Mark 8 Footnotes

8:1-10 Many scholars question the historicity of this miracle, even if they accept the historicity of the feeding of the five thousand. The second feeding appears to be a different version of the first, especially when in this story the disciples do not seem to be aware of the possibility of Jesus performing such a miracle. But if this is so, it is hard to account for the several distinctions between the two accounts and for Mark’s reference to both miracles in vv. 17-20. The disciples’ lack of expectation here may be accounted for by the Gentile location or by the disciples not anticipating Gentile participation in the messianic banquet.

8:12 At least six places in the Gospels have Jesus’s audience asking him to show them a sign (Mt 12:38-39; 16:1-2; Mk 8:11-12; Lk 11:16,29-32; Jn 2:18; 6:30). The request for a sign was a regular occurrence during Jesus’s ministry, and this alone may account for some of the distinctions among the various records. If Mt 16 and Mk 8 record the same event, then Mark’s must be taken as a truncated version, giving in effect the message of the longer accounts. The authorities wanted an immediate sign attesting to Jesus’s message, but they would not receive such a sign. Jesus did supply signs, particularly in John, to help create faith where there was openness for it or to bolster weak faith. But he would never work signs on demand, just to pacify the skeptics. The sign they would be given, that of Jonah, would not be the sort they sought. Some scholars, on the basis of Lk 11:29-32, take the sign of Jonah to be Jonah’s effective preaching. Others, on the basis of Mt 12:39-41, take the sign of Jonah to be the resurrection.

8:33 Jesus intended his statement to Peter to shock some sense into the disciples. Chapters 8–10 of Mark form a transition from Jesus’s ministry to his passion. In this section Jesus three times prepared his disciples for the goal of his ministry—his death—by trying to correct his followers’ power-centered understanding of what his messianic role meant (8:34-35; 9:30-36; 10:32-45). Peter, like Satan, would undermine the purposes of God by self-centeredly seeking the glory of the messianic kingdom too quickly (Mt 4:8-10).