Coincidence II.1: “Many Were Coming and Going”
The Alleged Coincidence
In Mark’s version of the feeding of the five thousand, the author tells us that, after the disciples returned from their missionary journeys, Jesus wants to get away from the crowds:
The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. (Mark 6:30–31) 1
McGrew finds the phrase “many were coming and going” problematic. Although it appears to be referring to the crowds following Jesus to hear his teaching and to seek healings, McGrew argues that the phrase “is slightly odd as a description of Jesus’ popularity alone and suggests that there was some other reason for a general bustle of crowds in their vicinity”. 2 But Mark doesn’t provide another explanation for the crowd’s presence. So why is it there, preventing Jesus and company from eating?
The answer supposedly comes from John’s account of the feeding. John tells us that the miracle occurs when “the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near” (John 6:4). Therefore, according to McGrew, there are so many people “coming and going” because the area was full of Passover pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem.
First Failure: No Coincidence
There’s no coincidence here. That the crowd in Mark is there because of Jesus’s “popularity alone” is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. Not only does Mark say nothing about Passover and pilgrims, but Mark frequently refers to large crowds following Jesus around (see 2:13; 3:20, 32; 4:1; 5:21, 24; 6:54–56; 8:1; 9:14; 10:1, 46). Even in this story, after Jesus and the disciples flee to a deserted place, a crowd of people “from all the towns” forms merely because they “recognized” Jesus (Mark 6:33). In all these stories none of these crowds is said to be pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem; they’re clearly made up of people who have heard about Jesus and who want to hear him teach and to see, or to be the recipient of, his healings.
Moreover, Mark often portrays the large size of the crowd as a nuisance, even a danger. There is, famously, the story of the paralytic who has to be lowered in through the roof because a large crowd is blocking the front door—a crowd that formed, according to Mark, when “it was reported that [Jesus] was at home” (Mark 2:1). On another occasion Jesus fears being crushed by the crowd and has his disciples prepare a boat so he can escape. This crowd is made up of “great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon” and has gathered, not as pilgrims passing through, but because they had “hear[d] all that [Jesus] was doing” (Mark 3:8). And when Mark says Jesus and the disciples “had no leisure even to eat” because of the crowd, this is the second time the crowd prevents Jesus and the disciples from eating; the first time occurs at Mark 3:20.
It’s very likely, then, that the crowd in Mark 6:31 is meant to be another large crowd consisting of people who have heard about Jesus’s teachings and healings and have come to see Jesus for themselves. The only evidence McGrew supplies against this interpretation is that she finds the phrase “coming and going” a “slightly odd” way to describe such a crowd (my emphasis). She doesn’t, however, say precisely why it’s odd. Presumably the reason is because Mark says the people in the crowd are “going” and well as “coming”. It may be odd but, in fact, the phrase describes how crowds work. Think of a modern-day street performer. People walk up to watch for a bit, and then they leave. They come, and then they go. And as some leave, others arrive to fill their places.
So McGrew can think the phrase is odd, but it works as a description of a crowd that is eager to see Jesus. And since these crowds occurs frequently in Mark, and since the story doesn’t mention pilgrims or Passover, there’s no reason to doubt that the crowd in Mark 6:31 is anything other than people coming from near and far to see Jesus.
Thus, McGrew fails to establish a coincidence between the two accounts. And if there’s no coincidence, there can be no evidence of reliability and eyewitness testimony.
Second Failure: No Evidence for Reliability
But even if there were a coincidence—that is, even if the crowds in Mark’s story are Passover pilgrims—it still wouldn’t be evidence that the stories are reliable. It would be evidence that a story was floating around in which the feeding miracle occurred around the time of Passover and the crowds were made up of Passover pilgrims. There’s nothing implausible about two storytellers hearing or reading about these details and one mentioning the crowd only and one mentioning Passover only. And McGrew cannot object to this explanation, since she has to argue for something very similar: Either the eyewitnesses sources behind Mark and John knew about both details but mentioned only one, or Mark and John the authors knew both details and mentioned only one.
Third Failure: No Evidence for Eyewitness Testimony
McGrew fails to provide any explanation of how this coincidence is supposed to be evidence for eyewitness testimony. Instead, she focuses on how the coincidence must be undesigned. She points out that Mark could not have mentioned the crowds in order to coincide with John’s comment about Passover because Mark was written first. And, she argues, it’s highly implausible that John would have included the detail about Passover in order to coincide with Mark’s comment about the crowds, because such “a hyper-subtle correspondence” is likely to be missed by readers. McGrew writes, “The correspondence here is so indirect that there can be no question that it is undesigned.”
But this argument is immaterial. I’m not disputing the undesignedness of undesigned coincidences. I agree that it’s highly unlikely that a Gospel writer included certain details to create subtle connections with other accounts. But being undesigned is not evidence that the coinciding details come from eyewitnesses. As I say above, Mark and John could have pulled their details from oral and literary traditions in which the story occurs around Passover, when lots of Passover pilgrims were around.
Fourth Failure: Reliable Eyewitness Testimony Is Not the Best Explanation
Because the coinciding details are found in a miracle story, McGrew’s hypothesis of reliable eyewitness testimony is not the best explanation of the coincidence. That the feeding story is fiction rather than historical, and that the details come from oral and literary traditions instead of eyewitnesses, is vastly more probable than a man miraculously and supernaturally multiplying a small amount of food into a large amount.
Conclusion: Failure In Plain View
This coincidence is a pathetic attempt to demonstrate that the Gospels are based on reliable eyewitness testimony. To begin with, there’s no coincidence. When Mark says “many were coming and going”, there’s no reason to think he has in mind Passover pilgrims. It’s far more likely to be yet another instance of many in Mark’s Gospel of a crowd forming because of Jesus’s celebrity. But even if there were a coincidence, it could easily have come about because Mark and John pulled the details from oral and literary traditions that set the story near the the time of Passover. And since the story involves a miracle, it’s far more likely to be pious fiction passed along by storytellers rather than a historical event relayed by eyewitnesses.
An Unsuccessful Resolution of a Contradiction
McGrew notes that there is an apparent contradiction between Mark’s and John’s accounts of the feeding miracle. She ultimately thinks the contradiction is harmonizable—that is, it’s not a true contradiction—but she argues that the appearance of a contradiction is evidence that John’s account is independent of Mark’s. The rationale is that, if John had access to Mark’s account, he would not have included the apparently contradictory detail.
I don’t think independence can be established from one apparent contradiction between sources. John could still have used Mark’s account as a source, and the apparently contradictory detail could have come from another source or John’s own imagination. But even if McGrew could establish that John’s account is independent of Mark’s, that is not much of a victory for the apologist’s cause. Independence is not evidence for eyewitness testimony, and it doesn’t ensure reliability. Furthermore, in this case, the massive improbability of the feeding miracle smothers any evidential value provided by independence.
But I’m more interested in discussing the apparent contradiction, and demonstrating that McGrew is unsuccessful in resolving it.
Here is McGrew’s presentation of the contradiction:
In John 6.3–5, Jesus goes up onto a mountain apparently before seeing the multitude coming, just before the feeding of the five thousand. But in Mark 6.34, . . . Jesus first saw the multitude when disembarking from a boat, which would not be on the top of a mountain. (Original emphasis) 3
And here is McGrew’s proposed solution:
One should note that Jesus does not feed the crowd immediately when he sees them in Mark 6 and that he is moving about amongst the crowds all day. So he might well have gone higher up the mountain and sat down shortly before the feeding, as recounted in John, meaning that the account in John is simply not exhaustive. [NB: McGrew must mean “Mark is simply not exhaustive”, since Mark is the one allegedly omitting details.]
It’s weird that McGrew is focusing on the issue of when Jesus sees the crowd for the first time, instead of on the more obvious issue: Where does the miracle take place? On the shore, as in Mark, or up a mountain, as in John?
In any event, McGrew’s proposed resolution doesn’t work. She says it’s possible that, in Mark, Jesus first encounters the crowd on the shore and at some point leads it up the mountain. But Mark says no such thing. Here’s what Mark says:
And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But 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?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. (Mark 6:32–39)
According to Mark, Jesus met the crowd on the shore, and “began to teach them many things”, until “it grew very late”, and then the feeding miracle occurs. There’s no going up the mountain. McGrew is using her imagination to rewrite Mark’s account to agree with John’s.
But the nail in the coffin for McGrew’s solution is what Mark says after the feeding miracle:
And all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men. Immediately he [Jesus] made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray” (Mark 6:42–46; my emphasis)
According to Mark, the crowd was never on the mountain, but near the shore. That’s why he says Jesus went up the mountain only after dismissing the crowd.
Thus, Mark and John contradict each other, and McGrew fails to resolve it. 4
- Unless otherwise noted, I use the NRSVue for all biblical translations. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter II section “1. ‘Many were coming and going’”. ↩
- McGrew’s quotes in this section of the post come from Hidden in Plain View, Chapter I, section “Conclusion”. ↩
- The location of the miracle is not the only contradiction between Mark’s and John’s versions of events. For example, in Mark, the feeding happens immediately after the disciples return from their separate missions throughout Galilee, and Jesus suggests going to a deserted place to rest (Mark 6:30–31); in John, it occurs after Jesus and the disciples return from Jerusalem, where they celebrated an unspecified “festival of the Jews” (John 5:1). And Matthew has yet a different explanation: He says the feeding miracle occurs immediately after Jesus hears of the Baptist’s death (Matt. 14:13). Moreover, there are many more contradictions among the Gospels regarding the feeding miracle and, of course, many other narratives. ↩