Scholars have debated the meaning of the report on feeding a crowd at one of Jesus’s mega-teachings that notes “5,000 men.”
Why men?
Perhaps the number 5,000 matters (I’m sure it wasn’t an accident, writers don’t add stuff just to add stuff—at least not good ones). And, men.
And consider that they wanted to crown Jesus as king.
5,000? That’s the size of a Roman Legion. If he had led those 5,000 at that point on a march to Jerusalem, think of how large the army would have been by the time they got there. And then the triumphal entry on what we call Palm Sunday. Jesus entered from one gate, so scholars say, at the same time the Roman ruler entered another gate with his troops in order to maintain order during Passover.
He could have been leading a 20,000-strong army on the capital. We know they were armed, since Peter drew a sword and used it at the time of the arrest.
What would have happened?
Well, consider what happened 35 years later when there was a popular uprising. Thousands were killed (and not Romans), the Temple was totally destroyed, and the Jews were dispersed.
Jesus and those 20,000 men would have been slaughtered.
I love stories that unfold in multiple layers. There is the immediate layer that Jesus saved his followers from immediate slaughter that would have nipped his growing project in the bud.
Of course, there is also the theological layer that we all know about–Jesus, the sacrificial lamb, killed for all of our sins.
Good stories bear truth in many layers. I don’t think the gospel writers could have made that up that quickly.
Faith Venture 
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