Mar 8:20 And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets
Mar 8:20 And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?
Interesting that the words used for "baskets" and "full" changes here from the last verse. In both cases, Christ chooses more extreme words. This basket is a larger type of basket. This full is not just an adjective but a noun describing the essence of fullness. Though the number of loaves was more initially and number of baskets fewer afterward from a smaller crowd, Christ is emphasizing that there is really no connection between the amount or number of loaves and the miracle involved.
Christ often repeats lines both. He does this for emphasis, and also to stress the key points involved to make sure that his listeners are not confused by the details. In Greek, there are often, as in this verse, changes in vocabulary that are lost in translation.
Here, the issue is not the number of people or initial number of loaves or final number baskets, so those change from the previous verse to this one. The point is that the creation of actual bread is not the issue.
The issue is the symbolic nature of bread as the fruit of our knowledge. It is the idea of bread as knowledge and the idea of leaven as the spirit within that knowledge that matters. It is not the physical nature of bread that can be counted that matters.
"Baskets" is from spuris (spyris), which is specifically a large basket, like a creel, woven out of reeds.
"Full" is from plêrôma (pleroma), which means "that which fills," "fullness," "reserves," "mass," "complex," "filling up," "completing," and "fulfillment."
"Take up" is from airo (airo) which primarily means "to lift," and also means "to raise up," "to take up," "to raise a child," "to exalt," "to lift and take away," and "to remove."
