“Jesus went to the other side of the sea”, which in fact is not a sea, but just a very large lake. And not to the “other side”, since Cana and Capernaum, and Nazareth and even Tiberias are all on one side of the sea, the western one, and on the other, the eastern side, there is the territory of a completely different country, Syria. Apparently, the knowledge of geogrsphy was very bad indeed mong the compilers of the Gospel.
Further, in verses 12, from 2 to 13, the well-known miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish is described. We will not cite it in full, we will dwell only on some details:
“2 Many people followed Him, because they saw the miracles that He performed on the sick” – on foot 20 kilometers from Cana? I wonder: did they go straight ahead, without even thinking to stock up on a some bread? Doubtful. And again – what kind of miracles are performed “over the sick”, who saw them and where? Since you and I have so far certified only two miracles: wine at a wedding and the healing of a child at a distance – there are “no more miracles”.
“3 Jesus went up a mountain and sat there with his disciples.” – 20 kilometers walk in the heat. Let’s suppose it happened.
“4 The Passover, the feast of the Jews, was drawing near” – how, again, the Passover? And what does this have to do with it? This is another “false insertable jaw”, so as not to forget who is the real Master here, and whose holidays are celebrated and honored here. But for some reason no one rushed back to Jerusalem – neither Jesus nor the peoples. What a bunch of sinners.
“13 And they gathered, and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves that were left by those who ate” – an interesting remark. Why did they collect it, and how did they do that – was it taken directly from people’s hands? People probably took the excess and hid it for the road back. Or they threw the remains on the ground (which is unlikely). The answer is contained in the “twelve boxes”: did Jesus and his disciples have such quantities of empty boxes in advance? Or did they run to the store to buy only to collect other people’s leftovers in them? There was no shop, no markets – nothing at all, the place was deserted. So this is added for the sake of a catchphrase, in order to convince of the proof of the miracle: here is how much is left of five loaves of bread – and this lie “as a testimony”, being exposed, undermines the credibility of the miracle itself: if someone lied in little, who will believe them in the big? And why twelve? Oh, because the twelve tribes of Israel – and the Greek author is unaware that for a long time there had been no “twelve tribes of Israel”
Okay, let’s say – why wouldn’t Jesus really feed the hungry away from home? The question is – why did He even bring them there? It seems that it remains to assume that he was fed up with all this popularity, He was tired of the enthusiastic crowd and wanted to escape somewhere to a deserted place, where no one would follow him, to hide from everyone – but they followed Him, literally dooming themselves to hunger with the children, you can’t get out of there quickly back to civilization, to get back you need to walk again on foot in the heat. And here, for sure, one portion of the distributed bread will not be enough, it is not out of order to pour manna from heaven onto a crowd of people like this, all along the way back home to Galilee.
What is the meaning of this hike outside the city remains a mystery – did Jesus decide to arrange a picnic for his disciples and admirers? Well, at least they could have stocked up on meat, or something, and fry a kebab.
In fact, all these incongruities have a simple explanation: Jesus went throughout the country preaching, and finally got to Tiberias. But did not go there on foot, accompanied by crowds…
Note that the narrative omits a huge and important period in the development of Jesus’ preaching after the first and second miracles: for more than one year He walks on foot throughout Galilee and Samaria – but does not go to Judea, they will kill anyone who dares to at least mention another god besides Jewish Yahweh-Jehovah. He preaches, works miracles, heals the sick on a massive scale throughout the country – and becomes widely known as a great prophet and miracle worker, His glory thunders throughout the country, the people rush to Him, and follow Him relentlessly and thoughtlessly, wherever He goes – the authors simply omitted all this as unnecessary. Why? Well, because all these “events” are generally needed by the authors only for the “bundle” of the narrative, which without such events would turn into a disorderly set of disparate, unconnected, utterances of Jesus of the type of e. Thomas. But the authors wanted to create exactly the narrative, the history of the development of the Teachings of Jesus as they understood it. To do this, arranging the available records in a certain meaningful order, as well as a small number of recorded testimonials about individual events that accompanied the sermon of Jesus, especially vivid, important and therefore clearly remembered, the authors, or rather, compilers, supplemented them with some connecting events that, perhaps, did not happen at all, or, in any case, the authors did not really know anything about them, having only inaccurate rumors in the form of folk tales that had developed over the decades after the Gospel events. And therefore, almost everything described by the evangelists is simply reconstructed or made up material in order to make more authentic (like 12 boxes) the narrative bundles, some events to which the already existing scattered records of Jesus’ utterances could be tied.
Such semantic connections are given away especially by the schematic description of events in them, in contrast to those few living, full of reliable details of vivid memories, which may have been entirely recorded by witnesses, presumably by John the Theologian.
Nevertheless, let’s go back to the text and see what else we can learn from it.
In the sixth chapter, this build up of events with the aim of linking them with the words of Jesus manifested itself in a particularly contrasting way: the further events described in it look very conditional.
“15 But Jesus, knowing that they wanted to come, accidentally take him and make him king, again withdrew to the mountain alone.
This is rathre interesting, if Jesus were a Mashiach, he would have grudgingly told the newcomers something like, “Well, finally, what took so long! Bring me the crown!” But he runs away.
16 When evening came, His disciples went down to the sea17 and, getting into a boat, went to the other side of the sea, to Capernaum "– here they are, they just left their Teacher alone in a deserted place and sailed away. And where did the boat come from? Or they just stole someone else’s boat and sailed away on it?
The whole story begins to look much more truthful if we assume that Jesus and his disciples sailed in a boat to Tiberias for the sake of preaching, then everything falls into place: the boat belongs to the disciples, they are former fishermen, the disciples brought Jesus from Capernaum or Bethsaida to Tiberias to preach to the peoples there. They went to the city and spread the news that Jesus was here, the people came to Him from the city a few kilometers away to the landing site – to the place where He climbed the mountain to pray, Jesus preached to them until evening, then took pity on the hungry and performed the miracle of the multiplication of loaves, to feed everyone before the way home – and then a conflict arises with the students, to whom he did not pay attention all day, and even forced them, the inner circle of disciples of the Great Teacher (in their view), to serve the commoners, to distribute bread to them. Moreover, when they informed him that they wanted him to be king in Tiberias – apparently, it was their idea – he brushed aside and went alone again to the mountain to pray. And here they were utterly offended, angry, and – they left him, deciding to take revenge on him a little: here we will sail away from You, and you get back on foot along the coast of the Sea
