Gerhard Lohfink - The Forty Parables of Jesus

The parables not only draw us into the center of Jesus proclamation; at the same time they point to the person of the proclaimer, the mystery of Jesus himself.

Eberhard Jngel

Jesus parables were never museum pieces. From the very beginning they were retold, reflected on, explained, relocated into new situationsand in the process they survived as something eternally fresh and blooming. Above all, they were inserted into the text of the gospels, where they were even given their own framework in many cases; the frames were themselves a kind of interpretation. In the process it could well happen that the point of a parable shifted.

Obviously it is legitimate to inquire about the oldest form and original meaning of Jesus parables, but not with the idea that the overlayer of church tradition must be removed to get access to the solid original rock. I reject that image. Church tradition is not a field of boulders, and most certainly not a dump. Without the churchs tradition as a faithful and sculpted heritage Jesus parables would no longer exist. It is only because they lived on in the churchs preaching that they have survived and are able to develop their power ever anew.

I prefer a different picture: Jesus parables are like diamonds that were given a setting even in their earliest transmission and then especially in the gospels. Settings for precious stones are not only valuable in themselves; they are necessary. They present the stone, hold it fast, preserve and protect it. In the case of Jesus parables, they have to be included in the interpretation. The church needs both a constant attention to its tradition and historical criticism that inquires about its origins.

In fact, we need to speak in much more radical terms: we receive the true image of Jesus only through the churchs proclamation and never apart from it. Peter Stuhlmacher rightly wrote: Historical criticism is a valuable tool, but in the exegesis of biblical books it must be embedded in the framework of the churchs tradition.

That all needed to be said to avoid a wrong understanding of what follows. Now that it has been said I can speak of what this book is about. It is about the origins. It is about the oldest form of Jesus parables and what they originally said. That is to say, it is about one of the most important questions in the interpretation of the gospels and about problems that have sustained research on Jesus for a long time. In this book I will refer gratefully to the work of many New Testament scholars on Jesus parables.

Still, I do not intend to offer a review of scholarship, nor am I primarily interested in purely scholarly debate. All that I want to do is to unlock these bold and often surprising texts for my readers. In doing so I have occasionally referred to parable interpretations I have published previously in various places, but I have questioned those interpretations again, thought about them, and often reformulated them.

The books title speaks of forty parables. Please, dont anyone put that number on the scales! For example, is the great speech about the Last Judgment in Matthew 25:31-46 anything like a parable? Does the opening image of a separation of sheep and goats permit us to call it that? At any rate the whole composition is by no means a parable.

The number forty also resulted from my having set aside Jesus extremely terse and concise similes. It is true that no clear boundary can be drawn between a parable and those similes, but in normal parlance they are not regarded as parables. Under those presuppositions we arrive at about forty parablesan astonishingly large number for an ancient author!

It is also striking that all these parables are admirable examples of the storytellers art. They speak of the coming of the reign of Godthe central theme of Jesus preachingin a way that only parables can. Finally, they lead us to Jesus. Nearly every parable discloses to usdiscreetly and in hidden fashionthe mystery of Jesus himself.