Debbie Patton
02/29/00
Critical Review #2

Fitzmyer, Joseph A., S.J. The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to Luke I-IX Vol. 28. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1981.

Fitzmyer's article The Return of the Apostles: The Feeding of Five Thousand gives the reader an explanation of Luke's account and how it differs from the other gospels, especially Mark 6:30-44. He gives a brief explanation of why he will not be examining John's account and that is simply because it represents an independent tradition and the two characteristics it shares with Luke are very minor. He moves onto the gospels of Mark and Matthew, both of which have two accounts each of the feeding of the multitude. Fitzmyer discusses the relationship between the gospels in three different ways so that he can narrow his discussion down to just the feeding stories in Luke 9:10-17 and Mark 6:30-44.

The first issue he deals with is why are there two versions of the stow in both Mark and Matthew? Did Jesus feed a great multitude twice or is the second account simply a variation of the first? Fitzmyer concludes that the event only happened once and the second account is a variation of the first. How else could it be explained that the disciples were puzzled by what Jesus was doing in Mark 8:4 if they had seen him do it before? Secondly, the similarities between Mark 8:1-10 and Luke 9:10-17 can also be found in Mark 6:30-44. And because Matthew drew from Mark, Fitzmyer decides to focus just on the first account in the gospel of Mark, so that the topic is more manageable.

The third part of his discussion is focused on the relationship between Mark and Luke. The author goes through the story step-by-step, mentioning several significant differences between the two:

1.) Prior to the feeding of five thousand, Luke does not include the death of John the Baptist

2.) Luke has Jesus and the disciples go to the town of Bethsaida, rather than getting on a boat to go to the deserted place

3.) Luke omits the dividing of the fish

There is a very brief mention of the similarities between Matthew and Luke, which allows Fitzmyer to mention his belief in the Q source. He mentions the form of the passage as being a nature miracle and explains that Luke intentionally includes the preaching about the kingdom of God in his account of this miracle. Luke does this so that the audience will equate Jesus' power with the power of the kingdom.

What is interesting about this article by Joseph Fitzmyer is that he mentions the conclusions of several other scholars and then states that he disagrees with their conclusions without formulating a counter-argument. For example, he quotes E. Earle Ellis who claims that this passage marks the climax of Jesus' Galilean mission, Fitzmyer says that this is not the case and then drops the subject entirely. If he was not going to offer a counter-argument, it would have been better for him to not have mentioned it at all. In the very next paragraph he mentions that Boobyer does not think this story was influenced by eucharistic elements. Fitzmyer's response is simply, "the accounts of the feeding and the eucharistic institution are too close to be explained otherwise" (764) and basically drops the subject. Like the Ellis example, it would have been much better for Fitzmyer to have either explained the position of the other scholars more carefully and offer his opposing position or to have not mentioned the other scholars at all.