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Craig Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables ( affiliate disclosure; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992).

Interpreting the Parables begins by summarizing significant findings and methodological issues in recent parable research so that a wide audience can benefit from this historical foundation for Blomberg’s work (13).

In reviewing this previous scholarship, Blomberg seeks to interact critically with it and, at some points, propose specific alternatives (14). In Blomberg’s opinion, all Jesus parables are allegorical on some level.

[caption id=“attachment_482” align=“alignleft” width=“63” caption=“Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant’s Eyes”] [/caption]Kenneth Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, (combined ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983).

Bailey initially published Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes separately. Yet, they have begun circulating in combined editions like the one shown here, and the works are, in fact, quite amiable partners, since Through Peasant Eyes is, in significant respects, a continuation of Poet and Peasant. Both these works are thought-provoking and fascinating pieces of scholarship, particularly with respect to Bailey’s unique perspectives on Jesus’ parables and the approach he uses to arrive at these understandings. Particularly, Bailey’s practice of interviewing Middle Easterners for their perspectives on the parables highlights some nuances that may easily become muted in purely Western treatments. Because modern, Middle Eastern culture is arguably closer to the culture of first-century, Jewish Palestine than is modern Western culture, Middle Eastern readers begin with a natural advantage over their Western counterparts in interpreting the parables. While some changes in Middle Eastern culture during the last two millennia (most notably, the Muslim conquest) may have introduced significant paradigm shifts into the Middle Eastern worldview, consulting people (whether directly or through Bailey’s work) who live in cultures of seeds and sowers, neighbors and midnight visitors will surely provide valuable grist for the interpretive mills of those who come from other cultural backgrounds.

Bailey’s works, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, explicitly attempt to approach Jesus’ parables from the perspective of an Oriental worldview.

Joachim Jeremias’s “Rediscovering the Parables” is a modern classic in parables research for reasons that can be clearly seen after even casual perusal.

[caption id=“attachment_442” align=“alignright” width=“95” caption=“Joachim Jeremias”] [/caption] Joachim Jeremias’ work, Rediscovering the Parables, attempts “to go back to the oldest form of the parables attainable and try to recover what Jesus himself meant by them” ( 7). Jeremias proceeds toward this goal by paying special attention to the Palestinian setting of the parables ( 7) and by analyzing the parables in terms of ten different categories of modifications that he thinks might be expected to appear in the course of their transmission ( 16–88)—namely,

A corollary problem to the tension between the old and the new was the tension between the absolute and the relative. No one would have dared relativize the words of the Highest, but some heretical sects thought parts of scripture (notably the Old Testament) were products of a lesser god. This position allowed them safely to relativize portions of scripture. Although the rabbis had relativized scripture, to some extent, in halakah, they had limited the operational extent of that halakah by the oral law. In competition with these other positions, the orthodox, Christian position received slightly different articulations based on which factors pressed heaviest on a given author’s context. For example, the Epistle of Barnabas applied whatever method necessary to arrive at a distinctively Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. In contrast to the general, orthodox emphasis on the use of the Old Testament, Ignatius used the New Testament more frequently than he used the Old Testament. Where he did use the Old Testament, however, he took Jesus as the starting point for his interpretation of the Old Testament.

The second century saw several, very live issues about hermeneutical method, such as the necessity to actualize scripture (i.e., to interpret scripture in a manner consistent with its supreme importance), the necessity to actualize according to rules (e.g., the rule of faith), and the reality that the actualizations are largely determined by community contexts. Therefore, within this context, what shape did the early Christian community’s hermeneutics take? Ireneas fully affirmed scripture’s divinity (as did the rest of the orthodox Christian tradition) and, because of its divinity, its perfection. In the ancient world, however, one assumption and test of divine literature was that it could be allegorized. Hence, when Celsus argued that the Old Testament was not divine because it could not be allegorized, Origen responded by seeking to defend the divinity of the Old Testament by proving that it would yield allegorical meanings [Origen, Against Celsus 1.20 ( ANF 4:404)]. Similarly, in polemicizing with pagans, Athenagoras applied the Old Testament directly to his own situation. Moreover, even some heretical, Gnostic groups (e.g., the Valentinians) had a hermeneutic that allowed for the Old Testament’s divine origin, but Marcion and his followers completely rejected idea that the Old Testament originated with the father of Jesus Christ. Interestingly, however, contrary to the willingness of orthodox Christians to allegorize the Old Testament, Marcion generally argued for a literal approach to interpretation.

Last in the series of challenges for boundary definition of the early Christian community is the work that orthodox Christianity had to perform to define itself in relation to its various, heretical offshoots. Particularly, orthodox Christians faced a significant struggle with heretical groups over the problem of the old and the new, which includes, but is not limited to, the problem of the relationships between the Old and New Testaments. This issue grew especially large in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and it encompassed problems of sociology (the relationship between Israel and the church), Christology (Jesus’ messiahship), theology (Jesus’ divinity), and eschatology (understanding prophesies of Israel’s scripture in light of Jesus). Moreover, the church had to sort through tensions along canonical-hermeneutical lines by defining how the Old Testament constituted specifically Christian scripture and how Jesus should affect one’s interpretation of it.

The early church also had to struggle to define itself in relation to Paganism. The church had to decide what degree of cultural syncretism was acceptable and how much its members had to form their own subculture. One example of this dimension of definition is the staunch, orthodox Christian refusal to participate in the Caesar cult, for which reason Polycarp was burned ( Mart. Poly. 9:2). Moreover, Christian monotheism (albeit in Trinitarian form), in a pantheistic society, opened Christians to the charge of atheism (e.g., Pliny of Flavia Domitilla and her husband Flavius Clemens; see Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 25‒30). Thus, the central defining point for the church vis-à-vis Paganism, as in relation to Judaism, was Jesus, but Jesus in his identity as the κύριος ( lord) who ruled over all, including Caesar (cf. Priene inscription).

Somewhat similar to the question of canonical development is the question of the boundaries of the Christian community. The orthodox early church had to work to define these boundaries over against Judaism, paganism, and heretical, “Christian” sects. Scholars have sometimes seen the struggle of Christianity to define itself in relation to Judaism as beginning in the mid-second century, but this effort had really already begun within the first century (cf. Acts 15; Galatians). It was crucial for the church to define itself correctly in relation to Judaism because, at the beginning, Christians did not want to say that they were a new religion. Instead, they preferred to view themselves and to be viewed by others (not least the Romans, who afforded the Jews special religious privileges) as the continuation of Judaism, which Israel’s God had planned. Moreover, Christians wanted to claim Jewish scripture as their own and borrow some of Judaism’s interpretive methods. Even the Christological method of interpretation, which the church developed, might be regarded as merely a Jesus-oriented application of other methods, which the Jews had already applied to their scriptures. Orthodox Christianity did not adopt all Jewish interpretive methods, but more than which methods the early church did or did not adopt, the central defining point for the church in relation to Judaism was really the church’s commitment Jesus’ messianic status. Therefore, Christian interpretations of scripture differed with Jewish ones at certain key points because of how the church’s a priori acceptance of Jesus as messiah impacted its hermeneutic.

Texts are artifacts insofar as they are products of constructive processes and are ontologically distinct from their authors ( Barton 159). Thus, respecting how readers encounter texts, Derrida correctly says that “there is nothing outside the text” ( Caputo 80; cf. Barton 220). That is, readers only directly encounter the text, not its “meaning,” the author’s “intention,” or anything else about the text; readers must construe these other things from the text. Moreover, a text’s context is not even “attached” to the text. The text may describe its context, but as such, this description is text, not context. Consequently, texts must be placed in contexts, and this placement requires textual data to be construed.