Appendix:
The Allegorical Nature of the Parables
The part of this book that will be most objectionable to biblical scholars is my
discussion of the parables as allegories. It seems advisable, therefore, to explore
the matter in more detail in this appendix.
The approach of biblical scholars is based from start to finish on their aversion
(which I share) to the arbitrary allegorizing of the Bible that the medieval Fathers
championed and that has been around ever since. For some people, moreover,
the very concept of allegory has connotations of being simplistic or superficial (a
bias that I do not share). Convinced that allegory is a bad thing, biblical scholars
proceed to multiply the reasons why the parables cannot be considered alle-
gorical. For the most part, these reasons betray an understanding of allegory that
simply does not hold up when applied to literature in general.
I have outlined my own proposed solution in my chapter on the parables. I be-
lieve that it will only create confusion if we deny the name allegory to stories that
fit the definition of allegory as applied elsewhere in literature. It is far preferable to
treat the parables as allegorical texts and then to insist on accurate as opposed to
arbitrary interpretation of the details. Allegorizing a biblical text is illegitimate, but
interpreting an allegorical text is not.
I propose that we take a critical look at the reasons that are commonly offered
for denying that the parables are allegorical. The list of such arguments includes
the following.
The parables are not allegorical because in an allegory every detail has a corre-
sponding “other” meaning. This is untrue of allegory in literature generally, where
the same range exists as we find in the parables, as Northrop Frye suggests with
his allegorical continuum. On the opening page of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, for
example, we attach allegorical meaning to such details as Christian, the book in
his hand, and the burden on his back, but not to his house, wife, and children.
When Aslan is killed near the end of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe, we ascribe symbolic meaning to Aslan’s death and resurrection, but not
to such narrative details as the stone table, the shaving of Aslan, and the mice
who gnaw through the ropes binding Aslan. It is a very rare exception, not the rule,
to find allegories in which every detail has a corresponding meaning.
The parables are not allegories because “the details are not intended to have inde-
pendent significance” (Charles Dodd). Modern scholarship has championed the
view that we should ignore the individual details in the parables and stand back at
such a distance from them that only one general point emerges. But this is some-
thing we cannot do even if we try because with most of the parables at least some
of the details automatically remind us of a corresponding reality. Jesus himself
provided the model for such interpretation. When Jesus interpreted the parable of
the sower for his disciples (Matt. 13:18–23), he gave a corresponding meaning to
every major detail in the story except the sower. When Jesus explained the parable
of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:36–43), he gave eight of the narrative details a
meaning.
Even Milton Terry, who denies that the parables are allegorical, admits that
“most of the details in a parable have a meaning, and those which have no special
significance in the interpretation serve, nevertheless, to enhance the force and
beauty of the rest” (Biblical Hermeneutics [1883; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Zon-
dervan, 1964], 286). In my chapter on the parables I cited the conclusions of M.
D. Goulder, who found that 82 percent of the details in the parables in Matthew’s
Gospel have a corresponding meaning, 75 percent in Mark, and 60 percent in
Luke. Of course some parables (such as the parable of the good Samaritan) have
no allegorical details. What we need, therefore, is a sliding scale that allows us to
be flexible in describing the unique contours of each parable; Frye’s allegorical
continuum provides exactly this flexibility.
“The point of the parable is not in the points of reference as it would be in a true
allegory” (Fee/Stuart). The mere identification of correspondences is never syn-
onymous with the main theme or purpose of an allegory. Once we have identified
Bunyan’s City of Destruction as the lost state and the Slough of Despond as de-
spair over one’s sin, we must still translate those details into a statement of lit-
erary theme and purpose. If, on the other hand, the quoted statement means that
the allegorical details in a parable are somehow extraneous to the theme of a para-
ble, this, too, is untrue. In the parable of the prodigal son, for example, the whole
point of the parable depends on our identifying the father as God, the prodigal as
a repentant sinner, and the elder brother as the scribes and Pharisees.
“The parable uses words in their literal sense, and its narrative never transgresses
the limits of what might have been actual fact. The allegory is continually using words
in a metaphorical sense, and its narrative, however supposable in itself is manifestly
fictitious” (Terry, p. 302). Here, too, the neat dichotomy between allegory and para-
ble breaks down. The parables, for example, have struck most readers through the
centuries as being “manifestly fictitious,” a quality that Terry reserves for allegory.
Allegory, says Terry, uses words “in a metaphorical sense.” So do the parables; in
fact, recent parable interpretation has stressed their metaphorical qualities. Many
of the details in Jesus’ parables already had metaphoric meanings before Jesus
told them: God as father, judge, and vineyard owner; God’s word as seed that is
planted; divine judgment as a harvest—the list goes on and on.
It is true that the parables are noteworthy for the realism of their surface de-
tails, whereas most allegories have employed the techniques of fantasy part of the
time (though rarely all of the time). But the narrative details of a work like The Pil-
grim’s Progress are often taken straight from Bunyan’s local Bedfordshire. In any
case, allegory need not be fantastic, as Jesus’ allegory of the Good Shepherd (John
10:1—18) illustrates. Besides, the parables of Jesus, for all their realism, are satu-
rated with elements of the preposterous or exaggerated, such as a grain of wheat
that when planted produces a hundred grains, a mustard plant treated as though it
were a gigantic tree, an employer who completely disregards how long his employ-
ees have worked when he pays them, and a housewife who bakes a bushel of
bread dough.
The parables are not allegories because in allegory the surface details of the story
are unimportant in themselves and exist only to point to a truth beyond themselves.
This may be true of transparent or unsophisticated allegory, but not of genuinely
literary allegory. Allegories like Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene or Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress are literary masterpieces that elicit the reader’s full imaginative
response at the realistic or surface level of the narrative. Great literary allegory is
bifocal, engaging a reader’s interest at two levels (literal and allegorical) simulta-
neously. Literary allegory does not give us a simple one-for-one correspondence
because surface details such as Bunyan’s slough, journey, burden, and river are
too connotative and multifaceted to be reduced to a single conceptual parallel.
(For more on this subject, see E. Beatrice Batson’s John Bunyan: Allegory and
Imagination [London: Croom Helm, 1984].)
“A parable is aesthetic in a way that an allegory is not” (Dan Via, Jr.). For many
scholars, this is really the heart of the matter: the parables are just too good to be
allegorical! But literary classification should be descriptive, not honorific. Besides,
modern criticism on such literary masterpieces as The Divine Comedy, The Faerie
Queene, and The Pilgrim’s Progress has long since exploded old myths about the
supposed artistic anemia of literary allegory. (Here, too, Batson’s book is the best
source.)
When we look closely at what biblical scholars say, it is apparent to me that
their comments misconstrue the nature of allegory as a literary form. If we apply
the scholar’s composite definition of allegory to literature as a whole, there is
virtually no piece of literature to which we could apply the title.
The result of denying that the parables are allegorical has been to confuse peo-
ple about how to deal with the parables. We are told that the parables are not alle-
gories, and then we find Jesus allegorizing the parables of the sower and the
wheat and tares. Nor does it inspire confidence in our ability to handle parables to
be told that “the parables are not allegories—even if at times they have what ap-
pear to be allegorical features” (Fee/Stuart).
The most obvious feature of the parables is that they are realistic stories, sim-
ple in construction and didactic (“aiming to teach”) in purpose, that convey reli-
gious truth and in which the details often have a significance beyond their literal
narrative meaning. In any other context we would call such works allegorical. My
proposal is simple and commonsensical: we should begin with what is obvious
(that the parables tend to be allegorical) and then note those things that distin-
guish these particular allegories: their profound realism, their brevity, their ab-
sence of allegorical names for people and places, their persuasive strategy de-
signed to force a response, their ingenious way of subtly undermining ordinary
patterns of thinking, their variability in regard to how many details call for a corre-
sponding meaning, and their artistic excellence.
Of course we need to insist on curbs to the interpretive process in order to
eliminate arbitrary allegorizing of the medieval type. These curbs include the inter-
pretive clues contained in the narrative links before or after a parable as it appears
in the Gospel narratives; the traditional symbolic meanings of a given detail (espe-
cially if those meanings appear within the Bible itself); compatibility with the in-
ferred purpose or main teaching of a parable; and compatibility with biblical/
Christian doctrine. There must be a good reason drawn from the biblical text be-
fore we attach a given meaning to a detail in a parable. In keeping with the oral na-
ture of the parables, a general or obvious meaning is truer to the spirit of a parable
than a specific or obscure meaning. In a parable that teaches about stewardship
(Matt. 25:14-30), for example, the money that is entrusted to the three stewards
should be interpreted in general terms as a person’s abilities, time, and opportu-
nities, not specifically as the Holy Spirit. We must, in short, insist on interpretation
of allegorical details rather than arbitrary allegorizing, but in the meantime we must
not try to deny the obvious symbolic meanings in parables.
The academic world has surrounded the parables with so many intricate rules
for interpreting them that ordinary people have become convinced that they had
best leave the parables to the specialist. It is time to give the parables back to the
group to which Jesus originally told them—ordinary people. Viewing the parables
as allegorical would be a step in the right direction, since simple allegory has usu-
ally struck ordinary people as being accessible.
==
Index of Persons
Aesop, 148
Allott, Miriam, 59n. 17
Alter, Robert, 32, 39-40, 73, 193, 196nn.20, 21
Aristotle, 40n.6, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 57, 83-84, 135
Auerbach, Erich, 39, 180n.3, 194, 196n.21
Bacon, Roger, 9
Bailey, Kenneth Ewing, 140n.2
Batson, E. Beatrice, 201
Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre, 58
Beardslee, William A., 32, 175
Bilezikian, Gilbert G., 85n. 11
Boonstra, Harry, 163
Breech, James, 32
Brown, Raymond E., l47n
Buechner, Frederick, 82n
Bullinger, Ethelbert W., 107
Bunyan,John,199, 200, 201
Cadoux, A. T., 150, 151
Caird,G. B., 107, 148n.13
Cary, Joyce, 68
Coleridge, Samuel T., 125, 169
Collins, John J., 175
Connolly, Terence L., 121n
Cox, Roger L., 85n.11
Crossan, John Dominic, 61n.18, 151n.21
Culler, Jonathan, 25n, 58n.15
Dodd, Charles, 200
Doty, William G., 3ln. 13, 158
Drury, John, 138
Eastman, Arthur M., 92n
Enslin, Morton Scott, 156n.2
Farrar, Austin, 29-30
Fee, Gordon D., 26n, 156n.1, 200, 202
Fischer, James A., 32
Fitzgerald, Robert, 44n
Fitzgerald, Sally, 44n
Fokkelman, J. P., 32
Forster, E. M., 42, 47
Fowler, Robert M., 31n.14, 132n.2
Frost, Robert, 92
Frye, Northrop, 32, 79, 83n, 85, 146, 185, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200
Frye, Roland, 32, 179, 183, 196
Funk, Robert W., l42n, 151n.21
Gardiner, J. H., 174n
Gerleman, Gillis, 107n, 108
Good, Edwin M., 56n, 84n.9, 163
Gottcent, J. H., 31
Goulder, M. D., 148n.14, 193n.12, 200
Grawe, Paul H., 82n
Guelich, Robert A., l33n
Gunkel, Hermann, 199-20
Hagner, Donald A., 134n.5
Hals, Ronald, 61
Henn,T. R., 183, 185n.8
Houghton, Walter, 76n
Huffman, Norman A., 144
Hunter, Archibald M., 148, 150
Jones, Geraint V., 140n.3, l43n, 145, 147, 152
Jones, Howard Mumford, 183n.5, 195n.18
Kaiser, Walter C., Jr., 185n.8
Kehl,D. G., 195n.17, 197
Kermode, Frank, 78n
Kugel, James L., 108
Lewis, C. S., 12, 52, 90n, 106, 111, 116, 120, 169, 180n.2, 199
Licht, Jacob, 73, 196n.20
Lindblom, J., 175
Lodge, David, 67n
Long, Burke O., 85
Louis, Kenneth R. R. Gros, 32, 73, 138
Lowes, John Livingston, 194-95
Luce, Henry R., 33
Luther, Martin, 185
McAfee, Cleỉand B., 194n.15
Melancthon, Philip, 185
Mencken, H. L., 24n
Michie, Donald, 32, 138
Milton, John, 52n.11
Moulton, Richard C., 29, 168
Muilenburg, James, 105n, 195n.20
Murry, J. Middleton, 58n.14
Niebuhr, H. Richard, 21n
O’Connor, Flannery, 43-44, 58-59, 77n
Perrin, Norman, 34, 125
Peterson, Norman R., 32
Prince, Gerald, 52n.10
Rauber, D. F., 73
Resseguie, James L., 136n.7
Rhoads, David, 32, 138
Richardson, Donald W., 173n
Richmond, Hugh M., 79n.5
Ricoeur, Paul, 94
Index of Subjects
Allegory in biblical parables, 145-48, 199-203
Allusion, 97
Apocalypse as a literary form, 165-75
Anthropomorphism, 102-3
Apostrophe as poetic figure of speech, 98
Archetypes, 143, 187-92
Artistry in.the Bible, 9, 23-24
Biblical scholarship, 11, 30-31
Character portrayal: in parables, 142–43; in stories, 37-40, 43-44, 53–54, 60, 63-64,
71-72
Choice in stories, 51-52
Comedy as a narrative form, 81-83
Dialogue in the Bible, 20, 196
Discourses of Jesus, 101, 137, 160, 162
Dramatic irony, 55-56
Encomium, 119
Epic, 78-81
Epistle, 20, 27-28, 155-58
Foils, 54-55, 69-70, 141
Genres in the Bible, 25-26
Gospel, 131-38
Grammatico-historical criticism, 9, 12-13
Hermeneutics. See Interpretation
Hero: in heroic narrative, 75–78; in tragedy, 83-84
Hyperbole, 25, 99-100
Interpretation: of characters in stories, 39-40; of narrative, 57-68; need for, 22-23;
of parables, 148-52; of poetry, 94-95, 101-2; of visionary literature, 171-74
Lament psalms, 114-15
Language, used distinctively in literature, 26-28
Literature, definition of, 12-31
Love poetry, 118-19
Lyric poetry, 109-14
Metaphor, 23, 28, 91-97
Metonymy, 101
Narrative: the Bible as a whole, 177—79; as a biblical form, 33-73; Gospels as,
132-37; parables as, 139-52; types of, 53-54, 75-86
Parable, 139-53, 199-203
