Mwandayi, Towards a new reading of the Bible in Africa – spy exegesisThe second reason, as noted by Utley, which kept the Jews in a state of
confusion, is that they did not expect the Messiah to be deity incarnate.
From their memory of Jesus’ teachings, however, they had heard him
allude to his oneness with God on several occasions (cf. Jn 8:56-59).
While also they had expected the Messiah to act like Moses (cf. Deut
18:15,19), the problem was that Jesus did not fit their traditional mili-
tary, nationalistic expectations of the Messiah.^34 Given such a scenario it
would have been so difficult of course for the Jews to comprehend the
claims of a person who came from the fringes of the Jewish society and
Jesus purposefully appears to have wanted it so also. Asked why he
chose the mode of speaking to people in parables he responded: “The
secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the
outside everything is said in parables so that, “‘they may be ever seeing
but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; other-
wise they might turn and be forgiven!” (Mk 4:11-12). Jesus is here pre-
sented as citing a passage from the book of Isaiah (6:9) and the source
which Mark uses here is the Aramaic Targum. The Matthean parallel
(Mt 13:13-15), however, is from the Septuagint and Matthew quotes both
Is 6:9 and 10. Both evangelists draw a parallel that just as Isaiah’s
preaching was rejected by the hard-headed Israelites he addressed in the
eighth century BC Jesus’ teaching similarly was rejected by his hearers
in the first century A.D. While the whole passage (Mk 4:11-12) presents
Jesus as intentionally misleading the Jews, Bill Lawrence, however, sug-
gests that this whole issue of special instruction for the Twelve could
actually have functioned in the early church as a way of accentuating
Apostolic authority. The picture they wanted to create was that they, and
they alone, knew the “true” interpretation of Jesus’ words and that all
revelation comes through these chosen and inspired disciples.^35 A simi-
lar passage which also could have been a creation of the early Church
needing to assert Apostolic authority is when Jesus exclaimed: “I bless
you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the
learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children." (Mt 11:25).
There could indeed have been some in the early Church who were trying
to denigrate the work of the Apostles as that of unlearned men and
hence not worth of attention.
(^34) Cf. B. Utley, John 10, http://bible.org/seriespage/john-10 (accessed 28/07/11).
(^35) Cf B. Lawrence, Mark 4, http://bible.org/seriespage/mark-4 (accessed 28/07/ 11).