Note 292 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Hence later critics have, with more292 or less293 decision, expressed the opinion, that here one and the same fact has been doubled, through a mistake of the first Evangelist, who was followed by the second. They suppose that several narratives of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were current which presented divergencies from each other, especially in relation to numbers, and that the author of the first gospel, to whom every additional history of a miracle was a welcome prize, and who was therefore little qualified for the critical reduction of two different narratives of this kind into one, introduced both into his collection. This fully explains how on the second occasion the disciples could again express themselves so incredulously: namely, because in the tradition whence the author of the first gospel obtained the second history of a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, it was the first and only one, and the Evangelist did not obliterate this feature because, apparently, he incorporated the two narratives into his writing just as he read or heard them. Among other proofs that this was the case, may be mentioned the constancy with which he and Mark, who copied him, not only in the account of the events, but also in the subsequent allusion to them (Matt. xvi. 9 f.; Mark viii. 19 f.), call the baskets in the first feeding, κόφινοι, in the second σπυρίδες.294 It is indeed correctly maintained, that the Apostle Matthew could not possibly take one event for two, and relate a new history which never happened:295 but this proposition does not involve the reality of the second miraculous feeding of the multitude, unless the apostolic origin of the first gospel be at once presupposed, whereas this yet remains to be proved. Paulus further objects, that the duplication of the history in question could be of no advantage whatever to the design of the Evangelist; and Olshausen, developing this idea more fully, observes that the legend would not have left the second narrative as simple and bare as the first. But this argument, that a narrative cannot be fictitious, because if it were so it would have been more elaborately adorned, may very properly be at once dismissed, since its limits being altogether undefined, it might be repeated under all circumstances, and in the end would prove fable itself not sufficiently fabulous. But, in this case particularly, it is totally baseless, because it presupposes the narrative of the first feeding of the multitude to be historically accurate; now, if we have already in this a legendary production, the other edition of it, namely, the second history of a miraculous feeding, needs not to be distinguished by special traditionary features. But not only is the second narrative not embellished as regards the miraculous, when compared with the first; it even diminishes the miracle, for, while increasing the quantity of provision, it reduces the number of those whom it satisfied: and this retrogression in the marvellous is thought the surest proof that the second feeding of the multitude really occurred; for, it is said, he who chose to invent an additional miracle of this kind, would have made it surpass the first, and instead of five thousand men would have given, not four, but ten thousand.296 This argument, also, rests on the unfounded assumption that the first narrative is of course the historical one; though Olshausen himself has the idea that the second might with probability be regarded as the historical basis, and the first as the legendary copy, and then the fictitious would have the required relation to the true—that of exaggeration. But when in opposition to this, he observes, how improbable it is that an unscrupulous narrator would place the authentic fact, being the less imposing, last, and eclipse it beforehand by the false one,—that such a writer would rather seek to outdo the truth, and therefore place his fiction last, as the more brilliant,—he again shows that he does not comprehend the mythical view of the biblical narratives, in the degree necessary for forming a judgment on the subject. For there is no question here of an unscrupulous narrator, who would designedly surpass the true history of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and least of all is Matthew pronounced to be such a narrator: on the contrary, it is held that with perfect honesty, one account gave five thousand, another four, and that, with equal honesty, the first Evangelist copied from both; and for the very reason that he went to work innocently and undesignedly, it was of no importance to him which of the two histories stood first and which last, the more important or the less striking one; but he allowed himself to be determined on this point by accidental circumstances, such as that he found the one connected with incidents which appeared to him the earlier, the other with such as he supposed to be the later. A similar instance of duplication occurs in the Pentateuch in relation to the histories of the feeding of the Israelites with quails, and of the production of water out of the rock, the former of which is narrated both in Exod. xvi. and Num. xi., the latter in Exod. xvii. and again in Num. xx., in each instance with an alteration in time, place, and other circumstances.297 Meanwhile, all this yields us only the negative result that the double narratives of the first gospels cannot have been founded on two separate events. To determine which of the two is historical, or whether either of them deserves that epithet, must be the object of a special inquiry.