The Jesus’ Parables: John versus Synoptics

The Parables of Jesus in Recent Study

I. THE TRADITION OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION The history of parabolic interpretation can be divided into four relatively distinct periods. During the Period of the Early Church (to 540) a tendency toward allegorical interpretation was firmly established. Despite certain protests the three-fold method of allegorical interpretation championed by Origen dominated the exegesis not only of the par...

How to Understand the Parables of Jesus. a Paradigm Shift in Parable Exegesis

For many years, the exegesis of the parables of Jesus was determined by assump­ tions that were largely purported by Adolf Jülicher and subsequently underwent only insignificant modification. The Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (ed. R. Zimmermann, Gütersloh 2007), whose methodology and hermeneutics are explained in this article, takes a new route, as can be illustrated in four steps. From a his...

The Origin and Development of the Johannine Egō Eimi Sayings in Cognitive-Critical Perspective

Th e long-held critical judgment that the I-am sayings of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel have no connection at all with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is based primarily on the inference that they are entirely missing from the Synoptics. As a result, John has been expunged from Jesus research, assuming its patent ahistoricity; yet critical analyses have largely overlooked JohannineSynoptic simi...

Eschatology and the Parables

In any attempt to understand the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, a consideration of the parables must take an important place. This is demonstrated not merely by the plethora of critical study and popular exposition to which the parables have given rise, but above all by the place which the parables occupy in the Synoptic tradition. According to A. M. Hunter roughly one t...

Diagram: the Synoptics and Their Sources