
Idiomatic Narrative Phrases
- ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν in Mark 6:37
- Ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις in Mark 8:1
- ἔκλασεν καὶ ἐδίδου in Mark 8:6
This would mean that there was a previous text which would have been translated from a Semitic language into Greek.
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MIRRORING THE SEPTUAGINT
The two sea miracles recall Moses’ parting the sea (Exod. 14), while the pair of feeding miracles mirror Moses’ feeding the Israelites in the wilderness with manna and quails (Exod. 16; Num. 11:4-15, 18-23, 31-32) and Elisha’s miraculous multiplication of food in 2 Kings 4:1-7 and 4:42-44.
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SOURCE Deconstructing Jesus, Dr Price.
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MEN ONLY AT FIRST FEEDING
At Mark6:44 the word ‘ANER’ (ανηρ) is used. It is a Greek word for male gender only. This was very strange to have males only at the first feeding so Matthew changed this to include women and children. Why male only? Because it parallels with both 2Kings4:43, “How can I set this before 100 men…”
Not only that but it also parallels with a feeding in the Odyssey by Homer of only men……
HOMER EPICS AND THE GOSPEL OF MARK P86 onwards (MacDonald).
“When Telemachus and Athens arrived at Pylos they witnessed a feast to Poseidon on the shore at which the celebrants sat divided into units and 500 men were in each, 4500. Later Homer makes it clear that this is a feast only the men of Pylos participated. The male only party in Homer presumably is due to the nature of the feast – a sacrifice by sailors to secure favorable weather and seas from Poseidon.
The 5000 whom Jesus served at the shore of the Sea of Galilee likewise were exclusively male. Mark gives no justification for the presence of men only. Matthew added women and children.
The correlations of disembarkation at shores and the feedings of 4500 or 5000 men are not accidental. They are Marcan flags.
Homer’s second feast at Menelaus’s Sparta was lavish but presumably smaller and because it was a wedding feast it included women.
Similarly the crowd in Mark’s second meal though substantial, is smaller than at the first and like the Spartan wedding seems to have included women.”
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SOURCE Homeric Epic and the gospel of Mark, MacDonald.
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WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?
ORAL TRADITION
Or
MARK USED SOURCES OF KINGS, EXODUS, NUMBERS AND THE ODYSSEY.
Dave Allens blog 