Jesus’ parables can be profoundly dialogic, and, because of their riddle-like nature, a systematic analysis of a parable will not necessarily result in one “true” meaning. Jesus’ parables—intentionally through their rhetorical strategies and unintentionally because of their first-century and other contexts—leave gaps that engage audiences and challenge them to attempt to fill in those gaps, understand the parables, and apply their messages.
In addition, no matter how carefully we analyze a parable’s rhetoric or the phonetic, morphological, and semantic elements of its words, we are lost without more context, and comprehensive approaches can assist interpreters to fill in some of those gaps with information about common social, cultural, economic, and other patterns in the first-century Mediterranean world, even though elements of specific historical events can be unrecoverable.
Yet even dialogic narratives, especially when interpreted with a systematic, interdisciplinary approach, provide buoys in the channel of interpretation that encourage interpreters to navigate within certain boundaries of interpretation, and engagement with other interpreters also can facilitate one’s own interpretations, making them more cogent, comprehensive, and persuasive.
Heteroglossia and polyphony, essential aspects of Bakhtin’s “dialogic criticism,” are thus apt terms for current trends in parable studies. Parable scholars who use various strategies and approaches should recognize that other strategies, approaches, and ideologies are necessary dialogue partners. A dialogic, integrative approach clarifies what parables mean and how they work, and it involves what Bakhtin calls “answerability,” an obligation to respond with action—in other words, to “answer” in our own lives the essential question, “What do parables want?”
The next few posts will examine that and other questions in light of the Jewish contexts of Jesus' parables all of which will be taken from the second edition of What Are They Saying about the Parables?
Then we'll move on to the Greco-Roman contexts, including some exciting new studies about parables and the rhetorical tradition and their connections with fable traditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment