Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition in Matthew 14.13-21

Introduction: Flat Bread, A Long Walk, Hungry People, a Messianic Age

The Matthean evangelist, aware of Jesus’ Passover meal and the central role for a ceremonial meal for the early Jesus movement, connects the story of the feeding of the 5,000, and Jesus’ central role within it, to the tradition of the Exodus that other late-first century Jewish apocalyptic writers had also signaled as a tradition firmly connected to the messianic age. The feeding of the multitudes, a story appearing in all four gospel traditions, became a sign that God’s holy kin-dom would soon be instantiated on earth. That’s a lot more than just bread loaves and fishes!

Matthew 14:13-21

¹³ Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴ When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵ When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷ They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸ And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹ Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰ And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹ And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Multiple Attestations

This well-known story—I’d venture to guess that even those from outside of a Christian tradition would still identify something like, “The feeding of the 5,000” or “The feeding of the multitudes,” as having something to do with Jesus and loaves and fishes. Perhaps its familiarity is owing to its appearance in all four gospels (Jewish Annotated New Testament).

In fact, this story is a doublet, meaning that the same story, or a variation of it, appears twice within the same gospel (The Complete Gospel Parallels). In Matthew 15.32-39, we read a similar story; though, the count of those fed is reported as nearer to 4,000. The commentary in the JANT suggests that this second telling may describe a feeding of a mostly gentile audience, given its placement in the text following two other stories about encounters with gentiles.

We’ve relied on parallel accounts reporting similar stories as suggesting that the story under examination may trace back to the authentic Jesus movement, as evidenced by multiple traditions containing a same or similar narrative construction of events. This feeding of the 5,000 counts as a special member of this class; even the fourth gospel that diverges in many ways from the synoptic accounts (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), includes this story.

If we accept the claim here that this story with multiple reports traces back to the Jesus movement, we may ask ourselves, what is it about this story, this report of Jesus’ activities in particular, that deemed it worthy for inclusion in each gospel? Was the anecdote multiply attested by many followers of Jesus? Was a well-known tradition circulating that was available to all the gospel authors? Did the evangelists prize something specific about this story that mandated inclusion in their distinct texts?

Of course, we cannot know.

Blessing and Giving Thanks

But we can follow the lead of commentaries, equipped with discussions we’ve had over the past several weeks, to imagine what the evangelists were relaying through this story. The lead candidate for a main idea in this feeding of the multitudes could be the prima facie most obvious: Jesus created much from a little to feed a huge crowd of people!

Though, is it the replication of food for the thousands that marks Jesus as especially anointed by God? That’s certainly plausible! Feeding 5,000, then feeding another 4,000 in Matthew later, could be strong candidates for veracity and authentic testimony of a Divine work, given the many thousands who witnessed such a sign of mystery and miracle! We’ve repeated often that these gospel accounts are constructed by anonymous authors decades following Jesus’ life and death. These are not eyewitness accounts. But for thousands to bear witness to an impressive event of superhuman provision, surely someone passed down the story! At any rate, no doubt that something about this story was circulating and available to each gospel author; how else would each tradition include this story but not others? So maybe it is the most obvious explanation that is likely true: Jesus fed thousands of people from scarce resources to fill people full with abundance. As Christian clergy may say, “That’ll preach.”

Still. I remain unsatisfied.

We’ve framed the Matthean text as Jesus’ call to repentance, to t’shuvah; a return to Torah observance and moral conduct. Simply that Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes is something that exceeds human capacity. Yet, I am unsure if multiplying food alone is the intended message. What is it about this abundance of food that the gospel writers intend for their audiences to understand? I do think that something about the food is important, but maybe less so about the specific numbers fed or the means of production.

Consider Matthew 26.20-29, the so-called “Last Supper.” In the synoptic accounts, this is a Passover meal prepared ahead of Jesus’ crucifixion.1 The language there, similar to this week’s assigned gospel reading, includes the blessing of bread.

An excerpt from this week:

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples

And an excerpt from Matt 26:

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples

I’ll even expand to incorporate an excerpt from Matthew 15 that I mentioned earlier as another feeding story:

he took the seven loaves and the fish, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples

I hear you saying, wait a minute! “Bless,” “bless,” “give thanks”! Those are different words! For good measure, I went to an interlinear Bible, showing the Greek underlying the English. The Greek word for blessing here, eulogeo, is the root word underlying both instances of blessing that appear in Matt 14 and 26. The “give thanks” word underlying Matthew 15 is eucharistēsas. Upon investigation, I found this paper appearing in one of the world’s longest-running academic journals in the field of classical studies, Hermathena, wherein the author connects both of these words to the Hebrew barak, or blessing.

This brief aside is just to say that I don’t think we’re applying a translated English word inappropriately to the Greek when attempting to connect each instance of ‘blessing’ or ‘give thanks’ in this story to be related etymologically.

Etymology is not exactly what we’re after, though. What should catch our eye is that one of those words, eucharistēsas, is the origin of the name ascribed by Christians to their tradition of participating in Jesus’ Passover meal, the Eucharist.2 And in all cases, the historical and theological connection is the Hebrew word and concept of blessing. Blessing, or giving thanks, for a meal, blessing God for the meal, not blessing the meal itself, if that makes sense, is traditional to Israel—and now to Christianity, too.

Here we see direct overlap with existing Jewish tradition and emerging, proto-Christian development. Academic consensus suggests that a ceremonial meal was likely an authentic practice of the early Jesus community. And I think this is where we gain insight into the feeding of the 5,000.

Feeding those in the Wilderness

I’ve remained unsatisfied that the feeding story is only about Jesus’ providing for thousands, but we’ve covered some ground by drawing out the tradition of blessing and acknowledging the tradition of a shared meal as a historical feature of the early Jesus movement. Miraculous feeding is not distinct to Jesus. If you are familiar with Judaism—like, if you’re Jewish—you may be thinking of your own blessing for a meal, and when thinking about blessing bread, there is one bread in particular that features significantly in Jewish tradition, and guess what, we’re back to the Passover meal! Passover is from the Exodus story, and while journeying in the wilderness, Israel is provided for by its own miraculous feeding of the multitudes.

Manna in the wilderness of Exodus 16. Read, especially, 16.31-32:

The Israelites called it manna; it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations in order that they may see the food with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

I think we have some classic gospel writer proclamation going here underpinning the feeding of the 5,000. For the obvious mention, see the account from the fourth gospel. John 6:31, Jesus speaking:

Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’

Now we’re on to something! Jesus’ act isn’t the first time in the tradition of Israel that a hungry and poor multitude was fed through a miraculous act! Recall the Exodus tradition! But it’s not only Jesus and Moses, there is Hebrew prophet Elisha also feeding a multitude!

Elisha, the predecessor of the prophet Elijah, not only shares thematic similarities with feeding the multitudes, he, in fact, participated in his own meal for many, as told in 2 Kings 4:42-44:

A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord: They shall eat and have some left.” He set it before them; they ate and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

I submit that the Deuteronomistic author of the Elisha story and the evangelists reporting Jesus’ feeding—by the way, Elisha is mentioned by name by the Lukan author, so Elisha was certainly known to the Jesus movement—were both drawing from Exodus 16 to recall the manna that miraculously provided for Israel in their time of need.

The Apocalypse of Baruch, a late first century, early second century Jewish pseudepigraphical text, sharing similarities with 2 Esdras, another Jewish apocalyptic text that we’ve discussed in the newsletter when saying more about the Son of Man tradition of Jewish apocalyptic literature, is useful for understanding this story in Matthew. Let’s see how.

If you choose to dig into this text, also called 2 Baruch, you’ll want to pay attention to 29.8 through 30.5 (complete text). In these verses, the author of 2 Baruch connects the wilderness meal of the Exodus, the manna that we’ve just described, with the messianic age. Consider 29.9 through 30.1 from the Apocalypse of Baruch:

And it shall come to pass at that self-same time that the treasury of manna shall again descend from on high, and they will eat of it in those years, because these are they who have come to the consummation of time.

And it shall come to pass after these things, when the time of the advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that He shall return in glory.

See how the messianic age is signaled by the author of 2 Baruch to commence with manna once again providing for the Israelites. And so, together we discover great similarity with the feeding of the 5,000 and the apocalyptic, or end-time message that was a central commitment of the Jesus movement.

We have another end-times text that draws this same connection, and this one is even in the Greek scriptures! Revelation 2:17:

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it [my emphasis].

The Messianic Age

We’ve arrived. My argument is this: The people of Israel celebrate their liberation story: The Passover and Exodus from Egypt. In this story, when Israel had nothing; hungry and tired, they wander through the wilderness in search of the land of eternal covenant. God provides for God’s people through the grain of heaven: manna. It is reported in Exodus 16 that for those who gathered too much and those who gathered too little, everyone found they had enough manna to provide for themselves.

The Deuteronomist connects Elisha to this tradition. The evangelists, aware of Jesus’ Passover meal and the central role for a ceremonial meal for the Jesus movement connect Jesus to this Exodus tradition, too. Jewish apocalyptic writers, like the author of 2 Baruch and the author of Revelation connect this holy meal with the coming end-time, the messianic age, and so, for a people whose proclaimed messiah had died and resurrected, the feeding of the multitudes, a story appearing in all four gospel traditions, became a sign and reminder that God’s holy kin-dom would soon be instantiated on earth, including a returning (t’shuvah) of the “Lost sheep of the House. of Israel” (Matthew 10.5-6) and the ingathering of gentiles.

Who’s hungry?!