Challenging Israel’s Guardians
Challenging Israel’s Guardians
The parable may imply a special relationship between Jesus and the Father, hence hinting more publicly at what was hitherto part of the “messianic secret.” 48 This hint could provoke further concern from the guardians of public order (cf. the report in Mk 14:61).
More obviously, the parable challenged Jerusalem’s political elite (Mk 11:27; 12:1, 12). Whereas the Pharisees might disagree or be angry with Jesus and his disciples, they lacked political power in this period to suppress their rivals. Jerusalem’s predominantly Sadducean municipal aristocracy, however, was quite another story. Jesus, like many other religious Jews, regarded the priestly authorities as illegitimate rulers, whose way would necessarily be supplanted by the coming kingdom. Indeed, their power was historically linked with Herod (who installed their families in power) and relations with Rome; it perished in the Judean revolt.
Jesus was ready to deliberately challenge this elite, not from the wilderness (like leaders of most prophetic or revolutionary movements), but in Jerusalem, and to depend on God’s vindication. In view of the Jewish tradition of Jerusalem rejecting prophets, that city was the appropriate place for a prophet to perish (Lk 13:33).49 Jerusalem was the center of Jewish restoration eschatology, hence also the appropriate place for a prophet of such eschatology to prepare his kingdom.50 But as we shall argue, Jesus did not intend to defend himself physically against their retaliation; his conception of the kingdom (exemplified in the present by healings and exorcisms) was not a political one in the sense in which they would understand it.