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 third of the recorded teaching of Jesus consists of parables and parabolic statements. There are some forty parables and twenty parabolic statements (to say nothing of the many metaphorical statements) in the teaching of Jesus, and they are found in all of the four sources or collections of material commonly distinguished by students of the Gospels. Further, there is abundant evidence of Palestinian background and Semitic speech in the parables. So sceptical a critic as R. Bultmann can say that ‘the main part of these sayings (sc. the tradition of the sayings of Jesus as a whole) arose not on Hellenistic but on Aramaic soil’, and this verdict applies especially to the parables. The parabolic tradition is thus seen to be integral to the teaching of Jesus and to have a high claim to authenticity.