Mark 6 Footnotes

6:14 The reference is to Herod Antipas, son of King Herod the Great, who was made tetrarch of Galilee and Perea by Caesar Augustus after the death of his father. Antipas was given the rank of tetrarch explicitly to deny him the higher rank of king, and continual campaigning for the former title eventually resulted in his exile by the emperor Caligula. Mark called Antipas “king” because that was what he was in effect, if not in title, within his regions (see Mt 14:1,9, where Matthew referred to him as both tetrarch and king). Some scholars have also suggested that Mark’s comment could be tongue-in-cheek criticism of Antipas’s claim to be a king.

6:17-30 The first-century Jewish historian Josephus related the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod Antipas somewhat differently (Ant. 18.5.2-4). But the accounts are compatible. Josephus focused on the political reason for the death of John, namely John’s potentially seditious popularity, while Mark focused on the more personal reason of Antipas’s illicit marriage to his brother’s wife. Yet John’s preaching against Antipas’s marriage to Herodias would be viewed by the ruler as seditious, particularly since the intrigues surrounding the marriage brought him to war with the Nabatean Arabs. Bawdy parties and extravagant gifts to entertainers were common in the first-century Roman world.

6:32 Luke places the feeding of the five thousand near “a town called Bethsaida” (Lk 9:10), but Mark has Jesus direct the disciples afterward to “go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida” (Mk 6:45), creating a geographical difficulty. This is further complicated when John says in his Gospel that the disciples took the boat toward Capernaum (Jn 6:17). The best solution is to assume that Luke referred to Bethsaida Julias, a city on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, just east of the Jordan River, in Gaulanitis, and that Mark referred to a Galilean village of the same name. (Bethsaida means “fishing village” and was perhaps the name of several towns along the shore of Galilee.) This may be confirmed by John’s designation of the hometown of Philip, Peter, and Andrew as “Bethsaida in Galilee” (Jn 12:21, see 1:44) and by the regular association of Bethsaida with the Galilean villages of Chorazin and Capernaum (Mt 11:20-24). Alternatively, “to the other side” (Gk peran) in Mk 6:45 may merely indicate moving from one place to another via the lake rather than a crossing between its eastern and western halves. In this case the disciples left the location of the miracle and traveled northwestward, in the direction of both Bethsaida Julias and Capernaum, but ended up southwest of Capernaum (Gennesaret) because of the storm (v. 53).

6:34 The feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness was a messianic act signaled here by an allusion to Nm 27:16-17. Moses prayed for someone to replace him after his death so the people would not be left as sheep without a shepherd. The motif is picked up in Ezekiel, where God promised that his servant David (i.e., the Messiah) will shepherd his people. Jn 6:14-15,26-34 makes it clear that the Galileans recognized the significance of the act (see note on Dt 18:15-19).

6:48 The feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on water are narrated in three of the four Gospels. These nature miracles, along with the stilling of the storm, are most difficult for critics to accept as historical, since no good naturalistic explanation can be provided for them. Here we come up against a fundamental point of contention. Either one believes that God can work through his creation in patterns that differ from the normal patterns or one does not. God’s usual ways of working we describe as laws of nature. The fact that John attests these miracles support their historicity.