Well, Jesus did the same thing, according to Mark 7:31, and biblical literalists say everything in the Bible is true. The passage says, "Then he (Jesus) returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decapolis" (RSV).
Geographically, that's a tremendous Oops! item. Both Tyre and Sidon are on the coast of Lebanon. Tyre is northwest of the Sea of Galilee, and Sidon is north of Tyre! That's certainly going the long way around to reach the Sea of Galilee from Tyre.
But it gets worse. According to a map of the first-century Middle East, a coastal road ran south from Sidon to Tyre, then branched off with a road going to the Sea of Galilee. You almost could not get from Sidon to the Sea of Galilee except by going through Tyre, not the other way around.
But the funniest part was the adding of "through the region of the Decapolis." The map shows the Decapolis as a region to the south(!) of the Sea of Galilee. From Tyre, you don't go to the Decapolis except by passing the Sea of Galilee, so Jesus went to Baton Rouge from Alexandria by going through Shreveport through Orleans Parish (from the center of the state to the far northwest, to the far southeast, then finally to the near southeast). A 125-mile trip in Louisiana would became a nearly 600-mile trip by my calculation. The middle Eastern distances, of course, would be much shorter; then again, Jesus didn't have a T-Bird and couldn't use I-49 or I-10 for his journeys.
Either god works in very mysterious--even absurd--ways or whoever wrote Mark did not know anything about the geography of the Middle East and certainly was not a disciple of Jesus. A charitable interpretation might be that "Mark" condensed a longer passage about traveling around the Levantine coast and that, being ignorant of the geography, garbled his source material. Less charitable views of this passage and other screw-ups of the laws, culture, and geography of that particular time and place found in Mark raise serious questions about the gospel. The possibility that it's entirely fictional can't be ruled out. And, with that, it must also be noted that Matthew and Luke drew heavily on Mark, so this raises questions about their authenticity too.
In Matthew 15:21-29, which corresponds roughly to the passage in Mark, the wording is changed to vague statements that avoid the geographical absurdity in Mark's account. (Among other things, Matthew changed "Sidon" to the "district of Tyre and Sidon" and left out the reference to Decapolis.) Perhaps the author of Matthew knew more about Middle Eastern geography than Mark's author, which doesn't mean that his material is accurate just because he fudged a problem. Obviously, "Matthew" wasn't a disciple of Jesus either.
As for Luke, it appears to be missing the equivalent of two chapters of Mark (6:45 to 8:26), which includes the geographical blooper. However, as G. A. Wells noted in Did Jesus Exist? (p. 90), a new absurdity was introduced. The best explanation for Luke's omission is that he used for his source a codex of Mark that had some missing pages. At that time, "Mark" had no name and none of the system of chapter and verse numbers that we have now, so no one could automatically detect a missing section.
Thus, "Luke" had two unconnected passages at hand, Mark 6:44 and 8:27, which he thought were sequential. The result shows in the juxtaposition of Mark 6:44 and 8:27 with Luke 9:17-19, which is the equivalent of the former as it would read with the missing section:
MARK 6:43-44; 8:27-28, And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men....If Jesus were alone, how could the disciples have been with him? The answer could likely be that in the version of "Mark" that Luke was using, the missing section left the impression that Jesus had interrogated his disciples while they were yet in the "lonely place" (Mark 6:35, RSV) where the multitude was fed. The interrogation of the disciples that follows Luke 19:18 is clearly derived from Mark 6:44 but under circumstances totally unrelated to the events in Mark 6:44. In Luke, the interrogation follows immediately after 9:17 (the gathering of the scraps left over from feeding the multitude), but in Mark it takes nearly two chapters and a lot of wandering to arrive at this point.And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" And they told him, "John the Baptist; and others say. Elijah; and others one of the prophets."
LUKE:9:17-19, And all ate and were satisfied. And they took up what was left over, twelve baskets of broken pieces. Now it happened that as he was praying alone the disciples were with him; and he asked them, "Who do the people say that I am?" And they answered, "John the Baptist; but others say, Elijah; and others, that one of the old prophets has risen."
Apparently, "Luke" was trying to clean up a mess without knowing how it had happened. He must have gotten pretty frustrated at being unable to do better. We can only feel sorry for him.
As for "god," if he really inspired the gospels, he screwed up big time. You'd almost think the Big Guy had never visited the Middle East. What can biblical literalists say about the errors but "Oops!"
(The address of William Sierichs, Jr., is 1400 East 35th
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