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PARABLES

Transliteration of Gk parabolḗ, used in the NT to identify a variety of literary forms. Literally the word signifies something cast alongside another thing to clarify it. However, literary units identified as parables in the NT themselves generally require clarification and are frequently, but not always, accompanied by explanations provided by the Evangelist.

The Gospels are not consistent in what they describe as a parable. The term is used to identify: stories having a beginning, middle, and end (Mark 4:2-9); brief images (13:28); aphorisms (7:15-17); and traditional proverbs (Luke 4:23). Luke (14:8-10) even regards Jesus’ advice about seating etiquette at a marriage banquet as a parable (v. 7). The Evangelists do not always agree among themselves that particular literary units are parables. For example, Luke 5:36-38 designates twin aphorisms as a single parabolḗ, while Matt. 9:16-17; Mark 2:21-22 do not. Generally NT scholars reserve the designation parabolḗ for the stories and use other terms more consistent with their character for the other literary forms.

The Evangelists do agree that parables are obscure and need explanation. They usually provide the parable with a literary introduction (e.g., Luke 18:1, 9) and/or an interpretation (vv. 6-8). The literary setting clarifies how they understand the parable. Some parables, however, have neither introduction nor interpretation to clarify how the Evangelists understood them (e.g., Luke 3:7-9). Parables are not always introduced by a literary frame calling for comparison (Luke 12:16-20; 15:8-9). Also, some parables are used as examples (Luke 10:25-37) rather than comparatively. Twelve parables out of about 38 preserved in early Christian literature are compared to the kingdom (i.e., reign) of God.

The usual way of explaining parables in the Gospels is the attachment of a contiguous “moral” at the end, relating the parable to some aspect of Christian life in the church community (e.g., Luke 18:6-8: the return of the Lord). Some interpretations treat the parabolic stories as allegories. In an allegory multiple elements in the story have a one-to-one relationship with things outside the story. There are only three fully developed allegorical interpretations of the parables in the canonical Gospels: the Sower (Mark 4:14-20 par.), the Weeds in the Field (Matt. 13:36-43), and the Fishnet (13:47-50).

Stories attributed to Jesus of Nazareth can be found in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and in two Nag Hammadi texts, the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of James. The Gospel of John preserves no parabolic stories, and does not even use the word parabolḗ. Instead, John uses paroimía, which seems best translated as “figure” or “cryptic saying,” since such language in John is contrasted to open or clear language (John 10:1-6; 16:16-30).

The canonical Gospels provide reasons to explain why Jesus spoke in parables. According to Mark 4:10-12 Jesus used the parables in order to keep outsiders from understanding his teaching about God’s reign, for if they understood they would “repent and be forgiven.” Hence the teaching about God’s reign in Mark was meant for the disciples only. Luke’s explanation (Luke 8:9-10) is like Mark’s, except that Luke does not include the offensive phrase about repenting and being forgiven. Matt. 13:10-17, on the other hand, cites Isa. 6:9-10 as a prophetic anticipation that people would not understand the parables. Matthew explains that people could have understood the parables had they wanted to. The reason they did not is that they deliberately hardened their hearts and in so doing fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. These explanations for Jesus’ use of the parables are generally regarded as early ecclesiastical traditions. They demonstrate that the Church in the latter half of the 1st century had difficulty understanding the parables. The stories could not easily be related to the cultural and theological changes that had taken place in the Church since the time of Jesus, such as the shift from a Semitic to a Hellenistic environment.

The stories are realistic portrayals of village life in 1st-century Palestine. They treat such topics as the hazards of farming (a Sower, Mark 4:3-8 par.), the ownership of real estate and property (the Hidden Treasure, Matt. 13:44 par.), household activities (the Lost Coin, Luke 15:8-9), Jewish worship (the Pharisee and Toll Collector, 18:10-13), family relationships (the Prodigal Son/Elder Brother, 15:11-32), and cooking (the Leaven, Matt. 13:33 par.). Since the latter part of the 1st century their realistic character, portraying aspects of ancient Palestinian village life, has regularly been bypassed in favor of insights into early Christian theology and morality. For example, Matthew appends a circulating saying (Matt. 20:16; cf. Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30) to the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-15), a story dealing with employer-employee relations in Palestinian antiquity, to indicate that the story illustrates reversal of rank at the last judgment. The story of the Lost Sheep (Matt. 18:12-13) serves Matthew as an allegory on the preservation of the Christian disciple (v. 14), while in Luke (Luke 15:4-6) it is an allegory on the conversion of sinners who are outside the Church (vv. 1-2, 7). These distinctly Christian interpretations strike many interpreters as out of place with the thoroughly Jewish stories.

The Hebrew Scriptures contain only a few narratives that resemble the characteristic story parable typical of Jesus. Ezek. 17:2-10 (the Eagles and the Vine) is an allegory (māšāl), followed by an allegorical interpretation (vv. 11-21) similar to the parable of the Sower. Ezek. 19:1-9 (the Lions) and 19:10-14 (the Vine) are called lamentations (qînâ). Judg. 9:8-15 (the Trees and the Bramble) is a fable that serves an allegorical function. 2 Sam. 12:1-4 (the Ewe Lamb) is a story that functions as an allegory. 2 Sam. 14:5-7 (the Wise Woman of Tekoa) is a brief fictional narrative (vv. 1-3 show it to be a fabricated story) used neither comparatively or figuratively. Eccl. 9:14-15 is a brief story (the Besieged City) followed by a summarizing moral on the superiority of wisdom (v. 16). These last two are most like the typical parable of the early Christian Gospels.

In the LXX Heb. māšāl is regularly translated as parabolḗ, and is used to characterize a variety of literary forms. Māšāl describes: allegories that are both narratives (Ezek. 17:2-10) and brief figures (24:3-5); traditional proverbs (Jer. 23:28; 1 Sam. 24:13; Ezek. 18:2); and lamentations that are brief narratives (Ezek. 19:1-9, 10-14) and sayings (Hab. 2:5-6; Mic. 2:4). In general, a māšāl appears to describe any literary unit whose meaning is not immediately clear or easily understood (Ps. 49:4[MT 3]; 78:2, Prov. 1:6).

The ecclesiastical and allegorical interpretations of the parables were not challenged until the end of the 19th century. The rise of the modern critical study of the parables began with rejection of the idea that parables were allegories requiring interpretations like Mark’s explanation of the Sower (Mark 4:14-20). In 1886 Adolf Jülicher rejected the allegorical method, and reduced the many points of allegorical interpretation to a general one point moral against a hypothetical background in the life of Jesus. The literary settings of the parables in the Gospels were not regarded as the original settings of the parables in the social life of Palestinian antiquity. Thus a story about the hazards of farming in 1st-century Palestine becomes “a warning to the converted against a failure to stand fast in time of persecution and against worldiness” (Jeremias, 150).

The next shift in understanding the character of the parables occurred in 1935 when C. H. Dodd argued that a parable was “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought” (Dodd, 5). Metaphors and similes are figures of speech that are used to describe one thing as another thing. For Dodd, the parables presented the reign of God under the guise of realistic stories about common life in small Palestinian villages. Thus the Sower becomes a parable of growth. It “illustrates . . . the coming of the Kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus, under the figure of harvest” (Dodd, 149).

In 1967 Dan O. Via argued that parables were brief narrative fictions that refracted a particular understanding of human existence. When one reads the parables one engages Jesus’ understanding of human existence. Thus the parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30) describes a man whose quest for security produces his own death, for in his quest for security he becomes “the slave of the very realities which he hopes will give him security . . . Risking is life, for in it one is free from the anxious effort to provide one’s own security through the world” (Via, 120-21).

A modification of Via’s approach is that Jesus’ parables are not existential, theological, or moral stories but rather political and economic ones. They are about political power and the exploitation of the peasant classes. Thus the parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12 par.) describes the spiral of violence attending a local peasant “revolt” against a landed elite class.

A recent approach argues that the parables are freely invented narrative fictions that are to be read in the context of the ways that 1st-century Palestinian Jews understood themselves. They are not referential, but are designed to bring the reader into the story where discoveries about self and the world may be made. The parables are open-ended stories that do not teach, direct, or answer; rather they confront and tease, and are capable of a rather wide range of reasonable readings, as the history of parables interpretation attests. Thus the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:10-13) confronts the reader with the conundrum: which of the two flawed characters in the story will in the final analysis be able to “stand before the Lord,” i.e., will be pleasing to God.

Today there is no common agreement among scholars on what a parable is or how it functions. Parables are read in many different ways: as allegories, as stories with a religious moral, as examples of Christian morality, as metaphors, as stories that refract a particular understanding of human existence, as political and economic stories, and as poetic fictions.

Bibliography. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York, 1961); C. W. Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions: The Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody, 1994); W. R. Herzog, II, Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville, 1994); J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, rev. ed. (New York, 1963); B. B. Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis, 1989); D. O. Via, The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia, 1967).

Charles W. Hedrick

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PARABLES

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)