What’s up with the numbers across Mark’s two feeding narratives? Weird numbers of loaves and fishes and baskets don’t make sense as history. No one would preserve incidental details like that, much less even have counted in the first place; nor could what is described ever have happened anyway. There is therefore some reason Mark chose the numbers he did. They are communicating something to the reader—at least an insider clued in to the code (since outsiders—and that means you, dear Christian heretic of today—were supposed to miss this stuff). So what was the code? What is Mark hiding in all this that was meant to be revealed?

Comparables

I’ve remarked on the use of numerological mythography in the Gospels many times before. John’s 153 fish and Luke’s 2 swords are examples. We can’t always know for sure because it depends on common knowledge then that is lost to us today. But we often have enough clues to have a rough or ‘more probable than not’ idea about what’s going on.

The best explanation for the code behind John’s 153 fish tale (famously adapted from Luke 5 where the fish represent converts won by traveling missionaries) is that an elect from every tribe of people in the world would be saved by the Christian mission before the end of days. As I wrote in chapter 10.7 in On the Historicity of Jesus (505–06, citing studies by Robert Grant and Edmund Leach):

Jerome believed the number ‘153’ symbolized the totality of species of fish then known (more in fact were known, but possibly this was a common folk belief of the time), so the point of the story is that all would be saved—or at least, an elect would be saved from all nations (a nation being the proper analog to a species here).

There is a parallel in 2 Chronicles 2:17–18:

Solomon counted all the resident aliens who were in the land of Israel, after the census of them that David his father had taken, and there were found 153,600. 70,000 of them he assigned to bear burdens, 80,000 to quarry in the hill country, and 3,600 as overseers to make the people work.

Which means by rough estimation, if there were 1,000 from each “alien people” there would be 153 peoples of the Earth, making up all the tribes of the Gentiles. So Jerome thought. There is also a bunch of fun numerological magic to do with 153 but none of it actually explains any of this story. Why is this number a count of fish in this particular tale? What is an enlightened reader supposed to take away as the message of the story? If, as Jerome reports, popular lore at the time was that there were 153 species of fish, and this is a story about the mission to the world (and by its association with Luke, it is: these are fishers of men, so we know the intended analogy), then species = tribe and “all the species” means “all the tribes.” That’s the reason for giving that as the number. It’s not 153 fish; it’s 153 fishes. Which is code for “all” the species, a.k.a. tribes, that there are.

I work the same reasoning (from the findings of various scholars, especially Kevin Moore) on Luke’s weird tale of Jesus claiming two swords was enough for his disciples to have (when it’s not even enough for a dinner much less a rebellion). I give you an outline here in Like, Can You Rebel Against Rome with Only Two Swords? but I give more evidence in chapter six of The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (189–209). But unlocking the code here requires knowing that the hot new Jewish novel Joseph and Aseneth had become the talk of the town by the time Luke wrote, and his whole tale is a counter-response to its messaging. Luke even quotes it (more or less) and drops other hints making this clear. Improbable coincidences stack up otherwise, but are resolved once you realize what Luke is really doing in composing the story. Luke’s two swords of folly are the counter to the two swords avenging Dinah. And you won’t get the point (in fact you will get exactly the opposite point) if you don’t know this. So Luke is counting on insiders knowing it. Which was easier then, when this was all a popular meme, than now, when we’ve mostly lost that context.

Markan Structure

In chapter 10.4 of On the Historicity of Jesus I document from the academic literature a ton of elegant and indubitable structure in Mark, demonstrating that the reason he has a lot of duplicate scenes is not because he is carelessly mashing two different sources together, but because he is deliberately creating the duplications to convey meaning. This is most explicit in the two “mass feeding” narratives, which end with Mark having Jesus explicitly mention there were two and that only by reading both can you get their coded message. So Mark intended there to be two, and designed them to dovetail with each other in a way that conveys his message only when you combine them.

We get this in Mark 8:14-21, immediately after the second feeding:

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Of course, Mark does not spell it out for the reader. He has just told the reader there is a code here. And the numbers across both feeding miracles have to do with it. But he is leaving it undecoded. The reader has to figure it out. They need to bring their own decoder ring.

Of course lots of attempts have been made at solving this. But in my estimation only one got it: Austin Farrer (that’s the Austin Farrer, pr. “Farrah,” the guy who also got the Synoptic Problem right). In “Loaves and Thousands” in The Journal of Theological Studies all the way back in 1953. Understanding his solution requires understanding the careful ordering structure of Mark. I give a detailed rundown on that in Historicity. But Farrer extracts something more from that: the observation that there are thirteen distinct healing narratives in Mark (if you count exorcisms, and don’t count blanket references to healings without a narrative of any), and that only one of them is explicitly said to be of a Gentile (and in such a way as to entail all the others must have been Jews, even when in predominately Gentile lands—I hadn’t noticed that before, but he’s right).

That lone exception is the Canaanite girl (the “Syro-Phoenician” woman Jesus interacts with, and her demonically possessed daughter, whom he cures). Which makes twelve healings of Jews and one hard-argued-for healing of a Gentile. Mark as auteur is making a deliberate point of this. We know Mark is simply reifying the teachings of Paul (more on that later; but you can catch up on the scholarship in Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles, with more in Paradigm). And here he has the foreign woman make Paul’s argument to Jesus that he should not neglect the Gentiles, overcoming his stock Jewish response that he must bring salvation only to God’s children (the Jews). She gets racist Jesus to soften that down to “bring it to the children first,” and then to the Gentiles.

Notably it is here that we learn the allegory of loaves and crumbs, meaning the gospel and hence salvation (“for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs,” but “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”). And this happens exactly in between the two feeding miracles: the five thousand are fed in Mark 6, the Canaanite convinces Jesus to save the Gentiles in Mark 7 (Gentiles deserve at least “crumbs from the children’s table”), and then the four thousand are fed in Mark 8.

In Historicity I document that the deliberate structure of this whole sequence (what I call The Sea Narrative, Mark 4 through 8) is to build contrasts between the reception of Jesus among the Jews and among the Gentiles. This is exactly what Farrer finds for the feeding miracles—which I show in Historicity replicate miracles of Moses and Elisha, and allegorize the Eucharist. As I pointed out there, one reason “Mark duplicates the feeding narratives is so that he can have one among Jews on the western side of the lake (6.35–43) and one among Gentiles on the eastern side of the lake (8.1–9) to teach that the Jews and Gentiles should receive the same communion (8.14–17).”

What Farrer observes is that before my Sea Narrative (Mark 1–3 vs. 4–8) we have:

The parallel structure can only be intentional. The only asymmetry arises from inserting the Gentile’s healing, and tacking on an additional exorcism (making three, a number Mark was structurally fond of) and restoration of sight—and of ears and mouth, as this last exorcism was of a “deaf and mute” spirit. So Jesus had just ended the Four Thousand story by asking “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?” and immediately cures blind and deaf men. That is not a coincidence. It’s narrative design.

But that means the switch to a Gentile mission inspired by the Canaanite’s argument was preceded by curing physical ailments, but followed by curing intellectual ailments, repeated twice for emphasis: the ability to see and hear, and speak the truth. Thus “Do you still not understand?” Opening your eyes, hearing the real message, and not staying silent about it, means recognizing the validity of the Gentile mission. Mark is defending Paul—by telling a story about Jesus defending Paul. Do you still not understand?

Moreover, that gives us eight Israelites (Palestinian or Disapora) followed by four more (likewise), so exactly half as many Israelites are cured after the Gentile as before. That Gentile is also a uniquely gender reversed exorcism (the only one of a girl), illustrating the reversal of the mission, and its “least shall be first” mentality. The message is that the bulk of the mission to the Jews is done, and though some will continue, after that point a focus must be on the Gentiles. Hence the sequence of feeding narratives is on the Jewish side then the Gentile side of the lake—and in between, the encounter with the Canaanite. Paul’s mission to the Gentiles has been pivoted into the superior role.

Of Loaves, Fishes, and Baskets

Which is all neat. But the question today is as to the loaves and fishes, and baskets of crumbs. A little backstory here is that Joshua (the original Jesus: the names are identical) split the Holy Land into five portions and then seven. Mark also structures his story this way: two pairs of disciples are recruited, each followed by two healing narratives, then one disciple followed by one healing narrative, making five disciples and five healing narratives, then Jesus appoints the remaining seven to make twelve. So the theme of “five and seven make twelve” appears again. The five and seven loaves represent the same staged thinking as Joshua and thus represent stages of the new Kingdom.

Here Farrer:

Five loaves are given to five thousands, but the remainders are twelve, a creel each of future provision for twelve thousands. And of course, for there are not five holy loaves or five tribes—the twelve loaves of shewbread represent the (twelve) children of Israel, Lev. 24:8 [he means 24:5–9—ed.]—but twelve holy loaves and twelve tribes. Seven thousands have still to receive their loaves.

And yet in the second feeding:

The seven remaining loaves are duly distributed, and seven remainders duly taken up. But two paradoxical features obtrude themselves. The remainders are not measured as before in creels (great baskets, cophini) but in common baskets (spyrides). And, second, there are not after all seven thousand present to receive, but four only.

What gives? “Because in the interval the gentile race has put in its claim, and been allowed crumbs from the children’s table,” so now, according to Farrer, while before Israel would have a great basket (a cophinus) of crumbs for every tribe to sustain them after, from just an initial five loaves (akin to the first five tribes to receive portions of land under Joshua), now there is a small basket (a spyris) for the remaining seven tribes (the 5 loaves and 7 loaves will now sustain all 12), and the five thousands and four thousands fed before (making nine thousands, just as the Syrophoenician girl’s healing is the 9th of the 13 healings) leaves a remaining three thousands for the gentles in the future mission (after Jesus’ passion).

There is one mistake here, however, pointed out in comments below (and I have added this and corrected following paragraphs): the kophinos was a small basket particularly associated with Jews at the time (documented in the LSJ), and so its symbolism was not the size, but its ethnic implications; while the large “creels” were actually the spurides, making the symbolism the growth of the mission (larger baskets will feed more peoples). But the rest holds.

Farrer:

In chs. 1–3 five persons were healed, and feeding has … caught up with them in the banquet of the five thousands. How many more persons beyond the five have been healed in chs. 4–7? Four, always discounting the non-Israelite who breaks into the series. Then let four thousands be fed in the beginning of ch. 8. That will leave three thousands unfed, just as there are three persons still to be healed.

All twelve tribes are symbolically fed together only at the Last Supper—as the twelve disciples consume the symbolic body of Jesus, the final “loaf” of bread Mark refers to. Remember? “The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat.” The one final loaf they had with them in the boat is, of course, Jesus. They eat it at the Last Supper.

As to the missing “three” thousand:

[T]hough no feeding of three appears by itself in St. Mark’s pages, the effect of the feeding narratives is to break the twelve into 5, 4, 3, figures arranged in the simple order of counting backwards. When five and four have been given, we are inclined to supply three, not only because other hints persuade us that the sum of twelve has to be made up, but also because three is the serial number next after five and four.

This is the code. You are to understand in your own mind (not on the page) who the next portion are: the “three thousand” are the Gentiles. And the final loaf of Jesus will accomplish it. This is basically Paul’s entire theology in high symbolism and allegory.

A reverse trick in the wording of “baskets” (they grow from small to great from the five thousand to the four thousand) occurs in the wording of “fish.” When Israel is the lone recipient of salvation, the first portion of five thousand get “two fish” meaning full hefty fish, which together with the five loaves fills out seven. Some have speculated that this means the loaves here are the five books of the Pentateuch (thus representing the Torah observant Christians) and the two fish are the two tablets of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 and Deuteronomy 10:4; although the story implies 613 commandments, the text keeps saying ten are on the tablets).

In which case, when the four thousand get fed it is specifically now “little fish” (the Greek is in the diminutive this time) and not specifically two but just “a few.” The baskets grew, but the fish shrank; and while there are two before, now it’s a non specific number. Extending the logic, this implies the moral codes of the various Gentile tribes: they are lesser ethical rules of no specific number; so they have a moral law, just not the great law of Moses. One might think here of the seven Noachic laws, although there are not seven fish; Mark made it just “a few,” implying a mixed mishmash and not a specific sub-Judaic code. The point is to contrast the great Torah code with what little mishmash the Gentiles have in its place. The Greater Law has been replaced by the Greater Baskets.

But this then means the seven loaves now somehow connect to the Gentile mission. They are not (or not just) filling out the twelve tribes to match Joshua (what was an allotment of land is now an allotment of access to the coming paradise). Yes, there are seven loaves to start, completing the twelve expected. But there are only seven (not twelve) greater baskets of crumbs left over. “Do you still not understand?”

Enter David Oliver Smith

Smith has recently done some interesting work on the Epistles and Gospels. He has contributed to the evidence that Mark used the Epistles, reifying Paul’s teachings into stories from and about Jesus, and explored other theories. I don’t always agree with him. But he often gets to or near some great insights. And here is one: Smith has documented evidence that Mark knows the seven authentic letters of Paul (and no others).

That’s not as true as he thinks. There is evidence Mark knows of Colossians, and none that he knows of Philemon. However, the gist may yet hold. Mark knew 1 Clement and probably Hebrews, and though he would know Hebrews was not “by” Paul he would have recognized it as from the Pauline sect, arguing for a Gentile mission (indeed, arguing even Jews should abandon Torah, an even more extreme position than Paul took). Almost all agree the Pastorals didn’t even exist when Mark wrote; and I think the evidence is strong enough to conclude neither did Philemon (see Did Paul Write Philemon?). But most scholars think the author of Ephesians was riffing on Colossians, so Colossians could date as early as the 70s. It is thus conceivable Mark thought Colossians was the seventh authentic letter of Paul, or else he included in “the seven” Pauline letters Hebrews, as a text of Paul’s school. Though there is more evidence of Mark’s knowledge of Colossians than Hebrews, so I am inclined more toward that result. Mark definitely used the other six (Romans, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Philippians).

So it remains true, however we land, that Mark would likely have known of a collection of seven “Pauline” letters as the definitive manifesto for the Gentile mission. And that is significant because in Smith’s magnum opus, The Bible Tells Me So: A Critical Analysis of the Jesus Myth, which I think is mostly wrong but still rife with usable insights, he argues this:

Paul used leaven as a metaphor twice in the undisputed letters, at 1 Cor 5:6–8 and Gal 5:9–10. In [the one] leaven is used as a metaphor for malice and wickedness. In [the other] leaven is used as a metaphor for the corrupting theology of the Jerusalem apostles who are preaching justification through the law. [Which suggests] Mark is making a clear reference to Paul and his leaven metaphor [when he has Jesus warn, “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod”]. The seven baskets of which Jesus reminds the disciples is a reference to Paul’s seven undisputed letters. Jesus and the disciples just left the miracle feeding where he used seven loaves as the spiritual nourishment for the world…[with] seven baskets of left overs. Mark’s Jesus is admonishing the Jerusalem apostles for failing to understand Paul’s seven letters.

We can shore that up by acknowledging that the seven Gentile mission letters Mark is referring to might not be today’s “seven undisputed” ones but the six (Philemon is legitimately disputed now) plus one more, either mistaking Colossians as authentic, or taking Hebrews as aligned with, even if not explicitly written by, Paul—or perhaps even mistaking it as by Paul. These scenarios are all compatible with Smith’s argument.

Once we grant that, we now have a reason there are seven loaves and seven final baskets. If it were twelve baskets again, then the seven would just complete the twelve after the five, and we’d just be looking at completing the mission to all Israel. But there are not twelve baskets this time. Nor, as Farrer pointed out, have we ended up feeding twelve thousands, but we’re missing three. Farrer’s analysis makes clear that Mark is definitely signaling something in his number and story symbolism about the Pauline switch from the original mission to the Hebrews to a now urgent mission to the Gentiles. The Canaanite’s gambit establishes the pivot. And what we are supposed to “understand” in the code about what’s changed between the previous feeding and the one after that gambit must relate to that.

This is especially because Jesus ties the one remaining loaf (himself) to the two feedings, where he emphasizes there is some code to understand in the numbers of loaves, baskets, and thousands (the fish are no longer important), and warns of the “leaven” of the Jewish authorities, just as Paul had done, in reference to the Torah Christians meddling with the Gentile Christians, trying to make them convert to Judaism: in respect to sinning in general he means “the old yeast,” “the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness,” but in the sectarian context that becomes Torah as “a yoke of slavery” because “every man who lets himself be circumcised is obligated to obey the whole law.” The leaven of the Pharisees and Herodians is therefore what Paul said: “you who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ” and “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value,” and so their leaven ruins the batch.

Conclusion

As with other examples, we can never be decisively certain. The original context is lost so we only have scattered and incomplete clues to work from. Even later Christian authors we have no longer believed in the original methods and message of the early Gospels, and plainly were out of the loop of any original backroom lore about how these texts were to be interpreted, as we can show they almost always get wrong what each writer meant and miss nearly every device they used to convey it. So between the first and second century, the near failure and conspicuous erosion of Christianity appears to have destroyed even their own institutional memory of what the early authors were doing or saying. So they made other stuff up instead, to suit their own corrupted and transformed belief system, indeed even against competitors, who might have preserved different parts of the original beliefs or intentions: in result, our preserved “orthodoxists” denigrated, shunned, and discarded any such data there may have been. So we get little to no help from them.

But from the data we do have (as just surveyed), we can propose the most likely answer to “Jesus’s” query as Mark contrived it:

“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Triangulate from the Joshuan allotment of five thousand, to the diminishing four thousand … to the missing three thousand, the Gentiles’ share. Then the five loaves of the Pentateuch for the Originals, transformed by Christ’s preaching, left twelve common Jewish baskets to feed the gospel to all Israel. Then, after being convinced by an ambassador’s pleading that the Gentiles deserved a share, Jesus goes for a total redo, and produces the seven loaves of Paul’s Epistles instead of the Pentateuch, leaving a humble seven great baskets to feed the gospel to the whole world. Yes, it’s crumbs to the dogs, falling from the heirs’ table. But it will feed every tribe, Jewish and Gentile—through the one loaf of Jesus, unleavened by the circumcision camp.

No other interpretation seems as likely given so many converging lines of evidence (as explored above). The irony is that this has Jesus prophetically referring to Paul and his Epistles and mission. Of course like all prophecy, Mark is inventing it after the fact, to retcon the church’s history, backdating Paul’s innovation into a “secret teaching” of Jesus during his very ministry that “the disciples” did not understand (thus explaining why they didn’t see Paul and his mission coming). But even as pure mythology, Mark’s contrivance creates a clever and thus “charismatic” way to preach that there can be no valid argument against Paul’s mission: any insistence to the contrary is the corrupting “leaven of the Pharisees,” a failure to acknowledge the Syrophoenician’s point, and the obvious logical fact that God can miraculously expand the mission however he wants, just as a Jesus could feed thousands from a few loaves—and the whole world from just one.