Theology Today - Vol 47, No. 1 - April 1990 - BOOK REVIEW - Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus

98 - Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus

Hear Then the Parable:
A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus
By Bernard Brandon Scott
Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1989. 465 pp. $29.95.

The author, Darbeth Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Phillips Graduate Seminary (University of Tulsa), has devoted a decade to the study of Jesus' parables, beginning with his earlier work Jesus, Symbol-Maker for the Kingdom. This present work, from which the specialist and non-specialist alike can profit, is the outgrowth of his methodological expansion and increasing sophistication.

Scott divides his exposition of Jesus' parables into four parts. In Part I, Scott posits his definition of the parable as "a mashal that employs a short narrative fiction to reference a symbol." An investigation of mashal and parabole as literary forms and an exploration of modern parable scholarship, as well as modern literary, semiotic, and linguistic theories permit Scott to amplify each aspect of this definition. He then specifies the criteria employed to delimit the corpus of authentic parables, the main criterion comprised of those elements of style and language which imply a consistency of "voice."

To devise a strategy for organizing Jesus' parables and an approach for interpreting them, Scott forges a bold methodological amalgam. Briefly and generally stated, he analyzes and interprets the parables by means of sociological and literary methods. Based upon the conclusions of the requisite and careful methodological considerations, the bulk of Scott's work contains his exposition of the parables themselves. The breadth of his innovative approach to the parables of Jesus can only be intimated summarily here.

Scott's sociological description of the dynamics and structures of first century Mediterranean social life and culture in general and Palestinian peasant culture in particular provides the basic categories for organizing the parables. In Part II, Scott groups and then interprets parables that exploit the concentric organization of Palestinian peasant culture from the central social unit, the family-which is "inside"-to the village, city, and beyond-which, in increments, are "outside." Following that,

99 - Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus

he groups and interprets parables embodying the client-patron model, a model that "delineates the regulation of crucial aspects of a social order." Such parables involve a "test" between master and servant and are subdivided into two groups depending upon whether the occasion for the test is provided by the master's departure and return or by an "accounting scene" between master and servant. In Part IV, Scott focuses on parables that "invest the artifacts of daily life with metaphorical and symbolic significance." These parables are subdivided according to whether they employ metaphors of the home or metaphors associated with the farm (or agriculture).

Scott's ambitious literary analysis and interpretation of each parable is divided into three parts. First, he examines the parable in its narrative context within the different Gospels (the evangelist's performance of the parable) and then attempts to discern its "originating structure" (Jesus' performance of the parable) by scrutinizing the parable's surface structure, which forms a "bridge" from the evangelist's performance of the parable to Jesus' performance of the parable. Second, Scott offers his reading of the parable, in which he attempts to discover how the originating structure effects meaning. Employing "reception-theory analysis," Scott endeavors to reconstruct the parables' implied audience, "a textual strategy that represents the predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its magic." Thus, despite his refusal to situate the parables within the context of Jesus' life and ministry, Scott's reading is not absolutely ahistorical because he strives to situate the parables within their "phenomenological world" of first century Palestine, which "informs the repertoire, the conventions, world view, ideologies, and stereotypes active in a text." Third, Scott explores the relation between the parable story and the kingdom of God, a juxtaposition from which emerges "the parabolic effect."

Finally, in an epilogue, Scott reflects upon the implications of his analysis pertinent to the genre (parable), to the speaker of the parables (Jesus), and the symbol evoked by the parables (the kingdom of God).

While some readers will quibble with specific details in Scott's analyses of the parables, his lack of dialogue with important sociological studies of the New Testament and its era, and his combination of diverse literary methods with different presuppositions about the nature of language and the status of a text, Scott's novel approach to the parables of Jesus yields interesting and insightful interpretations. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Scott's study is his attempt to reconstruct the "implied" (not the "real") audience of Jesus' parables. Scott's combination of the literary and the sociological in his investigation signals a shift in American parable scholarship away from strictly ahistorical (synchronic) interpretations.

Jeffrey T. Tucker
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee