Parables As Poetic Fictions

Contending that Jesus narrative parables are more poetic than metaphoric, Hedrick argues that parables should be heard solely on their own terms. Hedrick s dissatisfaction with figurative and metaphorical approaches or those that argue for a particular meaning or a single interpretation diverges sharply from the modern consensus and breaks new ground in parable studies.

Within the pages of the Holy Bible, our Lord and Savior instructed his followers on how to live a proper life devoted to God Himself. Through simple parables, Jesus sought to impart lessons upon the faithful so that they would meet their reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. But for many modern-day Christians, Christ's parables can seem inscrutable and difficult to comprehend. In Parable Poems: The Parables of Jesus Retold as Poems, author Nick Weatherhogg simplifies these timeless teachings by retelling Christ's parables through poetry. After reading these illuminating poems, the words of Christ will reside within you. His wisdom will sparkle with clarity as you absorb the true meaning of his words.

The familiar stories of the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, and Lazarus and the rich man were part of the cultural currency in the nineteenth century, and Victorian authors drew upon the figures and plots of biblical parables for a variety of authoritative, interpretive, and subversive effects. However, scholars of parables in literature have often overlooked the 19th-century novel, assuming that realism bears no relation to the subversive, iconoclastic genre of parable. In this book Susan E. Colòn shows that authors such as Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and Charlotte Yonge appreciated the power of parables to deliver an ethical charge that was as unexpected as it was disruptive to conventional moral ideas. Against the common assumption that the genres of realism and parable are polar opposites, this study explores how Victorian novels, despite their length, verisimilitude, and multi-plot complexity, can become parables in ways that imitate, interpret, and challenge their biblical sources.

In this splendid introduction to the elusive rhetorical device central to the New Testament picture of Jesus, Charles Hedrick explores the nature of the parable and its history of use. He asks basic questions such as, what is a parable? is Jesus really the author of the parables? and what does a parable mean? and then reviews a range of sources--from Aesop's fables to modern New Testament scholarship--to answer them. He also surveys the various ways the parables have been approached in literary criticism throughout history, giving specific examples of each method and delineating their strengths and weaknesses.

The contributors to this book pursue three important lines of inquiry into parable study, in order to illustrate how these lessons have been received throughout the millennia. The contributors consider not only the historical and material world of the parables' composition, and focusing on the social, political, economic, and material reality of that world, but also seek to connect how the parables may have been seen and heard in ancient contexts with how they have been, and continue to be, seen and heard. Intentionally allowing for a “bounded openness” of approach and interpretation, these essays explore numerous contexts, encounters and responses. Examining topics ranging from ancient harvest imagery and dependency relations to contemporary experience with the narratives and lessons of the parables, this volume seeks to link those very real ancient contexts with our own varied modern contexts.

Craig Blomberg surveys the contemporary critical approaches to the parables--including those that have emerged in the twenty years since the first edition. This widely used text has taken a minority perspective and made it mainstream, with Blomberg ably defending a limited allegorical approach and offering brief interpretations of all the major parables.

Many resources have been written to offer assistance in exploring and understanding the lectionary texts for the purpose of preaching. However, few have sought to provide this kind of preaching commentary on texts that do not follow the lectionary's grouping. For those whose preaching does not customarily follow the lectionary, and for those who depart from the lectionary text during certain periods of the year, little guidance has been offered for how to select, and preach on, important biblical texts. The Parables: A Preaching Commentary, the third book in The Great Texts series, gives guidance to preachers on preaching about this central part of faith. The principles by which volumes in The Great Texts series have been chosen are primarily two-fold: -Thematic: Texts on certain overarching themes or ideas of the Christian faith are brought together. -Biblical/traditional: Texts have long been recognized as belonging together, and as being particularly beneficial to the work of preaching.

Hedrick contends that parables do not teach moral and religious lessons; they are not, in whole or part, theological figures for the church. Rather, parables are realistic narrative fictions that like all effective fiction literature are designed to draw readers into story worlds where they make discoveries about themselves by finding their ideas challenged and subverted--or affirmed. The parables have endings but not final resolutions, because the endings raise new complications for careful readers, which require further resolution. The narrative contexts and interpretations supplied by the evangelists constitute an attempt by the early church to bring the secular narratives of Jesus under the control of the church's later religious perspectives. Each narrative represents a fragment of Jesus's secular vision of reality. Finding himself outside the mainstream of parables scholarship, both ecclesiastical and critical, Hedrick explored a literary approach to the parables in a series of essays that, among other things, set out the basic rationale for a literary approach to the parables of Jesus. These early essays form the central section of the book. They are published here in edited form along with unpublished critiques of a thoroughgoing literary approach and his response.