Portal:Bible/Featured article/March, 2008

Feeding the multitude (also known as The miracle of the loaves and fish) is the name of two miracles attributed to Jesus, the first of which is reported by all four of the canonical Gospels of the Christian religion (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), while the second is reported by Mark (8) and Matthew (15) but neither Luke nor John. The first is the only miracle (apart from the resurrection) present in both the narrative of the Gospel of John and that of the Synoptic Gospels. According to the narrative of the Gospels, the first event happened after Jesus had been teaching in an area away from the towns, and insists that the people be fed where they are, rather than sending them to the nearest towns. The Synoptics state that the location was a "desert place" near Bethsaida, while John does not state a specific location, only specifying that it was very grassy. The canonical Gospels all report that, upon investigating the provisions of the crowd, the disciples were only able to find 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and the Gospel of John adds that these came from a single boy in the crowd. The Gospels state that Jesus blessed the food, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, who distributed it to the people present - 5000 not counting women and children - all of them being fed. The Gospels also state that after the meal was over, the disciples collected the scraps, filling 12 baskets. The second event, according to Mark and Matthew, occurred when Jesus was teaching a crowd of about 4000, not including women and children, in a remote location. Like before, Jesus is described as taking the few provisions available, and giving grace, before distributing them amongst the crowd. In this event there are 7 loaves and an unspecified number of fish, and 7 baskets of scraps are collected. (more...)