Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 14:13-36, Bread in a deserted place, a walk on the sea
Jesus feeds five thousand men, besides women and children, in a deserted place, then comes to the disciples walking on the lake, and Peter tries to walk to him.
Matthew 14:13-36, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus tries to withdraw after John's death, but the crowds follow, and he heals them and feeds thousands from five loaves and two fish, with baskets of scraps left over. That night he walks across the lake to the disciples' storm-tossed boat, and Peter starts out to meet him on the water before fear makes him sink. The disciples worship him as God's Son, and at Gennesaret the sick are healed by touching his clothes. In Israel's Scriptures it is God who treads on the waters, which is why the scene ends in worship.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/wilderness\/","n":"The wilderness","s":"The dry, empty country beyond the Jordan where John preached, Jesus was tested and a crowd was fed. It was hard ground, and it was where Israel's story with God began.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/messianic-banquet\/","n":"The banquet of the age to come","s":"The feast Jews expected God to spread for the righteous when his kingdom came, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the table.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/the-sea\/","n":"The sea","s":"To ancient Israel the sea stood for chaos and danger that only God could command. The Gospel stories on the lake of Galilee lean on that old picture.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/shepherd-and-sheep\/","n":"Shepherd and sheep","s":"Scripture pictured Israel without a leader as sheep without a shepherd, and promised that God himself would come to shepherd them.","r":""}
Villages of a few hundred to a few thousand people could not feed such a crowd, and Keener notes that teachers rarely fed even their disciples. The fourth watch on the Roman scheme ran from about three to six in the morning. Belief in ghosts was popular despite mainstream Jewish teaching, and Keener notes that in the Old Testament only God treads on the waters. Josephus describes the plain of Gennesaret as thirty furlongs long and twenty wide, watered by a spring the locals called Capharnaum. Tradition puts the feeding at Tabgha, where the pilgrim Egeria saw the stone in the fourth century (Wilkins), while the Zondervan Atlas thinks it probably took place northeast of the lake. The baskets were the kophinos, a basket Jews used for carrying their own food (Wilkins). The Zondervan Bible Dictionary makes the plain of Gennesaret less than four miles long and about a mile wide.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 14:13-21, 14:16, 14:21, 14:22-33, 14:25, 14:26 and 14:34-36
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 14:15, 14:19, 14:21, 14:25, 14:26, 14:27 and 14:34
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Matthew 14:15-21
- Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 3.10.8, trans. William Whiston
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 14:13 and 14:20
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Life of Christ
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Gennesaret
