A Messianic Secret and an Unconventional Christ in Matthew’s Gospel

In his pioneering study of secrecy in the gospels, William Wrede noted that Matt 16:13–20 construes Jesus’s messiahship as a secret, hidden from his contemporaries apart from a gift of divine illumination. I contend that Matthew develops that theme in the broader narrative. Patterns in the use of secrecy-related material, Matthew’s explanation of the secrecy policy, and structuring devices that link key passages corroborate the conclusion that Jesus avoids public recognition during his public ministry to postpone conflict with Israel’s leaders. Secrecy is possible because even people who are positively disposed toward Jesus do not experience his healing ministry as overtly messianic. I argue that the gentile woman and four blind men who confidently recognize Jesus’s messiahship during the period of secrecy do so by means of revealed insight. Thus, the emphasis on secrecy, veiled messiahship, and revelation in 16:13–20 is not, as Wrede concluded, an unassimilated vestige from the tradition but an integral feature of Matthew’s narrative Christology

Christian ministry · Gospel · Narrative · Revelation · Secrecy · Theme (computing) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Interdisciplinary Studies: Technology, Society, and Humanities · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies