Nietzsche & Jesus

On page's 6-7 of his translation and edition with commentary on "On the Genealogy of Morals" and "Ecce Homo" (New York: 1989) Walter Kaufman says about Nietzsche's readers:

[They are] tempted to add that the kind of obscurantism he abominated involves irremediable ambiguities which lead to endless discussion, while his terms, whether German or foreign, are unequivocal. That is true up to a point--but not quite. Nietzsche had an almost pathological weakness for one particular kind of ambiguity: he loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of context and almost the opposite in the context he gives them. He loved language as poets do and relished these "revaluations." All of them involve a double meaning, one exoteric and one esoteric, one--to put it crudely--wrong, and the other right. The former is bound to lead astray hasty readers, browsers, and that rapidly growing curse of our time--the non-readers who do not realize that galloping consumption is a disease.

The body of knowledge keeps increasing at incredible speed, but the literature of nonknowledge grows even faster. Books multiply like mushrooms, or rather like toadstools--mildew would be still more precise--and even those who read books come perforce to depend more and more on knowledge about books, writers, and, if possible--for this is the intellectual, or rather the nonintellectual, equivalent of a bargain--movements. As long as one knows about existentialism, one can talk about a large number of authors without having actually read their books.

I want to take the time to consider arguments charitably, even perhaps daring to research some citations and recommendations made by their authors. I can't help but compare Nietzsche's passion for a distinct kind of obfuscation with Jesus' as recorded in Matthew 13:10-16:

And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" Jesus answered them, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND;
YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE;
FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL,
WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR,
AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES,
OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES,
HEAR WITH THEIR EARS,
AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN,
AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.

But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear."