Therefore they gathered together, and filled twelve baskets with the broken pieces of the five barley loaves which remained over to them that had eaten, says, "For ( οὖν) they gathered together, and had filled [ ἐγέμισαν, first aorist, not pluperfect] twelve baskets with the fragments [the more than enough food that had been gathered and prepared for eating] of the five loaves;" and he makes John here speak, not of remnants left after the meal, but of bread broken before the meal.
Such a treatment of the text cannot be justified on any pretext. The twelve baskets full ( δώδεκα κοφίνους) are interesting in two ways. The number "twelve" naturally suggests that each one of the twelve apostles had been employed in the collection of the fragments.
There is no need, with Luthardt, to imagine an unconscious reference to the twelve tribes of Israel, further than that the twelve apostles themselves were at first chosen with that reference. The number twelve points to the fact that the apostles had already been selected, though this Gospel is silent about that fact.
Again, the word used for "basket" is that which is used in the three synoptic narratives, and contrasts with the σπύριδες, the word used in the later account of the feeding of the four thousand. It means the ordinary wallet, or corbis, in which Jews, on the march, were accustomed to carry their food.
In Matthew 16:8-12, where the two miracles are compared with each other, the two words are again used. The "fragments," the superabundance of provision of love for all mankind, was an idea specially conveyed by our Lord as antithetic to the monopolizing doctrine of the scribes and Pharisees.
It is unsatisfactory to suppose that the author of this Gospel manipulated the story as given in Mark, adapting it to his own purpose. John's narrative is full of fresh life, though not so pictorial as that of the Second Gospel.
The incident of Philip and Andrew is calculated to throw much light upon the event without conflicting with the synoptists. The mythical hypothesis suggests that we have here a Messianic reproduction of the story of Elijah and the cruse of oil (1 Kings 17:16), or the augmentation of the oil by Elisha (2 Kings 4:1-7), and still more the feeding by Elisha of a hundred men with twenty loaves of bread and fresh ears of corn (2 Kings 4:42-44).
The suggestion simply shows that there were anticipations in the prophetic career of the great prophets of the northern kingdom of that which the greater than Elijah. accomplished in vindication of his own mission.