The title of my second book is,

Enigmatic Texts in the Gospel and the Constitution

An enigmatic text “does not mention what it knows; it hides what organizes it; it unveils solely by its form what it erases from its content.”

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I have borrowed this definition of enigmatic texts from Michel de Certeau. It is found in his book, The Writing of History, translated by Tom Conley, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988, 332.

We tend to rely on the content of a document, the Gospel of Mark, for instance, to identify what it says. The content of most ordinary documents can be reliable. But there are texts that are highly misleading. “They hide what they know.” This is what makes them enigmatic. Those who would read the Gospel of Mark as they would read a novel by Mark Twain are bound to miss important information that exists in the Gospel of Mark, not overtly but covertly. There are in that gospel three enigmatic passages that have defied all possible explanations.