One Man's Web

The Banquets of Mark 6: 1-52

Mark 6:1-6 Poor ngaltatjaras^[1] us

He left that place and came to his home town, and his disciples are following him. ²And the Sabbath having come he began to teach in the synagogue, and many (much) who heard him were astounded. They said, 'Where did this (man) get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? And such deeds of power are being done by his hands! ³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary^[2] and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?' And they were scandalised at  him^[3]. ⁴Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their blood relatives, and in their own house.’ ⁵And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶And he wondered at their unbelief. (NRSVa alt)

¹Καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἐκεῖθεν καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς τὴν πατρίδα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀκολουθοῦσιν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ. ²καὶ γενομένου σαββάτου ἤρξατο διδάσκειν ἐν τῇ συναγωγῇ, καὶ πολλοὶ ἀκούοντες ἐξεπλήσσοντο λέγοντες· πόθεν τούτῳ ταῦτα, καὶ τίς ἡ σοφία ἡ δοθεῖσα τούτῳ, καὶ αἱ δυνάμεις τοιαῦται διὰ τῶν χειρῶν αὐτοῦ γινόμεναι; ³οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων, ὁ υἱὸς τῆς Μαρίας καὶ ἀδελφὸς Ἰακώβου καὶ Ἰωσῆτος καὶ Ἰούδα καὶ Σίμωνος; καὶ οὐκ εἰσὶν αἱ ἀδελφαὶ αὐτοῦ ὧδε πρὸς ἡμᾶς; καὶ ἐσκανδαλίζοντο ἐν αὐτῷ. ⁴καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν τοῖς συγγενεῦσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ. ⁵καὶ οὐκ ἐδύνατο ἐκεῖ ποιῆσαι οὐδεμίαν δύναμιν, εἰ μὴ ὀλίγοις ἀρρώστοις ἐπιθεὶς τὰς χεῖρας ἐθεράπευσεν. ⁶καὶ ἐθαύμαζεν διὰ τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν. Καὶ περιῆγεν τὰς κώμας κύκλῳ διδάσκων.

Text Notes

Home town (vv1) ie Nazareth

Many (vv2) That Markan favourite, polloi.

Astounded (vv2) Mark distinguishes here between astounded (exeplēssonto) and Jesus' wonderment (ethaumazen) in verse 6.

Joses (vv3) James; ie, Iakōbou is from the Hebrew Jacob. Iōsētos is a Greek form of Joseph, Iouda  is Judas, and Simōnos is a grecized Simeon.  Hidden behind the Greek for we English speakers is that Jesus' brothers are all named after the patriarchs of Israel. (cf Genesis 35:22-26)

Scandalised (vv3) eskandalizonto (See Mark 4:1-20 - Scandal: A key word) The affect, or emotional colour, of the word eskandalizonto in Mark 6:3 is that his home-town folks were "jealous and angry at him,^[4]" but underlying the word is the sense of stumbling. Skandalizó^[5] has the sense of setting a snare, which evokes exactly the problem of resentment. The more the snared or scandalised person struggles, the tighter the noose of the snare becomes. So, although I think the Scholars Bible translation that they resented him is excellent, I am using the translation scandalised because it reminds me of the implications of the word scandal. These words of Hamerton-Kelly will discussion below:

We attack and cherish, hate and love, diminish and exalt [our rival, otherwise we would ignore them]. This is scandal, and it is the essence of anxiety (and addiction) because it is the love of what one hates and the hatred of what one loves… The crowd wants to be like the other, and to destroy him, because he is so pleasing.^[6]

Honour (vv4) This is a sharp saying from Jesus. Malina says it is "seriously insulting" because it implies that outsiders can discern more about Jesus than the people of his own home town.^[7] Mark's customary three-fold listing: "… except in their home town, and among their blood relatives, and in their own house…" emphasises the insult.

We who live with the delusion that we are "individuals," may not recognise how powerful communal honour systems were in Jesus' time; everything, even survival, depended upon one's honour. Honour was understood to be a limited good; more honour could only be gained through the loss of honour by someone else. To grant that Jesus was "more than Mary's son" meant someone else lost honour; the people around him felt diminished.  Malina says such a system "institutionalises envy^[8]." The language of honour is unfamiliar and may seem confected in our time, but our fear of diminishment, our communal tendency to tall poppy syndrome^[9], the emotive power of the word "dissing" in our time, and the constant jockeying for supremacy on social media, all suggest that we are little different to the people of Nazareth. 

Wondered…unbelief (vv6) NRSVa says Jesus was amazed, which is the same English expression used only a few words earlier in Chapter 5:42.^[10] Greek listeners would not hear that repetition. Ethaumazen includes a sense of bemusement at the a-pistian  of people despite Jesus' and Mark's familiarity with the rejection of prophets in their own home towns. The word apistian makes it clear that people were not sceptical of the stories about him; rather, the were a-pistis, not trusting/faithing in him despite what they knew.^[11]

A Shift in the Gospel: How to Live with the Basileia at Hand

Jesus comes home. They really like him, and they really hate him, and this all happens so quickly that we scarcely notice it. Six skilful verses move us from the defeat of empire's legions to the "small things" in our own home town which undo so much of the life of the church: Simple envy^[12] and resentment blind us and separate us from the life of the culture of God as effectively as the military power of empire! Envy and resentment are key elements within the culture of empire, so much so that where there is envy and resentment, empire is at hand. In Chapter 6, we see the resentment in Nazareth mirrored by the resentment in Herod's family and palace. There is no qualitative difference between them.

Chapter 6 verse 1 takes the life of discipleship, crucifixion, and resurrection, all shown to us in Chapter 5, home to Nazareth. The phrase and his disciples are following him makes our calling clear.

Chapter 6 then continues with words deliberately chosen to remind us of Jesus' earlier and very favourable reception in Capernaum. There is a clear parallel between the structures of Mark 6:1-6 and Mark 1:21-28.

 

1:21: And on the Sabbath he went into the Synagogue and immediately began to teach	6:2a: And when the Sabbath had come he began to teach in the Synagogue
1:22 And the people were amazed (exeplēssonto) at his teaching...	6:2b: And many people, when they had heard him, were amazed… (exeplēssonto)
1:27a: "What is this? A new teaching with authority!"	6:2c: saying, "Where does this man get these things from? What wisdom has been given to him!"
1:27b: "He even gives orders to the unclean spirits, and they obey him!"	6:2d: "And such works of power are performed by his hands![13]"
28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.	6:3 "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary[14] and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?' And they were scandalised at  him."[15]

 

Mark crafts these verses in such a way that we expect the story to echo the praise of the story in Mark 1:21-28 which concluded with the words, "At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee."^[16] Instead, there is a contrast.

Returning to his hometown, he is almost immediately "put in his place" as "the carpenter," which is to say, "What would he know?" Then he is referred to by his mother's name, rather than the Jewish pattern of his father's name."^[17]   The use of Mary's name was an unsubtle insult^[18] which Luke 4:22 seeks to erase by saying (in his version of the same story,) "Isn't this Joseph's son?" Matthew 13:55 says "Isn't this the carpenter’s son? Isn't his mother called Mary?" For the reader of Mark there is an unmissable invitation to join in the celebration of a scandal.

There is another insult which is almost invisible to us, but again obvious to people of the time. James and Joses and Judas and Simon (vv3) are all Grecized names of the Patriarchs.^[19] Through this naming of the brothers, the family itself is shown to be pious despite Jesus which, of course, is also to insult him. All this "brings him down to size" and justifies denying his power.

This is the hometown rivalry and envy which grows into resentment so quickly that we scarcely notice the shift. Envy does not (at first) deny that Jesus is doing deeds of power; instead, envy, impressed, wonders, "I too am from Nazareth. Why can I not be like him? Why do I not have this power? Why only him?" And all this perhaps not even noticing the first response, which is "I wish I could be like Jesus" And these questions begin to drip with resentment almost before the asking is done, and then the deeds themselves are belittled. Because so much depends upon relationship in the healing economy of the Basileia, and because relationship with Jesus is so rapidly severed by his townspeoples' resentment, it is consequently the case that few deeds of power can be perceived or received in Nazareth. In these six verses a clear contrast is drawn between the life of discipleship in the Basileia, and the normal social expectations and demands of life in our home town, among our blood relatives, and even in our own house.

Resentment

One can find any number of dictionary distinctions drawn between envy and resentment. As I use these words, envy is a "fresh" emotion, the recognition and regret that we do not possess something we admire and therefore desire.  Envy is a transitory, decisive moment and emotion. I might see what another has and think, "If I had that, I would be like them; I would be." There is a moment of decision here: I could recognise that to emulate and cultivate their way of being—and model myself upon them—will be healthy and life giving. Or I might recognise that to work for the possessions they have taught me to desire, will have benefit to me. Here, my envy may become a moment of grace! But if I instead focus my attention upon bettering the person who has inspired me, I will slip into resentment before I even notice. And they will become my rival. 

Resentment is an escalation of envy. It festers. Resentment perceives that I lack what I take to be another person's "superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes the other [person] lacked it."^[20]  (Whether the other person's possession or quality is objectively superior is irrelevant.)  Resentment adds a "moral dimension" to envy.^[21] It is an emotion which unconsciously builds an alternative, self-serving reality, where we feel we deserve and should have, what the other has, and can give you the reasons why. And so, even though there is little healing in Nazareth, everyone feels a little better, and somewhat justified, because, after all, it's only Mary's son—snigger; we know we are superior to him. Luke discerns where such resentment can very easily go: The crowd "got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff."^[22] (Luke 4:28-29 NRSVa) Resentment consumes and controls us. I said the questions of the people of Nazareth dripped resentment almost before the asking was done: Although a potential moment of grace, envy is the short-lived warning of something much worse.

As with all violence, empire seeks to control resentment^[23] because of its destructiveness, but not by reducing it for the common good. Instead, those who are at the top of the pecking order seek to foster and direct communal resentment to ensure their own continuing dominance.  Empire recognises that resentment is potently destructive of the healthy relationships and growth which could undermine it.

Mark draws for us here something common to both an inconsequential Galilean village and the royal palace. It is a human universal which Mark contrasts with the exemplary disciple of Chapter 5; indeed, Alison says, "Resentment…is the exact opposite of grace."^[24] Jesus said to the woman, "Daughter, your trust has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.l" Perhaps resentment is our primary human affliction.

Ressentiment

Although imitation, rivalry, scandal, and scapegoating are often things we need to learn to discern, their symptoms of resentment and hatred, are plain to us. We are intimately familiar with what the French word ressentiment describes; the festering affliction and disease of unhealed rivalry and envy. Ressentiment has "undertones of persistent hatred rooted in feelings of impotence"^[25] which our English word resentment can allow us to gloss over. Girard says

jealousy and envy, like hatred, are scarcely more than traditional names given to internal mediation, names which almost always conceal their true nature from us. ^[26]

Ressentiment Lies at the Heart of Scandal. It is a trap

Empire glorifies violence, for it is violence which leads to the success of those at the top. Nietzsche spoke of "life itself, its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence," which "creates torment, destruction, the will to annihilate^[27]..."^[28] This leads to the "strong and the victorious," the Ubermensch. Girard considered that Nietzsche could hold this view only because of the relative security of his age; real vengeance had been enough attenuated in his time and place for him to be able to indulge in such "frivolity."^[29] But real vengeance is back among us, Girard said,

in the shape of nuclear and other absolute weapons, reducing our planet to the size of a global primitive village, terrified once again by the possibility of unlimited blood feud.

Ressentiment is not Christianity stifling the Ubermensch by repressing the most dynamic individuals of a culture;^[30] that's Nietzsche. Instead,

ressentiment is the interiorisation of weakened vengeance. The Bible and the Gospels have diminished the violence and vengeance and turned it into ressentiment not because they originate in the latter but because their real target is vengeance in all its forms, and they succeeded in wounding vengeance not eliminating it. Ressentiment is the manner in which vengeance survives the impact of Christianity.^[31]

Ressentiment is a consequence of not pursuing our rival or attacking a scapegoat! "It is the collateral damage of forgiveness."^[32] And ressentiment unchecked is always a seed to the increasing rage in our time "that turns ressentiment back into irrepressible vengeance and can unleash the unspeakable."^[33] There is no frivolity here. My personal experience is that unmitigated ressentiment is deadly for life and health, both physical and spiritual.

How does all this work out in our hometown? In a very public and emotionally charged situation, a colleague allowed themselves to be seen to have no answers, while at the same time still demonstrating an utterly graceful gentleness toward others. To my shame, I recognise the same gentle grace shown to me when they were once subjected to my sharp tongue. They were modelling to me the gratuitous love of Jesus—no conditions imposed. Contrast this to my side of the relationship; existential anxiety satiated by imagining my superior theological acumen and pastoral wisdom. There is some truth in my critique of my colleague, but the shortcomings I have discerned in them are not the issue. Nor is my sense that they are among the favoured insiders of our denominational system and I am not. There are other folk about whom I could make the same observations, but do not. But this person has irritated me for years, for the simple reason that I long for their popularity and apparent self-assurance. This has been the source of my criticisms of them, for which we should read, my condemnation, which is to say, hatred. Scandal is the endpoint—the final outcome—of our ressentiment.

Hamilton-Kelly says, "Scandal begins with the assumption that we are potentially our model’s equal and can always be the same as [them.] We want not only to equal but also to surpass [our] model." I imagine I do that with my superior theological understanding to that of my colleague. But then my colleague ceases to be my model, and I do not really want that … "because the tension of our desire depends on their modelling, and so we desire a contradiction, to surpass and to be surpassed by our model."^[34]

Put bluntly, if you have been my model, if you have been effectively showing me how to be, and then I surpass you, the terrifying question "Who am I?" confronts me all over again. In my case above, feeling superior and surpassing my colleague, all they have left to offer me is their natural self-ease, which my neuro-diverse self knows I will never match. And if I could? Well then, I would be on my own. I would have no model. I would not know how to be! —for the simple reason that looking self-assured does absolutely nothing to counter our existential dilemma which is that what

is 'out there' is already, inescapably, a construct made real by human desire ... We desire according to the desire of another, that is the eyes of another teaches us who we are by teaching us what we want^[35].

If we take away our sense of autonomy, and our sense that there is a concrete and unconstructed "out there" world, then who are we!? All that is left, inescapably and incontrovertibly, is death. And so our hardwired need to imitate propels us into a crisis of violence as we lash out at the one we both love and hate. ^[36]

How much easier, and how much less humiliating, to hide the great fear of nothingness and impotence behind ressentiment and its violence, building ourselves up by belittling our model, satiating our rage by pretending their guilt in whatever scapegoating we develop. We can see how the interior ressentiment can spill over into violent action in seconds.

What my colleague—I hope they are blissfully ignorant of my scandalised self—has done for me is model Jesus, who simply gives. Who shows no resentment in Nazareth, does what he can, and moves onto the next place. And who we will see authorises us (aka, the disciples, Mark 6:7ff) with a list of instructions—modelling to follow—which work to reduce resentment.

There is now a critical distinction provided to us by Mark at this point in his text. It is not a distinction between the people of Nazareth, and the people in the villages where  the disciples "cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them." (Mark 6:13) Rather, the people of the villages are a vehicle by which to contrast the people of Nazareth with those who are disciples. The contrast is that disciples "faith" Jesus by trusting his example. They model Jesus' example in 6:6b-13, rather than seeking to surpass him. 

Mark 6:6b-13 A new Exodus

Then he was going around the villages teaching. ⁷And he calls to himself the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. ¹⁰He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. ¹¹If any place will not welcome you or hear you, as you are leaving, shake off the dust that is under your feet as a testimony to them.’ ¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. ¹³They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Καὶ περιῆγεν τὰς κώμας κύκλῳ διδάσκων. ⁷Καὶ προσκαλεῖται τοὺς δώδεκα καὶ ἤρξατο αὐτοὺς ἀποστέλλειν δύο δύο καὶ ἐδίδου αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τῶν πνευμάτων τῶν ἀκαθάρτων, ⁸καὶ παρήγγειλεν αὐτοῖς ἵνα μηδὲν αἴρωσιν εἰς ὁδὸν εἰ μὴ ῥάβδον μόνον, μὴ ἄρτον, μὴ πήραν, μὴ εἰς τὴν ζώνην χαλκόν, ⁹ἀλλ’ ὑποδεδεμένους σανδάλια, καὶ μὴ ἐνδύσησθε δύο χιτῶνας. ¹⁰καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς· ὅπου ἐὰν εἰσέλθητε εἰς οἰκίαν, ἐκεῖ μένετε ἕως ἂν ἐξέλθητε ἐκεῖθεν. ¹¹καὶ ὃς ἂν τόπος μὴ δέξηται ὑμᾶς μηδὲ ἀκούσωσιν ὑμῶν, ἐκπορευόμενοι ἐκεῖθεν ἐκτινάξατε τὸν χοῦν τὸν ὑποκάτω τῶν ποδῶν ὑμῶν εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς. ¹²Καὶ ἐξελθόντες ἐκήρυξαν ἵνα μετανοῶσιν, _arflpκαὶ δαιμόνια πολλὰ ἐξέβαλλον, καὶ ἤλειφον ἐλαίῳ πολλοὺς ἀρρώστους καὶ ἐθεράπευον.

He went… began to send the out two by two (vv6b-7) At this point in the Gospel, the disciples stop being mere observers of Jesus' works of power. They are now participants in his works of power.

Jewish practice sent official representatives in pairs, which probably reflects the Torah requirement that legal testimony had two witnesses.^[37] The text also reflects the world view which we have already seen in Chapter One, where when one met the chosen or designated son of a ruler, it was effectively to meet the ruler himself.^[38] Here, in this mindset, the disciples are Jesus himself.^[39] 

Nothing for their journey… (vv8-11) Matthew and Luke make this list even more extreme: not even a staff is allowed.^[40] There is a strong emphasis on "travelling light," and not being embedded into and obligated to a place. This will soon be contrasted by Herod’s complete embedding into, and total obligation to, his court.

"Travelling light" is to be dependent upon God.  Mark highlights this with Jesus’ list of what may be worn or taken by the travelling disciples. The list is often understood to make a distinction between  disciples of Jesus and the travelling Cynic^[41] philosophers of the time. But if we read Mark’s list as what is not needed for the journey, the dependence upon God is obvious.  There may also be an intended echo of the Exodus story here. Exodus 12:11 says of the Passover meal, "This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly."^[42] In this reading of Mark, discipleship is to make an Exodus from empire.

For their journey is a good translation of eis hodon except that English speakers do not see the hodon which is visible throughout the gospel to Greek readers. Hodon is the Way, a particular journey, seen especially in the story of Bartimaeus who was sitting by the way and then followed Jesus on the way. I am tempted to write for their journey on the way for hodon.

Shake off the dust…as a testimony to/against them (vv11) There is a translation issue in this verse which I address below.

Proclaimed that all should repent… (vv12) cf Mark 1:14-15:

 Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

The disciples are reflecting Jesus. They are not on their own mission.

Mark 6:6b-13 - What is Power?

In his eschewing of violence, and in his  vision of the Basileia of God, Jesus completely upends our notions of power.  The disciples are quite powerless when viewed from the perspective of empire.  They have no resources. They don't even take with them the dust of a place on their feet if hospitality is not freely given.^[43]  Yet despite this apparent lack of power they are full of power, healing those communities which step a little out of the thrall of empire to offer them hospitality and a hearing.

Jesus could do no work of power in his home town. (6:5) It was beset with rivalry. His townsfolk were scandalised, and stumbled over him. But what rivalry is there to be had with disciples who travel the Way light?  The twelve did "cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them." The contrast between the two pericopae (Mark 6:1-6 and 6:7-13) is deliberate.  The disciples are sent without status. They have nothing of which to be envious.

When you go out in my name, to proclaim that all should repent; when you hope to cast out many demons, and anoint with oil many who are sick, and cure them, do not even take your name with you. (Something Jesus could have said.)^[44]

Leaving a congregation where I had been rejected, I parked off the road where the town disappears from view, took off my shoes, and beat them together, shaking off the dust in the direction of the town. My actions were a counter-factual claim to power and a good name. Shaking the dust off my feet against that congregation was an attempt to carry my good name with me by rejecting them. "You reject me, I’ll reject you," is actually a revenge even though it claims a biblical intention. 

In my actions, I stumbled over them just as much as they had stumbled over me. I was driven to do this because I had "brought my name with me"; I had come, unconsciously, desiring to be a someone, seeing the placement as a promotion. Which meant I had to win, and meant that when I could not be heard by people, the problem became mine. Shaking the  dust off my feet as a witness against them was simply a passive-aggressive escalation of the rivalry and violence between us.^[45]

There is something "un-Jesus-like" about making a witness against them. Something

contrary to how Jesus typically operates. If this were a way of providing a testimony ‘to’ them, it would fit the spirit of not taking anything along for the journey. The twelve are not being sent out to benefit or exploit. They go out with authority over unclean spirits and receptive to hospitality. If there is no offer of hospitality, they demonstrate that they are not there to take anything – not even the dust – that is not freely given.^[46]

How hard it is to see this! We want righteous revenge.  The Textus Receptus^[47] used by the KJV adds Matthew 10:15 to Mark 6:11.

Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgement, than for that city.

The desire to "be a somebody" is, of course, driven by envy of those around me, which is part of the scandal of empire. It is the desire to insulate myself from death just that little bit more, a desire which, within empire, scales up into the desire to conquer. Empire works the violence judgement and exclusion, and if I make a witness against you, I am making judgement.

In verse 11, the dative would typically be translated as "a testimony to them."^[48] This is  how exactly the same Greek phrase is translated in Mark 1:44.^[49]  But here in chapter 6, NRSVa and others translate eis marturion  autois "as a testimony against them." Marcus, supporting this, says marturion plus the dative "normally has a negative nuance" outside the New Testament.  He^[50] sees shaking off the dust as a breaking of communion, noting  similarities with Nehemiah 5:13 and Acts 18.6.  I agree with his assessment of those events, but do not think they carry over into verse 11. Here, the disciples say, "We came only  to give; we do not even keep the dust of your streets upon our feet." As it shows us our lack of grace, it may so threaten and destabilise us that we feel it as judgement, but the disciples dust shaking is a profound testimony to us of the Basiliea which is God giving and giving.

No cut 'n' paste here

Mark 6:13 says "They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them," and Mark 6:30 concludes that story of their travels with a solitary verse: "The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught." Oddly, this last verse comes after the long story of Herod's feast. In a world of word processors and copying machines, it could look as though Mark slightly misplaced the cursor as he pasted the story of Herod into his gospel. Surely he meant to place it after the story of the twelve's discipleship?

Not so. This placement of pericope is a deliberate literary sandwich. Herod's feast is not only a saga failed power. It is a comparison of discipleship and "kingdom." Mark is telling us we can only understand Herod if we compare and contrast him with the twelve. ^[51]

Also deliberate is the sad juxtaposition of two groups of disciples: John's disciples take his body and lay it in a tomb (6:29) as the apostles rejoice telling Jesus all they had done and taught. (6:30) The irony is that in 14:46 a disciple will lay Jesus' body in a tomb.^[52] 

Herod’s Banquet

Herod's Banquet fulfills multiple roles in Mark.^[53] After the initial comments on the text, I explore the roles the story seems to play in the gospel. 

Mark 6:14-29 Herod's Banquet

¹⁴ King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ (Gk his) name had become known. And people were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and because of this these powers are at work in him.’ ¹⁵But others were saying, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others were saying that he was a prophet, like one of the Prophets.^{[54] 16}But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I myself beheaded, has been raised.’

¹⁷ For Herod himself had sent men who seized John and bound him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod (Gk he) had married her. ¹⁸For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to hold your brother’s wife.’ ¹⁹And Herodias did hold it against him, and wanted to kill him, but could not, ²⁰for Herod feared John, knowing he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; yet gladly heard him.

²¹But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. ²²When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod  and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ ²³And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ ²⁴And having gone out, she said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptiser.’ ²⁵And having entered  immediately with haste to the king she asked, saying, ‘I desire that at once you  give me on a platter, the head of John the Baptist.’ ²⁶The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. ²⁷Immediately, the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, ²⁸brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. ²⁹When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. ³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. (NRSVa alt)

¹⁴Καὶ ἤκουσεν ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρῴδης, φανερὸν γὰρ ἐγένετο τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἔλεγον ὅτι Ἰωάννης ὁ βαπτίζων ἐγήγερται ἐκ νεκρῶν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐνεργοῦσιν αἱ δυνάμεις ἐν αὐτῷ. ¹⁵ἄλλοι δὲ ἔλεγον ὅτι Ἠλίας ἐστίν· ἄλλοι δὲ ἔλεγον ὅτι προφήτης ὡς εἷς τῶν προφητῶν. ¹⁶ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἡρῴδης ἔλεγεν· ὃν ἐγὼ ἀπεκεφάλισα Ἰωάννην, οὗτος ἠγέρθη.

¹⁷Αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ Ἡρῴδης ἀποστείλας ἐκράτησεν τὸν Ἰωάννην καὶ ἔδησεν αὐτὸν ἐν φυλακῇ διὰ Ἡρῳδιάδα τὴν γυναῖκα Φιλίππου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι αὐτὴν ἐγάμησεν· ¹⁸ἔλεγεν γὰρ ὁ Ἰωάννης τῷ Ἡρῴδῃ ὅτι οὐκ ἔξεστίν σοι ἔχειν τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου. ¹⁹ἡ δὲ Ἡρῳδιὰς ἐνεῖχεν αὐτῷ καὶ ἤθελεν αὐτὸν ἀποκτεῖναι, καὶ οὐκ ἠδύνατο· ²⁰ὁ γὰρ Ἡρῴδης ἐφοβεῖτο τὸν Ἰωάννην, εἰδὼς αὐτὸν ἄνδρα δίκαιον καὶ ἅγιον, καὶ συνετήρει αὐτόν, καὶ ἀκούσας αὐτοῦ πολλὰ ἠπόρει, καὶ ἡδέως αὐτοῦ ἤκουεν.

²¹Καὶ γενομένης ἡμέρας εὐκαίρου ὅτε Ἡρῴδης τοῖς γενεσίοις αὐτοῦ δεῖπνον ἐποίησεν τοῖς μεγιστᾶσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῖς χιλιάρχοις καὶ τοῖς πρώτοις τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ²²καὶ εἰσελθούσης τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ Ἡρῳδιάδος καὶ ὀρχησαμένης ἤρεσεν τῷ Ἡρῴδῃ καὶ τοῖς συνανακειμένοις. εἶπεν ὁ βασιλεὺς τῷ κορασίῳ· αἴτησόν με ὃ ἐὰν θέλῃς, καὶ δώσω σοι· ²³καὶ ὤμοσεν αὐτῇ [πολλὰ] ὅ τι ἐάν με αἰτήσῃς δώσω σοι ἕως ἡμίσους τῆς βασιλείας μου. ²⁴καὶ ἐξελθοῦσα εἶπεν τῇ μητρὶ αὐτῆς· τί αἰτήσωμαι; ἡ δὲ εἶπεν· τὴν κεφαλὴν Ἰωάννου τοῦ βαπτίζοντος. ²⁵καὶ εἰσελθοῦσα εὐθὺς μετὰ σπουδῆς πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα ᾐτήσατο λέγουσα· θέλω ἵνα ἐξαυτῆς δῷς μοι ἐπὶ πίνακι τὴν κεφαλὴν Ἰωάννου τοῦ βαπτιστοῦ. ²⁶καὶ περίλυπος γενόμενος ὁ βασιλεὺς διὰ τοὺς ὅρκους καὶ τοὺς ἀνακειμένους οὐκ ἠθέλησεν ἀθετῆσαι αὐτήν· ²⁷καὶ εὐθὺς ἀποστείλας ὁ βασιλεὺς σπεκουλάτορα ἐπέταξεν ἐνέγκαι τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ. καὶ ἀπελθὼν ἀπεκεφάλισεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ φυλακῇ ²⁸καὶ ἤνεγκεν τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ πίνακι καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτὴν τῷ κορασίῳ, καὶ τὸ κοράσιον ἔδωκεν αὐτὴν τῇ μητρὶ αὐτῆς. ²⁹καὶ ἀκούσαντες οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἦλθον καὶ ἦραν τὸ πτῶμα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔθηκαν αὐτὸ ἐν μνημείῳ.

³⁰Καὶ συνάγονται οἱ ἀπόστολοι πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ ἀπήγγειλαν αὐτῷ πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησαν καὶ ὅσα ἐδίδαξαν. (NA28) 

First Comments on the Text

Not only a relatively long story for Mark, this is the only story which does not include Jesus, although he is mentioned in its introduction.

When King Herod heard of it… (vv14-16)  Jesus is twice mis-identified by Herod as John raised from the dead. Immediately we are being told that Herod does not understand what is happening within his kingdom. The repetition is also a rhetorical asterisk reminding us of the gospel's themes of death and resurrection, and reintroduces the John/Elijah theme which is in the opening words of the Gospel.

The words "When King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known," create the link between the ministry of Jesus' apostles and the "filling" of the sandwich structure of Mark 6:6b-30, whilst also reminding us that the gospel is about Jesus. It is his name that has become known, not the apostles', although it is the disciples' ministry which Herod hears about.

In this sandwich we see a comparison of the least of society (misfits from Galilee) who are full of the power of the healing of Creation, and the very greatest of society, who is powerless and forced to destroy even the  person through whom he senses his own potential for healing.

King Herod... (vv14) The "king" is Herod Antipas, (CE 4-39) not the Herod the Great of Matthew's birth narrative. Antipas was a son of Herod the Great, and was Tetrarch^[55] of Galilee, not a king. Why does Mark call him a king five times,  (βασιλεύς, Mark 6.14, 22, 25, 26, 27), where, after the introductory verse, the remaining four namings occur in his interaction with a little girl. Marcus says that in the narrative we see the supposed "king" is not even in control of himself, much less of his subjects: he is, rather, overmastered by his emotions, which swing wildly from superstitious dread (6:14, 16) to awe, fascination, and confusion (6:20), to a sexual arousal that seems to border on insanity (6:22-23), to extreme depression (6:26) ... Herod is one who merely appears to rule, whereas actually his strings are pulled by others.^[56]

Jesus' euangelion is about the kingdom of God as opposed to empire.  Mark  makes it clear that "King" Herod is embedded in empire—rather than ruling it—and is therefore at its mercy.

But others said...a prophet like one of the Prophets  (vv15)  The text follows the confusion about who Jesus is in Mark 6:1-6, and his subsequent rejection, and also alludes to  Mark 8:27-30 where Jesus "asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?'"

The structures of 6:14-15 and 8:27-29 are similar.

Mark 6:14-15: And people were saying, 'John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and because of this these powers are at work in him.' ¹⁵But others were saying, 'It is Elijah.' And others were saying that he was a prophet, like one of the Prophets. ¹⁶But when Herod heard of it, he said, 'John, whom I myself beheaded, has been raised.'

Mark 8: 27-29: And they answered him, 'John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets. He asked them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.'

In Mark 8, the report is concluded by Peter's identification of Jesus as Messiah. But here in Mark 6, Herod can only see that Jesus is, as it were, another John. He is blind to who Jesus is.

At this point Mark shows us Herod's fascination with John.  He

feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; yet he liked to listen to him. (6:20)

We can see Hamerton-Kelly's description of scandal reflected in Herod, over John.

We attack and cherish, hate and love, diminish and exalt [our model]. This is scandal, and it is the essence of anxiety (and addiction) because it is the love of what one hates and the hatred of what one loves.^[57]

And so Herod "stumbles" over John; he protects him, fears him (vv17-20), hears truth and likes to listen, but then, although only a little lower than Caesar, is powerless, and must kill him.

Whom I myself beheaded…has been raised… (vv16)  Apekephalisa (I beheaded) is already first person singular. Adding ego would generally indicate an emphasis, (thus the translation I myself.) It is a boast: Herod did not himself perform the execution. His statement is a claim to greatness^[58]: see what I can do! The irony is that the reader sees no greatness at all, only a man who is out-manoeuvred and who capitulates.

His greatness is contrasted with Jesus.  Jesus has just sent disciples two by two in Mark 6:7, and they heal. Herod sends men to seize John and later sends an executioner. (vv17) The Greek word is the same in each case.

It was a common expectation in the first century that important leaders might return from the dead. Herod's identification of Jesus as John  therefore indicates anxiety about what this returned John might do to him.^[59]  

The word ēgerthē (has been raised) is common in Mark. This same divine passive is used in Mark 2:12 – Peter's mother in law, and of Jesus himself in Mark 16:6.

Herod himself had sent men… (vv17) See the verse above, and note the emphasis on Herod's role and responsibility: He himself (autos) does the sending.

Who seized John… and bound him in prison (vv17) The word arrest too easily signifies a sense of legal due process which does not seem warranted by the situation. In current events (2025) people are seized off the streets in democracies without due process, or with only a pretence of such. This is what happened with John.

Neither chains (contra Scholars Bible), nor the words "and put him" in prison exist in Mark's Greek. John was "bound in prison."^[60] (kai edēsen auton en phulakē)  He may well have been in chains, but the prison is itself a binding.

On account of … his brother Philip's wife… (vv17-18) The Herod family tree is complicated. For our purposes, the Herod whom Mark calls Philip was a half brother to Herod Antipas who imprisons John. But Josephus identifies the one Mark calls Herod Philip simply as Herod^[61], and it appears the identification of the brother as Philip may have been a mistake on Mark's part. (Luke was apparently aware of this; in 3:19 he simply identifies him as "his brother's wife," and removes Philip.)   There was another son of Herod the Great called  Philip the Tetrarch,^[62] sometimes noted as Herod Philip 2 to distinguish him from the Herod called Philip by Mark. 

Antipas divorced his first wife (Phasa'el) who was the daughter of King Aretas  of Nabatea^[63], so that he could marry his brother's wife Herodias. This caused an outbreak of war with Aretas which Herod ought to have foreseen. One cannot imagine that Herodias' first husband Herod (Mark's Philip 1) was happy, either. The use of the word fascination by Girardian commentators to describe Herod's desire for Herodias  is warranted.

In light of verse 20, where Herod protects John, it is tempting to see his imprisonment as some sort of protective custody. But given that it is unlikely Herod welcomed John's criticisms, and given his fascination, (vv21) such a view is too simple.

Not lawful for you to hold your brother's wife (vv18) I have used archaic English in translating echein to include the pun which seems to exist in the Greek. Echein is usually translated as "to have,^[64]" and Herodias had a grudge against John; literally, she did hold it (eneichen^[65]) against him.

Leviticus 18:6 says "None of you shall approach anyone near of kin to uncover nakedness." Herodias was the daughter of yet another brother of Herod, Aristobulus. By marrying her, Herod Antipas had married his niece.  Added to this, Leviticus 20:17-21 (also forbidding marriage to close relatives) says "If a man takes his brother's wife, it is impurity." (vv21)

He was greatly perplexed (vv21) He feared him, he considered him to be righteous and holy, he was greatly perplexed, but he gladly heard him. I use gladly as a contrast to Herod's simultaneous perplexity. This is another Girardian fascination.

An opportunity came (vv21) Hēmeras eukairou is literally a day opportune and we can see the etymology of the word opportune: eu is good and kairos is a significant time. Cognate with eukairou is the word  eukairoun (to have good time or opportunity) which we see in verse 31.^[66]

Herod… gave a banquet  (vv21) Much more will be said below, but any reading must remember that this is the first of three banquets which should be compared to each other. It is enough to say here that this first banquet was "a ritual^[67] designed to reinforce all the power structures in Galilee."^[68] Later we will see what the other banquets reinforce.

Whose is the daughter? (vv22)
Josephus identifies the daughter as Salome, but this name is not in our text. It is difficult to know what Mark's original text said. It is unclear from the text if the girl was Herod's niece or was his own daughter by Herodias. Did Mark say "the daughter of Herodias herself," or did he say, "the daughter of him Herodias," giving her the same name as her mother? NRSV follows this latter interpretation.^[69] 

In either case, the girl is his daughter.  I tend to the NRSV choice to name the daughter Herodias because it "twins" the two women almost as one in the same way the number 12 and the word daughter twins the older and younger women in Mark 5:21-43.

She pleased Herod... the king said to the girl (vv22) The girl is korasiō which is a diminutive. The same word is used of the girl who was twelve years of age in Mark 5:41.  The term seems to have been used for girls up to marriageable age (which might only have been fourteen or fifteen), but it is likely that Mark intends us to remember the korasion of Mark 5. She was about twelve, still a little girl.

I find it difficult not to see sexual desire for the girl playing a part in the events. Where the word pleased (ēresen^[70]) appears in the Septuagint it often has sexual connotations.^[71] Most compelling is the fact that the story of Herod and his (step) daughter is clearly told to remind people of the story of Esther, where Esther is chosen as queen because of her beauty.

The presentation of Esther (2:9) to King Ahasuerus (aka Artaxerxes) is described as kai ēresen autō  tō  korasiō; that is, "and pleased him the (little) girl." Later in Esther 5:2 the king says "What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given you, even to the half of my kingdom^[72]."

The guests are men, so even if the korasion is a very little girl whose "dance melts her doting father's heart and everyone else's, and so her father impulsively offers to give her anything she wants up to half his kingdom,"^[73] sex will be on the mind of more than a few of the guests.  The text does not imply, however, that Herodias the daughter was some kind of "femme fatale." That would be to blame the child for our own lusts, and also blunts the implicit criticism of Herod and of empire.

Even half of my kingdom… (vv22-3) He offers "whatever you wish/ask" twice. Herod's oath to give up to half his kingdom is likely to be an idiom which indicated the generosity of what the King was prepared to give.  The words (up to half of the kingdom of me (heōs (tou) hēmisous  tēs basileias mou,) are identical in Mark and Esther.  Laura and Tom Truby say that Herod's telling "her she can have her heart's desire [is] a safe offer for he knows a child's desires will be simple and transparent."^[74]

What should I ask for? (vv24-25) The girl has a certain innocence—Girard^[75] makes the point that she has to learn what to desire—and needs to ask her mother what to ask for. She is referred to as a girl not only in vv22 but even as she is given the head, and even as she gives it to her mother. (vv28)

And having gone out (vv24)   The Greek says kai exelthousa (and having gone out) We can hear the echoes: She has already eiselthousēs in vv22 and then again will eiselthousa (vv25). But in the latter entry everything accelerates:  "having entered  immediately with haste to the king and she asked saying, 'I desire that at once you give me on a platter the head of John the Baptiser.'" She has learned what to desire, and she must have it. (By placing "on a platter" at the end of the sentence NRSV removes some of this urgency.)

The phrase "head on a platter" occurs twice. (vv25-28) It is inserted by the girl; her mother does not say it.  The symbol of an enemy's head on a platter is not original to this story. When Crassus invaded Parthia, and lost the battle of Carrhae, he was  beheaded, and his head was used as a prop in a play before the king.^[76] Pompey's head is reputed to have been presented to Julius Caesar on a platter. A head on a platter seems to be a form of gloating and humiliation, and Mark uses this to highlight John's martyrdom. Note too the Midrash on Esther says Vashti's head was brought in on a platter.^[77]

The urgency of the text is maintained by the repetition of euthus in vv27.

Laid it in a tomb… (vv29) In both Chapters 6 and 15 the bodies (ptōma) of John and Jesus are  taken and laid in a tomb. (kai ethēken auton en mnēmeiō) (Mark 6:29, 15:45 46) Although the placement of the apostles to create the sandwich at first appears somewhat clumsy so long after their sending out, their placement next to the disciples of the one killed (foreshadowing Jesus' own death) is clearly deliberate, and maintains the discussion of discipleship.

The apostles gathered around Jesus…  (vv30) This verse completes the sandwich of 6:6b-30. Jesus makes no reference to the event of Johns death because it was in the past, introduced to explain Herod's reaction to the ministry of the apostles, and to Jesus.

The Roles of the Pericope of Herod's Banquet

John and Herod show us how like us Jesus is, and also how different.

The Role of Elijah and John
Who is Jesus? If Jesus really is the longed for Messiah, Elijah has to return  first.^[78] Indeed, those in Mark 6:13 who think Jesus is Elijah reflect the idea that Elijah must return before the Messiah can come. In his camel hair clothing and leather belt, and with his diet of locusts and wild honey, John is unmistakably drawn as Elijah. (cf 2 Kings 1:8) In 2 Kings we have Elijah the prophet whose life is entangled with a king who is manipulated by his queen; namely Ahab and Jezebel. Jezebel seeks to kill Elijah, and John will be killed by the "queen" of his situation. (Mark relies on us knowing that Elijah can return not because he is raised from the dead, but because he never died.)^[79]

The presence of John, and his identification with Elijah, therefore "allows" Jesus to be identified as Messiah. But John also highlights where Jesus differs from those who came before him.

It is not only Elijah who is in view here, but also Empire. Mark is pointing out that Herod and Herodias are simply one more Ahab and Jezebel, one more iteration of empire.

Foreshadowing the Death of Jesus
As one of the prophets, John must be killed. This is what Israel does to its prophets.  Exactly the same thing will happen to Jesus. There is nothing which is unique about Jesus death. And we see John's death demanded by the mob, even if prompted by Herodias. Herod, "out of regard for his oaths and for the guests," did not want to refuse his daughter, but his decision is neither honourable nor about his promise. Indeed, neither is it thought of the disappointment of the girl, should he refuse her request, which drives him here. He is controlled by his desire to preserve his status—his being!—in the eyes of his guests. He knows that the crowd of his well liquoured guests—who are also always his competitors, will react badly if he does not give them John's head, because to be a part of the murder of John cements their place in the power structure. In the same way, Jesus' death is demanded by a mob: "Pilate asked them, 'Why, what evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him!'" (Mark 15:14)

Herod has been protective of John, but gives into the mob. Pilate attempts some defence of Jesus, but gives in to the mob. Each death is demanded by a mob, not by God. Jesus is innocent. His death is exactly the same as John's death. What is different, is resurrection.

How historically factual is Mark's claim that John's death was caused by the rivalry between Herodias and her husband? Josephus does not know this story; he understood John to be killed by Herod because of his criticism of Herod.^[80] Yet Mark's construction around Pilate and Herod captures brilliantly the peculiar powerlessness of the empire's powerful, whose "power" is always derived from a Power (cf Eph 6:12) which they do not control. The lesson is reinforced by the similarity of the story to that of Esther where, again, the king is deftly manipulated by those around him.

The Four Banquets
There are three obvious banquets in Mark. One is hosted by Herod, and two are hosted by Jesus; those numbers alone are suggestive. Then, observing Jesus' banquets we realise they foreshadow the banquet of Holy Communion.

In Jesus' banquets, the bread is highlighted. There is no bread in Herod's banquet, and no direct mention of food at all,^[81] only the listing of the status of the guests (which is a listing of the local power structures of the empire.)  Herod's banquet was not a birthday celebration. His birthday was merely an occasion for acting out a ritual designed to reinforce all the power structures in Galilee, with Herod at the top. There is no feeding of people, rather people are fed to the power structure. And that means not only John, but also the girl, who is corrupted by the rivalry and resentment in her parent's relationship.

The banquet was a liturgy, a repetition and acting out of what we believe to be important. Liturgy shapes us, reinforces what we believe and how we act, and is a critical aspect of human life. Herod's liturgy embeds the guests further into the maw of empire.

In contrast, at his banquet, Jesus has compassion on people because they are like sheep without a shepherd. His liturgy is "the gentle repetition of the things that are really important."^[82] Directing the people to sit down in groups on the green grass (Mark 6:30) alludes to resting in the green pastures of Psalm 23.  Jesus becomes the shepherd of the people. Herod, who should be a shepherd of Israel fails. One banquet has no bread, the other has bread left over. The Basileia/culture of God is shown in stark contrast to empire.

The Markan Sandwich
As noted above, Herod's feast is the filling of a Markan Sandwich. It is placed inside  a pericope about how to be a disciple of Jesus. What does Herod tell us about discipleship, and what does discipleship of Jesus tell us about Herod?

Jesus' teaching in 6:6b-13 is about travelling light.  Travel so light that if people won't listen to the gospel, you don't even take the dust of their village away with you on your feet!^[83] Shake it off! Don't get embedded in their world. Don't get obligated to the wrong things in order to keep on living.

There is a subtlety here where the gospel will read us. I have already mentioned stopping at the edge of a town and shaking the dust off my shoes. But what I was doing was taking a sort of passive-aggressive, counter-factual revenge, disguised as Christian piety. I was channelling the violence that we see in Herod’s feast, but hiding it from myself. Travelling light simply walks away, leaving no violence behind it.

Herod was the most powerful man in Galilee. As noted, his banquet was a ritual  to reinforce all the power structures in Galilee. We might call it an "I've scratched your back, so now you scratch mine," kind of event. It showed who held the power, and who didn't. If you were invited, you had it made. And your place on the guest list showed you exactly who you could depend upon, and who you had to suck up to, and to whom you owed favours. You knew your place in the hierarchy. You knew what was expected of you. And you knew what you had to do to "stay in good" with the power brokers. This being shown where you fitted in to the Empire was the complete opposite of travelling light like Jesus. This was "heavy stuff."

And into this, Mark injects the surprising information that Herod was a man open to God! He was "greatly perplexed" by John, and yet... "liked to listen to him."  He protected him. (6:20-21) But when we are embedded in Empire, rather than in what Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven, we have almost no freedom. We are enslaved to the ways of the world. To save John, and grasp freedom for his own soul, Herod would need to have to given up his power in the world. But the drug of power, the web of empire, owned him. He was powerless. So, he gave in to Herodias... which meant he kept his place in the Empire, and he lost everything worth having. Don't be like Herod.^[84]

Clifton Black notes the tendency of Mark's narratives to be "densely stereophonic, impossible—or at least unwise—to reduce to a single track. Hearing this text properly requires listening in multiple channels."^[85] This is true here. The sandwich of the twelve which holds Herod's banquet also melds into a commentary upon the disciples of John, contrasting them with those of Jesus, and yet foreshadowing Jesus own burial in a tomb. (Mark 6:29-30)

The Women
Despite the echoes of Elijah,  the story of Herod's feast is also clearly written to remind us of the story of Esther, as I noted in the textual comments above. Both Ahasuerus and Herod are manipulated by those around them. The irony of each king's political power is that they lack personal freedom. Yet Esther and the daughter Herodias exhibit contrasting behaviours.  Esther petitions the king for the life of her people. Herodias petitions the king for the death of John. Mark's naming the daughter Herodias reinforces this, for the mother Herodias plans and executes the whole scheme (at the expense of her daughter).

In Mark, the story of Herodias and her daughter is bracketed by two other stories of women and daughters.  The first is the sandwich of Mark 5:21-43 where the little daughter is raised from the dead. The second is the Syro-Phoenician woman and her daughter in Mark 7:24-30.

These two stories are clearly connected. In both cases, Jesus heals a daughter. In both cases, the parents are desperate. The synagogue leader's daughter  is a thugatrion, a little daughter. (Remember that Herodias' daughter is described as korasion, a little girl.)  The first daughter precedes Jesus' first banquet which has peculiarly Jewish characteristics. The last daughter is a Gentile.^[86] The story of that daughter is followed by Jesus' second feast, which has peculiarly Gentile characteristics. The Gentile girl with an unclean spirit is also little daughter, and each of the two girls are lying on a bed. (cf 5:39-41 which implies this, and 7:30)

In desperation, Jairus goes to Jesus for help. His daughter is raised. In desperation, the Syro-Phoenician woman goes to Jesus for help. Her daughter is healed.  Embedded in empire's power, Herodias destroys not only John, but her own daughter. In Chapter 5, blood is life and resurrection. In Chapter 6, blood is violence and death.

Regina Janes^[87] notes the particular connections between the two daughters of Mark 5 and 6. Both are korasion. Both walk about; one after being raised, the other in dance. Both eat, one given food by her parents, the other obtaining the macabre meal of John's head on a platter.  The idea that John is the food at Herod's feast is a very old understanding. Janes says "The earliest images of Herodias dancing (ninth and tenth century) place on Herod's table, Christ's presence in John's Head."^[88] As Marcus says, the proximity of this pericope to Jesus' Feast make Herod's Feast a "demonic Eucharist."^[89]  The daughter Herodias is the celebrant of this demonic Eucharist. By contrast, the Syro-Phoenician girl is freed from the demonic. (cf 7:29-30) In support of this Eucharistic identification, Marcus goes on to note how Jesus passes the bread to the disciples, where it is set before the people.  John's head is passed to the daughter, who passes it to her mother.^[90]

Janes says

The dancing daughter who brings death makes visible the dead daughter, rising to life. The woman healed of blood anticipates the bloody woman Herodias, to whom the head is delivered, while the woman healed and child revived are held in a mother-daughter relation by the number twelve. Unless Herodias’s daughter dances for a platter, Jairus’s daughter walks and eats when she rises to no particular purpose... Mark’s two daughters form the crux of the gospel message: life against death. The only other person this Gospel raises from the dead is Jesus himself.^[91]

Rivalry and Violence
Herod is a man of the world. He knows what he wants. Or does he?  At one level he is well described by Kierkegaard, just as we all are.

For it seems indeed as if, in order to be themselves, a person must first be expertly informed about what the others are, and thereby learn to know what they themselves are—in order then to be that.^[92]

Herod doesn't know who he is. As Alison says

We always learn to see through the eyes of another. The desire of another directs our seeing and makes available to us what is to be seen.^[93]

Herod, like all of us, needs someone to copy, someone who  will teach him what he wants.

But at another deeper level, of course Herod Antipas knows exactly what he wants:  Like all of us, he wants to be. He wants to feel real, to feel safe, have a purpose, feel like he has achieved something.  Death and  its cohorts of violence and fear constantly threaten him with non-being.

When visiting Rome, Antipas stays with his half brother—the one Mark calls Philip—and casts eyes on Herodias, and has to have her, apparently because Antipas feels Philip knows how to be. Why? Because Philip has her!  Envy (desire) occurs because Philip has her. And violence soon follows from his ex-wife Phasa'el's father, Aretas, who starts a war. There is some evidence that Philip may have died before he could take revenge.^[94]

This is a classic triangle of desire, with sibling rivalry between Herod and Philip, with Herodias as the object of fascination for them both. Unsurprisingly, Herodias loves this. She thinks that it is all  about her—she is  somebody. Suddenly, her desire for being has its cup overflowing. But the rivalry never was about her. She is merely the occasion of a sibling rivalry. It's not her they care about, but each other.  She learns this soon enough when she chooses Herod, and John the Baptiser says it is not lawful for Herod "to have her." Herod loses interest in her, now that he has her, and focuses his attention on John. It works like this:

John is not simply some pious prophet quoting verses of the law. He, like any real prophet, can see that stealing Philip's wife is somewhere between a high risk strategy (at best), and plain stupidity. Herod's subsequent military defeat makes it clear at which end of the scale things developed!

(We might note here, that where Herod has kept the peace by rituals such as status reinforcing and violence damping banquets, John is using the strategy of prohibition. He intrudes into the rivalry and tries to stop it.)

When John confronts Herod, using "parressia, boldness in speech, one of the most revered virtues in the hierarchical and often repressive Helenistic world,"^[95] Herod is impressed. He becomes greatly admiring of John: Here is someone who knows his own mind. Here is someone who, somehow, is impervious to being pushed around by others. He is; that is, he gives all the indications of knowing how to be. Herod knows his life is a mess and he is not free. He sees the freedom of John, and it looks good!

So Herod switches his attentions from Philip to John. He is fascinated by him. Mark captures this in the observation that "when he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him." Suddenly, Herodias is ignored. Not long before, Herod would have done anything for her in order to outdo Philip. Now that he desires the groundedness—the being—of John, Herodias is irrelevant to him. She can't even get him to dispose of a stinking, crazy prophet. No wonder she hates John.

But look at the architecture of her hatred: She, too, is fascinated by John. She also desires what he has; not being, but Herod's attention. Suddenly Herod and Herodias are rivals. Violence cannot be far away. And their rivalry with each other, means that John, clearly visible in the middle of things, is an obvious choice if a scapegoat is needed to get things under control.

Mark goes deeper. In the normal course of a killing, a myth—we would call it a propaganda today—would arise about a great banquet held for Herod's birthday.  Some story about a wicked pretend prophet perhaps, who was rightfully killed to save the kingdom. As Girard observed, myth lies.  But Mark knows that prohibition, ritual, and myth, never finally control our violence. He shows us rivalry exploding into violence and murder in this pericope. Mark does not provide us with a myth, but with an exposè.

The little girl innocently dances her way into the centre of all this. When Herod makes his promise, she does not know what to ask for. Her mother tells her, and suddenly she knows what she wants, what she desires. Mark unflinchingly shows the playful, headstrong directness of a child, who put on a show for her father and his guests, and is corrupted into murder. "I desire that at once, you give to me, upon a platter, the head of John the Baptist." (KJV) The girl has made her mother's desire her own. Herodias has brought her "own little girl into her adult scandal."^[96] The girl is both perpetrator and victim. Later, Mark will quote Jesus' words to the disciples.

If any of you scandalize one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. (Mark 9:42)

We see here the fragility of a social structure dependent upon violence for its stability.  The so-called "peace" can disappear in a moment, for the simple reason that there is no peace—ever, there are only coalitions of convenience.

Mark will show us that Jesus' death is just the same as John's. There is nothing holy  about the cross, nothing of God. The cross is just another example of a Herod giving into a scapegoating crowd, only in Jerusalem it will be Pilate giving in. The cross is our demand, the demand of an un-free people, people deathly afraid that the violence will descend upon them. It is better to choose someone else, to have one man die for the people, than have the whole nation destroyed.^[97]

Formed and shaped by the violence of empire, we have no idea how to be free. Girard says we can only imitate the desire of another; we cannot escape our mimetic nature. It can only be that mimetically produced violence is replaced with a mimetically transmitted desire for peace.^[98] For this, there needs to be a model—someone to follow; ie imitate—who is not violent. Someone who has overcome the rivalry and violence we see here in Herod's court, and at Nazareth,^[99] and finally at the crucifixion. 

Our individuality, and our agency, comes from who and what we decide to imitate. Seeing things through a mimetic lens does not mean we are without free will; rather we are free to choose who we follow, and our choice is critical. Mark is saying with his gospel, "Be like Jesus. Imitate him." There is mystery in this, for the living out of our choice is beyond our abilities, as the story of Peter, and the other disciples, at the time of Jesus' crucifixion will show us. But in making the decision to follow something is done to us,^[100] something "breaks in."^[101]

Mark 6:30-46 Jesus' Feast

³⁰ The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, ‘Come away to a wilderness place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no opportunity even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a wilderness place by themselves.

³³Now they saw them going and many recognised them, and they hurried there by land from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a crowd of many ; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. ³⁵And since it was already late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a wilderness place, and the hour is now very late; ³⁶dismiss them  so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ ³⁷But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii  worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ ³⁸And he said to them, ‘How much bread have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five (loaves^[102]), and two fish.’ ³⁹Then he ordered them to get all the people to recline group by group on the green grass. ⁴⁰So they reclined cluster by cluster by hundreds and by fifties. ⁴¹Taking the five loaves of bread^[103] and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves of bread, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. ⁴²And all ate and were satisfied; ⁴³and they took up twelve baskets full  of broken pieces and of the fish. ⁴⁴Those who had eaten the bread numbered five thousand men.

⁴⁵ Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, (εἰς τὸ πέραν) to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. (NRSVa alt.)

³⁰Καὶ συνάγονται οἱ ἀπόστολοι πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ ἀπήγγειλαν αὐτῷ πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησαν καὶ ὅσα ἐδίδαξαν. ³¹καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· δεῦτε ὑμεῖς αὐτοὶ κατ’ ἰδίαν εἰς ἔρημον τόπον καὶ ἀναπαύσασθε ὀλίγον. ἦσαν γὰρ οἱ ἐρχόμενοι καὶ οἱ ὑπάγοντες πολλοί, καὶ οὐδὲ φαγεῖν εὐκαίρουν. ³²Καὶ ἀπῆλθον ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ εἰς ἔρημον τόπον κατ’ ἰδίαν. ³³καὶ εἶδον αὐτοὺς ὑπάγοντας καὶ ἐπέγνωσαν πολλοὶ καὶ πεζῇ ἀπὸ πασῶν τῶν πόλεων συνέδραμον ἐκεῖ καὶ προῆλθον αὐτούς. ³⁴Καὶ ἐξελθὼν εἶδεν πολὺν ὄχλον καὶ ἐσπλαγχνίσθη ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ὅτι ἦσαν ὡς πρόβατα μὴ ἔχοντα ποιμένα, καὶ ἤρξατο διδάσκειν αὐτοὺς πολλά. ³⁵Καὶ ἤδη ὥρας πολλῆς γενομένης προσελθόντες αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἔλεγον ὅτι ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ τόπος καὶ ἤδη ὥρα πολλή· ³⁶ἀπόλυσον αὐτούς, ἵνα ἀπελθόντες εἰς τοὺς κύκλῳ ἀγροὺς καὶ κώμας ἀγοράσωσιν ἑαυτοῖς τί φάγωσιν. ³⁷ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· δότε αὐτοῖς ὑμεῖς φαγεῖν. καὶ λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· ἀπελθόντες ἀγοράσωμεν δηναρίων διακοσίων ἄρτους καὶ δώσομεν αὐτοῖς φαγεῖν; ³⁸ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐτοῖς· πόσους ἄρτους ἔχετε; ὑπάγετε ἴδετε. καὶ γνόντες λέγουσιν· πέντε, καὶ δύο ἰχθύας. ³⁹καὶ ἐπέταξεν αὐτοῖς ἀνακλῖναι πάντας συμπόσια συμπόσια ἐπὶ τῷ χλωρῷ χόρτῳ. ⁴⁰καὶ ἀνέπεσαν πρασιαὶ πρασιαὶ κατὰ ἑκατὸν καὶ κατὰ πεντήκοντα. ⁴¹καὶ λαβὼν τοὺς πέντε ἄρτους καὶ τοὺς δύο ἰχθύας ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εὐλόγησεν καὶ κατέκλασεν τοὺς ἄρτους καὶ ἐδίδου τοῖς μαθηταῖς [αὐτοῦ] ἵνα παρατιθῶσιν αὐτοῖς, καὶ τοὺς δύο ἰχθύας ἐμέρισεν πᾶσιν. ⁴²καὶ ἔφαγον πάντες καὶ ἐχορτάσθησαν, ⁴³καὶ ἦραν κλάσματα δώδεκα κοφίνων πληρώματα καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἰχθύων. ⁴⁴καὶ ἦσαν οἱ φαγόντες [τοὺς ἄρτους] πεντακισχίλιοι ἄνδρες. ⁴⁵Καὶ εὐθὺς ἠνάγκασεν τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ ἐμβῆναι εἰς τὸ πλοῖον καὶ προάγειν εἰς τὸ πέραν πρὸς Βηθσαϊδάν, ἕως αὐτὸς ἀπολύει τὸν ὄχλον. ⁴⁶καὶ ἀποταξάμενος αὐτοῖς ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸ ὄρος προσεύξασθαι.  (NA28) 

Comments on the Text

The apostles gathered… (vv30) The sandwich began with disciples (6:1) and the twelve (6:7), but now we have the sent, the apostles (apostoloi) . Gathered (συνάγονται) has the same root as the word for synagogue (συναγωγῇ.)  Does Mark suggest, "Gather around Jesus, make Jesus your synagogue?"

No  opportunity…  (vv31) Eukairoun (to have good time or opportunity) is cognate with eukairou, the opportune day of verse 21.^[104]

Many, great, very…  (vv31)  There are 5 uses of polloi in five verses. The pressure and the need of life is being emphasised here, added to by the repetition of the lateness (pollēs) of the hour (vv35) and the size of the crowd.

A wilderness place… (vv31, 32, 35) Not only is the phrase erēmon  topon used twice in verse 31 and 32, but the disciples themselves say, "Erēmos estin ho topos" (lit. Wilderness is the place) in verse 35.  Their statement is rich with irony, for Jesus sees an erēmon place as a place of opportunity, and a spiritual place: Mark 1:35 says

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a wilderness place, (eis erēmon topon) and there he prayed.

And the word erēmon is reminiscent of the wilderness of the Exodus and the wilderness of Mark 1:12. But in verse 35 the disciples will see only that a wilderness place is a problem because there is no food here—even though God feeds the people in the Old Testament wilderness— and that the hour is late.  Indeed, Jesus might say, "So let us teach and free and heal; this too, is food." And this is what he will do, the very opposite of  the disciples' request that he "dismiss them." (vv35)

No opportunity even to eat… (vv31) Loosely the word eukairoun means a good significant moment. It is present in the previous banquet, where a good! significant moment (eukairou) arises to commit murder.

All by yourselves… (vv31, 32) autoi kat' idian (Literally: yourselves apart own) mirrored in vv32 with kat' idian might be best understood by contrasting Jesus' words with the Australian habit of packing the satellite TV and everything else but the kitchen sink, and then heading to the outback in the company of thousands of other folk. 

Dismiss… (vv35) Although "send them away"^[105] captures the idiom of the text in verse 35, I use the word dismiss to draw a sharp distinction between Jesus' sending out (apostellein) the twelve in Mark 6:7. We might say Jesus sends out, but does not send people away.

Went away in the boat… (vv32) Being in (ev) the boat is symbolic in Mark for living in the Basileia of heaven. It sails a different course to empire, several times crossing over to the other side (εἰς τὸ πέραν.)^[106] While empire sees crossing over to the other side as a betrayal,^[107] Mark seems to use it as a motif for the Gospel's inclusive and healing nature.

By land… (vv33) pezē can mean on foot (so NRSVa) or, when in contrast to by boat, it can mean by land.^[108]

A crowd of many… (vv34) A more usual translation would be "a great crowd," but see the comments above at Verse 31. The consonance of the poll… sound is continued in with the word pollēs, or late, twice in the next verse. (vv35). I wonder if I should maintain the many repetition in the English translation of this pericope by saying there that "many hours have passed" rather than using the word late.

Sheep without a shepherd (vv34)

Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I … (who) made great the name of Babylon … the shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves … who recognises the right, who rules by law…

These words from the prologue to the Code of Hammurabi^[109] (1755–1750 BC^[110]) are the aspirations of the good and compassionate leader of the ancient world, if not also the self-justification of empire. Mark follows Jesus' observation of the "sheep without a shepherd" with a probable reference to David, the shepherd king, when people recline in the green grass (cf Psalm 23). That psalm, and Jesus' behaviour, contrasts with the well known failure of other shepherds of Israel. The Old Testament text that highlights the severity of Jesus' observation sheep without a shepherd  is Ezekiel 34^[111], a chapter-long diatribe against the shepherds; e.g., " Thus says the Lord God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand." (Ezekiel 34:10)

The Septuagint translation of Numbers 27:17-18 may also have been in Mark's mind here: Moses implores God to appoint a successor to follow him "so the congregation of the Lord shall not be as sheep without a shepherd." (LXX) And the Lord spoke to Moses saying· "Take to thyself Joshua the son of Naue, a man who has the Spirit in him."  The Greek for Joshua son of Naue is Ιησοῦν υἱὸν Ναυή.

When it grew late… now very late (vv35)  In both cases the literal Greek idiom is the "hour is many." (pollēs) The repetition emphasises the hour and helps heighten the disciples' helplessness. We might wonder if Mark is not only talking about the time of day, but the time of the age; that is, things are drawing to a close.

You give them something to eat… (vv37) Following on from their successful mission on their own, the disciples are again included in Jesus' healing rather than simply being observers of his works of power.

 200 denarii (vv37) is half a years' wages. The question is sarcastic. It contrasts the human response to need with God's power. The story echoes 2 Kings 4:42-44, and other stories of God's provision,^[112] and exceeds them.

⁴²A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, 'Give it to the people and let them eat.' ⁴³But his servant said, 'How can I set this before a hundred people?' So he repeated, 'Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, "They shall eat and have some left." ' ⁴⁴He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord. (2 Kings 4:32-44)

There is also an allusion to God's provision of the manna from heaven in this pericope, although the manna came from God alone, not through the actions of God's servants.  And people were specifically told not to keep extra manna,^[113] where here, Jesus orders the left-overs to be collected.

How much bread?  (vv38) The word artous (bread or loaves) is used five times. (I have twice used "loaves of bread" for stylistic purposes rather than say, for example, "five breads," but the Greek is the one word artous.) Bread is often a symbol of the Torah. The voice of Wisdom in Proverbs 9:5 says, "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed." And Moses says,

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna… in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

Reclined… on the green grass… they reclined (vv39-40) In verse 39, contra NRSVa, Jesus ordered the disciples to get all the people to recline (ἀνακλῖναι,) not sit. Verse 40  ἀνέπεσαν also means to recline.^[114] In the ancient world banqueters  normally reclined to eat, and this was especially so with the Passover.^[115] (Mark 14:18) This took room; poor people normally sat on the floor rather than recline on couches.^[116] The reclining is meant to remind us of Herod's banquet in 6:21, and to look forward to the opulence of the messianic banquet which the poor people will attend. The green grass is a reference to Psalm 23 where the Lord who is my shepherd has laid me down in green pastures, and prepares a table in the presence of my enemies. There is probably also an allusion here to Ezekiel 34.^[117]

Group by group…cluster by cluster… (vv39-40) symposia symposia … prasiai prasiai. Both these expressions appear only here in the New Testament. A symposium was originally a drinking party, and grew to mean a banquet, often including a philosophical discussion. The Passover seder grew to reflect aspects of Greek symposia. A prasai was literally a garden bed, reflecting orderly arrangement; in Rabbinc schools pupils were arranged in lines.^[118]

The numbers… The numbers used in this pericope are saying, that for Jewish people, the Messianic age has arrived. The second banquet will use numbers and language with Gentile echoes.

a) Hundreds and fifties (vv40) This reminds us of the Exodus, God's calling out of Israel. Note the unusual ordering of hundreds and fifties, which is present in both places.

Moses chose able men from all Israel and appointed them as heads over the people, as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. (Exodus 18:25)

Dueteronomy 1:15^[119] repeats these numbers, and also references the (12) tribes of Israel. In that verse the leaders are called commanders, which gives a military flavour to the description and may support the suggestion that the the later number of 5000 in our story alludes to a "legion" which is not of empire.

b) Five loaves of bread (vv41) This is a probable reference to the Torah as noted in the comment on verse 38.

c) Two fish… (vv38, 41)

Fish were an early symbol of the Eucharist.^[120] There are also other possible symbolisms: In 2 Baruch 29:3-6 we see two fish, Behemoth and Leviathan which are food for the end of time.^[121]

And in Psalm 74:14 the NRSV notes a variant reading of the Hebrew:

You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
   you gave him as food for the people of the wilderness. 

The two fish may also be part of the Exodus typology of the passage, referencing a tradition that Miriam's Well followed Israel through the desert, providing fish.^[122]

d) Twelve baskets (vv43) There are 12 disciples^[123] and twelve tribes of Israel. The basket in this pericope is a kophinōs, a type of basket typically used by Jewish people. In the second banquet, (Mark 8:1-10) the baskets are spuridas, a basket used by Greek folk.

e) Five thousand men (vv44) The five is possibly a reference to the Torah. It may also be a reference to the size of a Roman Legion as a reminder that our gathering is not a gathering of empire. The word andres is used for men, rather than the word for humans (anthropoi). This insistence allows Mark to adhere to his Exodus typology since men and males are used in Exodus 12:37 and in the census accounts of Numbers Chapters 1 and 26. Matthew emphasises this typology by saying it was "five thousand men, besides women and children," echoing the "besides children" of Exodus.  (Matthew 14:21)

Twelve  baskets full… (vv42) Plērōmata , or full, also has the sense of fulfillment (eg "the fullness of time" in Ephesians 1:10.)

Dismissed the crowd... (vv45) apoluei is the same word for dismiss as is used by the disciples in verse 36.

And, finally, the old rationalisation that Jesus' example shamed people into sharing the food they had brought with them, is simply not in the text.^[124]

Reflections on Jesus' Banquet

Jesus saw the crowd were like sheep without a shepherd. Literarily, we, the listener or reader, are like sheep without a shepherd because we have been at Herod's feast where there is no bread, only murder. Coming  so soon after Herod's feast, "sheep without a shepherd" is a clear critique of Herod the ruler, and of the other leaders of the country.

Jesus' feeding of the crowd is everything Herod's banquet is not. His feasts are for the common people rather than the top end of town; all people, even Gentiles, are included.  His banquets are not characterised by violence and murder; rather than the coveted place to be, they are an image of blessed life in the presence of the shepherd of Israel, in green pastures far from any palace.

Playing with the numbers, which are typical Jewish or Gentile numbers, Mark reinforces his point with the baskets.  The basket in this pericope is a kophinōn a type of basket used by Jewish people. In the second feast, the baskets are spuridas, a basket used by Greek folk. The numbers in this first feast are saying, that for Jewish people, the Messianic age has arrived. The second feast (8:1-10) will reprise this to include Gentile people.

Robert Crotty^[125] points out the careful rhetoric of the text at this point in Mark. In Chapter 6:30 – 7:37, we have the Feeding of the 5,000, a crossing of the sea, a dispute with the Pharisees, a conversation on bread, and a healing.  The same pattern can be found in Mark 8:1-26. This careful repetition is a sign of the importance Marks sees in his contrast between Jesus and Herod's feasts.

In 2 Kings 4, Elisha who succeeds Elijah, performs a feeding miracle. Here, Jesus who succeeds John, the Elijah of the day, performs a greater feeding miracle. 

A new Exodus is hinted at in the text, but there is no violence, despite passages from Numbers alluding to warfare.^[126] Instead there is a new organisation or way of being. There is a great crowd (ochlon) that thing of violence and "un-wisdom"^[127] which, in the presence of Jesus and in the eating of his feast, in some sense ceases to be a crowd. The idioms pantas sumposia sumposia and avepesan prasiai prasiai "eating groups" and "clusters"^[128] reflect not merely organisation, but the healing of our tendency to mob and be violent.  There is no great crowd who eats, simply 5000 men. Given Mark's constant use of "the crowd" (36 times), this is remarkable. But at the end of the feast, the great number of people reverts to being described as a crowd (vv45), as though the embodiment of the culture/kingdom of God cannot persist away from Jesus' presence.^[129] I'm reminded of the profound community of the gathering around the communion table which would "fade" a little over morning tea with the airing of daily discontents.

For anyone scrupulous about food laws, the feeding of 5,000 (men) was a nightmare. "Conscious intention had nothing to do with the all-important matter of avoiding impurity. Contact with sinners or the ingestion of forbidden or unsanctified foods would defile one..." This observation leads Gil Bailie to say "The meals Jesus shared with the outcasts were not, therefore, simply the occasion for the delivery of his message. They were the message."^[130]

It does not really matter whether Herod's banquet adhered to the dietary conventions of pious Jews. The point of separation between the two is the indiscriminate nature of Jesus' feast; anyone could attend, which is the very opposite of empire where organisation and being is founded in discrimination.^[131]

It is not only two men being contrasted in the stories, but two "kingdoms," two ways of being human. Given that the description of Jesus' banquet cannot but remind us of the Eucharist,  there is a clear message that doing Eucharist is central to our living as the people of the Basileia of God. The fact that the disciples wished to dismiss the crowd, but Jesus refused, makes clear there is to be no dismissing of the hungry without feeding them.

The Banquets are part of something larger than a comparison between Jesus and Herod. They expose two kingdoms; that is, two ways of being human. Mark began with a storm at sea, and the story of the two kingdoms—in this chapter, at least—ends with another storm. It is to this we now turn.

Mark 6:45-56

⁴⁵And immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶After leaving them, he went to^[132] the mountain to pray.

⁴⁷And evening having come, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on land. ⁴⁸He saw the disciples being tortured in their rowing, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking upon the sea. He was about to pass by them, ⁴⁹but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, ⁵⁰because they all saw him and were terrified.

Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid." ⁵¹Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, ⁵²for they had not understood about the bread; their heart was hardened.

⁵³When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. ⁵⁴As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. ⁵⁵They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. (NRSValt)

⁴⁵Καὶ εὐθὺς ἠνάγκασεν τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ ἐμβῆναι εἰς τὸ πλοῖον καὶ προάγειν εἰς τὸ πέραν πρὸς Βηθσαϊδάν, ἕως αὐτὸς ἀπολύει τὸν ὄχλον. ⁴⁶καὶ ἀποταξάμενος αὐτοῖς ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸ ὄρος προσεύξασθαι. ⁴⁷Καὶ ὀψίας γενομένης ἦν τὸ πλοῖον ἐν μέσῳ τῆς θαλάσσης, καὶ αὐτὸς μόνος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. ⁴⁸καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτοὺς βασανιζομένους ἐν τῷ ἐλαύνειν, ἦν γὰρ ὁ ἄνεμος ἐναντίος αὐτοῖς, περὶ τετάρτην φυλακὴν τῆς νυκτὸς ἔρχεται πρὸς αὐτοὺς περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ ἤθελεν παρελθεῖν αὐτούς. ⁴⁹οἱ δὲ ἰδόντες αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης περιπατοῦντα ἔδοξαν ὅτι φάντασμά ἐστιν, καὶ ἀνέκραξαν· ⁵⁰πάντες γὰρ αὐτὸν εἶδον καὶ ἐταράχθησαν. ὁ δὲ εὐθὺς ἐλάλησεν μετ’ αὐτῶν, καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· θαρσεῖτε, ἐγώ εἰμι· μὴ φοβεῖσθε. ⁵¹καὶ ἀνέβη πρὸς αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ πλοῖον καὶ ἐκόπασεν ὁ ἄνεμος, καὶ λίαν [ἐκ περισσοῦ] ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἐξίσταντο· ⁵²οὐ γὰρ συνῆκαν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἄρτοις, ἀλλ’ ἦν αὐτῶν ἡ καρδία πεπωρωμένη.

⁵³Καὶ διαπεράσαντες ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἦλθον εἰς Γεννησαρὲτ καὶ προσωρμίσθησαν. ⁵⁴Καὶ ἐξελθόντων αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ πλοίου εὐθὺς ἐπιγνόντες αὐτὸν ⁵⁵περιέδραμον ὅλην τὴν χώραν ἐκείνην καὶ ἤρξαντο ἐπὶ τοῖς κραβάττοις τοὺς κακῶς ἔχοντας περιφέρειν ὅπου ἤκουον ὅτι ἐστίν. ⁵⁶καὶ ὅπου ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο εἰς κώμας ἢ εἰς πόλεις ἢ εἰς ἀγρούς, ἐν ταῖς ἀγοραῖς ἐτίθεσαν τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας καὶ παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν ἵνα κἂν τοῦ κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου αὐτοῦ ἅψωνται· καὶ ὅσοι ἂν ἥψαντο αὐτοῦ ἐσῴζοντο.  (NA28) 

Comments on the Text

Read this story of the sea whilst comparing it to the pericope beginning at Mark4:36. Also bear in mind Elijah's epiphany at Mt Horeb (1 Kings 19) which itself reflects Moses' meeting with God in Exodus 33.

Compelled… to go before him… (vv45) He compels those who have followed him to now go before^[133] (proagein) him. Combined with the kai euthus, the word compel (ēnankasen) adds a sense of urgency to the text, which appears to be a second sending forth of the disciples after their successful mission in Mark 6:6b-13. Henderson suggests "Jesus 'compelling' the disciples to 'go before' him suggests the maturation of the disciples as fully authorized agents of Jesus' mission." ^[134]However, the rest of the pericope shows that mission running into heavy weather, or even fails. And the language of proagein contrasts with the later emphasis upon Jesus going before the disciples, in Mark 10:32, 14:28, and 16:7. The last reference is the message that "He goes before you into Galilee." When we come to interpreting these verses for our situation Henderson says that Jesus compelling the disciples to go before him indicates that they are able to undertake the task set to them.^[135]

He dismissed the crowd… (vv45) It's the same thing the disciples wished to do, but it's done in Jesus' own time.^[136]

Bethsaida… (vv45) House of the fisherman.^[137] But note that Jesus and the disciples do not land here, but at Genesaret.^[138]

He went to the mountain… (vv46) apēlthen eis to horos reflects the language of LXX Exodus 3:1:  ēlthen eis to horos Chōrēb.  The language also reflects LXX Exodus 24:13 where Moses went into the mountain (eis to horos) of God.

The sea… (vv47) The Greek is thalassēs, not lake. See also vv48; the fact of the sea is being emphasised. We have noted^[139] that the sea was symbolic of chaos and evil, a "spiritual domain,"^[140] but it was also a place of God's rescue. The allusions to the Exodus in the feeding miracle continue here, recalling the rescue from Pharaoh's army in Exodus 14.

On land… (vv47) tēs thalassēs … ἐπὶ tēs gēs matches the tēn thalassan epi tēs  gēs of Mark 4:1. The sea and the land are contrasted.

Being tortured in the rowing… (vv48)  I have previously read this incident on the sea as a lesser storm than that in Chapter 4. I think this is a mistake given the word basanizomenous. It comes from basanizō, meaning to torture or torment. The word and its cognates are used in Mark 5:7 and Luke 8:28 (basanisēs) in the story of the man with demons. It is also used to describe the tribulation in Rev 9:5,11:10, and 12:2. In the 2 Maccabees 7:13 story of the torture of the seven brothers the same word is used. It is also present in 4 Maccabees 6:5 in the story of the martyrdom of Eleazar.^[141] Added to this, the word for rowing has connotations of demons driving to some place the men whom they possess.^[142] Indeed, in Luke 8:29 ēlauneto describes the man with demons being driven into the desert by them. Anyone living in the world of Mark 13 is unlikely to miss the subtext here. 

Dawn… (vv48)  Shortly before dawn is literally  About the fourth watch of the night. Dawn is the time of God's rescue, see Exodus 14:24 and Isaiah 17:14 for examples.

Walking Upon the sea… (vv48,49) This phrase is repeated in vv49 as upon the sea walking. The impossible act of walking on the sea is being emphasised.  There is no textual warrant to suggest he was wading in the surf.^[143] This is emphasised by the fact that the boat was in the middle (mesō) of the sea. Psalm 77:19 says

Your way was through the sea,
 your path, through the mighty waters;
 yet your footprints were unseen. (NRSV)

It sets the scene for the epiphany which follows.

He was about to pass by them… (vv48) ēthelen parelthein autous.   LXX 111 Kings 19:11 says "and behold, the Lord will pass by." (pareleusetai) This story of Elijah's mountaintop experience is itself written with an eye to the experience of Moses at Horeb where God promises Moses "I will  pass before you." (pareleusomai proteros sou)  Moses is told to stand on the rock and that he will be placed in a "hole" (vv22) in the rock when God passes by. (Exodus 33:17-23) Elijah stands in the cave when God passes by. (LXX 111 Kings 19:13) Marcus notes: "Under the impact of these passages the verb parelthein became almost a technical term for a divine epiphany in the Septuagint."^[144] So the apparent contradiction of Jesus coming to help yet meaning to pass by the disciples disappears when we realise Mark is describing an epiphany on the sea.  The drama prepares us for the terror in the face of the Divine in vv50.

It is I… (vv50) egō eimi; that is, I am. This is God's self revelation. We see it in John, eg 6:35—I am the bread of life, John 18:5,6,8 in his trial and in John 8:58—Before Abraham was, I am, all reflecting the egō eimi^[145] of Exodus 3:13-14. 

Understand… (vv52) The disciples are like those who were "outside" in 4:11-13. Again I am reminded of Kermode's words that "being an insider is only a more elaborate way of being kept outside."^[146]

Bread… (vv52) Artois means loaves or bread. Using bread highlights the Eucharistic overtones of the story. (See also the comments at How much bread 6:38.)

Their heart was hardened… (vv52) The kardia is singular. The word for hardened is the same pōroō (stone) used of the Pharisees (if not others) in Mark 3:5, where the heart is also singular. This singular heart of a group may say something about the corporate nature of our obstinacy  which is the word used to translate hardened in The Scholars Bible. I have retained the word hardened because it enables us to hear the  echo of the Exodus, where God hardens Pharaoh's heart. (Exodus 7:3, 13)^[147]

Here, there is an irony inserted into the text by Mark. In a few moments, the listener will hear of the sick and the poor who immediately recognise Jesus; the disciples had thought he was a ghost, and did not recognise him.

Gennesaret (vv53) With Jesus on board they change course from the intended Bethsaida to Gennesaret on the other side of the sea. The reason for the change is not clear.

Reflecting Upon the Text

In Mark 1:35, after a "ministry success," Jesus goes away to a wilderness place to pray. The same phrase ἔρημον τόπον (wilderness place) is used three times in the story of Jesus' banquet, highlighting its importance, and initially by Jesus saying "Come away to a wilderness place all by yourselves and rest a while." (Mark 6:30-31) He says this immediately after the apostles' report their ministry success. This parallel is easy to miss because, sandwiched into their story of ministry,^[148] is an horrific meditation on the dangers of success. After Jesus' banquet we can now see that Herod Antipas' banquet is a grotesque satire of the banquet to come.

Antipas' banquet was satanic; the participants were bound and driven by forces which oppose the Basileia of God. Even when following Jesus' calling, if we are so busy that there is "not time to eat,"^[149] (Mark 6:31) there is the danger of being eaten by the temptations to success and reputation and earthly power.  The stark warning is that even the celebration of Eucharist can become a satanic consuming thing: the place of Jesus' banquet is holy; it is the archtypical wilderness place where God meets the people of God, but already, even as Jesus is teaching people, the disciples can only perceive it as an inconvenience.  I noted that at Herod's banquet "there is no feeding of people, rather people are fed to the power structure." ^[150] If we do that, we will find the structure inevitably consumes us, too. So, as we^[151] depart Antipas' banquet, Jesus immediately pulls the apostles out of the Herodic culture within which they are working, and back into the boat.  But the people still come, leading to the first of his own banquets. So, after his first banquet he makes the disciples get back into the boat. (Mark 6:45) Even in enacting Eucharist we are still living in the midst of empire where a eukairos is as likely to be a moment for murder as a moment for giving life.^[152] What will guide our use of opportunity? The boat (and we people of the boat) must go to the wilderness place.

But the wilderness place where we meet the Divine is also discomforting. It can feel like abandonment in the middle of a stormy sea, not holy, but only a desolate ruined Horeb as we flee the Jezebel of the day. Where is Jesus then? Has God abandoned us?

We have just read the second sea voyage and storm. As we come ashore with the disciples and Jesus at Gennesaret, where have our sea journeys taken us? They read to me as a prefiguring of the final triumph of the Basileia of God.  The Legion's preemptive attack in the first sea storm was defeated, and the Legion driven back into the sea, like Pharaoh's army. Following this, Jesus continues to heal at the deepest level:

The loss of blood is stopped; Israel is healed. (After Herod's banquet we might wonder if the flood of blow in some way represent human violence draining our vitality?)

A child of God and of Israel is raised from the dead. We will see this again.

Even the disciples work the power of God, despite their limited insight. Their telling Jesus "all they had done and taught" contrasts them with John's disciples' lack of power, even as John's disciples ironically show Jesus disciples their future.

But the hydra-headed power of empire rises again, leading to the death of John, whilst at the same time showing how lacking in real power are the disciples of empire. Everything in Herod's palace is a desperate struggle to hold what power one has always facing down, or being defeated by, the latest demonic eruption; in this case, Herodias.

By contrast, the Basileia banquet is ordered, calm, and feeds people rather than feeding upon them. The crowd is calmed—it ceases being a crowd—for a time.

And then Jesus leaves them, crowd and disciples, just as he will leave the disciples after the last supper.

He goes to the mountain, almost in an ascension. Even in the time of Mark, the torture of God's people who seem to be left alone, continues as the little boat of the church struggles and is tortured in the middle of the sea. No mountain top experiences here. Sea storms are Old Testament images of death^[153], particularly in Jonah 2 which Mark knew well. (See Mark 4:35-41 - The storm, a pre-emptive strike - Reckoning with Jonah) Marcus says this meant storms became a standard  image of the end times^[154], which clearly invites the listener to associate this storm with the horrors of Jerusalem.

Yet far away, Jesus sees them. He returns to them. Jesus comes to them, supremely powerful, passing by on the sea. His Divinity is shown in his walking on the sea. But does he pass them by as the Divine has done from the time of Moses? No. "I am here." Ego eimi, God's self, the power of God, gets into the boat with them. And again the wind ceases. Here is Mark's resurrected Jesus.

Black observes that "Divine self disclosure to mortals never occurs head on."^[155] God always passes by us, and must do so because such a bridging of the disjunct would destroy us;^[156] even after all that has happened the disciples cannot "understand about the bread."  Here Mark is telling us that the miracle-work-of-power is not only the epiphany, but also the loaves. The final, great act of power in all the drama confronting the empire-sea is the bread, the self-giving of Jesus in Eucharist. In short the resurrected Jesus is placed next to the breads. We find him in the breads.

For all that Jesus teaches, there is something here that cannot be taught. There is a reality which is beyond our conceiving.  Real power, which is to be being brought to our full humanity, is only given as we give our life—our self—away. Even though I can say this, I have no real conception of what it means. Only a profound healing can enable me to give my whole self away, for my heart has been hardened. The old stories say God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the implication is present in Mark. Our gathering together always has the potential to morph into behaviour and be-ing which stony-hearted and rejects Jesus. With the Basileia only "at hand" we must navigate this carefully.

Last Sunday, two small boys collected the communion glasses and took them back to the front of the church. One of them shook his head at his father and took his box of glasses from the left side of the front pew to the right; to its rightful place from where he had collected it. Everything at the meal is done reflectively and properly, organised so that the person with genetic bromhidrosis stands next to the landed gentry; so there is a place for the person whose vocal stimming competes with the preacher; and rivals' dissensions are transcended, race and gender momentarily dissolve. The divine is passing by, even sitting among us in the boat. But we must always go back to the sea, or we will become one more exclusive club, one more crowd only heart-beats away from lashing out and holding onto its life.  The lessons of the sea soften our heart.

Andrea Prior (Jan 2026)

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[1] Ngaltatjara is a Pitjantjatjara word which loosely means "poor old thing." It can express compassion for someone stuck in an impossible situation. As I recall the term, people would sometimes add to the meaning the sense that a person was being self-piteous about things that were their own fault. In this text, Nazareth can stand for us poor ngaltatjaras.

[2] NRSVa: Other ancient authorities read son of the carpenter and of Mary

[3] ἐσκανδαλίζοντο -  nrsv: "took offence at," Scholars Bible: "resentful of him."

[4] Robert G. Bratcher and Eugene A. Nida, The Gospel of Mark, pp184 (UBS 1961)

[5] See: https://biblehub.com/greek/4624.htm

[6] Hamerton-Kelly, pp 95-97

[7] Malina, "Textual Notes: Mark 6:1-6"

[8] Malina, "Reading Scenarios: Mark 6:1-6"

[9] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome if this phrase is unfamiliar.

[10] "At this they were overcome with amazement" NRSVa

[11] As Douglas Hare says,"Those expecting little from God will not be disappointed." Hare, Douglas R. A. 1996. Mark. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

[12] Cf Galatians 5:19-21 "Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹envy (phthonoi) drunkenness, carousing, and things like these."

[13] This table is to this point taken from Marcus pp 378, using his own translation of Mark.

[14] NRSVa: Other ancient authorities read son of the carpenter and of Mary

[15] ἐσκανδαλίζοντο -  nrsv: took offence at, Scholars Bible: resentful of him

[16] Mark 1:28

[17] Even if the father were dead. Marcus pp374

[18] See Bratcher pp184, Marcus pp374-5

[19] James is Jacob, the father. Three of his sons were Joseph, Judas, and Simon.

[20] Originally, Parrott, W. Gerrod;Smith, Richard H. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 01 Jun 1993, Vol. 64, Issue 6, pages 906 - 920" Referenced by Ayaka Nakai, Makoto Numazaki "The Emotional Nature of Malicious and Benign Envy: Separate Measurements for Emotion and Motivation"

https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12568 (Retrieved 13/10/2025) Note that Parrot called this envy, not resentment.

[21] D’Arms, Justin, "Envy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/envy/>.

[22] See: https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/intro/living-by-the-sea-mark-435-543.html See also this commentary at   Point 14. The herd: (vv13) Hamerton-Kelly says the herd "is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means the violence ceases when the mob disappears." Australian English clarifies his understanding: here, a herd is often called a mob.  And there is something mobbish happening here. The word used for the steep bank is krēmnou, a steep bank or cliff, or an overhang. Such places are sometimes used for the killing of the scapegoat; eg the Tarpeian Rock in Rome. In Luke 4:29, for example, the mob tries to cast Jesus over the cliff. The word there is  katakrēmnisai which means to cast off a cliff or cast headlong. It comes from krēmnos.  In the Gerasene story where "Normal relationships are reversed. The crowd should remain on top of the cliff and the victim fall over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges and the victim is saved. The miracle of Gerasa reverses the universal schema of violence fundamental to all societies of the world."

[23] Cf Deuteronomy 5:21 which sees its destructive power: " Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."

[24] Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp45

[25] Bledsoe, https://theopolisinstitute.com/victimhood-and-the-gospel/  (Retrieved 9/10/2025)

[26] Girard, Reader, pp40, taken from Deceit, Desire and the Novel, pp1-7

[27] Nietzsche,  (The Will to Power, quoted by Girard in Reader pp244)

[28] Nietzsche,  (The Will to Power, quoted by Girard in Reader pp244)

[29] Girard, Reader pp253)

[30] Girard, Reader pp246

[31] Williams, pp252, which is the Girard Reader reprint of Girard's "Nietzsche vs the Crucified."

[32] Giles Fraser, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2008/nov/24/philosophy-religion-nietzsche-girard (Accessed 3/10/2025)

[33] Girard Reader pp256

[34] Robert Hamerton-Kelly The Gospel and the Sacred, pp 95-97.

[35] Alison, on being liked, pp1-2

[36] Girard, Reader,  pp40 The one for whom we have "the most submissive reverence and the most intense malice."

[37] Marcus pp313. See also Deuteronomy 17:6…⁶On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness. Also Deuteronomy 19:15 15 A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offence that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.

[38] See Point 5. The Son of God under the section 1:1 The beginning.

[39] M. Ber 5.5 “one’s messenger is equivalent to one’s self. “  See https://www.sefaria.org/English_Explanation_of_Mishnah_Berakhot.5.5. Retrieved 20/8/2024, or Levine and Brettler Jewish Annotated New Testament pp71

[40] Cf Matthew 10 “⁹Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, ¹⁰no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for labourers deserve their food. ¹¹Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. ¹²As you enter the house, greet it. ¹³If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. ¹⁴If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. “  CF also Luke9:1-6,10:3-11

[41] Eg Scholars Bible, which notes that the Cynic philosophers went barefoot.

[42] In addition, Marcus pp389 draws our attention to Deuteronomy 8:4, and 29:5 with their reference to the supply of bread (manna) by God, and clothes which did not wear out.

[43] I think I owe this insight to James Alison.

[44] Andrea Prior, see https://www.onemansweb.org/do-not-even-carry-your-name-mark-61-13.html

[45] This text is reworked from my post at https://www.onemansweb.org/do-not-even-carry-your-name-mark-61-13.html

[46] Mark D. Davis. See https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2024/06/

[47] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textus_Receptus

[48] See The Jerusalem Bible for example, or Young’s literal translation.

[49] “⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ “ (NRSV)

[50] Marcus pp384 cf Nehemiah 5:13¹³I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, ‘So may God shake out everyone from house and from property who does not perform this promise. Thus may they be shaken out and emptied.’ And all the assembly said, ‘Amen’, and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised. Acts 18:5-6 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word,^* testifying to the Jews that the Messiah^* was Jesus. ⁶When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes^* and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’

[51] This said, I note that Moloney says the majority of scholars do not see  a sandwich here. Moloney pp152

[52] The Greek text is identical.

[53] How might one even name this pericope given that it addresses so many issues.

[54] NRSVa nicely captures the sense of the Greek by saying "like one of the prophets of old."

[55] See for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas

[56] Marcus pp 399 provides this superb summary.

[57] Robert Hamerton-Kelly The Gospel and the Sacred, pp 95-97

[58] Marcus pp393

[59] Marcus pp393

[60] Cf RSV

[61] Marcus pp 394

[62] Philip the Tetrarch married Salome, the daughter of Herodias.

[63] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas

[64] See https://biblehub.com/thayers/2192.htm

[65] "eneichen: From en and echo; to hold in or upon, i.e. Ensnare; by implication, to keep a grudge. " See https://biblehub.com/thayers/1758.htm

[66] Cf Black, Mark, pp158

[67] See "How the Sacred Controls Violence" above. This distinguishes between ritual and cebration.

[68] Quoting my text below.

[69] Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament pp 89 The  text says τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς ⸃ Ἡρῳδιάδος [the daughter of Herodias herself], and the Nestle text says τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτου  Ἡρῳδιάδος [the daughter of him Herodias]. The Textual Commentary by Metzger (p90) decided "somewhat reluctantly" in favour of this reading and gave it a D rating, which is "a very high degree of doubt" and sometimes "the least unsatisfactory reading" (pp xxviii)  for a text where there are variations.

[70] "In 6:22b, À B C* L Δ and 33 and a smattering of minuscules read ἤρεσεν instead of καὶ ἀρεσάσης which is supported by all other Greek manuscripts.  The editors of the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation preferred the Alexandrian reading here – and in doing so, they rejected the testimony of Papyrus 45, the earliest manuscript of this part of the Gospel of Mark.  Although P45 is extensively damaged in chapter 6, this reading is preserved.  This constitutes an agreement between the Byzantine Text and the earliest manuscript of this part of Mark." See: https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2018/07/mark-622-whose-daughter-danced.html Retrieved 26/7/2024

[71] Marcus pp396 directs us to Gen 19:8, Judges 14:1A ,14:3A 14:7A,and Job 31:10 as well as Esther 2.

[72] See Ben Smith: "In Mark 6.21 the banquet is said to be "for his lords and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee." In Esther 1.3 the banquet is said to be "for all his princes and attendants, the army officers of Persia and Media, the nobles, and the princes of his provinces."" https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2522 Both Smith and Marcus also note that in Est. Rab. 4/9 on Est 1:19, and 4/11 on Est 1:21  the tradition of Vashti's head is brought into the King on a plate, and both presume that this text, later than Mark, reflects much earlier oral Jewish traditions. See also Marcus pp401

[73] See: Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby,   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/teachingnonviolentatonement/2015/07/wednesday-sermon-backstory-to-a-beheading-mimetic-theory-and-the-gospel/ Retrieved 30/7/2024

[74] See: Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby,   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/teachingnonviolentatonement/2015/07/wednesday-sermon-backstory-to-a-beheading-mimetic-theory-and-the-gospel/ Retrieved 30/7/2024

[75] Girard, The Scapegoat, Chapter 11. "This human being has no desire of her own; men are strangers to their desires; children don’t know how to desire and must be taught. Herod does not suggest anything to Salome because he offers her everything and anything. That is why Salome leaves him and goes to ask her mother what she should desire."

[76] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae Retrieved 30-7-2024

[77] See https://www.sefaria.org/Esther_Rabbah.4.9?lang=bi (Retrieved 23/11/2025)

[78] See Malachi 3:1, 4:5. See also Mark 9:11,13

[79] 2 Kings 2:11-12

[80] Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, 18.117–18.118

[81] But see the section "The Women," which refers to a demonic eucharist, below.

[82] Loosely quoting Prof. Peter Subramianim

[83] I owe this thought to James Alison.

[84] This paragraph includes edited text from Andrea Prior:  https://www.onemansweb.org/feasting-on-jesus-sandwich-mark-66-30.html . (Retrieved 23/11/2025)

[85] Black, Mark, pp160

[86] Matthew heightens this in his telling, making the links between the region of Syro-Phoenicia and Canaan explicit. See Matthew 15:27

[87] Regina Janes "Why the daughter of Herodias must dance." JSNT 28.4 (2006) pp443-467

[88] This image from Chartres Cathedral in the ninth century can be seenb at https://artanddance.art.blog/2021/04/15/salome-dancing-prints-and-glass/  Retrieved 30-7-2-24

[89] Marcus pp403

[90] Marcus Ibid

[91] Regina Janes "Why the daughter of Herodias must dance." JSNT 28.4 (2006) pp443-467

[92] Christian Discourses  pp42, quoted by Bellinger. I have modified the original to be gender inclusive. See: http://www.religion-online.org/article/the-crowd-is-untruth-a-comparison-of-kierkegaard-and-girard/

[93] Alison, On Being Liked, pp1

[94] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas

[95] Marcus pp395

[96] Paul Nuechterlein. See https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper10b_1997_ser/ Retrieved 31-07-2024

[97] John 11:50

[98] Woody Belangia. See: https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/ Retrieved 31/07/2024

[99] Cf Mark 6: 6b-13 and the comments following.

[100] Cf Mark 5:33

[101] James Alison's book Undergoing God is subtitled Dispatches from the scene of a break in.

[102] NB. Loaves is understood; artous is not used here.

[103] Loaves of bread, mentioned twice in verse 41, is the one word artous

[104] Cf Black, Mark, pp

[105] So NRSVA.

[106] See:Mark 4:35 (They end up in the country of the Gerasenes),
Mark 5:1 ("to the country of the Gerasenes," Gentile territory);
Mark 5:21 (no specific destination given, but clearly Jewish territory because "one of the leaders of the synagogue" is mentioned);
Mark 6:45 (Bethsaida, A Hellenistic city with some Jewish residents See Marcus pp422); Mark 8:10 (Dalmutha, an unknown town. See Joel Watts at https://web.archive.org/web/20130921161925/http://unsettledchristianity.com/2013/09/no-dalmanutha-has-not-been-found-because-it-doesnt-exist/ (Retrieved 22/8/2034) In a reprise of this article at Huff Post, Watts says "geography is a literary device". Whether or not the town existed is not the point; what is important is what it meant. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dalmanutha-has-not-been-found_b_3947850 (Retrieved 22/8/2024)), and
Mark 8:13 (no site given.)

[107] "'An empire cannot remain neutral in relation to the powers in its sphere of influence': that is, it cannot allow either independence or nonparticipation without retaliation." Herfried Münkler , quoted by Wes Howard-Brook, in  Come Out, My People!: God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), pp8.

[108] Cf https://biblehub.com/thayers/3979.htm and also Bratcher, pp203.

[109] See https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp (Retrieved 22/8/2024)

[110] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi (Retrieved 22/8/2024)

[111] See also Nu 27:17, 1 Kings 22:17 cf 2 Chron 18:16, Judith 11:19, which all focus more on a lack of leadership and then , Zech 10:2-3, which like Ezek 34 is against the evil shepherds.

[112] cf 1 Kings 17:8-16 - Elijah and the jar of meal, and 2 Kings 4:1-7 - Elisha and the jars of oil.

[113] Cf Exodus 16:19-36

[114] Marcus pp407-8

[115] In Mark 14:18 NRSV poorly translates anakeimenōn kai autōn  (lit. and as were reclining them) at the Passover meal as "when they had taken their places!"

[116] Marcus pp930  In Old Testament times, people sat to eat.  Reclining, which is what the Greek text of 6:39-40 contains, was a later Greek influence. In fact, reclining to eat was seen as decadent. Cf Amos 6:4-7: Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
   and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
   and calves from the stall; etc…

[117] ¹⁴I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. Ezekiel 34:14-15

[118] See Marcus, pp407-8

[119] ¹⁵So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and reputable individuals, and installed them as leaders over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officials, throughout your tribes.

[120] Eg., see Robert Crotty Good News in Mark, pp78

[121] Baruch 29:3-6 :

And it shall come to pass when all is accomplished that was to come to pass in those parts, that the Messiah shall then begin to be revealed. And Behemoth shall be revealed from his place and Leviathan shall ascend from the sea, those two great monsters which I created on the fifth day of creation, and shall have kept until that time; and then they shall be for food for all that are left. The earth also shall yield its fruit ten-thousandfold and on each (?) vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape produce a cor of wine.  And those who have hungered shall rejoice: moreover, also, they shall behold marvels every day.

[122] Sifrei Bamidbar 95:1 "Could all the fish of the sea be gathered for them?" (Numbers 11:22). Even if you gathered fish for them to eat, they would grumble! Didn't the well of Miriam accompany them in the wilderness and did it not bring up for them more plump fish than they needed? Rather, they wanted an excuse to separate from God... See https://www.sefaria.org/Sifrei_Bamidbar.95.1?lang=bi (Retrieved 28/8/2024) Marcus mentions this (pp411)

[123] Cf Mark 3:13:19

[124] See more details in Marcus, pp410.

[125] Robert Crotty Good News in Mark, p76

[126] "everyone in Israel able to go to war." Numbers 1:2, 26:2

[127] "It is not that all individuals are level-headed, or reflective, or kind, or merciful. It is that level-headedness, or introspection, or kindness, or mercy are only possible for individuals. Crowds can be joyful or they can be murderous; they can celebrate or they can protest; but what is beyond their reach is sobriety—and it is sobriety that ultimately separates civilization from barbarism." David Reiff https://newrepublic.com/article/77460/the-unwisdom-crowds (Retrieved 28/08/2024)

[128] Marcus pp419, quoting J. Bolyki

[129] Note that the more condensed description of the second feast simply refers to the crowd throughout, and makes no reference to the groups.

[130] https://girardianlectionary.net/learn/bailie-miracle-loaves-fishes/ (Retrieved 28/8/2024) Nuechterlein is quoting Bailie's Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, pages 212-215. New York: Crossroad, 1995.

[131] “Imperiality . . . dissolves . . . equality and reduces subordinates to the status of client states or satellites”: that is, international relations are not between equals, but between a “center” and a “periphery.” David Prichett, quoting Herfried Münkler https://missiodeijournal.com/issues/md-4-1/authors/md-4-1-pritchett#footnote-34521-10 , (Retrieved 28/8/2024)

[132] Mark 6:45-53

[133] So RSV.

[134] Henderson, pp214

[135] Henderson, pp215

[136] Marcus, pp430

[137] https://biblehub.com/thayers/966.htm

[138] See 6:53.

[139] Cf the comment on 4:39,41.

[140] Henderson, pp218

[141] Cf Marcus pp423.

[142] Cf https://biblehub.com/thayers/1643.htm

[143] Proposed by Paulus, and also Taylor in his Mark. Noted by Marcus pp423

[144] Marcus, pp426.

[145] See Exodus 3:14 LXX

[146] Kermode, Frank. 1979. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.Quoted in Black, Mark, pp150

[147] The LXX does not use   but σκληρυνῶ (think sclerosis!) and κατίσχυσεν  which appears to reflect to different words for harden in the MT.

[148] Mark 6:6b-13, 30

[149] Mark uses the phrase metaphorically, pointing to much else. In my culture one of the first signs of not time to eat is over-eating.

[150] Cf the section "One of Four Banquets" above

[151] Key to these central chapters in Mark is that we the reader are present; the gospel is our journey. Mark does not mean to write an historically sequential record, or a geographically correct description of events.

[152] Cf  the textual comments on eukairos at 6:21, 31

[153] [ See 2 Samuel 22:5, Psalms 69:1-3]

[154] [ Marcus, pp430 See also Matt 7:25-27]

[155] Black, Mark, p165

[156] Exodus 33:20 "You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live."