The Theological Significance of the Parable in Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament

When he was alone, the Twelve and others who were around him questioned him about the parables. He replied, “To you the secret of the kingdom of God has been given; but to those who are outside, everything comes by way of parables, so that (as Scripture says) they may look and look, but see nothing; they may hear and hear, but understand nothing; otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven.”

(Mark 4:10-12; NEB)

These lines have always been something of a crux interpretum.^[63] Yet the consensus of modern scholarship seems to be on the side of Frederick C. Grant, who, pointing out that “quite patently (Jesus’) parables were a device to aid his hearers’ understanding, not to prevent it,” finds it necessary to describe Mark’s theory as “perverse.”^[64]

Whatever may have been the original significance of Mark’s words or their justification with regard to the parables as spoken by Jesus, there can be very little doubt that they are a fairly accurate description of what has happened to the parables in the long history of their interpretations—not only the traditional allegorical ones, with their built-in arbitrariness, but also much of the voluminous writing on the subject which has appeared since Jülicher administered the coup de grace to the allegorical understanding of the past.

• ^[1] See Adolf Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (offset of 1910 edition; Darmstadt, 1969), 1:25-118, for a survey of this kind of interpretation including Jülicher’s own. For a more recent attempt to classify the various types of parable, see Eta Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables (New York and Evanston, 1966), 3ff. ↩
• ^[2] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 3ff. ↩
• ^[3] Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York, 1953), 20. See also Robert W. Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (New York, Evanston and London, 1966), 126. ↩
• ^[4] C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (revised ed.; London, 1936), 15. ↩
• ^[5] Ignaz Ziegler, Die Königsgleichnisse des Midrasch be leuchtet durch die römische Kaiserzeit (Breslau, 1903), passim. ↩
• ^[6] Israel Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1917-1924), 1:99. ↩
• ^[7] W. O. E. Oesterley, The Gospel Parables in the Light of their Jewish Background (London, 1936), 10ff. ↩
• ^[8] J. W. Doeve, Jewish Hermeneutics in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts (Assen, 1954), 54ff. ↩
• ^[9] Cf. W. Bacher, Die exegetische Terminologie der jüdischen Traditionsliteratur (Leipzig, 1905), 1:25-7, 103-5. ↩
• ^[10] See Bacher, Die exegetische Terminologie, 1:42ff. ↩
• ^[11] See Bacher, Die exegetische Terminologie, 1:30-37. ↩
• ^[12] Doeve, Jewish Hermeneutics, 56ff. ↩
• ^[13] Siphre, Eqebh, paragraph 49, ed. Finkelstein (Berlin, 1939), 115. The statement there is attributed to the doreshe haggadoth. A variant reading has doreshe reshumoth, probably a group of allegorists. See Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “The Ancient Jewish Allegorists in Talmud and Midrash,” Jewish Quarterly Review (New Series, Vol. 1 [1910/11]): 291-333, 503-31, and Isaak Heinemann, Altjüdische Allegoristik (Breslau, 1936), 66ff. ↩
• ^[14] See Paul Fiebig, Altjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1904): Die Gleichnisreden Jesu im Lichte der Rabbinischen Gleichnisse des neutestamentlichen Zeitalters(Tübingen, 1912); and Der Erzählungsstil der Evangelien (Leipzig, 1925). ↩
• ^[15] Fiebig, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 128ff. ↩
• ^[16] Gustaf Dalman, Jesus-Jeshua (London, 1929), 223. ↩
• ^[17] Oesterley, The Gospel Parables, 10ff. ↩
• ^[18] In R.G.G. (2nd ed.), 1241, as quoted by Theodor Guttmann, Hamashal Bithequphath Hatannaim (2nd ed.; Jerusalem, 1949), 71. Guttmann attempts to rebut Bultmann’s charge by saying that Bultmann’s distinction might possibly be correct in the case of some of the post-Tannaitic parables, but that it does not hold in the case of the Tannaitic parables, i.e., those of the period closest to the New Testament. ↩
• ^[19] Cf. Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity? (New York, 1957), passim. ↩
• ^[20] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 35. ↩
• ^[21] Ignaz Ziegler, Die Königsgleichnisse des Midrasch, xxii. Jülicher, too, was aware of the aggadic nature of Jesus’ discourse, but he could not get himself to admit that Jesus shared that much with the Rabbis. That is why Jülicher makes a pathetic attempt to divorce the aggadic realm from the purview of Rabbinic concern. “The Rabbi, as such, has one method of teaching only—the Halachah. The scribe is already bound by his very name to forgo originality. He is to be but a channel for the wisdom streaming forth from every word of the Scriptures. The Haggadah, that independent melting down of Scriptural bullion in the fire of imagination and soul, it is not the product of the Rabbinic, but of the Hebraic spirit... It is the voice of the people which can be heard in such pictures. The Haggadah together with its flowers, the parables, grew up in the home—to be sure, in the Hebrew home with its intimate, happy and pure family life. The Rabbi and his Halakhah is (sic) an outgrowth of the school. That is why the Jewish Rabbi, as a Rabbi, had to despise the haggadic element. But, as a human being, as a son of his people, he was nevertheless unable ever to get away from it altogether. Jesus did not want to get away from it. God had saved him from the school” (Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 1:172ff.). It did not seem to have dawned on Jülicher that such Haggadah as is available to us has come down to us for no other reason than that the Rabbis, in their schools(!), have preserved it. He seems also completely unaware of the fact that, in Rabbinic Judaism, it was usually one and the same person (e.g., Hillel, R. Yohanan ben Zakkai) who was both a master of the Halakhah and a master of the Aggadah. There is, of course, no denying that the Aggadah represented the more popular element in Rabbinic teaching. But, in reading the literature, one hardly gets the impression that the Rabbis, as Rabbis, had to “despise” that element, or that they yielded to it only with the utmost reluctance. On the contrary, as Max Kadushin points out (The Rabbinic Mind [2nd ed.; New York, Toronto, London, 1965], 87): “Characteristic of the Rabbis’ relation to the folk, of the identity of their interests with those of the folk, is the Rabbis’ own attitude toward Haggadah. They did not view it as something fit only for the masses, but to which they themselves were superior; on the contrary, they felt themselves deeply in need of Haggadah, regarding it as one of the great divisions of Torah, and the study of which was incumbent upon them.... Younger scholars were stimulated toward becoming skillful in Haggadah as well as in Halakhah.” And see Isaak Heinemann, Darkhe Ha-Aggadah (2nd ed.; Jerusalem, 5714), 16. Yet there are indeed a few isolated passages in Rabbinic literature which disparage the Aggadah. Leo Baeck has examined those passages in great detail, finding it possible to relate them to very specific circumstances, viz., the usage of aggadic hermeneutics by Christians of the second century, in the allegorical and christological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible (Leo Baeck, Aus drei Jahrtausenden [2nd ed.; Tübingen, 1958], 176-85.) ↩
• ^[22] Mark 1:22; Matthew 7:29; Luke 4:32. ↩
• ^[23] Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (New York, 1946), 264ff. ↩
• ^[24] Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 205. ↩
• ^[25] Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 1:96. See also A. Marmorstein’s observation that the sermons, contained in the Aggadah, are so brief and laconic that it is not always possible for us to reconstruct the entire sermon on the basis of the mere sketch which has been preserved (Arthur Marmorstein, Talmud und Neues Testament [Vinkovci, 1908], 47.) ↩
• ^[26] Tosephta Baba Kamma 7:4, ed. Zuckermandel, 357ff. ↩
• ^[27] Midrash Debharim Rabba, Eqebh, section 17, ed. Lieberman (Jerusalem, 1964), 91. The parallels in Tanhuma, Ki Tissa, chapter 30, and Yalqut Shime’oni, Ki Tissa, section 397, introduce yet a further motif, viz., the bride’s agent destroys the original marriage contract. ↩
• ^[28] David Halivni, Sources and Traditions (Tel Aviv, 1968), 15 (Hebrew). ↩
• ^[29] Jacob Neusner, Development of a Legend (Leiden, 1970), 2. ↩
• ^[30] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 42ff. ↩
• ^[31] Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York and Evanston, 1963), 205. ↩
• ^[32] Leo Baeck, Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia 1958), 99ff. ↩
• ^[33] Charles W. F. Smith, The Jesus of the Parables (Philadelphia, 1948), 17. ↩
• ^[34] Smith, The Jesus of the Parables, 272ff. ↩
• ^[35] Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 21. ↩
• ^[36] Dan Otto Via, Jr., The Parables (Philadelphia, 1967), 192. ↩
• ^[37] S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots (New York, 1967), 1 and passim. And see his, “The Trial of Jesus,” in Judaism 20:1 (Winter 1971): 43-8. ↩
• ^[38] Haim H. Cohn, The Trial and Death of Jesus (Tel Aviv, 1968), passim (Hebrew). ↩
• ^[39] Emil L. Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future (Bloomington and London, 1968), 16ff. ↩
• ^[40] B. Erubhin 13b; b. Gittin 6b. ↩
• ^[41] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 88. ↩
• ^[42] Mishnah Abhoth 5:23. ↩
• ^[43] J. Berakhoth II, 8, Krotoshin ed., 5c; Canticles Rabba 6:2. ↩
• ^[44] Arthur Marmorstein, The Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature (London, 1920). ↩
• ^[45] J. Sanhedrin X, 1, Krotoshin ed., 27d. ↩
• ^[46] Midrash Tanhuma, Ki Tissa, section 16, ed. Buber, 58b. Parallels which name different “good deeds” are found in Midrash Tanhuma, Ki Tissa, section 28, and Exodus Rabba 45:6. ↩
• ^[47] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 80ff. ↩
• ^[48] B. Sanhedrin 99a. ↩
• ^[49] Louis Ginzberg, Geonica (2nd ed.; New York, 1968), 2:376–7. ↩
• ^[50] Ginzberg, Geonica, 2:351. ↩
• ^[51] Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 1:92. ↩
• ^[52] S. Mendelson, “Abbahu,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1:36-7. ↩
• ^[53] Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God, 221ff. ↩
• ^[54] Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 205. ↩
• ^[55] Cf. also Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God, 208ff. Funk summarizes the position of Birger Gerhardsson: “Since the rabbis were fond of the parable in the exposition of scripture, it is not surprising that the lawyer’s question, which had to do with an exegetical point (what is the meaning of re‘akha in the text?), evokes a parable as a midrash on the text.” ↩
• ^[56] Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 205. ↩
• ^[57] Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, 53. ↩
• ^[58] Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God, 212ff. ↩
• ^[59] B. Berakhoth 8b. ↩
• ^[60] B. Kiddushin 31a; j. Pe’ah I, 1, Krotoshin ed., 15c; and cf. Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 2:36ff. ↩
• ^[61] B. Hullin 4a. ↩
• ^[62] See Maurice Simon, “Introduction” to Tractate Kuthim, in A. Cohen, ed., The Minor Tractates of the Talmud, Vol. II (London, 1965). ↩
• ^[63] Reprinted from Christian News from Israel 23.2 (10) (1972): 76-86. Used with permission. Christian News from Israel was a publication of the Government of Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Many outstanding articles were published in this journal during the approximately thirty years of its existence, beginning in 1950. However, unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find copies of this now-defunct journal—even large libraries seldom possess it. Jerusalem Perspective reprints this article with the permission of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, thus resurrecting Petuchowski’s fine work. At the time the article was written, Petuchowski was Professor of Rabbinics and Jewish Theology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a visiting Professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. We have preserved the spelling of the original Christian New from Israel article, which was according to British usage. Flusser and Lindsey’s responses appeared in the following issue: Christian News from Israel 23.3 (11) (1973): 147-50. ↩
• ^[64] In The Interpreter’s Bible (ed. George Arthur Buttrick, et al.; Vol. VII; New York and Nashville, 1951), 699ff. But cf. T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1935), 57-81. ↩