Shiny Happy People!

Get some sunglasses, because this week we're shining bright like a diamond! That's right, we're diving into all the glowy sparkle that is the transfiguration of Jesus. What is that story really about? What happened on that hill? And why does everyone drag Peter for offering to set up tents? He was just brainstorming! No stupid questions, right? Then, gather 5,000 of your best friends and let's have a pot-luck. We're talking loaves, we're talking fishes, and we're comparing not two, not three, but ALL FOUR GOSPELS! It's a miracle! ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  There's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. He's like, "I was on the way home with this. This is my, this is our dinner, man."

• 1:47Speaker 01

  My mom's gonna be mad!

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma Podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Things are good. Things are good. I am, I am well fed. All of my loaves and fishes are doing well.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  So, uh, we need to see if Factor has a loaves and fishes.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  We need to get some Ezekiel bread. We need to get some loaves and fishes. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of Bible-based culinary experiences that, uh, that they are, they are missing out on.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  I know. We, maybe, maybe we'll get a Bible-based meal, meal planner, uh, sponsor. Who knows?

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll get the, the high protein Samson plan.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Anyway, uh, as, as, as you may have guessed, one of the things we're talking about today on the show is the, the feeding of the 5,000, something that Dan, you have been, uh, uh, sort of poring over lately.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Little bit, yeah.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Uh, on, on your YouTube channel. But before that, we're going to do a what is that? Uh, about transfiguration.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Hopefully, we can all, by the end of the, the segment, we'll all know how to do it, how to look super shiny.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, your transfiguration and you.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Or maybe that's just something for Jesus. It's an all New Testament show today.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  We're, uh, we're, we're gonna have a bunch of Jesus. So buckle up and let's dive into what is that?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so this week's what's that? As we said, it's transfiguration. It's, uh, it's, it's something looking different than it did.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  But in this case, uh, it's Jesus specifically.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  It's Jesus again.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Oh, that guy.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Yep. That's what everybody wants to hear come Christmas morning. Oh, it's Jesus.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  He's got, he's got main character energy and that's what we're rocking with.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Yes. And we've got three different accounts of the Transfiguration. This is a synoptic tradition. This is absent from Mr. John, the Gospel of John. So.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  John, John was out on his own, man. John was, was doing his own thing. He was feeling, he was feeling,

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I don't know, he was feeling himself.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  He must have been, he must have been thinking about whoever it was that song was about.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  But we've got in Mark nine, in Matthew 17, and then in Luke nine, we've got the story of the Transfiguration. And interestingly, and not insignificantly, in all three of the Gospels, this comes immediately after Jesus pulls everybody, well, his disciples aside and says, hey, just so you know, I'm gonna die. And then I'm gonna come back to life. So.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  He's, yeah, it's, it's a very, it's a little gruesome. It's a little.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  And, and also interestingly, so Mark nine, Mark is, correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, we think is the earliest of the Gospels.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Yes, that's pretty widely agreed.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  So that's what we're, where we should start when we're looking at this, right?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  And Mark nine, really, again, again, with the, you know, when they, when the, whoever came up with the chapters and verses, whoever the versification, why, why would you start Mark nine with the last paragraph of the last thing? Like Mark eight ends with, with Jesus talking about how he's gonna die and he's gonna be tortured and all this stuff. And then Mark nine starts with him saying, and he said to them, truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Yes. And seen, except this is the first verse of chapter nine.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is so weird.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  So you can, you can blame that on, um, who did the, the chapter divisions? I think it occurred with the, if it, if it occurred with the verse divisions. Well, the verse divisions would, um, would be relevant here. That was a dude named, uh, Robert Astien. Um, and I'm, I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation of that. Um, but Stefanus is the other name that he went by. Uh, that was 1551, I believe, the version of the textus receptus with versification for the first time ever.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I think he was sleepy when he worked on this one.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  He could have been, yeah. Uh, and yeah, we get verse two, you've got your pilcrow. Uh, you've got your paragraph marker there and, and, uh, most modern bibles starts off with six days later. And interestingly, both Mark and Matthew point out that this happens six days after Jesus, uh, well, one says he's going to die, but also predicts the second coming is going to happen before some of the people standing there passed away.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  So basically he said, this, this is happening within this generation, which didn't turn out to be 100% true.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Or even 1% true, but, uh, in, in Luke, he changes it.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  About eight days later.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he gets approximate about it.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's just, he's just, we're just going to squint at this a little bit and we're just going to get a little, uh, a little ambiguous, just for literary effect. Uh, but Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. And interestingly, if you look in the Greek, uh, the word for transfigured is basically the word, uh, metamorphosis.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Sure.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, um, we're getting a little Kafkaesque.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say with apologies to Franz Kafka.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And Jesus became a cockroach.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, uh, he was transfigured before them. A couple of things to point out here. Six days later, the, uh, the previous story is taking place, a place called Caesarea Philippi, which is, uh, right by a place that's now known as Banias. It's kind of a, a very small, kind of resorty retreat area, uh, in the very north of, uh, the modern state of Israel. In fact, when you're driving up there, one side of the road is a fence. That's, that says, careful landmines. Syria is on the other side of this fence. Oh goodness, okay. So, uh, you drive up there and, and Banias is there and they've got Pan's cave. There's a, um,

• 8:54Speaker 00

  there's a big cave. There used to be, uh, some temples and stuff up there. Very cool area. But, uh, this is at the, the base of Mount Hermone, which the, the mountaintop is actually in Syria. Oh, okay. So there, there's an interesting thing going on here. Where did the Transfiguration take place? Right. It's a big question. And We know it's on a mountain. We know it's on a mountain. At least the, the text says so. If it actually happened, then it was only on one mountain. What mountain was that? Right. Around the third century CE, there was a mountain called Mount Tabor or Tabor in, uh,

• 9:35Speaker 00

  in Hebrew, that is further south. In fact, it's right over the hill from Nazareth. If you're in Nazareth, Nazareth is kind of in a little bowl surrounded by mountains on all sides. Uh, and then there's a, there's a valley floor on the other side of, of, uh, the southern end of Nazareth. And then if you, if you head out of Nazareth to the south and you get to the valley floor and you look to the left, there's just this little mountain just sticking out from the valley floor. And now that's Mount Tabor. Third century CE, that becomes a traditional site of the Mount of Transfiguration. And so there's a, there's a church that was built up there, Church of the Transfiguration. You can still go up there today.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Significant because that's also where, uh, we have the Song of Deborah from Judges 5 and the story of Deborah beating Cisera in battle from Judges 4. So it it has some significance, but more recently, people have said, no, it's probably Mount Hermon, because they were at Caesarea Philippi, which is right at the base of Mount Hermon. And so they would have been right there. So maybe it's that mountain. Or maybe it's just a literary creation and it never happened. So we don't know. It's somewhere in between that.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Anyway, they go up on a mountain.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  They go on a mountain.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Is the main thing here.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  High on a mountain top.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yes. Three dudes walk up a mountain. A rabbi, a fisherman, a rabbi, and I don't know. I don't remember what Peter, James, and John did for their. So it's four dudes.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. He he was transfigured before them, verse three, and his clothes became dazzling bright, such as no one on earth could brighten them. And and this is the allusion here is to theophanes from the Hebrew Bible, where you're seeing God, and God is so brilliant and shiny, that it's like, you know, whiter than any fuller could could get fabric. And it's shiny and bright and intimidatingly even deadly. So so this is a this is divinization. This is showing that Jesus is divine. Jesus is like the son of man from Daniel seven. Jesus is like God from Ezekiel one, just really shiny. You're going to see a very similar

• 11:59Speaker 00

  thing happen in the book of Revelation, the first chapter, when the person describes Jesus and his paps. But so so Jesus is being divinized, basically.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  No mention of the paps here.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  No, no paps.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  His paps presumably are encased in the the bright white clothing.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, they're in there somewhere. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. So now we got the two main forerunners of of the the Christian Gospel. Elijah, because Jesus is, you know, Elijah is supposed to return, is Jesus Elijah, is John the Baptist Elijah. John the Baptist had just been executed a couple of chapters before in most of these stories.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got really confused about the whole Elijah returning thing. I like there was all this stuff about.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  With like, I looked at John the Baptist's death and there was this stuff about

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Jesus asking his disciples, who is the Messiah? And they said, some say it's Elijah, some say that it's John the Baptist. And anyway, it's like, it got, it's a, so Elijah is the, is a figure that I don't under, he's a figure that, that plays prominently in their minds.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And I don't understand what his position is for them.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  So Elijah is supposed to, at the end of the book of Malachi, you have Elijah who's going to come before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. So you identify that as the eschaton, the end times. And so there's an expectation that develops in Greco-Roman period Judaism that when Elijah, Elijah will return to usher in the end times. And so some people suggest Elijah is a forerunner to the Messiah. Some people suggest Elijah is the Messiah. So the messianic fervor of this time period sees Elijah as, as one of the main figures.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Elijah is the, the canary in the coal mine of, of apocalypticism, so.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  And I assume that this is also to do with, I know, I, I'm not very familiar with, with modern Jewish tradition, but there is a Jewish tradition of like,

• 14:28Speaker 01

  is it Elijah that, that's to come and visit on Passover or something like that?

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Well, there's the, you leave the, you leave the chair empty and the door open for.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And that's for.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Elijah, right.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I, this is all, this is all me just sort of.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Piecing vague, fuzzy notions together in my little brain.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  And then you have Moses.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yep. Moses is there, right?

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Moses is there, and Moses, obviously, Jesus is the new Moses, like Deuteronomy 18, one like Moses, you know, a prophet like Moses, oh, that's Jesus. What did Moses do? Went up a mountain, brought down the law. You also have Exodus 34. What happens when Moses comes down off the mountain? His face is so shiny. This is divine imagery. That's what's going on here. Moses has been divinized, and that's why he's got to put the veil over his face because he's he's giving off divine vibes and it's freaking the people out. So, so this is, this is taking a bunch of different traditions associated with divine mediation, with messianism,

• 15:40Speaker 00

  with the mountain of God, with all of these things, and it's all shoving it together in this one event. So this is a, this is an, a highly elusive, highly kind of referentially rich event. And so you can, you can find all kinds of things to read into here. Where, with Elijah and Moses talking to Jesus. But, but part of the idea is, look, these two are signing off on Jesus, basically. That, that Jesus's identification with them, with their missions, the fulfillment of their missions,

• 16:20Speaker 00

  they're okay with it. They're, they're signing off. So it's, it's a way to endorse, authorize Jesus as the new Moses, as the new Elijah, all this kind of stuff.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Then we get, then we get weird.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, what we get is these two, the three of them, Elijah, Moses, and Jesus are, are having a chat. They seem to be, they seem to be separate from, from Peter, James, and John.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  We will get to. James and John getting sleepy, but they're not sleepy yet, not in this version.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Um, and Peter has a big idea, which is, hey, there's three dudes here up on a mountain. He says, it's good, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us set up three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  I, okay, what, first of all, do we have a sense of, there are different versions of the, he did not know what to say. I think in Luke, it's like, uh, it says something about, cause he was dumb or something like, like, I'm not, I got confused about.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Peter. Yeah. Well, the, the verse that says, he did not know what to say, for they were terrified is, is kind of writing off. It's presenting Peter's statement as misinformed, as inappropriate. So Peter, Peter is your impetuous kind of doofus in the gospel of, well, in, in all of the gospels where he's doing stuff that he gets chided for. And, uh, and Jesus was a little rough on him, uh, in the previous, uh, chapter. But here is, just represent Peter saying something dumb. Now, now what is it that's dumb about this? Well, uh, depends on how you interpret what Peter means by this.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  The three tents and the word in Greek is skeeney, which, uh, is tabernacle. It's a, it's a tent, it's a booth, it's all of these things. And, and this has a lot of, uh, referential quality to it because what did Moses build? A tabernacle. You have the festival of the booths, which involves creating a tabernacle. But. One of, I think, what's most, and, and there's even, there's even this idea that this has to do with kind of Greco-Roman ideas of metamorphosis and Greco-Roman ideas of epiphany. Because you, what do you do where gods appear? You build ritual sites. You build

• 19:06Speaker 00

  cultic installations for them. So there's, there could be a degree to which that's going on in the background where Peter's like, "Let's, let's build a shrine." And it could be going, "No, no, no, no, no, we don't do that." I think more likely, the idea is, well, they need a place to dwell. Let's get them a place to dwell. But the author of the story is going, "This is temporary." Because maybe Peter thinks this is the second coming. Maybe Peter thinks this is everybody coming back. This is the beginning of the, of the end days and Peter has to be corrected. "No, no, this is just a brief drop by visit. This is a dropping."

• 19:49Speaker 01

  The vibe that I got was that Peter was like, "Hey, we should turn this into Comic-Con. We'll get each of you a booth. People can come up. They can talk to each one of you. They can get your signature, your autograph and your headshot."

• 20:02Speaker 00

  We're gonna do numbers today.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  But, uh, someone, there is an objection to this plan, specifically from a cloud.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Because a cloud-

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Got a lot of cloud stuff to do.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  So a cloud comes in and overshadows them.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  And-

• 20:25Speaker 00

  And this is also, this is also referential, because this happens on Mount Sinai.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Cloud of smoke on Mount Sinai. That's how, that's where Moses encounters God. But, yeah, and, and the cloud represents God's presence. Because this voice is God's voice.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our old car and that took actual planning, which you know, I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and were able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress, which I, this is brilliant. The fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is an amazing thing.

• 22:48Speaker 01

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• 24:05Speaker 01

  And so the voice comes and says, this is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Which is, which is, I guess, as sort of stands in counterpoise to the idea, this is my son, in whom I am well pleased, or whatever, you know, now, now it's, it's saying, hey, pay attention.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's, it's kind of re-upping the, the same thing that happens at the baptism of Jesus in, in Mark 1:11, where you hear the voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And so, according to the traditional rendering. So we've got God, once again, I think it is the only two times in the entire Gospel of Mark where you hear the Father's voice. Okay. And it's at the baptism and the transfiguration, which, which are probably also prefiguration. Or foreshadowing the resurrection when Jesus again is going to be divine clouds of glory, cats and dogs.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Living together.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Yes, total pandemonium. So you've got a lot of-

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Pandemonium, really? Not mass hysteria?

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Mass hysteria, that's what-

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Ah, you know, you know, it's- You're the reference guy. I don't know. When I call you out, you know, something's gone horribly wrong. You've had a, you've had a rough day, I know.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Well, as, as one great poet once said, "I have proximate knowledge of many things." It may not be exact. But yeah, you're, you're, we're looking backward and we're also looking forward in this, but, but this is, uh, this is big time. But it is not quite the actual second coming. We're not quite ushering in, uh, what we're looking forward to. It's not what, uh, what Jesus promised. Uh, when, you know, he said, "There will be some still standing here today who will not have tasted death before the Son of Man comes in the clouds of glory." And so this is not that.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Despite a lot of folks who say it is that because they don't want it to be the second coming because that's me, that means it's wrong. And we've already talked about that. It's just wrong. Let it be wrong. And, uh, and then you have verse eight, "Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus." And I, I would love to see, uh, like a cinematic portrayal of this where it's clouds, it's windy. You hear this voice and all of a sudden snap. And Jesus is like, "What's going on, guys? Let's go." Uh, and they're like,

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Where, where, where'd Moses and Elijah go?

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then they, what I think is funny is God says, "Listen to him." And then-

• 26:50Speaker 01

  He doesn't say-

• 26:50Speaker 00

  He doesn't say anything. And then it goes on to say, "As they were coming down the mountain." He ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Now, one of the things that's probably going on here, we've already had Jesus say, "Oh, I'm gonna die," and then come back to life. And now we've got him saying, "Don't tell anybody about this until I have come back to life." There's no hint of this until, up until this point in the Gospel of Mark. And I and other scholars think that the historical Jesus had no idea he was going to die. And it wasn't until after he's dead, and then we start to get reports of him being

• 27:33Speaker 00

  alive again, that everybody goes sprinting back to the drawing board and goes to find ways to reinterpret the messianic expectation to have a suffering, dying, resurrecting Messiah. And so this gets written into the narrative of Jesus's life as if to say, "Oh, yeah, they knew it was gonna happen. Nobody said anything until after the resurrection because Jesus told them not to." So they were, they were in on it.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Like, you know, historically, we know that nobody seemed to have had a clue, but in reality, we know there was a secret. Jesus told them he was gonna die, and nobody talked about it until after his resurrection because Jesus ordered them not to, right after God said, "Listen to what he says."

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Right. Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me. I mean, Mark I of these Gospels was probably written, what, 20 years after Jesus's death?

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Uh, no, probably 40.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 28:32Speaker 00

  So it is, yeah, I think most, most scholars would say this is either months before or months to a year or two after the destruction of the temple in summer of 70 CE.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, so if, uh, because it, it- Basically predicts the destruction of the temple, uh, but it's not yet so far away that it's not possible for someone to still be alive from Jesus's generation. And so most likely that is somebody who can read the writing on the wall right before Rome is about to destroy the temple, or it's someone writing after Rome has destroyed the temple.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Okay, fair enough. Now, there's one more thing I wanted to cover while we're in Mark.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Before we get to Matthew and Luke. Uh, and that is just that, uh, cause this doesn't exist in either of those other gospels. It's, but it's the, it's what comes immediately after. As they're walking down the mountain, uh, the, the apostles, they say, the disciples, whatever, they say to, uh, Jesus. First of all, in verse 10, it says, so they came to, so they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. So that's interesting that that's how they've framed, you know, these two figures appearing as rising from the dead. I guess that makes sense. They're dead. Uh, and then it says, uh, then they asked him, what, why did these scribe, why did

• 29:59Speaker 01

  the scribes say that Elijah must come first? He then said to them, Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the son of man that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with, with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased as it was written about him. I, so who, wait. Elijah has come or Elijah is coming like I, like it's very confusing to me. And also did, when he says Elijah has come, is he referring to Elijah appearing to them on the mountain or what, what are we referring to?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  So I think the, uh, so Jesus is first talking about traditions about the son of man and, and about Elijah saying, this is what's expected. Um, and, but it's not really what's expected because it says, uh, how's it written about the son of man that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? That's not really anywhere about the son of man. So just like talked about how the expectation was not that the Messiah would suffer and die, and then rise from the dead. That seems to be a revisionist take on things. They're retconning the the Son of Man. And so it seems like Mark's already doing that and having Jesus say, oh, yeah, the Son of Man's gonna suffer.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  And you're like, I don't remember that part of the tradition. But and the same is about Elijah. Like Elijah was was certainly persecuted in his life. But the reappearance of Elijah was not supposed to be associated with with suffering and stuff like that. I think we're probably kind of in a in a not totally clear way identifying Elijah with John the Baptist. Because John the Baptist is the one who just suffered execution at the hands of Philip Herod, one of the Herods. Well, no, it wasn't Philip. It was a it was another Herod, but it was Philip.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Philip's wife Salome, I think, was the one who said, bring me the head of John the Baptist on a plate. So I think it's kind of a furtive reference to John the Baptist. If we've got to identify Elijah with somebody, I think that's the most likely candidate. But yeah, it is kind of a veiled, kind of ambiguous. Yeah, the tradition was like this, and you know, it's been fulfilled. It's like, the tradition is not like that. And like, but but Jesus is just like, hey, God said to listen to me, so just shut up.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  So, yeah, they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him. It's not really written about him, but they did do whatever they pleased to John the Baptist. And he had a bad time. So I think that's probably what's going on there.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  I'm open to being corrected, though. If there are any other folks out there who know better than me who are listening, by all means, write in.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  As in terms of differences between the Gospels, it doesn't seem to me that there are many differences. As I read through them all.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Other than Luke having.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  James and John being sleepy, uh, which was so weird to me.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Which I think is probably prefiguring the Gethsemane, uh, event where they are sleepy there and they don't. And Jesus is like, you couldn't even stay awake with me.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  I'm gonna eat all the pizza. The movie's not even over yet. You couldn't stay awake.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  That sounds like a personal life, uh, thing that's happened in, to you many times.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  There, there are a couple of differences. An interesting one in Matthew, uh, says Jesus's face shone like the sun.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Not just his clothes, but his face. Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and so that's more directly, uh, I mentioned that Moses came down from the mountain and was all shiny. It was his face that was shining. So Matthew is like, come on, Mark, let's get, let's get more specific. We're talking about this, right? So let's, let's get all Exodus 34.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Well, and then John one, or, or sorry, Luke one ups him and says, uh, his face looked different and his clothes, uh, became as bright as a flash of lightning.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. And then his, his breath was pleasing. Um, yeah, he, there, there are expansions that are going on because all, it probably, Mark was first, Matthew was second, Luke was third. Everybody is making use of the, the gospel that came before, but they're probably going, well, I gotta, I gotta one up him. I can't be, um, you know, I, I can't, I gotta show up to this, uh, this discussion. So they're, they're expanding on things and we've already talked about how Luke is like, oh, it was, I don't know, like eight or something days later. It was in the rough vicinity. Um, and, but yeah, we're also looking forward to the, to Gethsemane,

• 35:04Speaker 00

  looking forward to the resurrection, looking forward to Jesus's glorification as a resurrected being, looking forward even to the second coming, when Jesus will come as the son of man in the clouds of glory and all shiny and everything. So, so we're looking backwards. We're looking forward. It's a, it's a big literary pivot point in the gospel story.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  All right. Well, I think that that about covers the transfiguration. Uh, somebody get Jesus some powder. So he's not quite so shiny and we will move on. So let's just dive into it with chapter and verse.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  This week's chapter and verse comes from all four of the Gospels.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Woo! This is, apart from the resurrection, the only miracle that is attested in all four Gospels.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Just so you're aware, yes, significant, yes.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Get at it, John. Finally, finally, John gets into the fray.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, shows up, gets on the board.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  And this, our earliest account of this, and we are, it is the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast, if I may just declare it so, that Mark is the first Gospel, Matthew is the second, Luke is the third, and John is the fourth. In, in order of initial composition, even though I think Luke underwent some revisions in the second century CE, mainly to add the first two chapters, but that's neither here nor there.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Neither here nor there.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  We're in Mark 6, starting in verse 30, for the beginning of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. And as we're going to see, where exactly we are is not totally clear.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Not only is it not clear, it feels like, uh, different authors have a different conception of where this is.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Yes, there, there is a bit of a divergence, a bit of a contradiction, if you will, regarding where this miracle took place. And, and the biggest, uh, division is going to be between the synoptics and the Gospel of John.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Cause the, uh, one of the synoptics actually says this is where it took place. Uh, another one doesn't really agree with that, and John really doesn't agree with that.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  But John, John just blows the whole thing up.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, but let's, let's just, uh, let's just fire away and, and we'll talk about the details as, as events warrant, as needs must.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  We're somewhere on Galilee, right?

• 37:36Speaker 00

  We're in the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, yes. And, uh, we are, we have just gotten, the, Jesus has, uh, sent His disciples off. He has empowered them to forgive sins, to cast out demons. And then we hear about the death of John the Baptist. And the very next verse after this is where we begin the story. "The apostles gathered around Jesus and told Him all that they had done and taught." So they're, they're excited about, hey, it all worked. Check this out. He said to them.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  It all worked. Congratulations. You got John killed. You got the Baptist killed. Yeah, I will say it was an abrupt transition between

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Between John the Baptist's death and then I feel like we're missing something. I feel like there's something in the middle that should be between them, but anyway.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you see, you see Matthew kind of provide that segue.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Cause in Matthew, he says, now, when Jesus heard this, referring to John the Baptist, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  So in Matthew, Matthew's like, come on, guys, we're not giving Jesus any, uh, any treatment here. He's, we're gonna let Jesus mourn his buddy, his friend. Uh, so, so Matthew does that, whereas Mark is just like, and the apostles came back and they were like, cool, look at this. I can do things.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  He said to them, come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while. So ultimately we end up in a deserted place. Whether it's because Jesus is like, I just gotta clear my head, or he's like, hey, let's go, uh, let's go do a little staycation. We're just gonna go rest.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Well, you say we end up in a deserted place, but we don't. Everybody gets on a boat and they just, they head toward what they think will be a deserted place. But then all the people in the nearby villages see this boat headed toward that deserted place.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And beat it there.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, and, and in Mark, they're leaving crowds and other crowds end up beating them to where they're headed.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Cause the, the end of Mark 631 says, for many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And this is, this is parallel to something that happens in Mark 320, where they're in Capernaum, they're a, what scholars think probably was Jesus's actual house.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  In Capernaum, and it says that they were crowding around so much that they didn't even have space to eat. So same issue, you got these people crowding around and they're like, this party's dead anyway, man, let's get out of here.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Let's get out of here.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  And then verse 32, "They went away in a boat to a deserted place by themselves." And this probably just means they were like, we're gonna go down the shoreline a piece.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Where there's not a village, or there's not a crowd of people. "Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them."

• 40:54Speaker 01

  This is your moment to remind, to remember that Galilee is not a sea, but rather a lake. And not, and not very, like, you know, it's like one-seventh the size of Tahoe. I noticed because I looked it up and tried to compare it to lakes that I know, so like...

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, it's still like a decent sized lake, but yeah, it's not, it's not enormous.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  If you're a Utah person, just think of Utah Lake, but cut it in half. It's a, it's a decent size, but it's not, it's not big.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And apparently, you could beat a boat to a desert, deserted place from your, from wherever you are on foot.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  I think the circumference of the Sea of Galilee is like, it might be what, 28 miles? 32 to 33 miles. So that's, that's the circumference of, of the Sea of Galilee.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  But it's not, it's not like they've got, they had roads back then, and you could just, you know, hike down the road. It would have been a, the shoreline would have been pretty problematic to, to navigate. But, yeah, so they're sprinting down ahead of them. "As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd."

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  "This is important." And he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, so he's on the shore, like he's gotten off the boat.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  He's just like, gather round, my people. Um, and I will sing you the song of my people.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I feel, I feel bad for the crowd in Mark, because other crowds get to be healed by him.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  This crowd just gets to be lectured.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, they get a lecture. Uh, when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a deserted place and the hour is now very late. Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat. So they're, they're on the shore somewhere. They're not near much, but there are villages scattered around.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Round about, yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, but he answered them, you give them something to eat, which is just what you expect from Jesus.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  No, no, keep them here, but like you guys feed them.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, he hit him with a, I'm rubber, you're glue.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  They said to him, are we to go and buy 200 denari worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And 200 denari would be like, uh, a half year's wages.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  A lot of people requiring a lot of bread.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Uh, it would be, uh, six months wages to, to pay for it all. And he said to them, how many loaves have you? Go and see. When they had found out, they said, five and two fishies. Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. And this is, this is another interesting detail. Uh, why would you say the grass is green? Like narratively, the gospel of Mark is pretty sparse about detail. When the God, when the author of the gospel of Mark provides detail, there's a reason for it. And some people use this as an indication that this is historical. This is a true historical memory.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Why would he say the grass is green unless it was actually green? Well, I see green grass almost every day. I don't tell stories where I say, the grass, it was green. Can't you see I'm telling the truth?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  I mean, Israel is not the greenest of places, uh, in, in the world.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Well, the Galilee is the most humid and the most, uh, that's where, uh, most of the water falls. Uh, and, and also the, uh, the sources for the sea of Galilee, um, are closer to Galilee. And, yeah, so anyway, um.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  It could indicate that it happens in the spring or early summer. And so some people use that to indicate this happened at Passover, which is one of these undesigned coincidences, magical ways to prove that Mark and John agree with each other without colluding. But the real purpose of identifying the grass as green has to do with the fact that Jesus was like, huh, look at them, they're like, they're like a sheep without a shepherd. I'll be that shepherd. I'll be the good shepherd. I will be the good shepherd who causes them to lie down in green pastures.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Just like it says in Psalm 23. So this is, this is a literary allusion to things going on elsewhere. And specifically the, the green grass, the sheep without a shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. So we've got Psalm 23 being alluded to with these details that otherwise don't really mean much. So I think that's-

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Other than green grass is more comfortable to sit on than brown grass.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll just, we'll just go with that. So-

• 46:08Speaker 03

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• 46:37Speaker 04

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• 46:59Speaker 05

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• 47:08Speaker 00

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• 47:41Speaker 00

  But there's another illusion here that we can talk about now. The idea of feeding somebody, feeding a crowd of people with not adequate amount of food and getting everybody and even having stuff left over, that doesn't come from, that's not original to this story. That's actually, that's actually an illusion of something that happens way back in 2 Kings 4, where we have Elisha, who's dealing with all kinds of different folks and doing all kinds of different magic tricks. But 2 Kings 4, verse 42, "A man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God, twenty loaves of barley and fresh

• 48:26Speaker 00

  years 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." So we've got a miracle where food is mysteriously and magically multiplied. And so we're doing the same thing here.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. First of all, okay, I hear, I, that's very clearly see a reference there. But Elisha's, Elisha's miracle, can we just say, everybody still gets what? A fifth of a loaf of bread when you're, when you're dividing 20 loaves among a hundred people? You're still getting a good amount of bread.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Depending on the size of the loaf. It seems like, that seems less miraculous.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  You get a good meal. So. That's a Simpsons reference that I think only my wife would get.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Somebody is about to comment. Someone's already in the comments in YouTube telling, telling us that they caught that reference.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Uh, anywho, as a matter of fact, many people, go, go do it, do it. Make that comment, please.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Also, uh, so, so, okay. Jesus has five loaves, not 20, and 5,000 people. Could I just mention, by the way, I did a little Googling just to figure out how many people probably lived in the surrounding villages and whatever.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  It seems really difficult to get five, you know, a fishing village is probably 100 to 300 people. A bigger village, maybe up to 500 people, but like getting five, and it says that they're men too. It says 5,000 men.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  If there are women and children there, then it's, then it's.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Then they're ancillary. Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  So it's like, so like 5,000 seems like an incredible number of people to have all gathered.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Just on a, on a random Tuesday.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's like all of Northern Galilee is, has gathered around the seashore in this deserted place.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  So it is, and, and so it's taking the miracle of Elisha and it's just multiplying it by 50.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  And saying, we're gonna, we're gonna escalate things here.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  We've got less food. We got far more people. And, and it says in verse 20, and all ate and were filled.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  So it's not that they, uh, they weren't rationing it out. Everybody ate as much as they wanted. And they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, 12 basketfuls. So we've got, it's not just, hey, there's some scraps left over. It's we got plenty of food left over, far more is left over than we started with.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Right, right. Now we've got 15 fish and 32 loaves left.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, something ridiculous. So, so the idea is to really eclipse the previous miracle.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Take that, Elisha.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Well, I, I was in, I was in, I somehow scooted over to Matthew. Um, he looked up to breast and blessed and break. They took up 12 baskets full. Yeah. So they still get the 12 baskets full.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Divided the fish among them. Also, think about this. How, how long would it take you to break up bread and hand bread and fish to 5,000 people?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Well, I will tell you, I will tell you, I was a Mormon deacon once and I was in charge of, uh, distribut- distribution of broken bread. If you're really, really on the ball, you can get it done pretty quick. You can, you can. But no, you're right.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  But that's just, that's just one little tiny, uh, thumb sized piece of bread per person.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  And, um, yeah, a half a swallow of water.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny. I, I've heard many, uh, sort of either apologetic or, or explanatory takes on how this miracle could have happened. And, and, you know, I think, I think it's very funny to me when people do that because it's supposed to be a miracle. So it's just, so like, yeah, everybody got fed and there was a bunch left. I, but like, I remember being a kid and being told that what probably happened was that everybody passed the basket around and nobody, and they pretended to eat, but nobody actually took anything. And I was just, and I was like, oh, well, that's, but no, it, that, it can't be that because, uh, because they all ate and they were filled.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Yes. And verse 42 is quite explicit about that on, and all ate and were filled. And then they got 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish, those who had eaten the loaves numbered 5,000 men. And here's the

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Sorry, I was just gonna push on, push back on that 5,000 because Matthew says, and I don't know how to interpret this. Matthew says, and those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children. So does that mean that there were women and children there?

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Matthew is, Mark doesn't say that explicitly. Matthew is like, oh, we'll say that.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds like Matthew's like, oh, Mark just said there are only men. We can, we can make this miracle double.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  If we just say there were also women and children there that were just not even counting in the 5,000.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that that makes it even more escalated.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Even miracle-er.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  So, so here's, so here's something interesting. The very next verse of Mark 6, it says, immediately Jesus told them to get in the boat and they headed across to Bethsaida.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  So Bethsaida is a city that is somewhere on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. There's kind of the traditional site of Bethsaida, which is up the, the little feeder river a little bit. And then within the last few years, scholars are pretty sure they've identified the actual site of Bethsaida, a place called El Arag. And it's closer to the shore and it's just an archaeological site. That's, that's smaller than the more traditionally identified site of Bethsaida, but it's on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. According to Mark, they are across the Sea of Galilee, or at least at some distance.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  From Bethsaida, and they hop in the boats to head to Bethsaida.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  So that's going to be significant when we look at the other tellings. Matthew, we already pointed out, Jesus was in his feelings and needed to go off by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. So Matthew, they get, they get, sick people get cured. And then 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. And then Jesus said to them, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. They replied, we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish. He said, bring them here to me. Ordered the

• 55:36Speaker 00

  crowds to sit down on the grass. Matthew is kind of balking at the Psalm 23 reference of Mark and is just like, they just sat down on the grass. This is no big deal. He breaks, he blesses, he gives them to the disciples, the disciples give them to the crowds. So maybe Matthew is like, look, it's unreasonable to have Jesus handing stuff to 5,000 people. So we're gonna divide it up a little bit. All ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over, broken pieces, 12 baskets full, and those who ate were about 5,000 men, besides women and children. No hint of where this is taking place in this telling, because I think, and I think you do not have, it does say immediately,

• 56:20Speaker 00

  he made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side while he dismissed the crowds, but it doesn't say anything about where they were headed.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  And then after he dismissed the crowds, he went up to the mountain by himself to pray. And yeah, this, and in Mark and Matthew, this is where we then get the stilling, the calming the storm story in the walking on water. Luke-

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And we're gonna have to do that at some point, because I read ahead on that, and I was like, wait, what's the timeframe?

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  It's late at night, it's in the morning, it's all the things. So yeah, eventually, and also, walking on water is a pretty cool trick, so we should talk about that.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  Now, we get to Luke, and then the story starts differently. On their return, the apostles told Jesus all they had done. Then, taking them along, he slipped quietly into a city called Bethsaida.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  We're being quiet. And, and, so this contradicts Mark.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like he misread Mark, and was just like, and was just like, oh yeah, they're in Bethsaida. He just wasn't reading carefully, and he just saw the word Bethsaida, and was like, okay, so that's-

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Well, I think there's a reason for Bethsaida, and we'll get to it in just a second, because the rest of the story is more or less following after what Mark says. When the crowds found out about it, they followed him, and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured. So, so he's not only teaching, he's also healing. So Mark says teaching, Matthew says healing, Luke says, teaching and healing, why not both?

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  The day was drawing to a close, and the 12 came to him and said, send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside to lodge and get provisions, for we are here in a deserted place. I thought we were in Bethsaida.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Now we're in a deserted place. Not only a deserted place, a deserted place that has villages and countrysides- In between the deserted place and Bethsaida. So either he likes to do an awful lot of walking or maybe sprinting while he's healing and teaching. Or Luke has messed something up. So I think what's going on here is Luke is basically repeating what he's found in Mark and Matthew with little changes here and there. But for whatever reason, he throws Bethsaida in. And I think there's a reason he threw Bethsaida in.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  And it is that there's another part of Luke where Jesus says, woe to you Corazin and woe to you Bethsaida. If the miracles that had been performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Here's the thing. So in Mark, there's a miracle that happens in Bethsaida. In fact, it's a couple of chapters later. He heals a blind man in Bethsaida quite explicitly.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  So when Mark says, woe to you, Bethsaida, because of these miracles, you didn't repent. We know what he's talking about. Oh, the blind man got healed in Bethsaida. That's the story. In Matthew, you've got the woe to you, Corazin and Bethsaida, but there's no miracle that happens in Bethsaida. Luke is probably looking at this and going, I don't have anything happening in Bethsaida. I need, because he does not include Mark's story of the blind man being healed in Bethsaida. I gotta have something going on in Bethsaida. So he probably just like, eh, eh, eh, here. And has this occurring in Bethsaida so that it makes sense for Jesus to condemn Bethsaida for not repenting despite the miracles that were done there.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  So I think that's what's going on with the inclusion of Bethsaida. But yeah, that does seem to contradict Mark. So, and then the story kind of basically follows the same outline. There were 5,000 men. They sit down, oh, and something we didn't talk about. They sit down in groups in Mark, they sit in groups of, I think, fifties and hundreds. And Luke says they sit down in groups of about 50 each. This has reference to Jesus as Moses, leading the people, because there are groups of tens, fifties, hundreds in the story of the Exodus. That's how they divide up into their companies in the wilderness in the Exodus narrative. So, so you've got an additional allusion there.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  And then all the details are pretty much the same there. And then, did you have anything you wanted to say about Luke?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. I, yeah, I, not really.

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  The main, yeah. I noticed that Luke, uh, yeah, the Bethsaida thing is the main thing about Luke. Let's get to John.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  John, yeah, and I love this story in John because, uh, John 6:1 says, "After this, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee."

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Fair enough, except the verse right before that, the story right before that is Jesus sermonizing in Jerusalem.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  So this is, this is a pretty significant literary seam where John is probably, you know, he's editing, he's, he's moving things around and for whatever reason, he's in Jerusalem and the next verse says, "Then he went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee." "A large crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick." Now here's a, here's John's main contradiction. "Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples." Now, if you'll recall, in the synoptics, it's all happening on the seashore.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, Jesus sells, uh, seashells to 5,000 men on the seashore. Now, and then, then we get this verse, "Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near." So, uh, uh, odd detail.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Just, uh, just, just some, just some world building. It's fine. It's good.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  But thi- this is something that some people identify as an indication that, oh, Mark says it was green grass. That's because that happens around the Passover. So this is these, you know, interlocking puzzle pieces. It all fits together, except for the fact that John is the only gospel that says Jesus's ministry was three years long. The synoptics all have Jesus's ministry lasting about one year, culminating in the Passover.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  So it makes no sense to, in order to read an additional Passover into the synoptics, you have to just ignore the fact that most scholars think there was no additional Passover in the synoptics. Uh, you're, you're basically begging the question. So, so no, we've got, we've got another contradiction here between, uh, John and these, uh, synoptic gospels. "When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat? He said this to test him, for he knew himself what he was going to do. Philip answered, 200 dinari would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many people?

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  And then we have the blessing.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  I love this.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  The blessing and the breaking, not the blessing.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  There's a, yeah, it's very interesting to me that now we've got a boy. Before it was just like, hey, what do you have? I don't know. What's on the boat? Uh, we got, I don't know. And now there's, now there's a kid who's like.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like, I was, I was on the way home with this. This is my, this is our dinner, man.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  My mom's gonna be mad.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, uh, but people make a big deal out of the fact that Philip is a character now who speaks in the story. And Philip does not speak and plays no role in any narratives in any of the synoptic gospels.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Oh, at all?

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  At all.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  His name is mentioned once, and that is in listing off disciples.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  That's it. Now there's another Philip, uh, who is mentioned, and that is, uh, one of Herod's sons.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Of course, there's another Philip. There's always, there, there's no character that has, that is the only one of his name. So.

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  There are four times in the Gospel of John where the narrative talks about Philip.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  So Philip is a, is a figure in the Gospel of John. Now, some people will say, oh, Philip, according to John, chapter one, another place where John is talking about Philip, says he's from Bethsaida. That's where he lives. And so you have some folks going, hmm, interesting that he would be asking the local where they're gonna get the food. Uh, so that's, that's another thing that people will point to as, as an indication that we've got these undesigned coincidences.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  That are, uh, really, even if you accept them as undesigned coincidences at best, it just demonstrates that they're all working from a shared source of some kind. Could be actual historical events, could be a text, could be an oral tradition.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  I saw, I watched your video about the guy talking about undesigned coincidences and I'm suddenly realizing like, what is a designed coincidence?

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, that would be, that would be like, uh, an, an author like, oh, he says this, I'm gonna write something that, that fits that.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  So even, even if you do have something that is a coincidence, where it's like, yeah, these things fit together. They all were literarily dependent upon the preceding gospels. So there's, there's not really a way to say, this coincidence was not designed. Like, they can all be designed.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and all of these were written and therefore there is a designer who is like, maybe they're not, maybe they don't intend the coincidence and maybe they do, I don't know.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Hard to say.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Hard, hard to say indeed. Hard to prove, but that does not stop people from insisting, uh, that's the case.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Uh, so Jesus takes the loaves, gives thanks, distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, gather up the fragments left over so that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and from the fragments of the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten, they filled 12 baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world. When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. He's already in the mountain!

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Shh, quiet.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Uh, one, there was a video one time I was tagged in some, uh, like 50 times. And, um, I didn't really wanna respond to it, but I ultimately did, cause I thought it was a cool thing. It was, uh, of a woman talking about how, uh, Jesus serves sushi in the New Testament. And people were like, what? And it's this story. It's like, they didn't, it's not cooked. They never talk about cooking it.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  They just talk about dividing it up. And, and I, and that's a clever way to understand the story. But really, this is salted and dried fish. That's how they, that's how they preserved the fish at the time. Salt it, dry it. Fish jerky, basically.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Um, and then it lasted much longer. If it wasn't just fresh, it could have just come fresh out of the, well, no, that would be the sushi part of it. And they didn't cook it. Um, it would have been, yeah, dried and salted.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  That makes more sense.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  All right, well, there you go. Uh, Jesus withdrawing himself into a mountain, uh, is, is where John ends it. John is by far the best storyteller of the Gospel writers.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  I, I think, yeah, John is, is really, um, stretching his, his kind of literary legs, uh, when it comes to some of the details here.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  He's had the longest time to, to think about it. Everybody else had to get their, everybody else was on a stricter deadline. They got their manuscripts in decades before John.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, all right, well, there you go. Um, 5,000 people, five loaves of fishes. That's, uh, loaves and fishes. It's, it's, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a miracle is what it is.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  But you know, 5,000 people can't be wrong.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. All right.

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  That's what I heard.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

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• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

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