1. A Textual Question

There is an important textual variant in John 6.52 that has received little attention in studies of John 6. NA²⁸ reads:

Once confident that αὐτοῦ was a later addition, more recent editions of NA are less sure. The NRSV and many popular translations include the αὐτοῦ in their translation of the text to produce the following:

What is true of the translations is also true of the Johannine commentary tradition. Most exegetes include the αὐτοῦ in their reconstruction of the text – often with little discussionFootnote ¹ – or they exclude the αὐτοῦ but submit that the meaning is little affected.Footnote ² Rudolf Bultmann wrote: ‘[if] αὐτοῦ should be omitted, it still gives the right sense. The suggestion that the people are horrified by Jesus’ exhortation to anthropophagy … can hardly be found in the text.’Footnote ³

While Bultmann is probably right that the characters in v. 52 are not protesting an invitation to anthropophagy in general,Footnote ⁴ the purpose of this article is to challenge the prevailing opinion that there is no noticeable difference in meaning between the alternate readings of ‘his flesh’ or ‘flesh’. I will argue that the shorter reading (‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’) heightens the dramatic irony of the scene as the question from Jesus’ interlocutors evokes the grumbling of the Israelites in the wilderness who were ‘given flesh to eat’ even as they challenged Moses and doubted God's ability to provide.Footnote ⁵ I will then turn to the text-critical question of John's Ausgangstext to consider what, if anything, this reading may contribute to the reconstruction the text of John 6.52.

2. The Traditional Reading of John 6.52

Most Johannine critics, who either include the αὐτοῦ in 6.52 or believe it is implied, contend that οἱ Ιουδαῖοι here protest the absurdity of Jesus’ statement in 6.51. On the heels of the explosive assertion that ‘the bread which I will give is also my flesh on behalf of the life of the world’, argument erupts and a question emerges which one could paraphrase thus: ‘What a ridiculous contention! Of course this man cannot give us his own flesh to eat!’Footnote ⁶

There is an alternative interpretation that, should the text read ‘flesh’ only, the question concerns not how Jesus could provide them ‘his flesh’, but rather ‘flesh’ in general. But this is very unlikely. As is typical of Johannine dialogue, misunderstanding characters do not utterly ignore what Jesus is saying, they rather understand what Jesus is saying within a particularly carnal or mundane frame of mind.Footnote ⁷ Nicodemus’ query to Jesus in 3.5 (‘How is a man able to be born, being old? Surely he is not able to enter into his mother's belly a second time and be born?’) responds directly to Jesus’ assertion in v. 3 that ‘unless someone is born ἄνωθεν, he is not able to see the kingdom of God’. So too, it was Jesus’ offer of ‘living water’ (4.10, 13–14) that prompted the request from the woman at the well that Jesus ‘give’ her ‘living/fresh water’ ‘so that I may never be thirsty’ (4.15). The gospel is full of such cases,Footnote ⁸ which provide a clear formal parallel to 6.52.Footnote ⁹

We should also consider here the structure of the Bread of Life discourse itself.Footnote ¹⁰ As commentators frequently note, there is a logical progression to the discourse as Jesus introduces new and ever bolder ideas to his audience(s).Footnote ¹¹ What is important to stress for our purposes is that the discourse advances by having Jesus’ audience(s) respond to the things he says – and that with increasing hostility (culminating with ‘many of his own disciples’ turning back in v. 66). Consider:

• • In vv. 26–7, Jesus tells his hearers to ‘work [from ἐργάζομαι] for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give’ (not yet identifying himself explicitly with that food). To this his hearers ask, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’

• • Then, in vv. 29–33, Jesus starts to turn the focus to himself, but still obliquely. He speaks of ‘bread from heaven’ which the Father ‘gives you’ (δίδωσιν, present tense). Still the audience does not fully get the point, and asks, ‘Sir, give us this bread always’ (v. 34).

• • To this request, Jesus states the point flatly (v. 35): ‘I am the bread of life’ (and then elaborates to v. 40). In response, οἱ Ιουδαῖοι ‘grumble’, pointing to Jesus’ family they know (vv. 41–2).

• • Jesus continues to elaborate on his identity as ‘the bread of life’ (v. 48), and then adds a new detail: ‘the bread which I will give is also my flesh’ (v. 51).Footnote ¹²

Quite naturally, then, his hearers respond to v. 51, as they have throughout, with a critical comment: ‘How can this man give us flesh/his flesh to eat?’ This progression, we should note, continues on after 6.52, as Jesus elaborates again in v. 53 speaking of the flesh ‘of the Son of Man’ and of the necessity of ‘drinking his blood’ (see from vv. 53–8).Footnote ¹³

The point of the preceding is to make a basic but important point – and that in support of the traditional interpretation of John 6.52 – that regardless of the presence of αὐτοῦ in v. 52, some who hear Jesus identify ‘the bread’ from heaven with ‘his flesh’ in v. 51 protest in v. 52 the absurdity of that assertion. They make the predictable Johannine move of misunderstanding Jesus’ teaching in a literalistic manner.Footnote ¹⁴

To draw such a conclusion, however, does not entail that we agree that the presence of αὐτοῦ is negligible for interpretation. And the reason is straightforward: the Fourth Gospel's fondness for dramatic irony.Footnote ¹⁵ As critics of John have known for some time, it is essential to distinguish in John between what characters in the story think they are saying and what the readers of John hear and understand in those utterances.Footnote ¹⁶ At nearly every turn in the gospel, we find a disjuncture between the knowledge of the characters and the knowledge of the implied readers, as John's characters do or say more than they know or can understand. That is certainly true for the Bread of Life discourse. The brilliant ambiguity of Jesus’ statement in vv. 32–3 (‘it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’) and its misunderstanding in v. 34 (‘Sir, give us this bread always’) can only be grasped if the reader recognises, as the characters do not at this point, that Jesus is talking about himself. Here and elsewhere in chapter 6, what characters in the narrative intend as honest engagement with Jesus’ teaching is actually ‘heard’ by John's readers as evidence of how far they are from the truth.

3. ‘Give Us Flesh to Eat’ and Intertextuality

My contention about John 6.52, therefore, is that while we assume the characters in the narrative are protesting Jesus’ assertion that ‘the bread is also my flesh’ (from v. 51) regardless of the presence of αὐτοῦ, readers of John hear something slightly different in that question if we exclude the αὐτοῦ (thus: ‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’). In particular, I believe that the question ‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’ is more evocative of the Exodus and Wandering of Israel in the wilderness than is ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’, even though, in both cases, the characters are clearly talking about Jesus’ flesh. This is a matter of dramatic irony in John. The question and protest function for the reader to secure the typological role of these characters as disobedient Israel in the wilderness.

This typological role has, of course, already been well established by what precedes in John 6. The feeding of the multitude, walking on the water and teaching about ‘bread from heaven’ all assume the Exodus and Wandering as their subtext, and consistently the audience(s) are cast in the mould of their disobedient ancestors while Jesus appears both as a prophet like Moses and one greater than Moses.Footnote ¹⁷ In light of this undisputed fact, it is surprising that so few commentators reflect on the possible continuation of this intertextuality when Jesus begins speaking of his ‘flesh’ in v. 51. An exception here is Brant Pitre's recent historical study, Jesus and the Last Supper, which also expressed surprise at this lack of attention. When faced with a sudden linkage between the ‘the bread (from heaven)’ and Jesus’ ‘flesh’ in 6.51, Pitre observed: ‘[a]lthough the point is often overlooked by commentators, in the original biblical account, a double miracle is described: God gives the Israelites both “bread from heaven” and “flesh” from heaven in the form of quail’.Footnote ¹⁸ Pitre points specifically to Exod 16, which narrates both the manna and the quail respectively, suggesting that Jesus’ sudden linkage of the ‘bread’ with ‘flesh’ is ‘not completely unprecedented’.Footnote ¹⁹

Pitre does not make much more of the point, and his interest is not in the question from οἱ Ιουδαῖοι in v. 52 but rather Jesus’ own utterance in v. 51. One wonders, though, if Pitre would have found further confirmation of his reading of 6.51 had he attended to the textual question of v. 52. For Pitre maintains the standard reading of v. 52 (‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’) without any discussion. If we consider v. 52 without the αὐτοῦ, however, we can revisit the same chapter of Exodus that Pitre pointed to, and initially here v. 8:

Here we have the shared phrase ‘flesh to eat’, mention of ‘giving’, and a pronominal indirect object (‘to you’ or ‘to us’). We can outline the parallels in the following way:

The connections are extensive: (i) an infinitive form of ‘give’; (ii) a plural pronominal indirect object; (iii) ‘flesh’ as a direct object; (iv) the infinitive ‘to eat’. One apparent difference between John and the Septuagint is that the Septuagint has opted for κρέας rather than σάρξ, no doubt because the ‘flesh’ in question is more accurately specified in Greek as a kind of ‘meat’ for human consumption.Footnote ²⁰ But the Hebrew term is בשר, which the Septuagint often takes as σάρξ.Footnote ²¹ We will return to this issue below.

As strong as these connections are, I would resist placing John 6.52 under the influence of any one line from Exodus. The reason is that what we find in Exod 16.8 is a more or less standard description of the miracle of the flesh from heaven which can also be found elsewhere in the biblical text. In fact, there is a common syntactical form in the description of the miracle of the ‘bread’ and the ‘flesh’, as evident already in John 6. Jesus’ hearers cite to him what has been written (ἄρτον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς φαγεῖν, v. 31), joining ‘give’ (from δίδωμι), ‘bread’ (direct object) and ‘to them’, and the infinitive ‘to eat’, obviously under the influence of the biblical text.Footnote ²² For the miracle of the flesh, we have not only Exod 16.8 above, we have Ps 78/77.20 (‘Is he able to give bread, or to provide meat for his people?’),Footnote ²³ Num 11.13 (‘Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, “Give us meat to eat!”’ (LXX: πόθεν μοι κρέα δοῦναι παντὶ τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ ὅτι κλαίουσιν ἐπ᾽ ἐμοὶ λέγοντες δὸς ἡμῖν κρέα ἵνα φάγωμεν)), and 11.18 (‘“Oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give to you meat to eat’ (LXX: δώσει κύριος ὑμῖν κρέα φαγεῖν)). What is especially intriguing about these passages is that they express questions and doubts about God's ability to provide, just as, from the perspective of the narrator, the characters in John 6.52 do. In sum, it may not be – and probably is not – the case that we are dealing with an allusion to one specific passage from Exodus in John 6.52, but we rather find here a well-known and repeated trope in the story of the Wandering. The rest of John 6 evokes the larger saga of Wandering Israel by drawing on stock images and phrases from the Pentateuch and Psalms, and some doubt that any particular passages from the Pentateuch are in mind. John 6.52 is probably the same.

The use of the Old Testament in the larger context of John 6 only further supports this intertextual reading of v. 52. I make three points. First, we should note that the whole of John 6 telescopes climactic scenes from the Exodus and Wandering saga (in John's order here): the feeding in the wilderness, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the disputes of the people with God and Moses. Therein it is clear that the persistent aim of the text is to refocus images and figures from that story around the person and work of Jesus, just as already with the wisdom and word of God (1.1–14), the glory of God (1.18–9), the Passover lamb (1.36) and the temple (1.51; 2.19).Footnote ²⁴ In John 6, for instance, Jesus is the one who feeds and satisfies the people (6.12), who is the prophet like Moses (6.14), who declares ἐγώ εἰμι while subduing the waters in the wind and the darkness (6.17; cf. Exod 14.21),Footnote ²⁵ and whose teaching is true manna from heaven. Readers have already learned in the conversation with Nicodemus that Jesus identifies himself with the bronze snake in the wilderness (3.14–5) – a point perhaps subtly re-evoked in 6.40Footnote ²⁶ – and in 6.35 Jesus may claim to be the rock in the wilderness that quenches thirst (καὶ ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ οὐ μὴ διψήσει πώποτε), which was a traditional interpretation in early Christianity (see 1 Cor 10.1–4).Footnote ²⁷ A Christological appropriation of ‘the flesh’ from heaven here would be entirely fitting in context, if not expected, given the persistent exploitation of key events and symbols of the Exodus and Wandering. The progression of the discourse itself would also mirror the sequence of the Numbers narrative where the Israelites are first given bread and then flesh (11.1–25).Footnote ²⁸

This reading not only befits the Fourth Gospel's christological appropriation of Scripture, it also, as a second point, befits the characterisation of Jesus’ audience(s) in this scene. As already mentioned briefly above, one consequence of the Exodus and Wandering subtext to John 6 is the typological shaping of its characters: Jesus appears as one akin to and yet greater than Moses, and his hearers (including his disciples) as the disgruntled Israelites. Concretely:

1. (i) The miraculous feeding narrative in 6.1–15 – which becomes the narrative spine and reference point for the commentary of the Bread of Life discourse that follows (cf. 6.26) – obviously places the recipients of this miracle in the same position as the Israelites whom God fed in the wilderness.Footnote ²⁹

2. (ii) As Jesus walks on the water – which, as mentioned above, probably evokes the crossing the Red Sea in several waysFootnote ³⁰ – the disciples ‘fear’ (ἐφοβήθησαν) just as do the people in Exod 14.10 (ἐφοβήθησαν), 31.Footnote ³¹

3. (iii) In 6.27–8, Jesus’ exhortation to ‘work for the food (τὴν βρῶσιν)Footnote ³² that endures’ not that which ‘perishes’, as well as his declaration that ‘my father gives you the true bread from heaven’ (6.32), assumes that his hearers in the present parallel ‘their fathers’ (see 6.31) of old in the wilderness.Footnote ³³ The same is true of 6.39 (πᾶν ὃ δέδωκέν μοι μὴ ἀπολέσω ἐξ αὐτου), as the ‘destruction’ (from ἀπόλλυμι) of members of the Wandering community who abandoned the covenant is stereotypical in the Pentateuch (see e.g. Exod 19.24; 30.38; Lev 7.20; 17.10; Num 16.33; 17.12; 21.6; etc.), and in its reception (1 Cor 10.10; Jude 1.5, 11).Footnote ³⁴

4. (iv) Throughout the discourse, the notion that the people remain unbelieving in the face of Jesus’ ‘signs’ parallels exactly the characterisation of the Wandering Israelites according to multiple sources. Note Num 14.11 (‘And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?”’), 22; Ps 78/77.17, 32, 56; Ps 106/105.1–13. Consider also the paraphrase in Josephus, Ant. 2.327 (‘(the people) forgot all the signs (σημείων) that had been wrought by God for the recovery of their freedom, and this so far that by their unbelief (ὑπὸ ἀπιστίας) they desired to throw stones at the prophet, while he encouraged them and promised them deliverance’).

5. (iv) Three times Jesus’ hearers ‘grumble’ (γογγύζω) at his words (6.41, 43, 61), which, as almost all commentators note,Footnote ³⁵ is a transparent allusion to the ‘grumbling’ of the wilderness generation (cf. Exod 17.3; Num 11.1; 14.27, 29; Ps 106/105.25; etc.).

These observations provide good reason to confirm Schnackenburg's contention that the mention of οἱ Ιουδαῖοι ‘arguing’ (μάχομαι) among themselves in 6.52 picks up the same Israel-in-the-wilderness typology.Footnote ³⁶ That would mean we find this typology at play not only in the larger context of John 6, but introducing the very verse under investigation in this article.

We should note as a third and final point that this intertextual reading of 6.52 is stylistically and thematically on point for John 6 as a whole. The recipients of the Bread of Life discourse clearly think that Jesus is making outrageous claims about himself, and they evidently believe that they are well justified in questioning and criticising him. But the story is told in such a way that readers of John ‘hear’ in such actions and words a rerun of Israel's prior disobedience and dissention in the wilderness. Such is precisely the case in 6.30, where Jesus is asked the question, ‘What sign are you doing that we might see and believe in you?’ This question at once adopts the ‘signs’ terminology from the Exodus and Wandering (as the questioners immediately in 6.31 refer to the miracle of the manna), even as it makes plain to the reader the inability of the characters to see what is happening right before their eyes.Footnote ³⁷ So too, in 6.52, οἱ Ιουδαῖοι respond to Jesus’ seemingly contemptible assertion that ‘the bread from heaven’ is also his ‘flesh’ (v. 51), but the question (‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’) merely utters again the infamous ἀπιστία of the wilderness generation. For they also had wondered, ‘Is (God) able to give bread or provide meat for his people?’ (Ps 78/77.20).Footnote ³⁸

4. The Text of John 6.52

The case for an intertextual reading of John 6.52 without the αὐτοῦ is strong. But the discussion above, which treated the text synchronically, inevitably raises a diachronic question about the Ausgangstext of John 6.52.Footnote ³⁹ Bruce Metzger summed up the nature of our textual problem as follows: ‘external evidence for and against the presence of αὐτοῦ is so evenly balanced, and … considerations of internal probabilities are not decisive’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Does that judgement hold in light of the above arguments?

The external evidence is indeed ‘balanced’. The putative uncials that lack the αὐτοῦ include Sinaiticus and Bezae. Vaticanus, however, includes it. Unfortunately, our verse falls within the missing 6.50–8.52 in Alexandrinus, so that important codex is of no help. Our few papyri are also divided, though this is not as well known. P⁶⁶ includes the αὐτοῦ,Footnote ⁴¹ but P⁷⁵, which is fragmentary at 6.52, almost certainly could not have included the αὐτοῦ due to space considerations.Footnote ⁴² F. J. A. Hort's wise principle that ‘knowledge of documents should precede final judgments on readings’ does not take us nearer to one side or the other here.Footnote ⁴³

The judgement that ‘internal probabilities are not decisive’ most likely stems from the wise and widely held opinion that the protest in v. 52 is in response to Jesus’ assertion about ἡ σάρξ μου in v. 51, regardless of the presence of αὐτοῦ in v. 52. But if the above arguments are correct, the dramatic irony of v. 52 without the αὐτοῦ provides ample reason to re-evaluate the ‘internal probabilities’ of the text.Footnote ⁴⁴

To be sure, the arguments of the above sections could possibly cut either way here. Of the critics who opt for the shorter reading of v. 52, many do so on the grounds that there would be no reason to omit αὐτοῦ if it stood in the text.Footnote ⁴⁵ But we could have just provided one. It is reasonable to envisage a copyist coming upon 6.52 and cutting the αὐτοῦ to make the question conform even more closely to the dense intertextuality of the scene as well as its dramatic style.

I would submit, however, that that scenario is less probable than the alternative that αὐτοῦ was added to clarify its connection to v. 51, with the consequence that the intertextuality of the question was partially muted. The rationale is twofold.

First, while the proposed intertextuality is possible on the basis of the Septuagint alone, it may assume some knowledge of the Hebrew. As noted above, John's use of σάρξ in v. 52 would not mirror the Septuagint – which reads κρέας in the relevant narratives – but it is a fair translation of בשר which the Septuagint itself often provides. The evangelist's use of σάρξ is probably influenced by eucharistic language at use in his own time,Footnote ⁴⁶ as it is, in my estimation, difficult to avoid some eucharistic connotation to Jesus’ words in 6.51–8.Footnote ⁴⁷ We also find in v. 52 the use of μάχομαι, a Johannine hapax. This term, as Schnackenburg notes, is not present in the relevant narratives of the Septuagint, but it is taken in the Septuagint to translate ריב which often appears in the Wandering narratives, e.g. Exod 17.2 (‘The people quarrelled (וירב) with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink”’), 7; Num 20.3, 13; etc. There is more in the immediate context. Brant Pitre has also made the important argument that there is a biblical subtext for Jesus’ controversial teaching that those who fail to drink ‘the blood’ (τό αἷμα) of the son of man will ‘not have life’ (οὐκ ἔχετε ζωήν) in themselves (v. 53): it is the repeated biblical notion that ‘the life’ of some living thing is found ‘in the blood’.Footnote ⁴⁸ He points to Lev 17.11 as an exemplar: ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives.’ This insightful reading has much potential, yet Pitre fails to make plain to his reader that the connection is stronger if we use the Hebrew, which repeatedly has נפש in the דם (whereas the Septuagint has ψυχή in the αἷμα). John's use of ζωή here, one of his preferred theologoumena, agrees not with the Septuagint but is an understandable take on the rich semantic domain of נפש. Lastly, we should recall that throughout the Gospel of John exegetes have frequently appealed to the Hebrew to make sense of John's exegesis.Footnote ⁴⁹ A few of the more notable examples can be mentioned here: (i) the citation of Isa 40.3 (‘the voice’ proclaiming ‘the way of the Lord’) in John 1.23;Footnote ⁵⁰ (ii) Jesus’ pronouncement about himself in 7.38 (‘rivers of living water will flow from his belly’) and Isa 12.3;Footnote ⁵¹ (iii) the citation of Isa 6 in John 12.40;Footnote ⁵² (iv) the citation of Ps 41.10 in John 13.18;Footnote ⁵³ (v) the entry to Jerusalem that engenders questioning from Greeks who ‘wish to see Jesus’;Footnote ⁵⁴ (vi) the allusion to Zech 12 in John 19.37.Footnote ⁵⁵ None of these examples requires us to believe the evangelist or final editor himself was in touch with the Hebrew, only that John's tradition shows some interaction with it.Footnote ⁵⁶

Of course, none of this means anything definitive for the text of John 6.52, as later copyists could also have been aware of the Hebrew Vorlage of σάρξ. But if we are dealing here with ‘internal probabilities’, it seems to me more probable to infer that knowledge of the Hebrew created the intertextually evocative and dramatic question, ‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’, rather than to infer that αὐτοῦ was later dropped to generate an intertextuality that the Greek Old Testament alone would not as readily suggest. The very need for this article at all provides the logic: for clearly most exegetes in the history of interpretation have not been put in mind of the Exodus and Wandering by the typical wording of 6.52 as ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

This argument, which really concerns the most likely historical context for the purported intertextuality of v. 52, is related to the second point that considers John's tradition. It is this: the shorter reading of v. 52 not only appears fitting synchronically in John, its intertextuality would probably be something inherited from pre-Johannine tradition. The sustained interaction with the Exodus and Wandering in John 6 is closely paralleled in synoptic tradition, although many of the details differ.Footnote ⁵⁷ Many have noted the similar events and sequence of events that appear in both John 6 and Mark 6–8. Raymond Brown outlined them as follows:Footnote ⁵⁸

In those chapters Mark includes the following: the feeding occurred εἰς ἔρημον τόπον (6.31), the people sat down ‘in hundreds and fifties’ (6.40; cf. Exod 18.21), Jesus tells his disciples to ‘be courageous!’ (θαρσεῖτε) while walking on the water (Mark 6.50; cf. Exod 14.31), the Pharisees ‘test’ Jesus by seeking a ‘sign’ from heaven (Mark 8.11; Exod 7.9; Deut 8.2; etc.), Jesus warns his disciples about ‘hardness of heart’ (Mark 8.17; Exod 7.2, 13; 9.12; etc.), ‘yeast’ (Mark 8.15; Exod 12.15), and upbraids them for ‘not remembering’ (Mark 8.18; Exod 12.14). All of these details are clearly evocative of the Exodus and Wandering, and they function to paint Jesus, his mission and his opponents in scriptural colours just as we found in the Gospel of John. Yet not a single one of these details is found in the Fourth Gospel. We could identify unique (yet similarly functioning) Exodus and Wandering motifs in these sections of Matthew and Luke as well, including the ‘this generation’ sayings.Footnote ⁵⁹ Whether or not John is dependent on the synoptics – that question is irrelevant for our purposes – we clearly have here four gospels that preserve, reshape and elaborate on a larger tradition of retelling the feeding story/stories and the aftermath in ways that evoke the Exodus and Wandering of Israel.Footnote ⁶⁰ Of particular interest is the tendency to have characters make statements or ask questions that evoke that subtext. In the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark, for instance, the disciples remain incredulous at the prospect of feeding the crowd (6.37), and in the feeding of the four they ask (8.4), ‘How is one able to feed these people here with bread in the wilderness?’ (πόθεν τούτους δυνήσεταί τις ὧδε χορτάσαι ἄρτων ἐπ᾽ ἐρημίας;). On this passage, Joel Marcus noted the similarity to questions/complaints of the Israelites in Exod 16: ‘[t]he disciples … play the role of the murmuring Israelites here … [and] in the next passage the Pharisees will do so’.Footnote ⁶¹ The shorter reading of John 6.52 would evidence the recycling of a larger trope in gospel tradition.

Again, then, it seems to me probable that John 6.52 read ‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’, as that is both thematically and stylistically of one piece with pre-Johannine gospel tradition. At some later point the τὴν σάρκα became τὴν σάρκα αὐτοῦ as an assimilation to the ἡ σάρξ μού of v. 51. This hardly constitutes a demonstration – which, in the absence of further external evidence, is impossible – but it does constitute a heretofore overlooked argument for the ‘internal probability’ of the shorter reading of John 6.52.