In declaring Jesus “Messiah,” Peter supplies the right answer, but he has the wrong understanding. Rejecting Peter’s militant messianic understanding, Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (8:31). Jesus’s teaching is so contrary to the disciples’ expectations that, as he repeatedly touched the blind man in 8:22–26, he will repeat it three times (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34) “on the way” to Jerusalem (8:27). At last Peter and the disciples understand—and “rebuke [Jesus]” (8:32). Never was it heard in Israel that the Messiah would suffer, or by suffering expiate the sins of Israel. It is important to recall that the one figure in…