What Are They Saying about the Parables?: Jewish Contexts (Chapter 5, Part 4): Rabbinic Parables and the Parables of Jesus

 

Rabbinic Parables and the Parables of Jesus 

A lot to cover before we get to more recent scholarship, but to pick up where I left off, this post covers David Flusser and Brad Young (David Stern will be in the next post)

David Flusser investigated the mashal and found an identifiable trajectory that led him to conclude that the similarities between rabbinic parables and the Synoptic parables are much more striking than the dissimilarities. Flusser believes that Jesus’ primary language was Hebrew, although it was possible that Jesus also spoke Aramaic “from time to time.” 

 In his book, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse und der Gleichniserzähler Jesus, Flusser argues that New Testament parables and rabbinic parables share compositional similarities. These similarities include such items as formulaic elements of diction, conventional themes, and stereotyped motifs, all of which indicate that both rabbinic parables and the parables of Jesus stem from a common narrative tradition. This common tradition has affinities with the fables of Aesop, so Flusser suggests that the antecedents of Jewish parables could be found in Greek philosophy. The parables themselves, however, were a development within Palestine. 

The differences between Jesus’ parables and rabbinic parables, Flusser argues, could be explained by the fact that the parables of Jesus belong to an older type of rabbinic parable, a nonexegetical “ethical” type (he also postulates an intermediate form, a parabolic proverb, which he sees reflected in Matt 9:37–38). The differences between Jesus’ parables and rabbinic parables are primarily due to a change of focus: the explanation of biblical passages. 

Flusser notes that many of Jesus’ parables focus on the kingdom of heaven, both its current presence and its future arrival. Although the rabbis also believed in the present and future kingdom of heaven, Jesus is “the only Jew of ancient times known to us who preached not only that people were on the threshold of the end of time, but that the new age of salvation had already begun.” Parables such as the Leaven (Matt 13:33) make clear that Jesus believed the kingdom of God was “erupting” in his ministry. 

Although some of Flusser’s conclusions about Jesus and his parables are idiosyncratic, recent scholarship has taken to heart that the Jesus and his teachings must be interpreted in light of their first-century Jewish contexts. The parables, a central element of Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God, were also, most scholars believe, a central element in his teachings. Therefore, to understand more fully the use and function of parables, as well as the creative understanding involved in their construction, parables must be explored in the first-century contexts in which they were spoken and heard. 

Flusser’s interesting, but speculative, reconstruction formed the foundation of the work done by his student, Brad Young. An important foundation of Young’s study is his acceptance of Flusser’s thesis that rabbinic parables and the parables of Jesus are the same, specialized genre of parabolic teaching that evolved into a “powerful tool of communication.” Jesus was one of the “outstanding Parabolists” of his day, one who stood firmly within Jewish tradition. Some of Jesus’ parables are not only similar in theme and form to rabbinic parables, but they contain similar illustrative motifs and examples, and they have a continuity of expression. Thus they stand in a common stream of the rabbinical world of instruction. 

To corroborate his thesis, Young seeks to demonstrate that Jesus, like the later rabbis, originally told his parables in Hebrew. Young even translates some of the parables from Greek into Hebrew, but the results of the translations are unconvincing. Young elaborates these insights in his 1998 book, The Parables. He argues that both Jesus’ parables and the parables of the (later) rabbis should be studied as Jewish haggadah: storytelling that “proclaims a powerful message that usually demands a decision” (8). As such, a parable may contain multiple points of comparison between the “picture and the reality, but it has one purpose” and makes one main point (14). Although rabbinic parables are from a later time period, rabbinic parables and the parables of Jesus share a common background, motifs, plots, points of reference, and conceptual world, demonstrating that Jesus and the Jewish sages have a “theological solidarity” (38). 

Young’s works are a helpful reminder that Jesus’ parables should be interpreted in the context of first-century Judaism, but some of his presuppositions and conclusions are nonetheless problematic. Jesus’ parables and the parables of the rabbis differ more than he allows. Rabbinic parables, in their final form, come from a much later time period, and Young underestimates the differences between the times in which the rabbis lived and the more diverse pre-70 CE Judaism (cf. 31, 37). A wider range of Jewish sources would be more helpful, and Hellenistic-Roman influences should also not be ignored. 

David Stern provides a sophisticated methodological approach to midrashic rabbinic parables, and the next post will cover some of his work.