Parables

The Parable of a Hidden Treasure – Matthew 13:44

As in the case of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price are linked thematically. In the previous two sayings, the smallness and hiddenness of the Kingdom was the main point. In these two parables, the kingdom is hidden and ultimately valuable are the main idea. In each parable, something valuable is discovered, then the discover sells everything he has in order to purchase the item of great value.

Bible Times Farmer

 

Are these “insider parables”?

The final three parables in Matthew 13 are addressed only to the disciples, followed by Jesus asking his disciples if the disciples have understood “all these things” (13:51-52). In Matthew 11:25 Jesus thanks the Father because he has “hidden these things form the wise and revealed them to little children.” Matthew 12 is the decisive break with the Pharisees. It is not difficult to understand the “wise” as the Pharisees and teachers of the law and the “little children” as the disciples. The hidden things Jesus revealed to the disciples is the nature of the Kingdom of God, which is a mystery (Matthew 13) hidden from the religious teachers, aristocratic priests and other elites in Second Temple Judaism.

Most commentators draw a parallel between the hidden treasure and the pearl. But there is a contrast between the two seekers. One finds the treasure by accident; the other was searching for valuable pearls. Both find the treasure, and both sell everything in order to obtain it. If the point is merely “the kingdom is very valuable” then the parables say the same thing. The difference is the one who finds the kingdom; a difference which is present among Jesus’s disciples.

Hiding and Finding

It is not unusual for someone to hide treasure in the ground, especially prior to modern banking systems this was rather common (“stuffing money in your mattress”). There were no salvage laws with respect to finding treasure (basically “finders keepers,” see m. Baba Batra 4:8). Presumably the original owner of the field is not known, but the legality of the man’s actions is not really the point of the story.

Josephus reports that the Romans discovered all kinds of gold and silver buried by the Jews in anticipation of the invasion by Rome (JW 7.5.2). The Copper Scroll (3Q15) from Qumran lists a number of buried treasures although the scroll has never been deciphered and no actual treasure has been found.

In the wisdom literature there is a comparison drawn between finding wisdom and finding a hidden treasure (Proverbs 2:1-4; Sirach 20:30).

The man who finds the treasure sells everything he has to purchase the field. It is easy enough to get side-tracked on the legality of the action of the man in the story, but that is not the point. There is nothing in the Old Testament law that specifically deals with this situation, and given the fact that people buried their savings somewhat more commonly than today, it is possible that occasionally the situation being described could actually happen. Jesus is not commenting on the legally or morality of the action. The important thing is a hidden treasure has been found, one that is worth risking everything for.

Does re-hiding the hidden treasure mean anything? Some commentators have allegorized this part of the story to refer to the delay of the kingdom, but it is just part of the story, the “finder’s desperate effort to own the treasure” (Bailey, “The Parable of the Hidden Treasure and of the Pearl Merchant,” 179).  The man sells all that he has “in his joy” and buys the field so that he can take possession of the hidden treasure.

What Does the Parable Teach?

The point is the Kingdom is so valuable it is worth “selling out” in every way in order to obtain the kingdom. The man was not looking for a treasure but found it unexpectedly. It is ironic that the Pharisees sought the treasure (the kingdom of God), but they have not found it because it is hidden in Jesus’s ministry.

The man in the parable is a disciple so Jesus who has left everything behind to follow Jesus (Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 279). The disciples have more or less done this already. They left their homes and families to follow Jesus. The encouragement to future generations of disciples is to realize the value of what they are seeking.

Another aspect of the mystery of the kingdom in the parable of the hidden treasure is that the kingdom is discovered. In this case it is discovered by one who is not seeking it.  It comes suddenly, in a way that is not expected. There is not only a joy in the discovery, but the immediately realization that it is worth more than life itself.

For many of Jesus’s disciples, they found the kingdom even though they were not looking for it. They left their homes and family and have followed Jesus with total dedication. However, other disciples are equally dedicated to Jesus but were seeking the kingdom all along.

Why Does Jesus Teach in Parables? Matthew 13:10-17

After the Parable of the Sower, the disciples ask Jesus why he is teaching in parables (Matthew 13:10-17). Until Matthew 13, Jesus has not used parables to teach the crowds.

Jesus teaches in parables

The reason this type of teaching is a problem is that this is the first true parable that Jesus has used in the Gospel of Matthew. The Sermon on the Mount used figurative language (speck in your neighbor’s eye, salt and light, etc.), but now he is using a full blown, easy to hear but difficult to understand, parable!

The Secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus explains why he now teaches in parables He says the “secrets of the kingdom” of heaven are given to the disciples (not the crowds) (13:11). “Secrets” is not esoteric knowledge. The Greek μυστήριον refers to something which must be revealed to be known. It is not the answer to a riddle which can be guessed from the clues, but more like “What have I got in my pocket?”

When something is described as a mystery, the idea of a revelation of something not previously revealed. A mystery is something that simply was not revealed before. It is not something that was there all along and you didn’t understand it. A mystery was something that was a secret, unknown, in the past, but is now being revealed to man.

What is the Mystery of the Kingdom?

The idea of kingdom is all over the Old Testament, so what is the secret part? Based on Jesus’s teaching in the parables of the kingdom, the unrevealed part of the Kingdom is the commitment required of the disciples of the Kingdom. “That there should be a coming of God’s kingdom in the way Jesus proclaimed, in a hidden secret form, working quietly among men, was utterly novel to Jesus’ contemporaries. The Old Testament gave no such promises.” (George Ladd, The Presence of the Future, 225).

For many Jews in the Second Temple period, what got you into the Kingdom was being Jewish. Now Jesus is teaching that not everybody who is Jewish is going to be included. In fact, many who were considered outsiders to the Pharisees (unclean, Samaritans, Gentiles, etc.) will be included, and surprisingly the Pharisees will be excluded.

Rather than attack the Romans, Jesus attacks Satan and destroys his kingdom, first through the miracles and preaching of his ministry, and then finally through this death and resurrection.The Jews only expected the physical kingdom, not the spiritual one that Jesus initiates.  The Kingdom is present in Jesus’s ministry because he is the king and he is exercising his control and authority over all things, especially those things that were a part of Satan’s realm.

What is the current “state of the Kingdom”? Is the Church the Kingdom?

Some argue that we are living in the kingdom, as established by Christ during his ministry, especially in his death and resurrection. This is the typical reformation position and implies several things.  First, the church replaces Israel as God’s people, and secondly, there is no future literal kingdom that follows the second coming.  This position is difficult to support if one desires to read the Old Testament prophets seriously.

The “restoration from exile” theme appears in nearly every prophet, with dozens of texts that imply a future utopian like period when God will rule earth. From looking at the Pauline epistles, especially Romans 9-11, there is certainly an anticipation of a restoration of the nation of Israel in the future. It is very often observed that the sort of Kingdom teaching found in the gospels disappears in the Pauline letters.

The kingdom cannot be present today because the King is gone, and the authority of the King is not being exercised today (although the Catholic church would say that the Pope exercises the King’s power for him until he returns!) Later in his ministry, Jesus explains that the kingdom will go into a “dormant” stage, when he is away, and will return in the future. He does not say that during that time the Jew and Gentile will be saved in one body, that is a mystery saved for the Apostle Paul to reveal. The interval seen by Jesus was a brief time of testing of Israel prior to his glorious return with “all his saints” (Matt 24-25).

Book Review: Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, Second Edition

Snodgrass, Klyne R. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2018. 892 pp. $58, Hb.  Link to Eerdmans

When the first edition of Klyne Snodgrass’s Stories with Intent was published in 2008, I happened to visit the now-closed Eerdmans Bookstore in Grand Rapids. Alan, manager of the Bookstore approached me and handed me a copy of the book and said “You are going to buy this book.” For those who knew Alan, if he told you to buy a book, you bought it because it was going to be an excellent book. And indeed it was. The first edition of Stories with Intent won the 2009 Christianity Today Award for Biblical Studies and was almost immediately considered by many to be the best book on parables written in the last fifty years. Since I regularly assign papers on parables in my Gospels class, my syllabus states: ignore Snodgrass at your own peril. I was therefore quite excited to see the announcement of a new edition of this important book.

Stories with Intent is a comprehensive commentary on every parable of Jesus. Although the commentaries may have similar content, Snodgrass includes parables from each synoptic gospels and includes two or three versions of the parable when this occurs (The Mustard Seed in Matthew 13:31-32, for example). Snodgrass includes two chapters of introduction to parables (sixty pages) where he defines and classifies parables and discusses interpretive strategies. He recognizes some parables have allegorical elements, but these do not give the interpreter warrant to allegorize anything and everything in a parable (p. 17). In the body of the commentary, he often interprets some element of a parable without resorting to the kinds of allegorical interpretation found in ancient commentaries or popular preaching. For example, the lamps and oil in the Parable of The Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-12) does not “represent” the Holy Spirit. Commenting on the two sets of servants in the Parable of the Banquet (Matthew 22:1-14), any interpretation that makes these two sets of servants into pre-Easter mission to the Jews and a post-Easter mission to the Gentiles is “merciless allegorizing” (315). Snodgrass is consistent in this methodology.

What makes this book an especially rich resource for parables interpretation is the collection of parallel material for each parable. While there are collections of rabbinic parables or parallels to early Christian literature, Snodgrass conveniently places the text of these parallels alongside his commentary on the parable. Sometimes these parallels seem strained, but since the goal of the volume is a “comprehensive guide,” this is understandable.

The book is now about 35 pages longer than the first edition, the main difference being one additional chapter on recent contributions to parable research (pages 565-600). The page numbers from the first edition have not changed and there appear to be no differences in the endnotes. This is convenient since references to pages in the first edition will be the same pages in the second. The index of authors is greatly expanded (from just short of four pages to nearly eight pages). The bibliography has been updated to include the books appearing in the new chapter. The bibliography appears to use a slightly smaller font and spacing since it is several pages shorter than the first edition although the content is nearly the same.

The title of the book is important. Snodgrass was dissatisfied with reader response approaches to the parables since they ignore the author’s intent and make the parables say anything. Some literary approaches to the parables completely ignored what Jesus said in favor of creating a new meaning which was somehow more modern and provoking. For Snodgrass, when Jesus spoke a parable he did so with a specific intention, and to ignore that intention is to miss the point of the parable. Although taking into account the literary features of parables as well as the literary context of its place in a gospel, he does not engage in the fanciful reader-response type application of parables. This requires the interpreter to understand the historical, social, and literary context of each parable and to consciously read that parable in that proper context.

Other books on parables are more concerned with reconstructing the original forms of parables or determining what the historical Jesus may (or may not) have said. This was the driving force in John Meier’s 2016 Probing the Authenticity of the Parables. Using the criteria of authenticity Meier concluded only four parables go back to the historical Jesus. As Snodgrass observes, these criteria have been challenged and for many Jesus scholars they no longer have any value at all. Snodgrass does engage with scholarship on the authenticity of the parables, but his goal is to set the parable into a context where Jesus’s original intent can be heard. Stories with Intent is not a historical Jesus study.

The parables are grouped thematically (parables of the present kingdom, parables about discipleship, etc.) For each parable Snodgrass collects any parallels in canonical writings, early Jewish literature, rabbinic literature and early Christian writing. He includes the text for most of the non-canonical texts, which is extremely useful for some of the more obscure rabbinical sources. He then asks questions and creates lists of things needing attention for students and teachers who want to interpret the parable accurately. Sometimes he does not address all of these needs in his explanation, but for the most part a mini-commentary on the parable compares and contrasts several approaches to the parable and draws conclusions. He provides a section on cultural background when applicable. For each parable he offers a short comment on how to adapt the parable for contemporary use in teaching and preaching. Each parable concludes with a short bibliography, although these have not been updated since the 2008 edition of the book.

In his new chapter for the second edition of the book Snodgrass observes that in the ten years since Stories with Intent was first published, more than twenty-five books on parables have been published. This does not include journal articles, but the number seems small to me, especially in comparison to other more burning issues in New Testament studies over the same time. Compare this trickle of parables research to the avalanche of books written in the New Perspective on Paul. Perhaps the publication of this massive commentary on all the parables discouraged some scholars from contributing their own monograph on the parables.

Snodgrass divides recent parables research into several categories and offers a short summary of their contribution to the study of parables. He begins with a short comment on his non-use of the Gospel of Thomas in Stories with Intent. This was a critique of the first edition in the original round of book reviews. For some scholars, GThomas is an early witness to the Jesus tradition and is useful for interpreting the parables. Snodgrass agrees with Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre that the Gospel of Thomas is dependent on the Synoptic Gospels and dates to the second century. In a footnote he dismisses April DeConnick’s suggestion that Thomas is a “rolling composition” with a kernel of early Jesus tradition as “speculative and unconvincing” (note 2, 807). Although Snodgrass includes Gospel of Thomas in this parallel texts on the body of the commentary, he is clear that Thomas will not provide “an early window into Jesus’s parables” (566).

There are only a handful of new books on Old Testament and Rabbinic parables, and Snodgrass includes a few Bible Study type books as well as a few monographs on specific parables. In his section on New Testament parables he includes David Gowler’s book on the reception of the parables in Christian art and other literature. He groups several studies under the heading “Social Science” approaches. In his summary, Snodgrass indicates these studies see the parables as political and economic stories rather than theology. They assume anyone who is rich in a parable is a negative character. Snodgrass is not convinced politics was Jesus’s intent. Although the ethical concerns are important, Snodgrass sees these approaches as open to criticism. If Jesus was were entirely political in orientation, how did the early church get them so wrong when they collected them as theological statements? Commenting on Stephen Wright’s Jesus the Storyteller, Snodgrass concludes “If Wright is correct, why were these stories remembered at all?” (588)

Conclusion. Stories with Intent is certainly the “first off the shelf” book on parables. Some will object to his rejection of parallels in Thomas or his rejection of most of the faddish approaches once popular in parables research. Nor is there much here on reception history of the parables, partly because Snodgrass soundly rejects allegorical interpretations of the parables and most of church history allegorized them extensively. Snodgrass consistently provides sufficient background material to read the parables in the context of Jesus’s ministry, but also to adapt the parable to the contemporary situation.

If you have the first edition of this book, it may not be necessary to replace it with this second edition. However, if you are going to use one book on the parables, Stories with Intent remains the best, most comprehensive book on the parables of Jesus.

 

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

Book Review: David B. Gowler, The Parables after Jesus

Gowler, David B. The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2017. 320 pp.; Pb.; $29.99. Link to Logos Bible Software  (This book is no longer listed on Baker Academic’s website)

David Gowler’s earlier book on the parables, What Are They Saying about the Parables? (Paulist Press, 2000) was a handy guide to the various approaches to the parables in scholarship. This new volume from Baker Academic extends that project by studying how scholars, pastors, preachers, philosophers and artists have understood Jesus’s parables. This book is a reception history, although it ranges broadly in both chronology and disciplines.

Gowler includes chapters covering examples from Antiquity (to ca. 550 CE); Middle Ages (ca. 550-1500 CE); Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries; Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Since he includes so many examples in each chronological period, each sub-section is necessarily brief. This may frustrate some (there is obviously more to be said about prolific writers Augustine or Luther), but it is the nature of the book Gowler has written. On the other hand, by limiting his comments only a few thousand words, readers may use this book as a kind of devotional reader. The brevity allows a reader to profitably spend a few moments reading a section without sacrificing the overall themes of the book.

Some of the selections are the most important and well known authors, but some selections are more obscure. For example, in the section on Antiquity (to ca. 550 CE), Gowler includes several of the earliest and most important Christian writers (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, John Chrysostom, Augustine), but also the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, two obscure writers (Macrina the Younger and Ephrem the Syrian), but also examples in Early Christian Art, Oil Lamp and Roman Catacombs. He also includes the Dura-Europos House Church and Illuminations from the Rossano Gospels and several Byzantine Mosaics and a song from Romanos the Melodist.

This diversity is seen in Gowler’s selections for his chapter on the Middle Ages. Gregory the Great, Hildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas are well-known to most students of church history, but the Sunni writer Sahih al-Bukhari (ca. 870) is far from a household name in contemporary evangelicalism. It may be a surprise for some readers to learn some of Jesus’s parable were discussed in Islamic literature, but as Gowler observes, this illustrates the trajectories gospel traditions could follow. The next writer Gowler includes in this chapter is positively obscure, Wazo the bishop of Liège (985-1048). He is primarily known from a biography written by Anselm. This chapter also includes several panels from the Golden Gospels of Echternach (Codex Aureus), an illuminated gospel produced between1030–1050. The book reproduces several pages illustrating parables in grey-scale. It is well worth the effort to find these images available on the internet. Gowler includes several pieces of art (Albrecht Dürer) and architecture (Chartres Cathedral) in this section, although he only provides a link for the images from Chartres.

Golden Gospels of Echternach

For the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, he includes the reformers Martin Luther John Calvin, but also playwright William Shakespeare, poet George Herbert and the remarkably evocative art of Rembrandt and Domenico Fetti (1859-1623).  One of the more obscure examples in this section is John Maldonatus (1534-1583), an example from the counter-Reformation who likens the “stony place” in the Parable of the Sower to the heretics Luther and Calvin.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries are even more diverse, ranging from William Blake’s art to Søren Kierkegaard, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the hymn writing of Fanny Crosby. The inclusion of abolitionist Frederick Douglass is a pleasant surprise. Douglass used the parable of the Great Feast in Luke 14:16-24 as part of his argument against slavery and the plight of the black slaves as similar to Lazarus in one speech, as a symbol for women’s emancipation in another. A rare biblical scholar in this period is Adolf Jülicher, a constantly referenced work on parables but rarely read.

For the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, Gowler includes such diverse voices as Thomas Hart Benton, Flannery O’Connor, and Martin Luther King Jr. along with more pop-culture examples such as writer Octavia Butler and the play Godspell. He has a section on Latin American Receptions, a Jewish writer (David Flusser) and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

In his concluding comments, Gowler asks, “What Do Parables Want?” Since the parables themselves are literary works of art, they function like any other type of art. Jesus was often ambiguous when he told a parable, and this ambiguity generates the variety of interpretations evidenced in this volume. When Jesus spoke a parable, he demanded a response, as in Luke 10:36-38: “go thou and do likewise.”

Although Gowler includes many examples of the reception of Jesus’s parables over the last two millennia, there is far more to be said. For example, he has barely scratched the surface of in the modern period with respect to art and literature. A catalog of scholarly approaches to the parables could generate another (much longer) book. Gowler maintains a blog, A Chorus of Voices: The Reception History of the Parables, where he has additional examples. Earlier posts on this blog are the seed-bed for this book and occasionally there are links to art and architecture examples. The book also includes an appendix briefly describes each of the parables covered in the book, although Gowler gives biblical references throughout.

Conclusion. This book is a joy to read, a book I would recommend one reads the book slowly. In many cases the examples are obscure and it will reward the reader to look up a few names in an encyclopedia or dictionary in order to place the section in a proper historical context. Gowler demonstrates an amazing range of scholarship, equally at home in patristics as in the Reformation, in both medieval and contemporary art. By including such a wide range of voices readers will be challenged by the diversity of responses to the parables of Jesus.

NB: Thanks to Baker for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

A Method for Interpreting the Parables

After looking at a few example methods in the last few posts, I want to suggest four points that need to be part of a method for reading parables properly.

First, Parables are “extended metaphors” in which an abstract concept is made more clear through the telling of a story. A proper understanding of metaphor should not lead either to wild allegorizing nor a complete rejection of allegory as a way to convey truth. Elements of the parable may have a so-called “allegorical” meaning, but only insofar as the original audience could have understood. For example, that a king or master in a parable is intended to “stand for” God is a common enough stock feature in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic parallels to accept this as the original intent of the parable. In fact, the imagery is so pervasive, it is hard to believe that anyone hearing the parables for the first time could have missed “king = God” as a metaphorical element. In order to develop this point, one would need to survey the rabbinic literature in order to develop a feel for these stock images. This would require a study to identify which elements of a given parable are likely to be “current metaphors” which would have had rhetorical impact on the original listeners.

Matt 18_23Second, Parables were given in a specific context in the ministry of Jesus which can be recovered with some certainty.  When a historical context is know it should be used to illuminate the parable. For example, the parable of the Two Debtors is found is a specific context in Luke 7:36-28 which is essential to the meaning of the brief parable. The “specific context” of a parable, however, may be generically stated and still be helpful for interpreting the parable. It is likely that the parables of the kingdom in Mark 4 / Matthew 13 were placed together via a tradition picked up by the authors of the gospels. But within the context of the overall ministry of Jesus, these parables were all spoken in Galilee, after some level of conflict with the Pharisees, and prior to the confession of Peter. Likewise, several parables of judgment are associated with Jesus’ teaching in the temple in his final week. This general Sitz im Leben Jesu seems give the parable enough context for proper interpretation. Parables therefore address a situation within the life and ministry of Jesus.

Third, Jesus taught in parables in order to communicate something to his original audience. While the single-point method of Jülicher avoids wild allegorizing, interpreters who attempt to create a single-point tend to boil the parable down to the most generic and bland message possible. Most of these “lessons” could be described as variations on the golden rule. For example, the Good Samaritan does teach us to love our neighbors, but this is something a Jewish audience would have already believed and practiced. However, if we really try to interpret the parable in the context of Jesus ministry the parable takes on a somewhat more radical dimension which has application to his present ministry at that moment in time. Interpreting the parable within the ministry of Jesus will aid our understanding of the point Jesus was making in the first place.

Fourth, since the stories were meant to communicate something to the original audience, we ought to look for the primary application of the parable to the ministry of Jesus.  The best example of this is again the parable of The Two Debtors is found is a specific context in Luke 7:36-28. Within Jesus current ministry people are receiving forgiveness and responding in radical ways. The Parable of the Lost Sheep/Coin/Son refer to the same theme of forgiveness in the ministry of Jesus at that very moment. The parable of the Sower is a case where the meaning of the parable is better rooted in the events of Jesus’ ministry. The gist of the story is that a farmer went out to sow seed and some of this seed fell on unprepared soil while other seed fell on prepared soil. In the literary context of Mark and Matthew, the parable is a commentary on the first movement of Jesus’ ministry. He has come preaching the Kingdom of God. Some have accepted this message and followed Jesus while others have rejected the preaching for a variety of reasons. Each of the parables of the kingdom can be read as applying to what was happening in the Jesus-movement at the end of Jesus’ Galilean ministry.

Several “parables of judgment” occur in Jesus’ last teaching in the temple and are rather pointed condemnations of the existing power structure in Jerusalem and can again be interpreted as referring to Jesus’ ministry up to that moment in history. There is no need to think that the Parable of the Vineyard has been created by Christians after the resurrection, Jesus is describing what has already happened throughout his ministry. The parable of the Wedding Banquet can also be read as describing Jesus’ rejection by those who thought they were invited to the messianic feast and their replacement by those who had no chance of being invited.