What Are They Saying about the Parables?: Jewish Contexts (Chapter 5, Part 8): Reading Jesus’ Parables in their Jewish Contexts (Amy-Jill Levine)

 

What Are They Saying About the Parables? Second revised edition with three additional chapters and new content in every chapter 

A reminder: I am only selecting, editing, and revising selected sections of the book and deleting significant sections just to give a taste of what the book covers. For the full discussion--summaries and my analyses--please see the second edition of What Are They Saying about the Parables? 

Amy-Jill Levine

Amy-Jill Levine’s books on the historical Jesus, The Misunderstood Jew, and the parables, Short Stories by Jesus, also explicitly seek to be a “bridge” between Jews and Christians for whom “far too long Jesus has been the wedge that drives” them apart. Both books are written in an engaging style on an introductory level, are provocative yet constructive, and are essential readings for Jews who want to learn about the historical Jesus and his message and for Christians who need to learn about Jesus’ Jewish identity. 

In The Misunderstood Jew, Levine discusses how Christians generally tend to misunderstand Judaism—which can lead to intolerance and even hatred of Jews—yank Jesus out of his Jewish context, and thereby interpret the New Testament in anti-Jewish (and also sexist) ways.  

Jesus, Levine notes, actually is in a long line “of Jewish teachers and prophets, for he shares with them a particular view of the world and a particular manner of expressing that view” (20). As Levine argues: “Jesus cannot be understood fully unless he is understood through first-century Jewish eyes and heard through first-century Jewish ears.

The book discusses several key parables, but this post will focus on Short Stories by Jesus, in which Levine examines how Jesus’ provocative parables might have been heard by first-century Jewish audiences, how they have been domesticated, and how they have been misinterpreted in anti-Jewish ways. 

Levine’s treatment of the Lost Son (Prodigal Son) parable (Luke 15:11–32) illustrates her approach. She argues that Luke “misleads” by turning this parable and the other two “lost” parables—the Lost Sheep (15:4–7) and Lost Coin (15:8–10)—into allegories about repentance. Neither sheep nor coins are capable of repentance, and it is doubtful that the prodigal son repents either (27). This rather “harmless allegory” in Luke—where the younger son represents sinners and tax collectors and the older son represents Pharisees and scribes—later becomes a dangerous stereotype when the older son is interpreted as an allegorical representation of Jews who “slavishly serve God the Father in order to earn a reward” in contrast to Jesus’ proclamation of salvation by grace from a loving father (28). In the context of Jesus’ ministry, Levine argues, the parable is not a story of repentance and forgiveness, and these and similar misinterpretations “not only get Jesus wrong, and they not only get Judaism wrong; they inculcate and reinforce bigotry” (21). 

“Biblically literate” hearers of the parable recognize the biblical patterns encouraging them to identify with the younger son (e.g., Jacob versus Esau) and also suspect that the prodigal does not repent but “connivingly” concocts an insincere plan to return to his father so that he will no longer be hungry (53–54; cf. Exod 10:16; Luke 12:17; 16:3; 18:4–5). 

Levine also questions long-held assumptions of many scholars, such as ones popularized by Joachim Jeremias’s The Parables of Jesus (128–32). She argues, for example, that the prodigal does not treat his father as if he were dead, the prodigal’s problem is hunger not uncleanness (because of feeding swine), it is not surprising that the father is compassionate, and it is not undignified or dishonorable for the father to run to his son, and other details (47–57). Many of these arguments are convincing, although a few are not (e.g., whether the parable implicitly compares the father with God--although there clearly are some problems with a simplistic representation; cf. how the son claims to have "against heaven and before"shis father).   

 Levine closes by considering what the parable of the Lost Son “wants” (68–70). In a parable in which no one really repents, exhibits remorse at hurting another, or expresses forgiveness, Levine finds a simple exhortation that is “more profound” than a message of repentance and forgiveness: Do not wait for an apology or for the ability to forgive someone who wronged you. Instead: “Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share the joy and so that the others will help prevent the recovered from ever being lost again” (69). By doing so, you will have begun a process that leads to reconciliation and a second chance for wholeness, whether in our personal lives, or communities, or even the world. 

Levine’s Short Stories by Jesus is essential reading for anyone interested in the parables of Jesus, just as her The Misunderstood Jew is essential reading for anyone interested in the historical Jesus. Careful readings of these two volumes will help to remove blinders that prevent Christians in particular from seeing the all-too-common anti-Jewish readings of New Testament texts. Yet Levine’s primary focus on reconstructing Jesus’ cultural context and criticism of “newer approaches” that are explicitly ideological (e.g., 22) minimizes the reality that all reconstructions of the cultural context of Jesus are, in part, also ideological representations of our own social and other locations. See WATSA Parables? for further details (e.g.,  her reading of the Rich Man and Lazarus parable, for example, omits insights about the culpability of the rich man).  

The Jewish contexts are critical for understanding Jesus' parables, but Greco-Roman sources and contexts should also be an essential part of the repertoire of any parable scholar, and the next series of posts will give highlights of some of those studies (rhetoric, fables, etc.).