Sublety and Indirection in Jesus’ Communication

I had the pleasure of delivering a talk for the Davenant Institute’s Teaching Fellows lecture series. It is up on YouTube now. Among the topics discussed are…

• Methods of communicating to one audience while leaving another in the dark: dramatic irony, Socratic irony, the words of Boaz in Ruth 4:5, and Jesus’ parables.
• What’s wrong with William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret.
• Jesus’ use of the Psalms as scripts for his actions and words.
• The ”sop” or morsel that Jesus gives to Judas as a way of identifying him to Peter and the beloved disciple, without letting everyone else know.
• The kiss of Judas as an attempt by Judas to identify Jesus to the servants of the high priest, without letting Jesus or the other disciples know.
• The significance of Peter’s cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant Malchus, and of Jesus’ healing of him.