The Blindness of the Disciples Rebuked. This is a difficult paragraph. Mark 8:15 contains a genuine utterance of Jesus which does not necessarily belong to its present context. Lk. gives it in another connexion (Luke 12:1) and Wellhausen points out that Mark 8:14 and Mark 8:16 seem artificially separated by Mark 8:15. Again, if Mark 8:1-9 is really a doublet of Mark 6:30 f., then the form at least of Mark 8:19 f. is due to the evangelist. But the rebuke of the disciples for anxiety about bread and for failing to understand the warning against the Pharisees and Herod (united here as in Mark 3:6) may well be historical Loisy holds that the rebuke is again artificial, the evangelist blaming the disciples for not perceiving the truths of Paulinism symbolised in the miracles of feeding the multitudes. But it is doubtful how far these miracles were symbolic in the mind of the evangelist, and he certainly gives no hint of Loisy's interpretation here.
Mark 8:14-21
14 Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf.
15 And he charged them, saying,Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.
16 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.
17 And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them,Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
18 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?
19 When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.
20 And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.
21 And he said unto them,How is it that ye do not understand?