The Historical Jesus

by John Dominic Crossan

“It is hard,” as Douglas Oakman rightly concludes, “to escape the conclusion that Jesus deliberately likens the rule of God to a weed.” And he is also surely correct that a peasant audience hearing Jesus speak of birds attracted by the mustard plant would think immediately, as in 34 The Sower [1/3] parable, “that birds are natural enemies of the sown” (1986:127). The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses—if you could control it.