Mark 8:14-21

The Blindness of the Disciples Rebuked. This is a difficult paragraph. Mark 8:15 contains a genuine utterance of Jesus which does not necessarily belong to its present context. Lk. gives it in another connexion (Luke 12:1) and Wellhausen points out that Mark 8:14 and Mark 8:16 seem artificially separated by Mark 8:15. Again, if Mark 8:1 is really a doublet of Mark 6:30 f., then the form at least of Mark 8:19 f. is due to the evangelist. But the rebuke of the disciples for anxiety about bread and for failing to understand the warning against the Pharisees and Herod (united here as in Mark 3:6) may well be historical Loisy holds that the rebuke is again artificial, the evangelist blaming the disciples for not perceiving the truths of Paulinism symbolised in the miracles of feeding the multitudes. But it is doubtful how far these miracles were symbolic in the mind of the evangelist, and he certainly gives no hint of Loisy's interpretation here.