Adolf Jülicher and the parables (part 4)

Adolf Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu

What about the relationship of Jesus’s parables to his teaching of the kingdom of God? To place Jülicher’s work in context, biblical studies in this era were dominated by the “social liberalism” of Albert Ritschl and Adolf von Harnack. Ritschl believed in an evolutionary kingdom of God, one in which Jesus gave human beings responsibility to create a new society here on earth that would be fulfilled by an eternal kingdom after death. Human beings, in response to the rule of the kingdom in their hearts, were to work to establish God’s kingdom on earth. Ritschl, therefore, interprets the “parables of growth” in this evolutionary way: the Growing Seed (Mk 4:26-29) portrays the seed of Jesus’ teaching as it was sown in the first century. It would grow and come to fulfillment in history as a result of human beings’ response and faithfulness to the redemptive activity of God in Christ and of the human activity made possible by God’s action (Riches 1993: 15-16). As Joachim Jeremias notes, Jülicher’s Jesus also is an “apostle of progress” (Apostel des Fortschritts; II.483) who teaches the moral precepts that encourage human beings in their quest to bring about God’s kingdom on earth (Jeremias 1972: 19). Other scholars such as Johannes Weiss, however, argue that Jesus’s message of the kingdom was apocalyptic: Jesus was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the imminent end of the world. The kingdom of God is wholly future, and human beings could do nothing to bring about its end; they could only prepare for its imminent arrival. Weiss also believed that many parables had nothing whatsoever to do with the kingdom of God, and he rejected the parables as a reliable source for Jesus’s understanding of the kingdom (Weiss 1971: 60-64; Gowler 2000: 86-87).

Jülicher attempted to remove the allegorical accretions in the Gospel parables and situate the parables in concrete situations in the life and ministry of Jesus, who uttered them in a particular context and in response to particular challenges: “Jesus’s parables were designed to make an immediate effect, children of the moment, deeply immersed in the particularity of the present moment” (Jülicher 1963: I.91). Parables are not riddles; they are self-evident and do not need to be explained (Jones 1964: 17). Yet in stripping away all traces of allegory, Jülicher’s interpretations of the parables, since they focused on one single idea, often with the most broad application, are often bland generalities: The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, for example, was supposed to produce joy (Freude) in a life of suffering, and to inculcate fear (Furcht) of a life of wealth and pleasure (Jülicher 1963: II.638). Likewise, the parable of the Unjust Steward encourages its hearers to make wise use of the present to ensure a happy future (II.511).

Scholars since Jülicher have noted the groundbreaking nature of his work, but many have pointed to weaknesses in his approach. Do parables always have one point, and is there an “essential” (wesentlich; I.52) difference between simile and metaphor? Many have answered no to both those questions. Even Aristotle’s Rhetoric, on which Jülicher depended, notes: “The simile also is a metaphor; the difference is but slight” (Rhetoric III.4). In addition, Jülicher was criticized for being too dependent upon Aristotle and not appreciative enough of the Jewish context of Jesus and his parables (e.g., see the discussion of David Flusser in Chapter 5 of my forthcoming book). Some recent scholars suggest that Jesus’s parables can include allegory or even be allegorical, so they contest Jülicher’s rigorous exclusion of allegorical elements in the original parables of Jesus. It is true, however, that post-Jülicher scholars would never completely resuscitate the allegorical method.

Book progress (9/13/2015)

Work on the book continues, even with the increased demands at the college/university. I have finished another round of editing, and this time I wrote the bibliography as I edited, so it feels like I am even closer to finishing the book.

Tonight I began writing introductions to each of the chapters, and I also have an outline and have started writing the Introduction to the whole book.

It's also time to send a draft of the book to one or more colleagues to get their feedback. I began that process as well this weekend. 

I feel good about the progress and also about what I have written so far. It's good to be on the home stretch, because the next book project is almost ready to go.

Again, this blog has been a help to completing the book, not a hindrance. I hope it has been and will continue to be helpful to those who read it.

Adolf Jülicher and the Parables (part 3)

Adolf Jülicher

Jülicher explores the form and nature of parables and, depending primarily on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (III.4), argues that parables are similes not metaphors. Metaphors are indirect enigmatic speech that say one thing but mean another; they can remain incomprehensible without proper context and interpretation. An example borrowed from Aristotle, “A lion rushed on” (der Löwe stürmt los), can function as a metaphor for “Achilles rushed on,” depending on the context. Metaphors thus easily and naturally extend into allegories, something that Jülicher argues Jesus never used.

Similes, though, are direct, simple, and self-explanatory speech, such as the clear comparison also used by Aristotle: “Achilles rushed on like a lion” (der löwenmutige Achill stürmt los; I.52). Jülicher concludes that Jesus used similes and that they develop into three categories:

1. Similitude (Gleichnis): A similitude reflects a typical or recurring event in daily life, and it has two components—the “picture” (image part: Bildhälfte) created by the story and the “object” (or reality part: Sachhälfte) contained in in the story. The details of the similitude merely provide a colorful context for the “picture” the “object/reality” portrayed, and a single point of comparison (the tertium comparationis) connects the two parts with a “like” or “as.” The similitude’s tertium comparationis challenges its readers with the necessity of either forming a judgment or making a decision (I.58-80). The saying about the children playing in the marketplace (Matt. 11:16-19; Luke 7:31-34), the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin (Matt. 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-10), and the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29) are all similitudes.

2. Parable or Fable (Parabel; Fabel): The parable is a fictional story that has all of the attributes of a similitude and functions the same way. The “resemblance” in the parable refers readers to an external reality; it is different from a similitude in that the parable is a story that takes place in the past. Jülicher considers this form to be a fable, but since fables are often confused with stories that involve animals, he prefers the term parable (I.92-111). The majority of Jesus’s parables, Jülicher adds, are fables similar to the fables attributed to Stesichoros or Aesop. The Workers in the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-15), Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and Sower (Matt. 13:1-9; Mark 4:1-9; Luke 8:4-8) are all parables, although the parable of the Sower’s allegorical interpretation does not stem from Jesus.

3. Example Story (Beispielerzählung): An example story is also a fictional narrative—like the parable—but it differs from the similitude and the parable because it actually illustrates the reality/truth it is meant to demonstrate; it doesn’t just refer to an external reality (I.112-115). Jülicher only lists four example stories from the Gospels: the Good Samaritan, Rich Fool, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the Publican. The distinctive feature of this type is that they present examples that are supposed to be emulated by others. The Good Samaritan, for instance, is an example story, because it illustrates the moral principle of loving one’s neighbor. God esteems loving compassion, so even a despised Samaritan demonstrates through his compassion what it means to be a neighbor in contrast to the priest and Levite (II.596). Thus all the allegorical interpretations by people like Origen completely miss the point: The injured man does not symbolize Adam, the Samaritan does not denote Jesus, the inn does not designate the church, Jerusalem does not symbolize paradise, and Jericho does not denote “the world.” Attempts to find symbolism in such elements are doomed to fail because details like Jerusalem and Jericho are only used to give local color to this example story. Instead, Jülicher contends, interpreters should focus on the one basic point of comparison—the neighborly actions of the Samaritan—to understand the meaning of the parable as Jesus intended it: the compassion we should have for our fellow human being  (II.585-598).

The problem, for Jülicher, is that a parable’s pictorial elements (Bildhälfte) must be understood literally (eigentlich), whereas the pictorial elements of an allegory must be understood figuratively (uneigentlich), and “this contrast allows no mixing of forms” (I.76). The parables, after they have been examined and restored to the form taught by Jesus, are “masterpieces of popular eloquence” that are “wholly unpretentious” and give their readers an overpowering feeling of the exalted nature of Jesus: “as far as we know, nothing higher and more perfect has ever been accomplished in this area” (Kümmel 1972: 187).

Review of Charles Hedrick's The Wisdom of Jesus

For those interested, my review of Charles Hedrick's The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church has just been published in the Review of Biblical Literature: (with a link here as well; the image above comes from the second RBL link).

There is a significant section on the parables of Jesus that may be of interest to readers of this blog.

Adolf Jülicher and the Parables (part 2)

Jülicher sets out to prune the allegorical overgrowth found in the gospel versions of the parables. Thus he assumes not only that such an allegorical overgrowth exists—some clearly does—but that scholars armed with proper sets of shears and trained eyes can pare back the allegorical overgrowth in the gospels to uncover the parables of Jesus as he spoke them, thus uncovering more authentic elements of Jesus’s teachings. Jülicher finds that Jesus used parables to “illustrate the unfamiliar by the commonly familiar, to guide gently upwards from the easy to the difficult” (1963 I.146). Jesus’s “original” parables are not allegorical, not meant to obscure his message, not (intentionally) created to be difficult puzzles to solve, and do not serve as stumbling blocks for “outsiders” (cf. Mark 4:11-12). Instead, the parables as told by Jesus before they were distorted by the Gospel authors are always straightforward discourse (immer eigentliche Rede) in clear language that is “meant to inform, clarify, and persuade” (McKim 2007: 586). Jülicher declares:

So far as I see, we cannot escape explaining the meaning and understanding of the evangelists [gospel authors] as a misunderstanding of the essence of Jesus’ parables. The difference can be expressed as follows: According to the theory of the evangelists, the “parables” are allegories, and therefore figurative discourse that to some extent requires translation, while in fact they are—or, we should say, they were, before they came into the hands of zealous redactors—something very different: parables, fables, example paradigmatic stories, but always literal discourse (Kümmel 1972: 187; emphasis in the original: Jülicher 1963: I.49).

Jülicher thus argues that despite the fact that centuries of interpreters had considered the parables of Jesus to be allegories—including the gospel authors themselves—the evidence points to Jesus’ parables not being allegorical (1963 I.61).

Adolf Jülicher and the Parables (1857-1938)

Adolf Jülicher

It's been over a week since my last post--the longest gap, I think, in the almost two years that I have written this blog. The beginning of the academic year and other issues have kept me away. 

I was able to steal some time to continue editing and, since my time was limited, to start putting together the bibliography for the book. That task is easily started and stopped, so even in a few minutes, I can accomplish something--unlike real research and writing.

I also could not decide which topic to cover next. Last night I decided to do Adolf Jülicher. The section I wrote about his work probably will make it into the book, but since I cover him and other scholars in a previous work, What Are They Saying about the Parables?, I do not focus on many modern scholars in this book (David Flusser and Elsa Tamez are the only two in Chapter 5; Jülicher is in Chapter 4, for now).

So here goes:

Adolf Jülicher was born in Falkenberg, Germany, in 1857. He attended the University of Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in 1880, and then served as a Lutheran pastor at Rummelsburg. He also worked as a private lecturer (Privatdozent) in Berlin, and during that time, he wrote the first volume of his seminal work, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (The Parables of Jesus), which was published in 1886. As a result, Jülicher was invited to join the faculty at the University of Marburg, where he remained until he retired in 1923 (the famed New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, was one of his students).

Die Gleichnisreden Jesu is the most famous and influential scholarly book on the parables ever written, and it inaugurated a new era in the modern research of the parables. The first volume of the work discusses interpretative issues, and the second volume, published along with a revised first volume in 1888-1889, gives detailed interpretations of all the parables found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Although many of Jülicher’s categories have been superseded by subsequent interpreters, some of his discussions still influence current debates (for much of the following, see Gowler 2000 and the sources listed there). For example, Jülicher argues that scholars must distinguish between the parables as told by Jesus and the parables as they are found in the gospels. Jesus uttered his parables perhaps as much as fifty years before the gospels were written, and the gospel authors creatively reworked those traditions. For Jülicher, the major problem is that the gospel authors obscured the parabolic message of Jesus with an overgrowth of allegory, descriptive supplementation, and interpretive application, with the “incontrovertible” (Unangreifbar) result that the gospels actually obscure the meaning and function of the parables as Jesus had uttered them:

The authenticity (Echtheit) of the Gospel parables is not absolute. They did not emerge from the mouth of Jesus as we now read them. They are translated, displaced, and internally transformed. . . . Without careful examination, one can nowhere identify the voice of Jesus with voices of the Gospel authors (Jülicher 1963: I.11).

In addition, in a survey of previous interpretations of the parables, Jülicher demonstrates that, with a few exceptions such as John Calvin and John Maldonatus, virtually all interpreters imposed allegorical interpretations far exceeding those found in the gospels themselves. As Joachim Jeremias observes, “It is positively alarming to read . . . [Jülicher’s] story of the centuries of distortion and ill-usage which the parables have suffered through allegorical interpretation” (1972: 18).

"The Characterization of the Two Brothers in the Parable of the Prodigal Son"

Last week I turned in an essay that will appear as a chapter in a volume edited by Frank Dicken and Julia Snyder. The entire volume covers a subject I started working on over twenty-five years ago--characterization in Luke-Acts--which ended up as being the subject of my first book, Host, Guest, Enemy, and Friend: Portraits of the Pharisees in Luke and Acts (1991). 

Here is the title of the current essay and the book information:

“The Characterization of the Two Brothers in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32): Their Function and Afterlives,” in Characters and Characterization in Luke-Acts. Edited by Frank Dicken and Julia Snyder. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2016.

Julia and Frank have some great contributors for this volume, and I really look forward to reading the book when it comes out.

As far as my own essay, it reinforced for me just how important reception history is for biblical interpretation in a number of ways, including the analysis of characters and characterization. I won't summarize the essay or talk about its basic elements, but perhaps 470 words from a draft of the essay's conclusion will illustrate (you will have to read the full essay when it comes out to see how I reach this conclusion):

‘The question to ask of [parables] from the standpoint of poetics is not just what they mean or what they do but what they want­—what claim they make upon us, and how we are to respond’.[1]

The quote above actually is about ‘pictures’, not ‘parables’, but in this instance pictures and parables function the same way (especially since parables tend to form pictures in their hearers/readers’ minds). In addition, the characterizations of the two sons in the parable, including ambiguities about both characters’ portrayals, generate a variety of interpretations.

Receptions that self-identify with the prodigal are illuminating, as are the receptions of the elder son where often ‘the dog does not bark’[2]: Ignoring or downplaying the role of the elder brother can lead to more superficial readings. John Ruskin, for example, complains that the elder brother is often relegated to a ‘picturesque figure introduced to fill in the background of the parable agreeably’.[3] His point was that interpreters neglected whatever lessons the elder sibling’s portrayal could generate. Very few people, in fact, want to identify with the elder brother; people usually only want to identify others as fitting that role.

Parables and other narratives, by their nature, do not function as telegraph messages that require a mere decoding. Parables, as indirect communication, serve to generate new meanings, and they, to a certain extent foresee and anticipate our responses. Parables do not give the final word, because Jesus the parabler created them with one ear already listening for our answers.[4] In addition, both parables and characterization themselves are rhetorical in the sense that they seek to persuade their readers, asking them to make particular choices.[5]

But readers do not have to acquiesce to the narrator’s attempts at persuasion, and the varying reactions to the prodigal son and his brother exemplify the enigmatic power inherent in such subtle characterizations. They also demonstrate the gap in most attempts at character evaluation, including some of my own previous attempts: It is informative not just to evaluate rhetorical aspects of characterization in narratives and the supposed effects on implied and intended audiences; it is also informative to evaluate the receptions of such characters by ‘real’ audiences over the centuries.

---

[1] W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), xv. I have replaced ‘pictures’ with ‘parables’ in this quote.

[2] As per the ‘curious incident of the dog in the night-time’, when it ‘did nothing’: Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, in The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes (Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1979), 196.

[3] Siebald and Ryken, ‘Prodigal Son’, 641. John Ruskin, Praeterita (Boston: Dana Estes, 1885), 397.

[4] David B. Gowler, What Are They Saying about the Parables? Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2000, p. 103.

[5] As Bennema notes, ‘character evaluation inevitably leads to self-evaluation’ (emphasis his), Theory of Character, 186.