The Power of Parable

How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus

John Dominic Crossan

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780281068128
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

In this perceptive and provocative new look at the Gospels, John Dominic Crossan begins by observing that the parabolic stories told by Jesus seem remarkably similar to the resurrection stories about Jesus. 'Were the latter intended as parables just as much as the former' he asks. Could it be that we have been reading parables, presuming them to be history, and misunderstanding both? In other words, could Jesus' use of parables have inspired the Gospel writers to create meaningful, metaphorical stories about Jesus to help them explain who he really was? 'A remarkable and important book for Christians and for all who seek to understand the Bible better...Crossan combines his customary literary and historical brilliance with fresh insights that illuminate not only the parables of Jesus but much of the Bible as a whole' Marcus J. Borg, author of Speaking Christian.

Part I

Parables Told by Jesus

Chapter 1

Riddle Parables

So That They May Not Understand

Nessun dorma—“Nobody sleeps tonight”—proclaims the Princess Turandot in Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, unfinished at his death in 1924. Nobody can sleep because a riddle must be solved before the dawn. Here is Princess Turandot’s tale.

In the long distant past, her ancestor, the Princess Lo-u-Ling, ruled wisely and well until she was raped and killed by an invading prince. In revenge, her descendant, Princess Turandot, decreed that any man who wished to marry her must answer three riddles—failure would entail beheading, and success, betrothing. Even as the opera opens, the handsome young Prince of Persia goes to his execution with Princess Turandot’s gleeful consent. Despite that, the newly arrived Prince of Tartary declares himself ready for the three riddles. This is the first one:

Princess Turandot: “What is born each night and dies each dawn?”

Prince of Tartary: “Hope.”

He is correct, and then comes this next riddle:

Princess Turandot: “What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire?”

Prince of Tartary: “Blood.”

Again he is correct, and it is time for the final riddle:

Princess Turandot: “What is like ice, but burns like fire?”

Prince of Tartary: “Turandot!”

He has won the contest, but offers the princess one final way out of the marriage. If she can guess his name by morning, he will be executed and she will be liberated. Otherwise, they will marry. And so nobody is to sleep that night, as all must seek to solve the riddle of the prince’s true name.

Princess Turandot tortures the servant Liu, who alone knows the prince’s name, but Liu kills herself to protect his secret. But the prince himself tells Princess Turandot that his name is Calaf and leaves his fate in her hands. Finally, then, she announces she knows his name. It is “Love” and they live happily ever after.

We think today of riddles as “gotcha games,” as puns or plays on words more appropriate between children or between children and adults, where the latter must say they don’t know even when they do. But in folklore—as with Princess Turandot’s story—they were often lethal contests in which failure to guess correctly could get you a coffin and success could gain you a kingdom. They were archetypal struggles between ignorance and knowledge and, as so often in life itself, ignorance could get you killed.

Four questions structure this chapter, and each leads onward from the preceding one’s answer. First, did lethal riddle parables—like those in Turandot—exist in the Mediterranean world before Jesus. Second, are Jesus’s own stories best seen as such riddles with potentially profound consequences—either negative or positive? The answer to that question involves a close reading of Mark 4—as promised at the end of the Prologue—and Mark clearly answers it affirmatively. Third, why did Mark interpret Jesus’s parables as riddle parables. Finally, was that understanding actually the intention of Jesus or only the (mis)interpretation of Mark?

This chapter’s first question is whether such potentially fatal linguistic contests as just seen in Turandot existed within Jesus’s own Greek and Roman environment or his own Jewish and biblical tradition. Two very famous cases answer that question with a very definite and very emphatic affirmative response.

The first case is that of Oedipus and the Sphinx. Sophocles’s ninety-year life spanned the entire fifth century BCE at Athens. The greatest play of this great tragedian is—in Aristotle’s famous judgment—Oedipus the King, of 429 BCE.

The great Oracle at Delphi warns King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes that their son will kill his father and marry his mother. Laius orders a servant to kill their newborn son, but the servant simply abandons him on a hillside. He is saved and reared by some shepherds and later adopted by the king and queen of Corinth. When he eventually discovers that they are not his real parents, he consults that ever helpful Delphic Oracle, who gives him the same warning about killing his father and marrying his mother. He accordingly decides not to return to Corinth, but heads instead—you got it—for Thebes.

On the way there he has a row with another man and kills him. All unknown to him, he has just murdered his father, Laius. And so, halfway into his terrible destiny, he arrives at the gates of Thebes. The entrance is protected by the Sphinx, a human-headed lioness, who poses a riddle to every traveler wishing to enter the city. The penalty for incomprehension is to be eaten alive by the monster. That was clearly bad for trade, so the city grew lean as the Sphinx grew fat. Here is that lethal contest:

Sphinx’s riddle: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?”

Oedipus’s response: “Human beings: as infants, they crawl on all fours, as adults, they walk on two legs, and, in old age, they rely on a walking stick.”

He is, of course, correct, and the Sphinx immediately kills herself. Thebes is liberated, Oedipus marries the newly widowed Queen Jocasta, thus having unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Sophocles’s great play opens on the tragic outcome for all concerned.

That is the most famous riddle in the Greek tradition and, indeed, it is hard to decide whether success or failure in solving it would have been the better fate for Oedipus, Jocasta, and all of Thebes. But, one way or another, riddle parables are not childish games, but lethally serious adult contests. Success means great gain; failure means great loss. And, as we see next, the same fatal threat hangs over riddle parables in the biblical tradition.

The second case, then, is that of Samson and the Lion. The story of Samson appears in Judges 13–16 and is, among other things, a severe warning against intermarriage between Israelites and non-Israelites. “Is there not a woman among your kin, or among all our people,” said his father and mother, “that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” (14:3). Samson was a Hercules-like figure who protected his people from threats and dangers, but was, unfortunately, a terribly slow learner when it came to women—not to speak of having a problem with anger management. At that time Israel’s particular enemies were the Philistines, who invaded Egypt possibly from Mycenean Crete in 1190 BCE. Repulsed by Egypt, they settled on the southern coast of Canaan and eventually became a serious military threat to Israel—despite what David’s slingshot did to their Goliath in single combat between the assembled armies.

Samson’s preference for Philistine women involved, first, the unnamed woman of Timnah (14:1); then, the unnamed prostitute of Gaza (16:1); and, finally, Delilah of Sorek (16:4). I focus here on that first woman and, once again, a riddle contest results—eventually—in death. On his way to propose to the woman of Timnah, Samson was attacked by a young lion, but “he tore the lion apart barehanded as one might tear apart a kid” (14:6). Later, when he went back to marry his betrothed, he found that bees had made honey in the lion’s carcass, and he scooped it up and ate it on his way.

His Philistine in-laws gave Samson thirty companions for the wedding feast. “Let me now put a riddle to you,” Samson said to them. “If you can explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. But if you cannot explain it to me, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments” (14:12–13). Here is the riddle:

Out of the eater came something to eat.

Out of the strong came something sweet. (14:14)

Not exactly a fair riddle, by the way, as it involved private information they could never have guessed.

So, “on the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, ‘Coax your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’ ” (14:15). Samson eventually succumbs to her insistence, and his thirty wedding companions triumphantly ask:

What is sweeter than honey?

What is stronger than a lion? (14:18)

Samson knows that they have cheated by using his wife against him. The result is that “the spirit of the Lord rushed on him, and he went down to Ashkelon. He killed thirty men of the town, took their spoil, and gave the festal garments to those who had explained the riddle” (14:19). Even after that, the riddle’s lethal effects continue.

Samson, however, considers the woman of Timnah to be his wife and, finding that her father had given her to his best man instead, he “burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves” of the Philistines (15:5). They, in turn, burned the woman of Timnah and her father (15:6). And, in revenge, Samson “struck them down hip and thigh with great slaughter” (15:8). Widely throughout folklore and legend riddles carry with them the smell of death.

With Turandot, Oedipus, and Samson we have stories that contain riddles rather than riddle stories. Those riddles are crucial to, but simply imbedded in wider narratives. But what if a riddle expanded to fill the entire story, so that its major point and even the minor points within it all presented hearers or readers with riddle upon riddle upon riddle? A riddle—as seen in those three cases—is usually just a one-sentence puzzle or mystery. When a one-sentence riddle question is expanded into a riddle narrative, not only the general story itself, but even its multiple parts each and all point elsewhere. Such riddle parables are also called allegories—from the Greek roots for “other” and “speak.” In riddle parables or allegories the whole story and also each of its component parts “speak” of something “other.” With them, not only the whole story, but all its elements must be decoded.

The answer to this chapter’s first question, therefore, is that potentially lethal riddles existed both outside and inside the biblical tradition in the Mediterranean world before Jesus.

I turn now to this chapter’s second question. Are some, most, or all of the parables of Jesus to be understood as riddle parables—also called allegories, as mentioned above? Is riddle parable the major type of parable preferred by Jesus? An emphatically positive answer is found in the Gospel according to Mark, and, since Mark is the earliest of the four gospels in our present New Testament, that answer demands careful study.

First, Mark gives us Jesus’s Sower parable and interprets it item by item as a riddle parable (4:1–20). He also cites it as a model or paradigm for the other parables of Jesus, so that all are taken as riddle parables. Finally, in the best riddling tradition, those parables have profoundly important consequences. Success in understanding them gains you the kingdom of God. Failure to understand them results not in physical, but in spiritual death. Her...