Nature and Purpose of Parables

What is a 'parable'?

In the Greek, 'parabole' means 'to put something alongside something else'.  A comparison, or analogy.  But in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish Bible), the word 'parabole'  is used to translate the Hebrew word masal, and this word is used of many different types of literature.

 

 

In fact, a very brief scan over the gospels will show you that most of these types of literature are attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, and as most scholars would agree with Jeremias in agreeing that 'The students of the parables of Jesus,,,,, may be confident that he (sic) stands upon a particularly firm historical foundation.", we can be pretty sure that He used the full range of literature available to him.

The different types of teaching literature in the OT need to be borne in mind when you are considering how parables should be interpreted.  There have been several methods employed by the Christian church over the past 2,000 years.

  1. The allegorical method employed by Origen, St Augustine et al.  With this method, everything in the story stands for something else.  The interpretation of the Good Samaritan by this method is a good example.  As far as St Augustine was concerned everything from the Priest, to the oil and wine to the saddle on the little donkey's back stood for something else!

    The trouble with this method is that it was often employed to relate the parable to a situation contemporary to the allegoriser,(a form of Pesher) which resulted in the obvious meaning being lost.  Thus the Good Samaritan became, for Augustine, an allegory about the salvation of the world, and the message of Jesus, exhorting people to costly, dangerous generosity, condemning racism, and identifying one's neighbour with anyone in need, whatever, their race, colour or creed was lost. To the huge detriment of the Christian Church, which so often seems to have ignored these common sense applications of Jesus' teaching.

  2. Luther and Calvin rejected this allegorical method of interpreting parables and their lead was taken up by

  3. Adolf Julicher (1899) who also rejected the allegorical method of interpreting parables, insisting instead that the way to interpret the parables was to look for the key teaching point in each one.  Thus, the Good Samaritan becomes an illustration of one's neighbour being anyone in need.

    This is all very well as far as it goes but clearly some of the extended narrative parables make more than one point.  The Rich Man and Lazarus, for example, or the Prodigal Son.

  4. C H Dodd, in his book 'The Parables of the Kingdom' (1935), argued that the main purpose of the parables was to teach about the arrival of the Kingdom of God in the person of Jesus.  The fulfilment of the Old Testament promises had arrived, he said.  There would be no future crisis.  The crisis was here and now for everyone.  For this reason, Dodd could dismiss the allegorical interpretation attached to the Parable of the Sower as an Early Church addition to the parable proper, which came from Jesus.  The interpretation (Mk 4:13-20) spoke of a future consummation of the Kingdom, whereas Jesus' own parable talked of the eschatological harvest of souls being reaped as Jesus was pursuing his ministry.  This way of looking at eschatology is called realised eschatology.

    The problem with Dodd's outlook is that he tends to overlook (a) parables that are not obviously about the Kingdom of God, and (b) those parables, like 'The Sheep and the Goats' that do not fit into the pattern of realised eschatology that he carefully constructs.  This means that the overall conclusions he arrives at in respect of the teachings of Jesus are inevitably unbalanced.

  5. Joachim Jeremias, brought to the study of parables ('The Parables of Jesus' (1947) ) an unrivalled knowledge of 1st Century Palestine, which he applied to their study.  From his background knowledge he was prepared to conclude that a substantial number of parables had a context in 1st C Palestine, and, despite Early Church  embellishments, some could be traced back to Jesus


    I'm still working on this, dears 

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