five loaves for five thousand people there came twelve baskets of fragments, while from seven loaves for four thousand people there came seven baskets?[1] How then can I (or you while you are with me) be in need of literal bread?" But this interpretation is open to one serious objection. It is opposed to the whole tenour of Christ's life. Nowhere else in the Gospels do we find that Jesus used any miraculous power to exempt Himself and His disciples from hunger. We are even taught that on one occasion He resisted a prompting to turn stones into bread, as being a temptation from the Evil One. For His disciples he might undoubtedly have been willing to do what He would not do for Himself; but that Jesus (like Elisha) so habitually used miraculous powers to shelter His disciples from the inconveniences and hardships of a wandering life, that he could encourage them to believe that he would do so on the present occasion, is a hypothesis quite inconsistent with the Gospel history. Moreover, plausible although this interpretation may appear to us—because we are familiar with the literalizing interpretation of the miracles of the Four Thousand and Five Thousand—it does not, if I may so say, bring out the proportion of the sentence. Surely it does not sound logical to say, "Did I not once supply you with bread for four and five thousand people (literally)? Why then do you not understand that I now speak of 'leaven' metaphorically?" Instead of this, should we not rather expect: "Do you not remember how on two previous occasions 'bread' was used spiritually? Why then do you not understand that 'leaven' is here used spiritually?" Now this is what I believe to have been the original meaning of the words, if genuine. I believe that Jesus intended to remind the
- ↑ Two different kinds of baskets appear to be denoted by the two different Greek words. A similar difference is also found in the narratives of the feeding of the Four Thousand and the Five Thousand: but it would be easy to shew that no inference of importance can be drawn from this distinction.
