Second expanded edition: What Are They Saying About the Parables? (Chapter 6, Part 5): Parables and Paideia

 

Parables and Paideia 

In addition to ancient rhetoric, many New Testament scholars cast their comparative nets in areas beyond only Jewish cultural waters and discovered in the broader range of Hellenistic-Roman literature and culture many aspects that expand our understanding of the first-century contexts in which the parables were spoken/written and heard/read. Ronald Hock, for example, pointed to the limitations of previous scholarship’s investigations of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) and called for a broader comparative framework for reading the parable, one that includes rhetorical, literary, and philosophical texts from the Hellenistic-Roman intellectual tradition. 

Hock argues that the repeated claims that the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man was adapted from an ancient Egyptian folktale are overstated—the “parallels…are neither compelling nor as explanatory” as suggested in scholarship. He laments the fact that sources from the larger Hellenistic-Roman environment are seldom considered seriously as comparative texts, and he argues that the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in particular “has an unmistakable Cynic coloring” (462). To demonstrate his thesis, Hock cites two Lucian texts Gallus and Cataplus, in which the poor man Micyllus is compared with rich men. Micyllus, a poor, marginalized artisan, goes hungry from early morning to evening, and he must bear the slights, insults, and beatings of the powerful. At their deaths, Micyllus and the rich tyrant Megapenthes make the trip to Hades. Megapenthes, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable, tries to strike a bargain to alter his situation, but to no avail. Finally, Micyllus and Megapenthes face Rhadamanthus, the judge of the underworld. Micyllus is judged to be pure and goes to the Isles of the Blessed. Megapenthes’s soul, however, is stained with corruption, and he will be appropriately punished (459–60). In Hock’s opinion, both this story and the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus illustrate Cynic views on wealth and poverty (463). 

Hock argues that many elements of these two parables, such as the reversal in the fortunes of the characters after death, partake in the broader arena of the social and intellectual life of traditional Mediterranean society (461). By limiting the comparative texts only to Jewish contexts, scholars place artificial blinders on their eyes, blinders that hinder access to the cultures in which this parable might have arisen and been told in the first century, and certainly in which it would have been heard. 

Other scholars provide examples from an even broader spectrum of Hellenistic-Roman culture. For example, the rather puzzling presentation of Jesus’ parables in Mark 4:1–34 (especially 11–12, 33–34) proved to be fruitful soil for much scholarly speculation, both with and without “depth of root.” Burton Mack’s analysis, for example, illustrates the fertile nature of various comparative texts from Hellenistic-Roman traditions. 

Mack acknowledges that the images of field, sowing, seeds, and harvest are standard metaphors in Jewish apocalyptic, wisdom, and prophetic traditions for God’s dealings with Israel. Mack, however, contends that this precise usage of such traditions would be conceivable for a later Christian thinker, but not for the historical Jesus (55). 

To cite just one example: The content of the parable of the Sower makes one “suspicious,” because agricultural images, especially that of sowing seed, were standard analogies for paideia (Hellenistic-Roman education) during this era. First-century Mediterranean ears would have heard this analogy/parable and “would have immediately recalled the stock image” for instruction, especially that of inculcating Hellenistic culture. These stock analogies used the sower (teacher) who sowed (taught) his seed (words) upon various soils (students). Therefore, this parable in Mark that illustrates Jesus’ “mysterious” teaching (4:11) actually was itself an established image of instruction. Because the imagery and the standard mode of referencing in the parable would have been clear to most first-century persons, the “mystery” has to reside in the nature of the culture and/or kingdom the parable seeks to illustrate (160). Mack then attempts to show how the entire section (4:1–34) constructs a cogent and clever rhetorical elaboration of the parable of the Sower—one that follows conventional modes of argumentation (152–58). 

Vernon K. Robbins’s analysis of Mack’s study demonstrates that social rhetoric of Mark 4 interacts with both Jewish culture and Hellenistic-Roman culture, and this interaction is twofold: On one hand, the argumentation is “deeply embedded” in Jewish and Hellenistic-Roman modes of culture, for example, by assuming many elements of those cultures; on the other hand, in this complex and variegated relationship, the parables in Mark 4 also reject, subvert, or transform other features found in Jewish and in Hellenistic-Roman cultures (80–81). 

Next: The Great Dinner parable in Luke 14.