Stories with Intent

A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus

Klyne R. Snodgrass

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781467449632
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Winner of the 2009 Christianity Today Award for Biblical Studies, Stories with Intent offers pastors and students a comprehensive and accessible guide to Jesus' parables. Klyne Snodgrass explores in vivid detail the historical context in which these stories were told, the part they played in Jesus' overall message, and the ways in which they have been interpreted in the church and the academy. Snodgrass begins by surveying the primary issues in parables interpretation and providing an overview of other parables—often neglected in the discussion—from the Old Testament, Jewish writings, and the Greco-Roman world. He then groups the more important parables of Jesus thematically and offers a comprehensive treatment of each, exploring both background and significance for today. This tenth anniversary edition includes a substantial new chapter that surveys developments in the interpretation of parables since the book's original 2008 publication.

Notes

Notes to “Introduction to the Parables of Jesus”

1. See especially John W. Sider, “Proportional Analogy in the Gospel Parables,” NTS 31 (1985): 1-23; and Interpreting the Parables: A Hermeneutical Guide to Their Meaning (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995); and also Ernst Fuchs, Hermeneutik (2d ed.; 2 vols.; Bad Cannstatt: R. Mullerschön, 1958), 1:211-20. In ancient rhetoric one of the steps in elaborating a chreia (a witty or wise saying from a famous person) was analogy (ek tou parabolēs [sic]). See The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises (trans. and ed. Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neil; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), pp. 83-84 et passim. Wolfgang Harnisch denies that Jesus’ parables are analogical, even though he grants that other parables are. (See his “Language of the Possible: The Parables of Jesus in the Conflict between Rhetoric and Poetry,” ST 46 [1992]: 41-54, esp. p. 52 and the apparent contradiction on pp. 50-51 where he denies that a parable is aimed at something outside itself and yet says the parable points to something beyond itself.) In his “Die Spachkraft der Analogie,” ST 28 (1974): 1-20, he assumed parables are analogies. As we will see, Greco-Roman, OT, and rabbinic parables are all analogical, and there are no grounds for saying Jesus’ parables are not.

2. Cf. Aristotle, Rhet. 2.20.1-8. See also Klaus Berger, “Hellenistische Gattungen im Neuen Testament,” ANRW 25.2 (ed. Wolfgang Haase; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 1114-15. Harnisch (“Die Sprachkraft der Analogie”) disputed the argumentative character of Jesus’ parables in favor of their opening existentially a new attitude toward life, even though he viewed them as promoting a decision (p. 20). Parables do open a new attitude toward life, but in doing so they present a case and are a means of proof.

3. Some seek to deny that Jesus’ parables reference the kingdom, but this is a very difficult argument with virtually nothing in its favor. See e.g., Charles W. Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions: The Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), esp. pp. 25-35, 76-78, and 86-87, who, not surprisingly, concludes that Jesus’ parables were banal. (Adolf Jülicher similarly concluded that Jesus’ parables were about trivial matters; see his “Parables,” Encyclopaedia Biblica [New York: Macmillan, 1902], 3:3563-67, here p. 3566.) Or see William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), p. 7, who thinks the parables address systems of oppression. Without reference to Jesus’ own mission and his proclamation of the kingdom to Israel the parables have little meaning that can be recovered by us.

4. This is in accord with Ben F. Meyer’s focus on critical realism. See his Critical Realism and the New Testament (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick Publications, 1989).

5. The attempt to answer this question does not suggest hermeneutical naïveté or make one guilty of the “intentional fallacy,” a simplistic understanding of intentionality that assumes it can get into the other’s head. Rather, it seeks the communicative intent of discourse and assumes that the discourse indeed had a purpose. For more detailed treatment of these issues, see my “Reading to Hear: A Hermeneutics of Hearing,” HBT 24 (2002): 1-32.

6. Two recent exceptions are Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); and Peter Rhea Jones, Studying the Parables of Jesus (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 1999), although Jones’s preaching suggestions are sometimes not as convincing as his scholarship.

7. See especially Warren S. Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1979), pp. 1-230; Norman Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), pp. 89-193; Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990), pp. 29-167; and his “The Parables of Jesus: Current Trends and Needs in Research,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 231-54; and two articles of my own, “From Allegorizing to Allegorizing: A History of the Interpretation of the Parables of Jesus,” in The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables (ed. Richard N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 3-29; and “Modern Approaches to the Parables,” in The Face of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research (ed. Scot McKnight and Grant Osborne; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), pp. 177-90.

8. There were exceptions, such as Tertullian, John Chrysostom and the School of Antioch, and John Calvin, but most of the church followed the allegorizing methods of the School of Alexandria. See Chrysostom’s advice regarding the parable of the Vineyard Workers: “The saying is a parable, wherefore neither is it right to inquire curiously into all things in parables word by word, but when we have learnt the object for which it was composed, to reap this, and not to busy one’s self about anything further” (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 44.3). Note that G. B. Caird (The Language and Imagery of the Bible [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980], pp. 167-71) distinguishes five types of allegorizing: rationalist (to remove offensive material), moralist, atomistic, exegetical, and polemical.

9. Quaest. Ev. 2.19.

10. Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies 31.

11. E.g., “Let there be light” taken literally could refer to creation, allegorically could mean “Let Christ be born in the church,” ethically could mean “May we be illumined in mind and inflamed in heart through Christ,” and with regard to heaven could mean “May we be conducted to glory through Christ” (Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians 4.7).

12. See Irenaeus, Haer. 2:27 on the “Proper Mode of Interpreting Parables and Obscure Passages of Scripture.”

13. See David Steinmetz, “Calvin and the Irrepressible Spirit,” Ex Auditu 12 (1996): 94-107, here p. 97.

14. Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (Freiburg i. B.: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. C. B. Mohr, vol. 1, 1888; vol. 2, 1889). This work was reprinted in one volume by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Darmstadt: 1963). Others had protested allegorizing before Jülicher, but no one made such a hard-hitting case as he.

15. Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1:44-70 and 80-81. Paradoxically Jülicher retained confidence generally about the genuineness of the parable tradition, and he knew that parables in “Hellenistic scribal learning” sometimes were enigmatic (1:42). Eta Linnemann (Parables of Jesus: Introduction and Exposition [London: SPCK, 1966], p. 24) followed Jülicher in saying parables do not need interpretation.

16. How Jülicher intended the German word uneigentlich to be understood is debated. It could mean “figurative,” as John Sider argues (Interpreting the Parables, pp. 247-50), or it could mean “inauthentic,” which is how it is understood by Dan Otto Via, Jr. (The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967], p. 8) and is so translated in Wolfgang Harnisch’s “The Metaphorical Process in Matthew 20:1-15” (in Society of Biblical Literature 1977 Seminar Papers [ed. Paul J. Achtemeier; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977], pp. 231-50, here p. 232). Jülicher certainly meant “figurative” with some uses (e.g., 2:265), but his view of uneigentliche forms was so negative that the translation may not matter. It is possible that Jülicher intended a double entendre. See Roger Lundin, Clarence Wahlout, and Anthony C. Thiselton, The Promise of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 159.

17. See Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 2:431-32 for his reconstruction of the parable of the Banquet in Matt 22:1-14 and Luke 14:15-24.

18. Altjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1904); and Die Gleichnisreden Jesu im Lichte der rabbinischen Gleichnisse des neutestamentlichen Zeitalters (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1912).

19. The classic discussion is that of Hans-Josef Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1978); see esp. pp. 354-56 where in summarizing he distinguishes Allegorie (a rhetorical and poetic process related to various forms), Allegorese (an exegetical method which neglects the texture of a document and inserts elements anachronistically from a philosophical or theological preunderstanding), and Allegorisierung (subsequent revision of a text in the direction of an allegorical understanding).

20. Madeleine Boucher, The Mysterious Parable (Washington: The Catholic Biblical Association of America...