Right Parables, Wrong Perspectives Intro 2: What is a Parable?

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Right Parables Wrong Perspectives

I will continue to share excerpts from my book Right Parables, Wrong Perspectives. These are used with the permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. You can get your discounted copy here or on Amazon.

 

Today, we’ll look at what a parable is. The following excerpt from pp. x-xi gives a very simple discussion on what a parable is.

 

In order to study a parable, it is important to define the term. Scholars have debated what parables essentially are.

1 Are they fables or allegories? Do they have one or multiple points? These questions tend to drive the discussions.

2 Whatever agreements or disagreements, we can’t dismiss the fact that these parables had relevance for Jesus’ original Jewish audience and Luke’s original readers. Thus, their origin was decidedly Jewish but their reception in Luke was Gentile. We shall discuss this matter shortly.

In past discussions regarding parables, many have sought to find a universal model to describe Jesus’ parables. Jesus’ parables however seem to defy such efforts. While many parables seem to have one clear message, many do not. I think it’s probably going to be a tough effort to find that one clear universal model. Perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions. Models may or may not determine the meaning. Forms may or may not determine the meaning. So what does?

The interaction between Jesus and his Jewish audience, per the description in the text, determines meaning. Then, the interaction between the author and readers also determines meaning. In other words, every parable encompasses two layers of meaning. How many points a parable makes ultimately doesn’t shed enough light to make the debate worth our while. Rather, two boundaries (the interaction between Jesus and his audience and the interaction between Luke and his readers) give us the range of meaning. The parable is the word picture reflecting the issues that are brought up by the two interactions.

 

Right Parables, Wrong Perspective Intro 1: the Purpose for Writing

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Right Parables Wrong Perspectives

I’m starting a series of blogs to give excerpts on my new book Right Parables, Wrong Perspectives: A Diverse Reading of Luke’s Parables. Feel free to share these excerpts with everyone who likes to read the Bible or on your Facebook wall. These are used with the permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. You can get your discounted copy here or on Amazon. Maybe with the holiday coming up, you can give your friends and families the gift of reading. Today, I’m going to address what this book is for with the following excerpt from pp. ix-x.

Jesus’ parables are polyphonic. His parables could represent one voice, while there are also multiple voices of ways the stories could have been told. This explains my title and subtitle. The title refers to the wrong perspectives. Jesus was a polemical teacher who didn’t hesitate to disclose and denounce the wrong perspectives of his day. The many voices could be the many perspectives people used to view a particular issue, while Jesus emphasized his own perspective. When reading as modern readers, we should keep in mind these perspectives. There have been a number of very good books on parables in recent years. Klyne Snodgrass’s Stories with Intent probably provides the most thorough methodological demonstration of various ways to read New Testament parables. Amy-Jill Levine’s brief work Short Stories by Jesus also provides a uniquely Jewish perspective, demonstrating the provocation Jesus was bringing to his audience while correcting anti-Semitic readings common in the modern West. In this book, I try to be more concise than Snodgrass and focus more on the original readers in addition to Jesus’ own audience. My book serves the curious and nontechnical reader who wishes to understand Jesus’ parables in Luke.

In this book, I will take sample parables of Jesus in the Gospel according to Luke to show how reading them within their literary and cultural context will challenge both the ancient and modern readers. Inevitably, I shall skip over a few of the parables simply because my purpose isn’t to write a thorough commentary on Luke’s parables, but to see how a certain way of reading can help us understand any of Luke’s parables more accurately, creatively, and clearly. At the end of our study, we shall discover that Luke had a very practical and social message that often addresses how resources ought to be used within the faith community and by the faithful individual. It remains a challenging message today in our churches.

I write to serve two primary groups of readers. I serve the busy pastor who wishes to get the gist of Jesus’ parables while juggling a busy ministerial schedule. I also serve the lay-person who wishes to go beyond the usual popular studies on Jesus’ parables to something with a solid intellectual spine, but without the academic jargon. This effort will cause me to be selective about presenting technical information that may be better suited to academic commentaries on either the parables or on Luke (and there are so many excellent ones out there). My goal is simple. I wish to help my readers appreciate the fact that we often retell Jesus’ parables in ways opposite to Jesus’ intent. When certain essential elements are missing in our interpretation, we not only risk interpreting a partial truth, but we often derive the opposite message. This book hopes to correct some of our misreading by looking at how ancient audiences could have read them, and then how that also reflects modern misreadings.

This book is also a continuation of my book on Matthew, Right Kingdom, Wrong Stories. Readers of Right Kingdom will notice similarity in format and differences in content. I will not rehash in detail the preface from Right Kingdom. The summary below will serve our purpose in reading Luke’s stories.