Block 4 - The Parables of Jesus: Windows on the Kingdom

Before the 20th century almost no one ever thought of interpreting the parables of Jesus in terms of what Jesus may have intended to say to his original audience when he first spoke these parables. The parables were routinely interpreted in terms of how they spoke to the life of Christians in whatever century the interpreter was writing. The parables were usually assumed to speak to life in the church and usually interpreted as allegories.

All that changed when a German scholar by the name of Adolf Julicher published a book on the parables in 1899, in which he argued that Jesus was not at all interested in allegorical meanings, but that each parable had a single general moral point. Not all modern scholars are convinced about the "one general moral point only" theory of parable interpretation espoused by Julicher. But this did spell the end of people thinking that Jesus may have actually intended to teach in allegories, and it was the end of spinning out fanciful allegorical interpretations of the parables.

The key to the new direction in parable interpretation was the acceptance by most 20th century New Testament scholars that the central theme of Jesus ministry was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This does not mean they all agree on what exactly Jesus meant by the "coming of the Kingdom", as you will find two very different interpretations of this between Ehrman and Borg. But even most conservative scholars today readily admit that the primary focus of Jesus' teaching was on the Kingdom of God, and this is no where more evident than in his parables.

Long before Borg and Ehrman came along, Jesus scholars were divided on to what degree Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was present in his ministry and how much was yet to come in the near or distant future. In the early 20th century, scholars like Rudolf Bultmann and C. H. Dodd advocated a view they called "realized eschatology" meaning that they believed Jesus believed the Kingdom was fully present in his ministry and present in those who imitated his ministry. Borg tends in this direction. At the other extreme were scholars who concluded that Jesus believed that he was announcing the Kingdom's arrival, and it would be here very soon and with a big dramatic arrival. They pointed to indications that this was already beginning to happen (such as Jesus exorcisms), but certainly the Kingdom of God was not present in its fullness. But such scholars believed that Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to soon become a dramatic reality where God would rule over all the earth directly. Some scholars say Jesus expected an apocalyptic event, others say Jesus expected maybe a more peaceful arrival of the kingdom. These scholars advocate that Jesus held a "future eschatology" view of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom was not fully here yet in Jesus' ministry, but it would be in the very near future. Obviously, Ehrman falls into this category.

There is no question that the parables of Jesus often address the question of the Kingdom ("the Kingdom of God (heaven) is like ... ). The more difficult question is what exactly was Jesus trying to teach with the parables? Many scholars thought he was simply making common sense observations using the imagery of everyday rural life. Other scholars doubt that it is quite that simple. But regardless, the common goal among historical critical scholars in the mid-20th century was to interpret the parables of Jesus within the historical context of Jesus' ministry.

After Julicher, the next important book on the parables to be published was C. H. Dodd's The Parables of the Kingdom, published in 1935. The importance of this book lay in the fact that it introduces the question of how the parables of Jesus fit into his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Dodd rejects Julicher's idea that a parable contains one general moral lesson. Rather the focus becomes Jesus' proclamation that the Kingdom has arrived. In this book Dodd seeks to interpret the parables of Jesus within the larger context of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom, in which the parables are interpreted as expressions of Jesus message about the Kingdom of God. Of value still today (in my opinion) is Dodd's definition of a parable:
"At its simplest the parable is 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."
This definition has the dual value of noticing both the everyday setting of the parable and the fact that there is sometimes something rather odd about it. In practice, most scholars believed the parables were accurate depictions of everyday life. This is no where more true than with Joachim Jeremias who grew up in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century, living as a child of Christian missionaries in Palestine.

Perhaps the most influential book on the parables published in the 20th century was Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus published in 1947. Jeremias consciously builds upon the work of Dodd, but changes Dodd's "realized eschatology" to "eschatology in the process of realization", which means, Jeremias believes, Jesus believed the Kingdom was in the process of becoming a reality on earth, and his ministry was heralding and hastening that process.

The first observation Jeremias made was that the parables, in the form in which we find them in the Gospels, are a creation of the early church, and the parables have been adapted to fit the setting of the early church, not the setting of the life of Jesus. So the first step in interpreting Jesus' parables is to remove the additional material added by early Christians (this includes any interpretive material or statements that apply the parable to some particular situation). Thus, the interpretation of the parable of the Sower (Mark 4:13-20) is certainly an invention of the early church, likewise the application of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:36-37.

Jeremias groups the parables of Jesus into various headings, seeking to highlight the central features of Jesus' message of the Kingdom as found in the parables. Here are the five most important categories: 1) Now is the day of salvation, 2) God's mercy for sinners, 3) the Imminence of catastrophe, 4) It may be too late, 5) the Challenge of the hour. In Jeremias' interpretation of Jesus' message we find something akin to an Old Testament prophetic message in which there is both God's offer of mercy and a warning of what may happen if that mercy is rejected. Not all scholars found Jeremias' conclusions about Jesus' message of the Kingdom to be satisfying. Scholars that came after Jeremias doubted that his practice of gleaning static unchanging messages from the parables really did the parables justice as proclamations of God's Kingdom.

The next big move in parable scholarship (which also shifted the momentum in parable scholarship from Germany to the United States) happened when American New Testament scholars decided to view the parables as literary entities and interpret them employing literary theories that had been developed by American and French literary critics. In this approach to parable interpretation, Jesus is seen as the one who communicates as a poet employing metaphors. The whole issue of how a parable can function as an extended metaphor consumes American parable scholarship in the 1960's and 70's. This brings into question the whole notion that a parable has one particular meaning to it, and that the interpreter's purpose is to identify that one meaning.

It was John Dominic Crossan's first book on the parables that did the most to push New Testament scholarship in this direction (In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, 1973). For Crossan, Jesus' parables do not express timeless truths or models of behavior but rather the parables are fundamental expressions of Jesus' personal experience of God. Crossan looks at the narrative structure of the parables and differentiates among the parables based on the how the narrative functions to make a point. Using this approach he comes up with three categories of parables: 1) parables of advent (that is, the coming of the Kingdom), 2) parables of reversal, and 3) parables of action. With parables of advent, the focus is on the hiddenness of the Kingdom in its current activity (as found in the example of a tiny mustard seed or leaven, yeast in dough, Matthew 13:31-33), but with the added expectation that there will be a great manifestation of the Kingdom in the near future, just as when yeast makes dough rise or when a seed grows into a great plant. In parables of reversal, the story does not turn out as one might expect. An example of a parable of reversal is the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This might seem like an odd choice of label for the Good Samaritan except when we think of how it might have been received in its original telling. The Samaritan is the good guy. But to the ordinary Palestinian Jews to whom Jesus is telling this (fictional) story, a Samaritan is a despised ostracized half-breed. How dare Jesus make such a person the hero of his story. (For an incident when Jesus actually provokes a strong reaction with a similar story see Luke 4:16-30). Thus, Crossan uses this as an example of how Jesus' parables often end up meaning the opposite of what the original hearers might have expected. Another good example of this is the parable of the Great Dinner where the outcasts of society become the honored guests (Luke 14:15-24).

As an example of a parable of action, Crossan spends much time discussing the Worker in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-13). But while calling it a parable of action, Crossan treats it as a parable of reversal, as the main point of the parable is the reversal of the proportional expectations of the workers. That is, the workers apparently all expect their pay to be proportional, the same pay per hour. But when Jesus tells the story so that the workers all receive the same standard daily wage whether they had worked one hour or 12 hours, we can imagine this would seem quite unfair to the original hearers. But Jesus' purpose was to challenge the idea that God should be expected to operate by human rules of proportionality. Or perhaps Jesus' purpose was to state flat out that God operates by different rules than what humans always think is fair. I personally believe Jesus' point is that God's mercy and grace are not proportional, but every one can receive a full dose whether they deserve it or not.

The theoretical underpinnings of parable interpretation have not changed much since the appearance of Crossan's book, In Parables. Numerous scholars have offered their take on the parables, but they are all working with the same assumptions that came from Julicher and Dodd, through Jeremias and then through Crossan. No one among modern American historical critical scholars challenges the basic premises of Crossan's approach to parable interpretation, even though they might differ on the exact meanings and interpretations of the individual parables. If Borg on the parables sounds anything like Crossan, you can attribute that to the enduring influence of Crossan's ideas. Crossan is definitely (in my mind) the most creative New Testament scholar living (others may be more creative, but no one has had more success in getting other scholars to accept his innovative views about Jesus than Crossan).

There is one other bit of parable scholarship I wish to discuss. This pertains to the question of how realistic are the parables? Scholars like Jeremias expect the parables to be accurate depictions of everyday life. I tend to side with those who question this. For example, take the parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7). The whole key to this parable is wrapped up in this rhetorical question: "Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4). The common sense answer to this question is No One is so foolish as to leave sheep to fend for themselves in the wilderness. The way the question is written in Greek, it is obvious that it expects a positive answer; it is not an open-ended question. Jeremias interprets this parable as realistic by saying the shepherd would have had helpers to assist him and watch the 99 while he looked for the lost sheep. But if we simply take the text at face value, it says nothing about helpers or assistants, but it's all about leaving the 99 to fend for themselves. In my mind, this is another way of Jesus saying that God does not always work according to principles that seem fair to humans. But it also reinforces the value of the one. This emphasis on the individual would have been the reverse of what was the prevailing view within the society and culture in which Jesus lived and taught, where it was always the job of the individual to sacrifice one's self for the good of the many. The individual was never as important in any ancient society as appears to be the case in the parables of Jesus. But over and over again Jesus reiterates the positive value of each individual person in God's sight (a perfect example is the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:11-32).

Along this line, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (who also wrote several books on religion in addition to his numerous tomes on philosophy) wrote a small book on the parables. He is the source of this way of thinking about the strangeness of the parables that I mention above. His theory was that each parable had a "trait of extravagance," something that stretched credulity and (remembering Dodd's definition of a parable) the strangeness then teased the mind into active thought. Thus Ricoeur proposes that whatever this "trait of extravagance" might be in each parable, that is the key to the interpretation of that parable.

Suggestion: When reading over the parables of Jesus, ask yourself these questions. (Not every question will apply to every parable.) Does this parable promote a view of the Kingdom as present or the Kingdom as future? What about this parable seems odd or strange? How would the Palestinian Jews who first heard this parable have responded? What attitude or action is Jesus trying to change with this parable?