Parables Notes

How do the parables of the Kingdom function in Mark?

Donahue, John. The Gospel in Parable, pg. 1- 62. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1988.

The poetic nature of Jesus’s speech, most embodied in the parables which portray a wide variety of images which:

• ‘embrace images of the dynamism of nature and deviousness of human nature and range from short narrative vignettes to full-blown dramatic stories’, pg. 2.

• Through Jesus’s language we glimpse his imagination expressing his understanding of his mission and ‘his struggle with the mystery of his Father’s will’

Problem- their original context is inaccessible to us today, furthermore they were part of oral tradition.

The original situation evoking their utterance, as well as the tone and body language with which people experienced/heard them, are important (e.g. was something said with a shrug? A snarl?)

All we have is the parables as text, and no original text; only Greek translations/adaptations

Joachim Jeremias shows that ‘the text has been so altered in transmission that the original ‘text’ of any parable is a reconstructed one.’ Pg. 3.

Jeremias also discussed the reconstruction of the parables’ context, the kingdom proclamation of Jesus.

Pg. 3 ‘in proclaiming the advent of God’s kingdom (Mark 1:14 – 15), Jesus proclaims God’s sovereign rule and God’s summons to people to open their hearts to the claims of God present in his teaching and ministry.’

The parables we see in the gospels are in their own definite context.

Donahue looks at the parables in the gospels as primarily being a window into the theology of said gospel and as reflecting its main motifs.

We must look both at text (parable) and context (gospel)

Pg. 5, ‘etymologically parable means that one thing is understood in juxtaposition or comparison with another.’

The term (Greek parabole from the Hebrew masal) is used to describe several different literary forms e.g. allegories, proverbs, riddles etc.

C. H. Dodd provides a good definition of the NT parable: ‘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.’ (Parables pg. 5)

His definition conveys the 4 major aspects characteristic of parabolic:

1. Open-ended nature

2. Paradoxical and engaging quality

3. Realism

4. Poetic/metaphoric quality

The parable as metaphor

1888- Julicher, instead of doing as had been done for centuries and interpreting the parables allegorically, thought that their ‘point’ was to be found in the historical context of Jesus’s teaching.

• Saw parables as rhetorical, rather than poetic, devices

• Thus Jesus used his parables to teach

• Pg. 7 ‘he argued that a parable is a developed simile where the point of comparison is clear, while allegories are developed metaphors that foster inauthentic speech and arbitrary interpretation.’

• He saw each parable as having only one point of comparison which usually applied to ethics

Later the eschatological meaning of the parables (instead of the ethical) was argued for.

Amos Wilder and Robert Funk saw parables as poetic forms where ‘deep appreciation of metaphor opened the way to new understandings of their literary and theological importance’ pg. 8

Wilder did not see the parables as pedagogical, arguing instead that parables portray basic assumptions about existence, as any art form of any time does.

‘New hermeneutic’, German school of thought:

• Stressed that Jesus’s sayings were language events not communicating his teaching but rather his self-understanding and his radical challenge to others

• Funk uses Dodd’s definition of the parable to argue that a metaphor combines too ‘discrete but not entirely comparable elements’ pg. 9, which are juxtaposed, this impacting on the imagination in producing an image of reality which discursive speech does not have the power to do.

Metaphor- particularly adept at expressing two characteristics of religious experience: immediacy and transcendence.

Jesus’s parables, as metaphors, point to an order of reality not described in the parable.

Pg. 10 ‘often it is an element of the parable itself, such as the extraordinary harvest (Mark 4:8)… where the ordinary has gone askew and thereby shocks us into realizing that the parables lead into another way of thinking about life.’

Therefore, Jesus spoke in a familiar language for people and their everyday lives, but this language pointed further and ‘summoned people to see everyday life as the carrier of self-transcendence’

Many of Jesus’s parables are thus proclamations of the kingdom which convey God’s power and the transformation the world is in the process of going through.

Donahue ‘the message of the kingdom is that the world points beyond itself. The use of parable with the native power of metaphor to point beyond itself means that in effect the medium is the message.’

CRITICISM – parables of Jesus often seem more like similes than metaphors as they often have ‘like’ or ‘it may be compared to’

Moreover, often attributes in a sentence or predications of an image are thought to be metaphors (e.g. you are the salt of the earth), whereas the parables are extended narratives.

Perhaps they are just metaphoric stories?

Paul Ricoeur offers an adequate description of parables as ‘a combination of the metaphoric process with the narrative form’ (pg. 10/11)

Madeleine Boucher argues that we must not discard the rhetorical dimension of the parable, although the content of the parables might not be as simple or broad as was argued by Julicher, they did have teaching functions.

One thing that was carried through from Julicher’s theory was the polemic against allegory.

‘from a literary perspective, therefore, parables are metaphoric in combining in one assertion two orders of reality and in using the language of concrete imagery to suggest an analogy or comparison with the thing signified’

From a theological perspective, metaphor and parable...

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