Jesus Distributed Bread, Not Fish! By Dr. Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- Mar 27
- 4 min read
Executive Summary: Did Jesus really multiply "five loaves and two fish" to feed the multitudes (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:31–44; Luke 9:12–17; John 6:1–14)? Not exactly. In Matthew 14, Jesus is described as breaking and handing out loaves, but not fish. When Jesus referred back to this event in Matt. 16:9–10 and Mark 8:19–20, and when early Church Fathers like Irenaeus, Arnobius, and Eusebius narrated the miracle, none of them mentioned fish.
Moreover, the Greek word for fish (ἰχθύας), as in Mark 6:41, Matthew 14:19, and Luke 9:16, is an acronym for " Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" (Akers 2000), a secret code commonly used by the early Christians to avoid persecution; and "fish (opsarion)", as in John 6:9, may also be a mistranslation of the Greek word for "fishweed (opson)" (Hicks 2019; Giron 2013), a popular vegan relish among Palestinian peasants both 2000 years ago and now.
1. Jesus Broke Loaves but NOT Fish (Matthew 14)
In the miracle of "Five loaves and two fish," which is narrated in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:12-17, and John 6:1-14, Jesus neither condoned the eating of fish nor gave it to the masses (Matthew 14). As pointed out by John Vujicic (2009), if you carefully read the text of Matthew 14, you will see that Jesus only broke the LOAVES and gave ONLY THE LOAVES to the people. Twelve baskets were filled with the broken pieces of BREAD. Subsequently, when Jesus referred back to the feeding of five thousand and of four thousand in the Gospel of Matthew 16:9-10 and the Gospel of Mark 8:19-20, He merely made reference to the LOAVES of BREAD AND THE BASKETS which held the broken pieces of bread, and never mentioned in any way the fishes.
Likewise, Irenaes, in his book written in the 2nd century, twice states that Jesus fed the crowd with bread and nothing else (Against Heresies 2.22.3, 2.24.4; see Akers 2020:126). Arnobius narrates the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 in a similar manner, sans referring to fish (Against the Heathen 1, 46). Eusebius, too, talks about this event sans bringing up fish (Proof of the Gospel 3,4).
In John’s version even though reference is circuitously made to Jesus’s breaking of the fishes, the twelve baskets contained only the broken pieces of FIVE LOAVES. Obviously Jesus used only five loaves to feed the crowd and the reference to the fishes is a subsequent interpolation.
2. Fish vs Fishweed
As put by Raw Matt (2019), "Even IF the manuscript is correct, the translation is erroneous." The "fish" in the miracle concerned is probably a mistranslation of a kind of dried seaweed. As found by the author's own research, in the Greek version of John 6:9, the word for "fish" is ὀψάριον (opsarion), which according to Thayer's Greek Lexicon (STRONGS NT 3795), is a "diminutive from ὄψον [opson] (cf. Curtius, § 630) i.e. whatever is eaten with bread, especially food boiled or roasted"; and according to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, is "a relish to other food (as if cooked sauce)…(presumably salted and dried as a condiment)". So opsarion is not necessarily real fish, but may be just a relish.
In this vein, after going through hundreds of ancient Greek writings, Ryan Hicks (2019:148) noted opsarion employed in many ways, including directly denoting plant life. For instance, 800 years before Jesus, Homer employed opson, the origin of opsarion, in his epic The Illiad, book 11, section 630, putting down:
"She first drew before the twain a table, fair, with feet of cyanus, and well-polished, and set thereon a basket of bronze, and therewith an onion, a relish [ὄψον, opson] for their drink, and pale honey, and ground meal of sacred barley..."
Hicks (2019:148) argues that "'fish' can refer to any aquatic life, including the fishweed, seaweed, and other aquatic plants that commonly made up the opsarion/relishes.... In Homer's reference it was an onion that made up the bulk of the relish."
Similarly, Giron (2013) points out that "dried fishweed would be more likely in a basket with bread, and fishweed remains a popular food among Palestinian peasants like the people to whom Jesus was speaking."
Moreover, according to Giron (2013), this helps explain Matthew 4:18-20, where Jesus gets his first disciples by telling some fishermen to give up their profession and follow him. Jesus even says to them "I will make you a fisher of men". Could this be Jesus was having them give up their barbaric line of work to do something more righteous? It may sound absurd, but it starts to make a little more sense when you take it in the same context as the story of feeding five thousand, where the disciples never even considered trying to catch some fish, despite being beside the sea. Why didn't they go fishing? Did Jesus teach it was wrong to eat fish?
3. Ichthys = Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour
A noteworthy observation concerning the fish symbol: The Greek word for fish (ἰχθύας/Ichthys) was an acronym or code word for " Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ [Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior]", popular among early Christians for the sake of avoiding persecution (cf. Akers 1989; Regenstein 1991; Altar n.d.). And in the Greek version of Mark 6:41, Matthew 14:19, and Luke 9:16, the word for fish as in "the five loaves and two fish" is none other than ἰχθύας!
4. Conclusion
In a word, Jesus multiplied and distributed vegan loaves instead of sentient fish. 3 trillion innocent sea creatures are murdered annually for human consumption. Eat seaweed instead of sea animals. Cut out our meaty vice; Follow the Vegan Christ!
P.S. As for instances of Jesus the Vegan Christ eating fish or helping His disciples to catch fish in the gospels, they are all products of either misinterpretation or later interpolation (text: https://www.hkbnews.net/post/all-those-fishy-stories-about-jesus-the-vegan-christ-by-dr-chapman-chen-hkbnews ; video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFN7GeHlVqI).
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