John 6:12,13

“ Then, when they were filled, he says to his disciples: Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, that nothing be lost. 13. So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves which remained over to those who had eaten. ”

In the Synoptics, the order given to the disciples is not mentioned. This order is the triumphant answer to the timid calculations of Philip and Andrew. We can understand, moreover, the close relation which exists in the feeling of Jesus between this word: that nothing be lost, and the act of thanksgiving which had produced this abundance. A blessing thus obtained must not be undervalued. Criticism has asked where the twelve baskets came from. The number leads us to suppose that they were the traveling-baskets of the apostles; for they had not set out suddenly, as the crowds had done; or they borrowed them from those standing by. The epithet τῶν κριθίνων, of barley, is designed to establish the identity of these fragments with the original source, the five loaves of the lad.

Not only is this miracle of the multiplication of the loaves found in all the four Gospels, but several characteristic details are common to the four accounts: the crowds following Jesus into a desert place, the five loaves and the two fishes, the five thousand men, and the twelve baskets, and especially the solemn moment of the thanksgiving. Besides this, some features are common to three or two Gospels, particularly to Mark and John (the fresh grass, the two hundred denarii). We see that at the foundation of the four accounts there is a fact, the principal features of which were ineffaceably imprinted on the memory of all the witnesses, but whose details had not been equally well observed and retained by all. John's account contains altogether peculiar features which attest the narrative of an eyewitness; thus the part of Philip, of Andrew and of the lad, and the character of the bread (of barley). But above all the narrative of John is the one which, as we have seen, makes us penetrate most deeply into the feeling of Jesus and the true spirit of this scene. Modern criticism claims that it was composed by means of materials furnished by the Synoptics, especially by Mark (so Baur, Hilgenfeld, and, in some degree, Weizsackerhimself, p. 290). But what! these so distinctly marked features, these most exact outlines of John's narrative are only charlatanism! Is it not clear that it is the narrative of the Synoptics which generalizes, in saying the disciples instead of Philip, Andrew, etc.,? and that we recognize here a narrative which traditional reproduction had robbed of its “sharp edges”?

According to Paulus, there is no need of seeing anything miraculous in this scene. Jesus and the disciples brought out their provisions, generously offering a share of them to their neighbors who followed their example, and, as each gave what he had, every one had enough. Renan seems to adopt this explanation of the fact, if not of the text: “Jesus withdrew into the desert. A large number of people followed Him. Thanks to an extreme frugality, the pious company had enough to eat; they believed, of course, that they saw in this a miracle.” What, with all this, Paulus and Renan do not explain is, that so simple a fact could have carried the crowd to such a pitch of excitement that, on that same evening, they attempted to get possession of Jesus in order to proclaim Him King (John 6:14-15)! Olshausen holds an acceleration of the natural process which multiplies the grain of wheat in the bosom of the earth; he thus furnishes matter for Strauss ' ridicule, who asks whether the law of natural reproduction applies also to broiled fish? Lange supposes that it is not the matter itself of the provisions, which was multiplied, but the nutritive power of the molecules! Either we place ourselves by faith in the region of the supernatural, which is created here on earth by the presence of Jesus, or we refuse to enter that higher sphere. In the latter case, the only part to take is to explain this story with Strauss as a mythical product. But what difficulties does not this hypothesis encounter in the perfectly simple, prosaic character of the four narratives, in the mass of small historical details in which they agree, in the authenticity of even one of the writings which contain the story, and finally in the fact that the narrative, before passing into our three Synoptics, had certainly formed a part of the apostolic tradition of which they are independent redactions (see the differences of detail). A fact which was necessarily accomplished with such notoriety could become the subject of a public narrative only on condition of having actually occurred.