What Are They Saying About the Parables?: Greco-Roman Contexts (Chapter 6, Part 2): The Parables, Greek Fables, and Ancient Rhetoric

 

The Parables, Greek Fables, and Ancient Rhetoric 

Adolf Jülicher noted that “the majority of the parabolai of Jesus, the ones bearing a narrative form, are fables, such as the ones of Stesichoros and of Aesop.” Jülicher’s judgment did not gain wide acceptance, especially since his arguments primarily relied on the discussion of fable in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Often when scholars do raise the issue of Greek fables, they are dismissed with a distinction between parable and fable such as the one used by T. W. Manson: parable tends to depict human relations by inventing cases analogous to what happens in real life. Fable, on the other hand, is “pure fiction,” which often invests animals, birds, and plants with human attributes. Madeline Boucher, for example, echoes Manson’s sentiments, but she adds that fables have a “prudential lesson,” whereas parables have a “religious or moral lesson” which is “typically Semitic.” 

Rhetoric, however, was pervasive throughout Hellenistic-Roman society by the first century C.E., and rhetorical modes of argumentation saturated everyday discourse in almost every form of oral and written communication. The most important rhetorical influences to the formation (and interpretation) of the gospels are the progymnasmata (or “preliminary exercises”), compositional textbooks used in secondary education that represent widespread educational practice for those who read/spoke/wrote Greek. These rhetorical handbooks, such as the ones by Aelius Theon of Alexandria (middle-to-late first century C.E.) and Hermogenes of Tarsus (second century C.E.), functioned in secondary education to instill the fundamental rhetorical skills to prepare students for more complex forms of oral and written composition: longer speeches and narratives. The parables, as well as other elements of composition in the gospels, reflect this progymnastic level of rhetoric and rhetorical training. 

Mikeal Parsons notes that the chapter in Theon’s Progymnasmata on the fable provides fertile yet under-tilled soil for examinations of the parables of Jesus, specifically where Theon states, “It may be possible for one fable to have several conclusions (or morals), if we take a start from each of the matters in the fable.” With this understanding in mind, the seemingly disparate applications of the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1–8a) in 16:8–9, 16:10–12, and 16:13 can be seen as a rhetorical unity instead of being evidence of “different traditions.” 

In antiquity the term fable denotes several kinds of brief narratives, including those stemming directly from human experience. Aelius Theon, for example, defined fable more generally as “a fictitious story picturing a truth,” a definition endorsed by the classicist Ben Edwin Perry. In fact, many fables are about humans and the Gods; thus they can convey religious truths (xxiv). In contrast to David Flusser’s claim that the mashal was dependent on the Greek environment (e.g., Greek philosophy, Aesop’s fables), Perry argues the reverse: The Greek fable had its literary-historical roots in the Semitic East. In fact, Perry claims, the Hebrew mashal is the precursor of the Aesopic fable.

Next up: Mary Ann Beavis and Joshua Stigall.

What Are They Saying About the Parables?: Greco-Roman Contexts (Chapter 6, Part 1)

 

Although Jesus was a first-century Jewish teacher and wonder worker, the parables, in their present contexts, are in Greek. The Jewish heritage of the Jesus portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels merges with Hellenistic-Roman forms of speech, thought, and action, so that the “Synoptic Jesus” speaks and acts in roles that combine Jewish and Hellenistic-Roman modes of words and deeds. Because Hellenistic culture influenced all Diaspora Judaism and Palestinian Judaism to a certain extent, the Jewishness of the Synoptic Jesus does not preclude the existence of Hellenistic elements. A careful reading makes clear that the gospels merge biblical patterns with Hellenistic patterns and conventions; they—and the Jesus they portray—are intercultural. 

Chapter 6 begins with a quick (and incomplete) review of scholarly views of the language(s) Jesus spoke, such as those who believed that the parables "almost certainly took shape in Greek" (Robert Funk) and opposing views (e.g., that Jesus told the parables in Aramaic). The latter is the more likely case, in my view, even though Charles Hedrick’s (and others) work seems to verify, at least in part, Funk’s arguments about the importance of euphony in the parables in Greek. 

Hedrick does not interact directly with Funk’s conclusion that the parables were initially spoken in Greek, however. Instead he notes that the form in which one analyzes the poetics of the parables will not be the language or the form of their “original audition.” While Hedrick’s investigation of euphony may give little information about the “initial” form of the parables, it does reveal much about their present characteristics in early Christian literature. In fact, one of Hedrick’s primary contributions is his innovative work of recognizing the critical nature of sound in both the structure of the parables and in the way the stories are organized.

Most of the remaining posts stemming from this chapter in the second edition will include discussions of fables and Greek rhetoric, but other aspects will be included as well.