Submitted:
23 December 2025
Posted:
24 December 2025
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Abstract
One of the most numinous expressions in the gospel is the assertion by Jesus in Matthew 11:11 that amongst those born of women, none is greater than John the Baptist and yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist. We show here that the obstacle to understanding the statement lies in the misconception that it is as a monovalent statement of fact rather than in actuality a riddle; the solution to which expresses multivalent realities. In form, Jesus employs the same lexical bauplan of the conundrum couplet as Sampson in his infamous riddle in Judges 14:14. We show that Jesus consistently phrases paedagogic riddles in this guise. The use of the phrase “of women born” to describe the pool of comparators necessarily includes Jesus and his mother, Mary. Hence continent in the riddle are two elements. Firstly is the question as to how John can be greater than Jesus or Mary. Since Jesus is making a comparison between those inside and outside of the Kingdom, the only possible solution to this moiety of the riddle is that Jesus and Mary are within the Kingdom. This re-affirms the Kingship of Jesus and Queenship of the Mary. By definition the King must be in the Kingdom. However it is the second limb that is even more instructive. The second question is why John is not in the Kingdom. Baptism is the means to enter the Kingdom. As Jesus himself confirms to Nicodemus in John 3:5, one must be baptised by Water and the Holy Spirit. St Thomas Aquinas explains that this is the means of removing the obstacles to the Kingdom. He adumbrates the Catholic Catechism. Both disclose the reality that original sin and personal sin are obstacles to entry into the Kingdom. Some traditions assert John the Baptist was “baptised” during the Visitation, but their remains, nonetheless, the impediment of personal sin. The only possible sequitur is that if Mary is in the Kingdom, before Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection, she must have been born without original sin and must never have sinned, via the grace of God. The only other alternative is that she is outside of the Kingdom and not of equivalent greatness to John the Baptist, who said of himself he was not fit to untie of sandals of Jesus; but we must conclude is greater than she who was chosen to carry and nurture Jesus himself. This contradiction must be rejected. This puzzle, which compares of all those born of women, John the Baptist and those in the Kingdom, is in some ways a prolegomenon or pre-articulation of the words of our Lady to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858 that she is the Immaculate Conception and pre-affirmation of the dogma of the Catholic Church in 1854.
