A Critique of Liberal Scholarship - Part 4 - Observations on the interpretation of parables given by liberal scholars

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1996.

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Editor's note: This article is one part of a multi-part series which David Gooding wrote to critique in a scholarly way some of the work of a number of liberal scholars. The series comprises:

1. Can following liberal scholarship lead to a loss of faith?
2. Following liberal scholarship can lead to biased research
3. Observations on Herman Hendrickx's 'The Accounts of the Resurrection'
4. Observations on the interpretation of parables given by liberal scholars
5. A critique of Jeremias's interpretation of the parable of the Pounds (Luke 19:11–27)
6. A critique of Joachim Jeremias's interpretation of Mark 4
7. A critique of Haenchen's attempt to use Acts 1:9–11 as support for the theory of the delayed Parousia
8. A critique of Jeremias's interpretation of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1–8)
9. A critique of Beare's interpretation of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31)

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The theory associated with the names of Julicher, Dodd, Jeremias and Haenchen is based on a number of unproven presuppositions.

The unproven presuppositions of their theory

Firstly, their theory holds that:

1. Parables current among Aramaic speaking people in Palestine at the time of Christ would have had only one major point. They would have been simple parables, and not have contained a number of points in the manner of allegories.

2. By contrast, parables conveying a number of detailed points in the manner of allegories would have been typical of the Hellenistic world.

Secondly, their theory holds that:

1. Many parables in the New Testament are, as they now stand, full of detailed points in the manner of allegories.

2. Therefore, these parables are no longer in the form in which they were spoken by Christ. Parables spoken by him would have been of the Palestinian-Aramaic type: each of them would have contained only one main point.

3. What happened was this: when the gospel spread from the Aramaic world of Palestine to the Hellenistic world of the Roman Empire, New Testament writers like Matthew, Mark and Luke rewrote Christ's original parables, added a lot of details that turned these parables into allegories, and thus made them more acceptable to the Hellenistic mind.

Thirdly, in rewriting Christ's parables—without, of course, acknowledging that they were rewriting them, but still pretending that Christ spoke these parables plus all the alterations and additions—Matthew, Mark and Luke were reinterpreting what Christ had originally said, in order to make it fit the circumstances and needs of the Christian church in their day. The result was that the rewritten parables conveyed a very different message from that which they originally conveyed when Christ first spoke them.

And finally, their theory holds that:

1. No parable, as originally spoken by Christ, contained:
   • any reference to Christ himself personally; or
   • any reference to his second coming.

2. But some parables as they now stand do contain references to his second coming.

3. According to the theory, this came about as follows: Christ taught, and the apostles and first-generation Christians believed, that Christ's second coming (his Parousia) would take place soon. However, it did not take place soon; and as a result, the second generation of Christians were shaken in their faith because the second coming seemed to be delayed. So Luke and the other Gospel writers rewrote the parables of Jesus and inserted various statements to make it look as if Jesus himself had predicted that his second coming would be delayed.

4. It follows therefore that anything that we now find in the parables that suggests that the second coming is going to be delayed is part of this later rewriting: it is not part of what Christ originally said.

5. When we strip away all these later additions and get back to what Christ originally said, we find that the parables, as spoken by Christ, had altogether a different meaning from what they now appear to have in our New Testament.

General comments on Jeremias's theory

Jeremias was so confident that his theory was correct that, on its basis, he was prepared to assert repeatedly that Matthew, Mark and Luke were wrong. However, time has proved that actually it was Jeremias who was wrong:

The sharp distinction that he made between Palestine, which he supposed to be unvaryingly Aramaic in its outlook and practice, and the rest of the Roman world, which he supposed to be Hellenistic, has been demonstrated to be false. Palestine in the time of Christ was heavily Hellenized, and had been for over a century:

1. Eupolemos, the right-hand man of the Maccabees, had written his propaganda History of the Jews in Greek!

2. The rabbis of our Lord's time not only studied the Greek translation of the Old Testament—the so-called Septuagint—but were engaged in revising it to make it conform more closely to the original Hebrew.

3. The Decapolis (the Ten Cities) were all Greek cities.

4. The title on the cross was written in Hebrew (Aramaic), Latin and Greek.

5. Many modern scholars hold that our Lord himself would have spoken Greek at times. See:

6. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, Vols. 1 & 2, London, SCM Press, 1974; and, Dominique Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d\'Aquila, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1963.

Jeremias's basic contention that Palestinian parables never had more than one point, and never resembled allegories in which a number of points all have significance, was itself never anything else than a false, arbitrary assumption, not founded on the facts. Palestinian parables could be of any type, from short one-point metaphors, through to detailed, allegory-like parables.

Take, for example, Nathan's parable in 2 Samuel 12:1–4. Nothing could be more truly Palestinian than this. And yet all the following points in the parable are significant:

The rich man = King David

The poor man = Uriah

The rich man's numerous sheep = King David's many wives

The poor man's one ewe lamb = Uriah's only wife Bathsheba

The rich man's seizure of the ewe lamb = David's taking of Bathsheba

Naturally, if you first assume without proof that all parables originating in Palestine had only one significant point; and if on that basis you eliminate from the New Testament all parables that have more than one point, and you claim that these parables were not spoken by Christ but were later inventions and distortions by the Church; then of course you can show that all the remaining parables in the New Testament have only one point. You can then argue that these parables originated in Palestine, and may well have been spoken by Christ. But this is circular reasoning based on an unproven and false assumption. It is valueless. It is no surprise that Jeremias's extreme views on the parables have lost a lot of credibility in recent years.

Of course, I do not deny that Jeremias had the right to tell the world that he did not believe, or accept the authority of, Christ's apostles—though that is a serious thing for a professing Christian to do (see Matt 10:14). Nor do I deny Jeremias's right to rewrite history on the basis of his own unproven presuppositions. But Jeremias does more than that: he claims that true literary criticism supports his theory and claims to prove that Mark and Luke have distorted and misinterpreted the original words and parables of Jesus. It is this that I strongly deny. I contend that Jeremias's method of literary criticism is both biased and false.