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By Tyson Thorne

September 20, 2017
 
 

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who find parables to be powerful lessons and those who view them as incoherent allegories. I used to be a part of the later camp, struggling to understand many of Jesus’ most memorable teachings. I could not find any help even among the best preachers and commentaries. I had to be missing something. No one seemed to be able to structure parables in a way that unlocked their lessons. If Jesus’ followers could understand them, why couldn’t I? The answer lay in a method that is both new and more than two millennia old.

While parables appear to be an invention of Jesus, the genre originates in the Old Testament. Parables may be found in the books of Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings as well as many of the books of prophecy. Yet where they really became popular were in Rabbinic literature, Jewish commentaries on the Tanach (Old Testament). Parables were a way to help explain and understand the Torah. This is likely why Jesus used them so frequently, the people were accustomed to them and knew how to understand them.

Julia Blum, of the Israel Institute for Biblical Studies, writes:

We find a parable similar to Jesus’ Parable of the Lost Coin in a Jewish commentary on the Song of Songs—Song of Songs Rabbah: “The matter is like a king who lost a coin or a precious pearl in his house. He will find it by the light of a penny-worth wick. Likewise, do not let the parable appear of little worth to you: through the parable, a man can stand on the words of Torah.”(Song of Songs Rabbah, 1:1,8)

I found this interesting, that the use of parables was so wide spread in the time period just before the incarnation. I also found it frustrating because it didn’t aid me in understanding them. I continued to study how others interpreted parables and found comfort in that I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. I discovered that many of the trusted early church fathers, philosophers and theologians considered them allegories (which they are not, though some contain elements of allegory). This lead to multiple interpretations even some theological error. It was too easy for a priest to read his own bias into the text and interpret it accordingly.

I won’t recount the history the church’s struggle to understanding parables, let it be sufficient to say that by examining how Jewish authors used them and some very good modern-day thinking by Craig Blomberg of Denver Seminary, I believe there is a method for understanding these mysterious stories. A way to allow their powerful meanings to enhance our relationship with God. In his book, Preaching the Prables, Blonberg states that a parable has as many lessons, or points, as it does characters. Are there three characters? Then there are three points. Two characters in the parable have, you guessed it, two points. And so on.

How does this work, practically speaking? Take the parable of the Prodigal Son as an example, since it is so well known. There are three characters, the Father and his two sons, so we can expect three lessons. One son asked his father for his inheritance money early so he could go live his life how he saw fit, the other son dutifully stayed and kept working the family farm. Then there is the father, who accommodates his foolish son’s request This points to another characteristic of most parables, that there is usually a patriarchal or God-like figure, and there is usually a person who does right (and it is usually not the person the people of the day would have considered).

After foolishly spending his money on so-called friends (more like users in the current vernacular) and finding himself face down in a literal pig’s trough for food, the foolish son recognized the error of his ways. Broken and penitent, he returned to his father’s estate to seek forgiveness and a job as a hired hand. Upon his return the father, overwhelmed for his son’s return, not only forgives the son but restores him as well. This is much to the chagrin of the other son, who cannot understand how his father can be so gracious when he was the one who had stood by the family business, asking for nothing before its time.

In this example, the father is the God-like character. He freely gives and, upon seeing the son’s brokenness and repentant attitude, places him back in his good graces. The question then becomes, which of the two son’s did what was right? One might think it was the son who remained on the farm, but that would be wrong. While the foolish son may have behaved foolish, he confronted his sin eventually and acted appropriately. The faithful son did not confront his sin of bitterness and envy, instead choosing to hold onto them, damaging his relationship with the father and his brother.

Take some time today to try this method of unlocking the meaning of your favorite parable, and see how much fun and how powerful this kind of teaching can be. If you are really ambitious, you might even try writing your own parable.

Oh, and Happy Rosh Hashanah! At sunset today begins the Feast of Trumpets, ending at sunset on Friday.