Part 1: The Feeding of The Multitudes

It’s probably best to start this post off with some background on my attitudes toward religion.  If you just want to go to my interpretation, feel free to skip ahead.  I class myself as an agnostic but I don’t believe in God.  I don’t really like to class myself as anything but for the purposes of this article, agnostic will do, it translates roughly to no knowledge.  I just don’t think I can be so arrogant as to say “I KNOW GOD DOES NOT EXIST”.  I don’t think humans can ever know if God exists.  I tend to think of organized religion as “Spiritualism for Dummies” but I do accept that religion is probably the biggest influence on humanity in it’s history.  Because of this I think it is important to try and understand the motivations behind people who follow them.

I believe that the bible should not be taken literally and think that it can sometimes be fun to study what was said and try and put a more modern meaning to it.  Mainly because it is fun to do though.  I believe it is quite likely that Jesus was a historical character, but I reject the fact that he was the son of God, died for our sins and was resurrected.  I think it is plausible that he was followed by people and that he had a huge influence on their lives.  I find it hard to accept that he performed miraculous acts.  I prefer to think of them as metaphors for other things.

The feeding of The Multitudes is quite a well known miracle where Jesus feeds thousands with only enough for one or two people, yet still has food to spare.  It is the only miracle mentioned in all 4 gospels apart from the resurrection and subsequent miracles so I think it is probably quite important to the message Jesus was trying to get across many years ago.

For the full story you can check out Matt 14:15-21, Mark 6:32-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-13. There is also a version on this website.  I have read a few posts on various sites that talk about sacred numerology.  I have a gut feeling that this is a load of rubbish and that when you look for patterns in numbers you always find them, wether they are there or not.  Without the rigor of mathematical rules numerology is no better than astrology as far as I’m concerned.

My Interrpretation

My interpretation is that Jesus is not literally feeding the 5000.  I don’t believe any of the miracles should be taken literally for that matter.  In fact, in the greek version of Mark, the word food is never mentioned.  I have to trust my sources here since I don’t read Greek but it does seem like something someone trying to manipulate something empowering into a means of control would do.  I pose the question, what can be repeatedly given without ever being lost?  My answer is knowledge.  I can tell you something and still know it myself.  I can keep telling people the same thing without losing the knowledge myself.  Knowledge is a more abstract concept whereas food is concrete and rooted in reality.  I think food is a metaphor for knowledge in this particular story.  Jesus has the knowledge and is passing it to the multitudes.

What knowledge I am not so sure and will never know.  I like to think that it is some sort of spiritual knowledge (gnosis).  Hopefully something empowering that they can use to improve their lives.  I find it hard to believe that he was telling them that they need to go to church every Sunday and pray to a God, but I treat everything organized religion tells us as suspicious (or worse).

The final point is to do with the left overs.  The bible says that there are more left-overs than originally there was food.  If you take the knowledge is food metaphor and try to extend it, I think (and this is me going out on a limb) that this can be interpreted as the collective knowledge of many is greater than the knowledge of one.  Jesus is feeding their collective minds with knowledge and encouraging them to go out and think about what he has said, knowing that their collective thought would be greater than his original thought.  I find this a much more empowering interpretation than a literal one.

I hope you enjoyed reading my interpretation.  I am eager to hear any thoughts you might have

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