Chapter 7 of the revised and expanded version of What are They Saying about the Parables? talks about how work in the social sciences has increased our understanding of the parables (I begin up with works in the 1970s and continue to the present day).
This post talks about some of the contributions of William Herzog, whom I met for the first time at an SBL meeting in San Diego (we happened to share a taxi), shortly after the first edition of WATSA Parables? had come out. He was a kind and gracious human being (he passed away in 2019).
Herzog’s 1994 Parables as Subversive Speech provides the first modern explicit and detailed analysis of the social setting of the parables. The crucial difference in Herzog’s approach is that he views the parables through the lens of a “pedagogy of the oppressed” (the description comes from the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire). Herzog’s brief critique of the façade of an “objective observer” is one of the most cogent I have read (15–16). Thus Herzog brings his own ideological perspective into the open, a move that should be applauded and emulated, even if one does not agree with his perspective or his interpretations of specific parables.
The focus of the parables, Herzog argues, is not on a vision of the glory of the reign (kingdom) of God, but on the gory details of how oppression serves the interests of a ruling class. Parables explore how human beings could respond to break the spiral of violence and the cycle of poverty created by such exploitation. Therefore, the parables of Jesus were forms of social analysis just as much as they were forms of theological reflection (3).
Herzog claims, for example, that a recognition of the social code of honor significantly alters our understanding of the Laborers in the Vineyard parable (Matt 20:1–16). Previous interpreters negatively evaluated the voices of the complaining workers so that the action of the owner of the vineyard symbolized God’s generous goodness (82). Herzog proposes instead to divest the parable of theological accretions to focus more clearly on the social world depicted: the agrarian world of rural Galilee and Judea.
The characters of the parable are not abstract theological types but belong to identifiable social groups in advanced agrarian societies. The landowner is a member of the urban elite who owns a large estate that produces a great harvest. The day laborers, on the other hand, are members of the “expendable” class who live at or below subsistence level.
Note: Herzog argues that the “excess” children (i.e., those who cannot be fed) of peasant farmers and others constitute members of the “expendables” who ranged from 5 percent to 15 percent of the population. The elites in the ancient world squeezed the dwindling resources of the peasants through taxation and other forms of redistribution, so these persons were forced into the most degrading and lethal form of poverty. Herzog estimates that “expendables” typically lived no more than five to seven years after entering this class, but others continually were forced into this lethal poverty (65–66).
Although the wealthy landowner has a steward as retainer, Jesus portrays him as hiring the workers directly to depict a direct confrontation between these two social groups. They represent the two extremes of agrarian society: a ruthless and exploitative landowner and the poor, desperate expendables who are fighting a losing battle for survival (90).
Herzog argues that when the last-hired workers are paid first, the landowner deliberately insults the first-hired workers. Because he pays the workers who worked just one hour the same as the workers who toiled all day, he shames the labor of the first-hired (20:8–10), and they respond to his provocation (20:11–12). Therefore, the wage settlement initiates an honor/shame contest with the steward delivering the insult (20:8). The workers, however, fight to maintain their meager position in society. The episode concludes with the final riposte from the shrewd but exploitative landowner (20:13–15) who feigns courtesy with a condescending form of the word “friend,” banishes the spokesperson of the workers with an “evil eye” accusation, and blasphemes by asserting his control over what should properly be seen as Yahweh’s land (94). The landowner thus demonstrates his sinful allegiance to the aristocratic view of the elites: Despising peasants enabled them to rationalize their exercise of power over these “expendables” and to justify their exploitation (69). So this parable, instead of using the landowner as a symbol for God, codifies the incongruity between the coming reign of God and the earthly systems of oppression that pretend to be legitimate guardians of its values (97).
For a critique of Herzog’s analysis (besides my What Are They Saying about the Parables? revised and expanded edition!), see V. George Shillington, “Saving Life and Keeping Sabbath (Matthew 20:1b–15),” in Jesus and His Parables, ed. V. George Shillington (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 87–101. Shillington argues that Herzog pays too little attention to the subjects in the parable who did not have a full day’s wage. Shillington thus has a more positive view of the landowner who “learned from his trip to the marketplace at the end of the day that gross inequality of life exists between worker and worker, and between the workers and himself” (98). One wonders, however, if Shillington accurately gauged just how shocking this information would be to a first-century landowner. Cf. Herzog’s statement about the elite “despising” peasants (69).
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