This section stands almost at the center of Mark’s Gospel; it is certainly, whether by intention or not, the turning-point in Jesus’ relationship to the religious leaders of his day. It leads on to the confrontation with the disciples at Caesarea Philippi in the following section and raises the momentous question, who is Jesus and how did he think of his mission? The prologue to the debate in 8:11–13 is a feeding of the crowd that runs parallel to the earlier feeding