Chapter Eight
Parables
The Parables as Stories
MY DISCUSSION OF THE PARABLES OF JESUS will focus on the ones that tell a story.
Some of Jesus’ brief parables are not stories but similes or analogies. To under-
stand them we need to apply what I said about metaphor and simile in the chapter
on poetry. But the longer parables are stories composed of setting, characters
about whose destinies we care, and plots that move through conflict to resolution.
Recent biblical scholarship has made so much of the parallels between parable
and metaphor that we are in danger of missing the story element in the parables.
This I take to be a great error. Furthermore, the parables, intended to be simple
(though profound at the same time), have been buried under such a weight of
scholarly controversy and esoteric terminology that they have ceased to commu-
nicate with power.
Masterpieces of Popular Storytelling
There is no doubt that the parables of Jesus lend themselves to almost indefinite
reflection and application, but why do they capture the listener’s attention in the
first place? They are folk literature, originally oral. Indeed, they are the very touch-
stone of popular storytelling through the ages.
Realism and Vividness
Virtually the first thing we notice about the parables is their everyday realism and
concrete vividness. “It is ‘things’ that make stories go well,” writes P. C. Sands of
the parables; here “everything. . .is concrete and vigorous. Everything is described
in solid terms.”¹ The parables take us right into the familiar world of planting and
harvesting, traveling through the countryside, baking bread, tending sheep, or re-
sponding to an invitation. The parables thus obey the literary principle of verisim-
ilitude (“lifelikeness”), and a perusal of commentaries always uncovers new evi-
dence of how thoroughly rooted in real life the parables are.² There is no fantasy
in the parables of Jesus—no talking animals or imaginary monsters, only people
such as we meet during the course of a day. The parables reveal “an amazing
power of observation.”³
The Parables as “Secular” Stories
This minute realism is an important part of the meaning of Jesus’ parables. On the
surface, these stories are totally “secular.” There are few overtly religious activities
in the parables. If we approached them without their surrounding context and pre-
tended that they were anonymous, we could not guess that they were intended for
a religious purpose. An important by-product of this realism is that it undermines
the “two-world” thinking in which the spiritual and earthly spheres are rigidly di-
vided. We are given to understand that it is in everyday experience that spiritual
decisions are made and that God’s grace does its work.
Simplicity of Action
Combined with the delightful fidelity to actual life is the extreme simplicity of ac-
tion. We can call this the principle of single action. The parables of Jesus have
simple plots that focus on one main event: sowing and harvesting a crop, taking a
journey and returning, hiring workers to labor in the vineyard, inviting guests to a
banquet.
Simple Plot Conflicts
These simple situations gain vigor from equally uncomplicated plot conflicts. The
seeds that the sower plants struggle against the destructiveness of their natural
environment. The conflict between the poisonous tares and the wheat has as its
background a feud between the farmer and his neighbor. The elder and younger
brothers contend for their father’s favor. As we read through the parables we listen
to character clashes and watch robbers beat up lone travelers. There is enough
plot conflict to seize an audience’s attention, but probably none of the parables
can be said to have a unifying plot conflict that persists all the way through the
story.
Suspense
The rule of suspense operates effectively in the parables. The opening situation is
invariably one that arouses curiosity about its outcome. The act of sowing is a risk
about whose outcome we wonder. When the younger son leaves his parental
home with his share of the inheritance in his pocket, we wonder how the action
will turn out. When people who work different numbers of hours get equal pay-
ment, we are curious about how the workers will respond. Often the parables turn
upon a test that arouses our curiosity (e.g., the entrusted wealth in the parable of
the talents or the wounded man on the highway in the parable of the good Samar-
itan).
Heightened Foils or Contrasts
Like other popular storytellers, Jesus used obvious and heightened foils (con-
trasts) in his parables. The rich man and Lazarus, the Pharisee and publican, the
generous employer and the selfish workers, the wise and foolish virgins are obvi-
ous examples. Sometimes a pair of characters is contrasted to a single character,
as with the two faithful stewards and the lone slothful servant, or the two passers-
by and the compassionate Samaritan.
The Functions of Contrasts
Why the heightened contrasts? Because folk stories deal with simple contrasts,
because the very brevity of the parable precludes subtle shades of good and evil,
and because the oral nature of the genre requires simple, heightened patterns. But
the strategy also fits well with the purpose of Jesus to elicit a response from his
hearers. Parables are an invitation and even a trap to move a listener or reader to
take sides for or against the characters in a story. By confronting the audience with
an obvious contrast, a parable by Jesus “tends to polarize the hearers. . . .The
lines along which polarization takes place must be signaled by an unambiguous
code in the narrative; like highway markers along the interstate, they must be leg-
ible at a glance. So we have pairs like Levite, priest/ Samaritan, laborers hired
fìrst/last, invited/uninvited, etc.”⁴
Repetition
The parables make conspicuous use of the principle of repetition, which produces
unity and emphasis. The owner of the vineyard goes out to the marketplace five
times to hire laborers. We twice hear the prodigal’s speech, “Father, I have sinned
against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son,” and
the father twice explains that the prodigal “was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and
is found.”
Threefold Repetition
Especially noteworthy is the folktale pattern of threefold repetition, often com-
bined with the rule of end stress (the crucial element comes at the end). Thus we
get three types of soil that yield no harvest and three degrees of good harvest,
three people who refuse the invitation to the banquet, three stewards to whom
wealth is entrusted and three corresponding interviews when the master returns,
and three passersby.
The Rule of End Stress
The rule of end stress is pervasive in the parables, leading some interpreters to
claim that the last element in a parable is the most important. In the parable of the
sower, the fertile soil with its abundant harvest comes last. The lesson of the para-
ble of the workers in the vineyard turns upon those hired last. Similarly, it is the
last steward who is judged harshly, the last traveler who is generous, and the last
invited group who enjoy the banquet.
Universal Character Types
The characters in the parables are anonymous. Only one of them (Lazarus) is
named. The result is that they become universal character types. Paradoxically,
these nameless characters assume a quality of vivid familiarity, like the characters
of Chaucer and Dickens. Someone has aptly commented that “nowhere else in the
world’s literature has such immortality been conferred on anonymity"⁵
Archetypes
The surface appeal of these stories also depends on the presence of powerful
archetypes. Archetypes are recurrent images and motifs that keep appearing in
literature and life and that touch us powerfully, both consciously and uncon-
sciously. The parables are filled with archetypal situations. Jesus told parables
about master and servant (employer and employee), for example, that tap our am-
bivalent feelings toward employers—feelings of fear, dependence, security, inse-
curity, gratitude, and resentment over injustice.
Archetypes Touch Us Where We Live
So also with the motif of lost and found that figures in several parables. All that
we experienced the last time we misplaced something of crucial importance enters
our experience of these parables—the panic that accompanied the discovery that
we had lost it, the self-laceration and sense of worthlessness that accompanied
our search for it, the relief and regained self-esteem that accompanied finding it.
The Psychological Dimension of Archetypes
Or consider the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal is an archetypal char-
acter that represents an impulse that lies within each of us. It is the impulse away
from the domestic and secure and morally governed toward the distant, the
adventurous, the rebellious, the indulgence of forbidden appetites (including the
sexual), the abandonment to unrestraint. The elder brother in the same parable
represents something that is equally a part of our psychic and moral make-up: the
voice of duty, restraint, self-control, self-righteousness. It is no accident that the
prodigal is the younger son (a figure of youth with its thirst for experience and
abandonment to appetite) and the other the elder son (representing a middle-aged
mentality, judgmental and self-righteous). Furthermore, the parable describes a
family situation, replete with sibling rivalry and parent-child relationships.
The Appeal of Archetypes
In sum, there is an abundance of human psychology and archetypal (universal)
human experience in the parables. Even when the theological or moral point of the
parable does not directly hinge on them, these archetypes do help to account for
the powerful grip the parables have on our attention and emotions. As Amos
Wilder has stated,
Human nature has always responded to stories about quests and adventures,
ups and downs, rags to riches, lost and found, reversals and surprises . . . ,
good and bad son or daughter, . . . masters and servants, the wise and the
foolish, rewards and penalties, success and failure.”⁶
Points of Exaggeration or Unrealism in the Parables
I have said that the parables are realistic rather than fantastic or supernatural, but
there is often an element of exaggeration or improbability in them. There are
“cracks” in the realism that tease us into seeing more in them than the surface
story would call for. For all their verisimilitude, the parables have an element of ar-
resting strangeness. We think of such details as a hyperbolic hundredfold yield of
grain (though not all commentators agree that this is an exaggeration), or the
Samaritan’s lavish generosity to an unknown victim, or the Oriental father’s run-
ning to his son and then bestowing such unrestrained luxury on him.⁷
The Artistic Excellence of the Parables
My discussion thus far has focused on how the parables are told and has been an
implied plea to relish the parables as masterpieces of popular or folk storytelling.
The parables represent the beauty of simplicity, and they can be enjoyed first of all
as examples of narrative art. They can be analyzed for their pleasing narrative
qualities of lifelike and vivid realism, for their skill in arousing the narrative curios-
ity to discover what happened next and how it all turned out in the end, for their
skillful conciseness in which every detail counts, for the universal character types
that are part of our own life, for the archetypal patterns, for the element of strange-
ness that teases us (as riddles do) to discover what the story is “getting at,” and
for “a structure and balance of narrative form which can scarcely be accidental.”⁸
The Parables Are More Than Stories
But of course we do not read the parables only as stories. There are several rea-
sons why we cannot rest content with the surface level of the narrative. The stories
are too simple to satisfy us at a purely narrative level. The “cracks” in the realism
hint at a meaning beyond the literal. Some of the details already had symbolic
meanings in Jewish analogues (e.g., sowing = teaching, seed = word, the owner of
the vineyard = God). Most conclusively of all, we have Jesus’ own recorded inter-
pretations of the parables of the sower (Matt. 13:18-23) and the wheat and the tares
(Matt. 13:36-43), which show that the parables have a meaning beyond the narra-
tive level. The parable is a story that means what it says and something besides,
and in the parables of Jesus that something besides is the more important of the
two.
Are the Parables Allegorical?
How, then, can we go about finding the intended meanings in a parable? My an-
swer is much less unfashionable now than it would have been a decade or two
ago: by treating the parables as allegories. I am not, to be sure, calling for a return
to the arbitrary allegorizing of the Middle Ages. I have in mind the kind of alle-
gorical interpretation that Jesus himself gave to the parables of the sower and the
wheat and tares, namely, translating at least some of the details of the story into a
corresponding other meaning and then deducing themes and applications on the
basis of those symbols.
I am well aware that many biblical scholars have deeply ingrained objections to
calling the parables allegorical. I would hope that all of my readers would give an
openminded hearing to what I say in the next several pages and in the appendix.
Literary scholars do not share the aversion of biblical scholars to allegory. They
acknowledge only one literary classification (allegory) for stories in which a sub-
stantial number of details have a corresponding “other” meaning.
A literary critic, therefore, is at once inclined to ask questions like these: Why
should we deny to the parables the literary classification that we apply to the same
type of literature when we encounter it outside of the Bible? What substitute lit-
erary term can possibly be invoked for stories in which numerous details stand for
a corresponding person, thing, or quality? Why would we create a confusing lit-
erary situation by avoiding the term allegory simply because the concept is capable
of abuse?
To think of the parables as being either allegorical or not allegorical is already
to confuse the issue. What we find in the parables is a range of degrees to which
the narrative details are allegorical. The idea of an allegorical continuum proposed
by Northrop Frye is the most useful framework for analyzing what we actually find
in the parables.⁹
According to Frye’s scheme, any work of literature can be placed somewhere
on an allegorical continuum. He describes that continuum thus:
Within the boundaries of literature we find a kind of sliding scale, ranging from
the most explicitly allegorical. . .at one extreme, to the most elusive, anti-
explicit. . .at the other. First we meet the continuous allegories, like The Pil-
grim’s Progress . . . . Next come the poetic structures with a large and insistent
doctrinal interest, in which the internal fictions are exempla, like the epics of
Milton. Then we have, in the exact center, works in which the structure of im-
agery, however suggestive, has an implicit relation only to events and ideas,
and which includes the bulk of Shakespeare. Below this, poetic imagery begins
to recede from example and precept. . . .¹⁰
We can visualize the continuum something like the diagram on the next page. The
great advantage of this model is that it does not force us into a “great divide’’ ap-
proach where a story is either allegorical or not allegorical. Instead, we can gauge
the degree of allegory in a work.
Degrees of Allegory in the Parables
The parables of Jesus range over the left half of the allegorical spectrum. In para-
bles like those of the sower and the talents we translate virtually every detail into a
corresponding meaning. Moving a notch to the right, we have the parable of the
prodigal son in which, for example, the father is God and the elder brother repre-
sents the Pharisees and scribes, but in which we do not allegorize such details as
the prodigal’s money, the harlots, the pigs, or the shoes that the father gives to his
repentant son. In the middle we can place the parable of the good Samaritan,
where the story as a whole embodies the moral meaning.
Decline of the Anti-Allegorical Bias in Biblical Scholarship
But doesn’t an allegorical approach to the parables run counter to what everybody
learns in seminary and Bible courses? This may have been true until recently, but
the anti-allegorical bias is on its way out and has, in fact, been questioned for a
long time. “Certain of the parables cry out for an allegorical interpretation of their
details,” writes a noted biblical scholar.¹¹ “The parabolic narratives are never whol-
ly free from allegory,” writes another, adding that “the difference which should be
emphasized is between a story which in itself is allegorical and the arbitrary al-
legorization of one which is not.”¹² “Parable and allegory. . .are partial synonyms,”
writes a third biblical scholar as he dismantles Jülicher’s influential theory that
none of the parables is allegorical, and he, too, makes a distinction between al-
legorizing (“to impose on a story hidden meanings which the original author nei-
ther intended nor envisaged”) and allegorical interpretation of texts in which the
details were intended to convey a corresponding set of meanings.¹³
Most conclusive of all is the study of a biblical scholar who devised a simple
scheme for determining the allegory content of the parables in the synoptic
Gospels.¹⁴ As he went through the parables, he listed the main details in each
story and then counted how many of them have a corresponding “other” meaning
(e.g., sower = evangelist, seed = word, etc.). His conclusion should settle the
issue of how allegorical Nţhe parables are: the allegory content of the parables m
the Gospel of Matthew is 82 percent, those in Mark 75 percent, and those in Luke
60 percent.¹⁵
Guidelines for Interpreting Parabolic Details
What guidelines do we have for interpreting the details in a parable? One signpost
is the surrounding context in the Gospel narratives. If the narrative lead-in to the
parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:1-2) alerts us that the parable is Jesus’ reply to
the Pharisees’ and scribes’ complaint that Jesus “receives sinners and eats with
them,” then it is plausible to see the prodigal as a representative of “sinners,” the
father who forgives him as a symbol of God and Christ, and the unforgiving elder
brother as a picture of the Pharisees and scribes.
Another signpost is details in the parables that had an established Hebraic
(usually Old Testament) meaning: God as father or owner of a vineyard or master,
seed as God’s Word, sowing as teaching, and so forth. Other details rather au-
tomatically call to mind the familiar teachings of Jesus or of New Testament writ-
ers: the banquet or marriage feast is a picture of salvation, the master’s return
after a long journey (Matt. 25:19) suggests Christ’s second coming, the father’s
forgiveness of the prodigal cannot be anything other than God’s forgiveness of
sinners, and the employer’s payment of his workers is a judgment that calls to
mind the final judgment at the end of history.
The One-Point Rule Challenged
Another long-established rule of parable interpretation that is under increasing at-
tack is that parables can have only one main point. This is an extremely arbitrary
rule of interpretation and one that we do not otherwise impose on a work of liter-
ature. It is one of the glories of literature that it can embody a multiplicity of mean-
ings even in so small a unit as a metaphor. How can the metaphor of God as fa-
ther, for example, ever be reduced to a single meaning? The one-point approach of
past biblical scholarship strikes at the very heart of a literary approach. As one lit-
erary critic exclaims, “No wonder there are six or eight one-point interpretations of
the Sower currently put forth, each to the exclusion of the others!”¹⁶
Multiple Themes in Parables
Even when a parable has a single main point, why would we deny legitimate sec-
ondary or related themes? The context of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke
15:11-32) would lead us to look for the main point in the satiric attack on the elder
brother, who stands for the Pharisees and scribes who occasioned the parable. Is
the only main theme that the Pharisees and scribes were wrong for not accepting
repentant people into fellowship? Are there not, rather, a number of rich themes in
this parable? Does it not give us insight into the nature of human life as a choice
for or against God, into the nature of evil and selfishness, into the selfdestructive
consequences of sin, into repentance as the first step to true satisfaction, into the
nature of God as forgiving, into the nature of forgiveness as a genuine personal
reconciliation, and into the joy that accompanies forgiveness? Surely we cannot
ignore all of these themes simply because of an arbitrary rule that a parable can
have only one main point.
Why Some Parables Have More Than One Meaning
Nor is the originally oral nature of the parables an argument against the notion
that they can have multiple meanings. For one thing, biblical truth holds together
as a system. In teaching a specific doctrine such as the certainty of final judgment,
Jesus would naturally touch upon related doctrines that are part of the total pic-
ture, such as stewardship or the second coming or heaven or glorification. Fur-
thermore, it is entirely possible for an audience listening to a story to make contin-
uous connections between details in the story and a corresponding symbolic
meaning, provided the story is not too complex. We should remember also that a
parable was not intended to yield all of its meanings at once. As Archibald Hunter
states:
the Gospel parable is not always sun-clear. . . .The Gospel parable is designed
to make people think. . . .And sometimes. . .it conceals in order to reveal. Seen
thus, the parable is not so much a crutch for limping intellects (as so many
illustrations are) as a spur to spiritual perception.¹⁷
Liabilities of the One-Point Approach
The one-point theory is something that we would do well to discard. As A. T.
Cadoux long ago noted, that approach has produced two unfortunate results:
The judgment for which the parable asks is likely to be sought for in one ele-
ment of it only and is thus unduly simplified; and all other elements of the
parable are regarded as. . .unnecessary ornament. . . .A parable is the work of a
poor artist if the picture or story is a collection of items out of which we have
to pick one and discard the rest.¹⁸
Analogy or Comparison as the Basic Principle
If we agree that the parables are designed to convey meaning, how should we go
about interpreting what the stories mean? The basic principle of a parable is that
of analogy or comparison. Literally the word “parable” means “to throw along-
side.” This means that the literal level of the story has a corresponding meaning,
either continuously or as a whole story. Amos Wilder writes that “there is the pic-
ture-side of the parable and there is the meaning or application.”¹⁹ The corre-
sponding activity that this requires of a reader has been stated succinctly by
Cadoux: “The parable elicits a judgment in one sphere in order to transfer it to
another.”²⁰
The Fourfold Process: 1. Analysis of the Literal Story
Once we have been alerted to the need to make such a transfer of meaning, the ac-
tual analysis of a parable falls rather naturally into a four-phase process. It begins
with looking as closely as possible at the literal details of the story. Here is where
we should apply all that I said about the parables as masterpieces of storytelling.
If, as modern scholarship has taught us, the parables function partly as
metaphors that have as a main thrust to shock our deep-level ways of thinking,
then we need to let the shock at the literal level of the story sink in—shocks such
as a good Samaritan, or outcasts being invited to a banquet while the respectable
members of society are excluded, or all workers receiving a day’s wage regardless
of how short a time they worked.²¹
2. Interpreting Symbolic Details
The second thing to do is determine whether any details in the story require a
symbolic interpretation. In the parable of the good Samaritan, none of the details
requires such an interpretation. In most parables, at least some of the details do.
In either case, this is the point in one’s analysis to apply the idea of the allegorical
scale or continuum discussed earlier.
3. Determining the Theme(s)
Having allowed the literal details to have their impact, and having interpreted the
symbols, the reader next needs to determine the theme(s) of the parable. The
rules for deciding what the parable is about are exactly the same as those for sto-
ries in general (see pages 33-73). Often the surrounding context in the Gospels al-
ready establishes an interpretive framework, but even in such instances the para-
ble might have implicit themes beyond the one(s) suggested by the lead-in or
concluding comment. In the parable of the talents, once we have interpreted the
allegory (the master = God or Christ; the entrusted money = abilities, time, and
opportunities; the master’s commendation and condemnation = the final judg-
ment; and so forth), we then have to decide what themes are conveyed by this mix-
ture of narrative and allegory. Using what we know about the doctrines of the
Bible and the clues that are inherent in the very nature of this parable’s action, it is
easy to interpret the parable as embodying ideas about stewardship or calling, the
sovereignty of God as creator and judge, and the eschatological doctrines of the
second coming and heaven/hell as the destination of people.
4. Application
Having identified the theme(s), there is, fourth, the matter of application. Granted
that themes a, b, and c are present in a given parable, to whom, or how, did those
themes apply in the specific context in which Jesus uttered them? And further-
more, how do those same themes apply today? As with other parts of the Bible,
interpretation deals with the double question of what a parable meant then and
what it means now.²²
SUMMARY
The parables of Jesus are masterpieces of storytelling. We should first of all enjoy
them in the same ways that we enjoy other stories. These simple stories are didac-
tic in their purpose. Before they fully interest us or assume their true significance,
we must usually attach a symbolic meaning to some of the details in the story,
and we must always find one or more religious themes in them.
Further Reading
The most convenient starting point is the excerpts collected under “Parable” in
The New Testament in Literary Criticism, ed. Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick
Ungar, 1984). The sources cited in the foregoing footnotes are all profitable ones
to consult. Much of the scholarship on the parables that has been touted as being
a literary approach strikes me as the worst possible type of pedantry.
¹Literary Genius of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932),
86.
²For a particularly outstanding example of commentary that uncovers the Ori-
ental verisimilitude of the parables, see the books by Kenneth Ewing Bailey: Poet
and Peasant: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke(Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1976) and Through Peasant Eyes: More Lucan Parables (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1980).
³Geraint V. Jones, The Art and Truth of the Parables (London: S.P.C.K., 1964),
113. This is one of the best literary studies of the parables.
⁴Robert W. Funk, “Critical Notes,” Semeia 1 (1974): 188.
⁵Jones, Parables, 124.
⁶Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 92.
⁷For more examples, see Norman A. Huffman, “Atypical Features in the Para-
bles of Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 97 (1978): 207–20.
⁸Jones, Parables, 120.
⁹For Frye’s theory of allegory, see Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957), 89–92.
¹⁰lbid.,9l.
¹¹Raymond E. Brown, “Parable and Allegory Reconsidered,” Novum Testa-
mentum 5 (1962): 36–45; reprinted in New Testament Essays (Milwaukee: Bruce,
1965), 254–64.
¹²Jones, 105–9, 137–41.
¹³G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: West-
minster, 1980), 160–77. Archibald M. Hunter, Interpreting the Parables (Phila-
delphia: Westminster, 1960), 92–100, also distinguishes between arbitrary allego-
rizing and interpreting the intended allegorical elements in the parables.
¹⁴M. D. Goulder, “Characteristics of the Parables in the Several Gospels,” Jour-
nal of Theological Studies, n.s., 19 (1968): 58–62.
¹⁵The easiest way to prove the allegorical nature of the parables is to compare
them to the fables of Aesop. Aesop’s fables are truly one-point, relatively nonalle-
gorical stories, and they at once strike a reader as far different from Jesus’ multi-
faceted parables in which numerous details call for identification and interpre-
tation.
¹⁶John W. Sider, “Nurturing Our Nurse: Literary Scholars and Biblical
