Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. The ordinary meaning of ἐγγύς need not be departed from (cf. John 2:13; John 7:2; John 11:55). This valuable note of time is confirmed by another hint incidentally dropped.
A month later than the Passover it could not be said that "much grass" was in the place. In the late spring such a phrase would most inadequately represent the scene that was indelibly impressed on the fourfold tradition.
Whatever the unnamed feast was (John 5:1), whether Trumpets, Purim, or Passover, we have reached the month Abib, when the crowds of pilgrims were gathering for their southern journey. If the Purim were the unnamed feast, then the suggestion arises that Christ's reception at Jerusalem had prevented his remaining until the Passover of that year.
If the Passover be meant (John 5:1), then a year has passed between John 5:1-47. and 6. Nor is this a day too long for the crowd of events and teachings recorded by the synoptists as having taken place before the death of John.
The note of time may be recorded as implying the dominant sentiment in the minds of the people. The great deliverance from Egyptian bondage was burned into the national conscience, and the fanatic desire for a second Moses to lead them out of Roman servitude was at such seasons fanned into a flame.
The Lord had his own thought about the Paschal lamb, and knew that God was preparing a Lamb for sacrifice. In mystic, parabolic sense he foreknew that men would and must consume the flesh of this sacrifice.
He was ready, moreover, to show them that he could supply all their need. The great Prophet who had said of himself, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!" had just fallen beneath the executioner's axe.
The people were bereft of a great prophet and leader, and to Christ's eye they were "as sheep without a shepherd." Verily he was preparing to lay down his life as a good Shepherd for these sheep—to provide for them in the future a feast of living bread.
All this may rationally be admitted, without for a moment conceding that second-century ideas like these were the formative causes of the narrative. The miracle that follows stands on an entirely distinct basis, and is more powerfully attested than any ether miracle, except the resurrection of Christ.
If it stood in John's record alone, there might be some colour for the supposition that we have merely a parable of great beauty. But the threefold tradition long anterior to John's Gospel deprives even the pseudo-John of the possibility of inventing it.
On the other hand, the appearance of the narrative in John's Gospel deprives it of the mythical character which some have attributed to the authors of the synoptic Gospels. Thoma, in the spirit of Strauss, here imagines that the synoptists were busy in fashioning a miracle of sustenance and a portent upon the waters—a sign on land and sea—to correspond with the manna and Red Sea marvels of the Book of Exodus.
"The mountain" ( τὸ ὄρος) is, as he thinks, a similitude of the Mount Sinai, and, as the latter represented the giving of the Law, this was associated with the mountain of Beatitudes. He goes further, and sees in the Johannine narrative the Christian (agapē) feasts, and the deliverance of the Apostle Paul from shipwreck!
He is even more ingenious still, and suggests that the "five thousand" fed at the first miraculous meal, with twelve baskets of fragments, correspond with the results of the first preaching of the twelve apostles, and that the seven loaves among the four thousand reflect "the many hundreds"" who were benefited by the seven evangelists.
He endeavours by a most elaborate process to make it appear that John has here combined into one tableau minute traces derived from the five several accounts of the two miracles. The old rationalistic theory was that the miracle was only an exaggerated poetical statement of the fact; that a good example of charity on the part of the apostles was followed by others, and so food was found for the entire multitude.
This hypothesis breaks on the rock that the authors of these Gospels intended to convey a perfectly different idea. The effect of such cheap philanthropy and pragmatic travesty of a royal act would not have been that the multitudes would have rushed to the conclusion that he had done a kingly deed, or one in the least way calculated to suggest the notion that he could feed armies at his will.
All efforts to extirpate by such theories the supernatural character of the occurrence fail, and force the reader back upon the plain statements of the fourfold narrative.