Offenbarung in Zeichen und Wort

M. Labahn examines the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus' walking on the sea in John 6. Both discourses are contained in one of the central chapters of the Fourth Gospel, in which Jesus calls himself the bread of life, and both have challenged Christians and exegetes of all times. Above all it is the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with its various models of interpretation ranging from the sacramental to the rationalizing-ethical that has received attention. How is this narrative chronology to be seen? How does it prepare for Jesus calling himself the bread of life, and how did the Johannine version of this story, which is also present in the Synoptics, originate? Against the background of the present-day discussion on exegesis, Michael Labahn gives new answers to these questions.