Parables, Allegory, and Luke 16 [the Theory]

[ADMIN NOTE: this is the first half of a post by Austin Ricketts.  This first half gives the theory, and the next will give the application of these ideas to a specific text: Luke 16.  The next half should come in the next couple of days.]

“And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem…And a voice came out saying,…‘this is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!’”[1]

Every thesis entails the usage of technical terminology.  Oftentimes it is this terminology that bars the common reader from accessing the particular message of the work that lies in front of her.  A thesis regarding the peculiar locution of any given parable does not stray from this general rule.  There is historical baggage for certain terminology surrounding the interpretation of Christ’s parables.  A survey of this history will reveal any attempt to properly deal with the interpretation of the parables of Jesus Christ lacking if it does not spill some ink concerning the meaning of allegory.  Once obtaining the linguistic boundaries of this term, movement may begin towards interpretation.

Allegory has landed on hard times.  Adolf Jülicher totally dismissed the idea of parables being allegorical remarking that “the parables in general do not admit of this method at all, and that the attempts of the evangelists themselves to apply it rest on a misunderstanding.”[2]  Joachim Jeremias chimes that allegory is a thick layer of dust, which conceals the original meaning.[3]  C. H. Dodd seems to eschew allegory because of its matrix-like appearance as a cryptogram, which needs de-coding.[4]

All of this may sound harsh, but it is certainly understandable once placed in its particular historical setting.  The parables had been suffering from various interpretations, which squeezed them through an allegorical sieve.  These interpreters desired to obtain every precious stone possible as they sifted through the parables.  The problem, however, was that in all of the flurry of activity these interpreters mistook fool’s gold for the real thing.

Jülicher, and, subsequently New Testament scholarship, reacted against this complicated and often contradictory mess.  Thus, in his reaction, Jülicher whittled the parables down to generalizations with moral or religious principles being the cognitive transaction.[5]  Jülicher believed that every parable had only a single point of comparison.  This was a great first step in alleviating the burden thrown onto our interpretive backs by the excessive allegorizing of prior interpreters.  The question then becomes, “Is Jülicher’s method the correct one, or is it more a polemic overreaction—has the pendulum swung too far?”[6]

Jeremias certainly thought that Jülicher erred, even fatally, in his tendency toward generalization.[7]  In his rejection of Jülicher’s generality, Jeremias was simply following Dodd, while, of course, taking cues from his training in the culture of Palestine.  Jeremias and Dodd are not the only ones who have rejected Jülicher’s “moralizing” as most scholars have since done so.[8]  Jeremias went looking for meaning in the culture and history of Palestine, while Dodd saw crisis in the life and times of Jesus.[9]

Jeremias made an even more profound step away from Jülicher’s complete decimation of allegory.  The distinction between parable, metaphor, simile, allegory, etc. is “a fruitless labour in the end” due to the fact that the original Hebrew and Aramaic words for parable embraced all of these categories.[10]  It is certainly not at all clear how Jülicher can surgically remove allegory from the rest of these literary categories when Jesus irrefutably “used the language and thought forms of Aramaic, a Semitic language very similar to Hebrew.”[11]  It is akin to removing someone’s heart with not a single intention of replacing it.

This raises another key issue, which conveys the polemicization inherent in Jülicher’s approach.  There is a tendency to think that it was the Greek mind of the early church, which drove the heavy allegorizing of parable interpretation.[12]  This may be true insofar as some church fathers are concerned, however, to eschew the allegorical interpretations of the Parable of the Sower and the Wheat and the Tares as an invention of the early church is absurd.  Christian Bugge argued that Old Testament and rabbinic literature rather than Aristotle provided the background for interpreting Jesus’ use of the parables “So, it is arbitrary to restrict Jesus’ use of parables to the patterns of Greek rhetoric.”[13]  Similarly, Paul Fiebig compiled into two books a large number of rabbinic parables, highlighting their allegorical nature, and in opposition to Jülicher, demonstrated that a mixture of parable and allegory was both common and well-liked in ancient Judaism.  He even goes so far as to demonstrate that there were “standard metaphors” which were employed so frequently by the Rabbis that Jesus’ audiences almost certainly would have interpreted them in fairly conventional ways.[14]  Many of the early church fathers certainly over-allegorized, but Jülicher, even in the eyes of his follower’s was overzealous with his axe.  He went for the root of the tree when he should have stayed after the dead branches.

Now, if allegory is admissible, how do we determine what may be interpreted as allegory and what may not?  It seems all that Jülicher really wanted to do was to eliminate the imposition of alien ideas onto the text, for example making the innkeeper in the parable of the Good Samaritan an allegory for the apostle Paul, when Paul was almost certainly not in the mind of Christ as he was telling this story.  At the same time, considering the standard metaphors of the rabbinic parables, it is too hasty to extract allegory itself as alien.[15]  Balance is desirable.

French Catholic Maxime Hermaniuk distinguishes between parable and allegory.  From both Jewish and Greco-Roman perspectives parables were seen as extended comparisons or similes, while allegories were extended metaphors (where the comparisons are left implicit).  But he stressed that the difference in meaning (though not in impact) between simile and metaphor is negligible once the points of comparison are recognized.[16]  In other words, whether simile or metaphor, there is something, which stands for/in the place of something else.  Extended metaphor, also know as allegory, is just less obvious than simile.  With the proper spectacles nearly all haziness disappears.    Hermaniuk’s essential conjoining of parable and allegory is reminiscent of Jeremias’ conception of Semitic thought on the issue wherein one word is used for both.  It seems the remaining piece of the puzzle lies in finding a point of comparison, the proper spectacles, in order to safely navigate through the Scylla and Charybdis of over-allegorizing or flattening the parables.

In the shadow of the Old Testament the light of the New Testament parables will become brighter in somewhat of a chiaroscuro fashion, wherein the light is emphasized by the shadowy, yet all too necessary, figures found under the Old Covenant.  Realizing the Old Testament to be Christ’s cognitive foundation is essential to understanding the parables.  Christ amazed the rabbis with both his understanding and his answers and he increased in wisdom and in favor with God.[17]  It was even said of him that he is greater than Solomon.[18]  Proverbs makes clear that wisdom is the path of the righteous, and the only way to gain favor with God is to follow God’s law perfectly, a law, which is found in the Torah.  Christ, in turn, understood himself to be perfectly in line with the thoughts of Moses as he says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.  But if you do not believe his writings how will you believe my words?”[19]  So, the imagery of the Old Testament (that of the Law, the Prophets and even the Psalms) was certainly prevalent in Christ’s mind.[20]  The Old Testament is our touchstone, our point of comparison from where we may determine correct or incorrect allegory.  This constant aids in ridding ourselves of methodological arbitrariness.

__________________________

• [1] Luke 9:30-31, 35.
• [2]C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961), p. 2.
• [3]Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus. (London: SCM Press LTD, 1963), p. 13.
• [4]Dodd, Kingdom, p. 1.
• [5]Dodd, Kingdom, pp. 12-13.
• [6]Dodd, Kingdom, pp. 7, 13.  Dodd firmly believes, like Jülicher, that parables present us with a single point of comparison, however, he holds that Jülicher has moved too far.  According to him, Jülicher’s interpretations have a flattening effect.  While holding to the single point comparison of Jülicher, Dodd adds the dynamic element of “crisis” to his interpretive understanding, which, in his mind, gives more depth in meaning.
• [7]Jeremias, Parables, p. 19.
• [8]Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables. (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1990), p. 33.
• [9]Dodd, Kingdom, p.13; Jeremias, Parables, p. 22.
• [10]Jeremias, Parables, p. 20.
• [11]Blomberg, Interpreting, p. 36.
• [12]Dodd, Kingdom, p. 4-5.
• [13]Blomberg, Interpreting, p. 36.
• [14]Ibid., p. 37.  “Among the most important for interpreting Jesus’ parables are: a father, king, judge, or shepherd for God; a vineyard, vine or sheep for God’s people; an enemy for the devil; a harvest or grape-gathering for the final judgment; and a wedding, feast or festal clothing for the Messianic banquet in the age to come.”
• [15]Blomberg, Interpreting, p. 47.  “Indeed, part of the debate is simply a semantic one involving the meaning of allegory.  Many scholars who reject the term nevertheless recognize stock symbols in almost all of the parables, which ‘stand for’ something other than themselves and would have been well known to Jesus’ original audiences.  Yet the other ‘side’ replies that this is precisely what allegory usually involves.  Moreover, almost all commentators who actually expound a selection of the parables wind up with some allegorical interpretations, as the anti-Jülicher tradition defines them, regardless of what they may say about their method.”
• [16] Ibid., p. 38.
• [17] Luke 2:47, 52.
• [18] Luke 11:31.
• [19] John 5:46-47.
• [20] Luke 24:44.

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