this from study of the sacred texts. The Old Testament abounds in questions. God often asks questions, usually awkward ones. The question is part of the artistic form of the book of Job, and is used by Yahweh to convey vast amounts of information and to delineate his power. In chapter 38 of Job alone the Lord asks fifty-eight questions, from “who is this that darkeneth counsel by word without knowledge?” (38 : 2) to “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4). To ask questions was also part of Jesus’s method of teaching. He spoke with great authority and had a great deal to impart, but he was anxious, if possible, to extract the knowledge and thoughts of his auditors, especially his disciples. “Whom do men say that I am?” (Mk 8 : 27) is a characteristic Jesus question. Mark shows him asking questions constantly. Thus before the feeding of the five thousand he asks, “How many loaves have ye?” (6 : 38). On the same occasion, John has Jesus ask Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” (6 : 5). Jesus was an inclusive teacher, indeed an inclusive person generally, who constantly sought to draw all those present into the discussion, the elucidation of truth, the perception of reality. In Mark he introduces the parable of the mustard seed by a sharp double question: “Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?” (4:30). When, at the beginning of his ministry, just after his baptism, he sees Andrew and another following him, he asks, “What seek ye?” (Jn 1 : 38). His questions to his intimates are often profound, poignant, even pleading. When many find his doctrine on the bread of life too difficult—“This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”—and leave, Jesus asks, “Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” When “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him,” Jesus said to the Twelve, “Will ye also go away?” (Jn 6 : 60-67). (Immediately afterward, referring to Judas Iscariot, he asks, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” [6:71].) He even asks such questions as “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” (Jn 14 : 9). And, finally, “Do you love me?” After the Resurrection, he asks Mary Magdalene, “Woman, why weepst thou? Whom seekest thou?” (Jn 20:15). What all these questions—and there are many others recorded—have in common is that Jesus knows the answers even before he asks them. Their function is to extend a hand in welcome, in interest, in affection. They are a form of embrace, even when they are critical.
Equally characteristic, though used for a variety of purposes, are Jesus’s silences. Though a teacher, an exponent, a man whose primary duty in life he regarded as discoursing, Jesus made highly effective use of both the question and the silence to get across his message. His questions, as often as not, were statements and conveyed information. Equally his silences were a form of mute speech. And often they carried a weight which words could not. There is a passage in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus which has a particular application to Jesus’s ministry: “Speech is of time, silence is of eternity. Thought will not work except in silence. Neither will virtue work except in secrecy.” Up to the age of thirty, Jesus was silent, or at least unrecorded—and there is no indication he wished it otherwise. He was silent, virtually, during his temptations, until the end. He was silent during his baptism. He was silent when he changed the water into wine at Cana. Indeed, he was habitually silent during his miracles, except in bidding the lame to walk or the dead to arise. And he enjoined silence about them. He was habitually silent about his powers, except when necessary, and about his divinity, as it was important to establish the nature of his character as a man.
Equally characteristic, though used for a variety of purposes, are Jesus’s silences. Though a teacher, an exponent, a man whose primary duty in life he regarded as discoursing, Jesus made highly effective use of both the question and the silence to get across his message. His questions, as often as not, were statements and conveyed information. Equally his silences were a form of mute speech. And often they carried a weight which words could not. There is a passage in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus which has a particular application to Jesus’s ministry: “Speech is of time, silence is of eternity. Thought will not work except in silence. Neither will virtue work except in secrecy.” Up to the age of thirty, Jesus was silent, or at least unrecorded—and there is no indication he wished it otherwise. He was silent, virtually, during his temptations, until the end. He was silent during his baptism. He was silent when he changed the water into wine at Cana. Indeed, he was habitually silent during his miracles, except in bidding the lame to walk or the dead to arise. And he enjoined silence about them. He was habitually silent about his powers, except when necessary, and about his divinity, as it was important to establish the nature of his character as a man.
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