Summary

This is the fifth volume in this series of the quest for the historical Jesus. At the outset, the strategy was to start with the material that was most likely to be traced back to the historical Jesus, such as Jesus' socioeconomic background, or John the Baptist's mission, or Jesus' healings, or the groups with whom he interacted, and then progress to more complex situations. This strategy served to develop a framework that allowed us to tackle the more problematic cases. The fourth volume addressed one of these complex situations, Jesus' position in relation to the Law.

The question of parables in this fifth volume belongs to the complex situations. The first problem concerns their meaning: when a parable is detached from its context in the gospel or in Jesus' ministry, it can be made to say anything. The second problem is methodological: when we apply the criteria of historicity used throughout this quest for the historical Jesus, few parables can be considered with any degree of probability as going back to the historical Jesus. Thus, ch. 37 will present seven basic propositions that will serve as a foundation for our claims about the parables. Ch. 38 aims to refute the argument of some biblical scholars who use the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (CGT) as multiple attestation of the parables. Ch. 39 reviews the various parables in the chronological order of their source. Finally, ch. 40 will focus on the few parables that have survived the criteria of historicity.

It is vital to distinguish the theological question of the faith message contained in a parable from the question of its historicity in order to know whether it goes back to the historical Jesus. It is to this latter question that this volume is concerned. To answer this question we will use the five main criteria applied in the other volumes: the criteria of embarrassment, discontinuity, multiple attestation, coherence and rejection. Secondary criteria such as traces of the Aramaic language or the Palestinian environment of the first century can only be used to confirm the main criteria. Some biblical scholars have looked for other criteria, or have rejected all criteria together, only to find themselves either letting in the back door the traditional criteria or falling into arbitrariness.

---

1. The Overall Strategy of A Marginal Jew

   The overall strategy might resemble the strategy adopted in any negotiation: one tackles the easier questions first before tackling the almost intractable problems. Thus we began our quest with material that had multiple attestations in a wide variety of literary forms, and then progressed, volume by volume, to more complex situations.

   1. In the first book, we established basic principles to guide our quest and provided an initial portrait of Jesus' social, cultural, economic, and family background. In the second volume, we tackled three major issues: 1) John the Baptist, Jesus' mentor, 2) Jesus' message about the kingdom of God, 3) the proclamation of the kingdom through Jesus' deeds of power, called miracles. The multitude and variety of stories has allowed us to apply our criteria of historicity at our leisure. And the portrait of Jesus that emerges is that of a healing and eschatological prophet, reflecting the traditions and hopes around the prophet Elijah.

   2. The third volume took a much broader view by considering those who interacted with Jesus, first the crowds and those who followed him, such as his disciples, and then those who opposed him, such as the scribes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees. This was a challenge, because apart from figures like Simon Peter, it is almost impossible to pinpoint the faces of those who were interested in Jesus' message. Likewise, to define exactly groups like the Essenes or the Herodians is a titanic challenge, for either the data is lacking or the possible sources are biased. Thus, in the course of this volume, firm conclusions have become increasingly rare. Nevertheless, we have been able to gain here and there, through Jesus' interaction with his supporters and opponents, a better understanding of the historical Jesus, especially with regard to the interpretation of the Mosaic law. All this has paved the way for the fourth volume.

   3. Thus, in the fourth volume, at the end of our quest, we were left with four puzzles:
      1. Jesus' attitude toward the Law
      2. His use of parables
      3. The way he was described both by himself and by others (i.e., self-designations and "titles")
      4. his last days in Jerusalem culminating in his death

   4. The value of this approach is that it allows us to tackle the riddles without being in a vacuum, because we have a reference portrait of Jesus.
      1. He is a healing and eschatological prophet like Elijah
      2. He proclaimed and initiated the gathering of the twelve tribes of Israel for the end of time
      3. At the same time, he engaged in debates with other Jewish movements and separated himself from them

      All of this gave us an analytical grid to determine what was possible, what was likely, and what was the most likely solution to the riddles.

   5. Volume four tackled the first of the four enigmas: Jesus' attitude to the Law. But the search for the "historical Law," i.e., the one that existed at the time of Jesus, proved more problematic than that of the historical Jesus. For example, large sections of Jesus' statements about purity have had to be dismissed as the creation of the early church, while other legal material has been inconclusive. On the other hand, other statements of Jesus, such as the prohibition of divorce and oaths, and the linking of love of God and love of neighbor as the first commandment, were concluded as historical. This analysis has allowed us to enrich the face of Jesus with that of a man who teaches the Law with authority, at the risk of making it more complex. For how do these new elements of the portrait fit with that of the healing and eschatological prophet? This is typical of all the other results we will get from trying to unravel the riddles: some questions are answered, the portrait of Jesus is enlarged, but the whole puzzle is not yet complete.

2. The Special Problem of the Parables
   1. The first problem with the parables is their meaning. Unlike the situation with Jesus' statements about legal matters, where a line could be drawn between what they might probably mean and what they absolutely did not (e.g., questions about divorce and oaths), the parables are open to all possible interpretations, without limit. For after detaching it either from its editorial context in the gospel or from its historical context in Jesus' ministry, an interpreter can make a parable say anything he or she wants. And over the last half-century, people have not hesitated to apply various analytical grids according to the fashions of the moment: existentialist, structuralist, socio-economic, Marxist, postmodern, Nietzschean.

   2. The second and most important problem is methodological. So far, in our search for the historical Jesus, we have constantly asked ourselves the question: does this or that element of the tradition go back to the historical Jesus, or is it a creation of the bearers of the Christian tradition in the first or second generation of the early church? Or, to put it another way, does this or that gospel passage so reflect the vocabulary, interests, and theology of the writer that it is probably a creation of the evangelist? The first volumes on the quest for the historical Jesus focused on points where there was the greatest chance of tracing words or actions to the historical Jesus using our methodology. Unfortunately, with this fifth volume on the parables, we face a gap. For we will see that, in most cases and applying our criteria of historicity, one cannot find an argument for tracing a particular parable to the historical Jesus. This does not mean that this or that parable does not go back to the historical Jesus. But we lack the arguments to do so. To automatically attribute all the parables to the historical Jesus is magical thinking. In fact, we can find arguments showing that this or that parable is a creation of the primitive church or of the evangelist. On the other hand, we will see that some parables have a good chance of being traced back to the historical Jesus, but they are few in number.

   3. Such a conclusion might seem shocking to some readers. Therefore, this volume will try to provide a guide to this reflection. First of all, ch. 37 will present seven basic propositions which will serve as a foundation for our statements about the parables. These propositions are called : Seven Unfashionable Theses, and we will begin with the least controversial and end with the most contentious claim, the one in which we declare that for the vast majority of the Synoptic parables we lack arguments to demonstrate their authenticity, for they do not meet even one of our criteria of historicity, especially that of multiple attestation.

   4. Ch. 38 seeks to refute the argument of some biblical scholars who use the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (CGT) as multiple attestation of the parables. This is our sixth thesis, which asserts that CGT shows direct or indirect knowledge of either of the synoptic gospels, and thus cannot be used as an independent witness.

   5. Chapter 39 reviews the various parables. Rather than grouping them thematically, we will group them by source and in the probable chronological order of their composition, i.e. Mark, Q (which is common to Matthew and Luke, and not found in Mark), Matthew's own material (M) and Luke's own material (L). As we move forward in our analysis, we will make the surprising discovery that the number of well-developed parables increases as we move from Mark to Q, then to Matthew, then to Luke. Moreover, the number of parables in Matthew (M) is greater than those in Mark or the Q document, and those in Luke (L) are the most numerous of all.

   6. Thus, each parable must be inspected for a preliminary indication that it might meet at least one criterion of historicity. Few parables survive this inspection. In our chapter 40, therefore, we will focus on those parables that have survived this initial inspection: the mustard seed, the murderous vinedressers, the wedding feast, the talents/mines. In their content, if not in their formulation, we have reason to believe that they could go back to the historical Jesus. This does not mean, however, that all the other parables were created by the early Christian communities or the evangelists. Rather, the vast majority of the parables do not offer us evidence to support a firm judgment.

3. Methodology: A Refresher Course on the Rules of the Road
   1. It is vital to make a distinction between the quest for the historical Jesus and theology, especially Christology. In the first case, the work is done in the history department of a university using the rigorous academic rules of history. In contrast, the study of Christology is carried out in the theology department using the methods of theology. If we turn to the parables, this distinction means that we must distinguish between the work of determining with a level of probability which parables could be traced back to the historical Jesus, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the work of clarifying the faith message of the first Christians, especially the one that the evangelist wanted to communicate with the parables. This volume is oriented to what is normally done in the history department, not in the theology department.

   2. Unfortunately, there is much confusion between the role of parables in Christian faith and theology and the role of parables in the search for the historical Jesus. The number of books that comment on the parables testifies to the place of the parables in the Christian life. But there is a problem when one slips unnoticed from the theological richness of the parables to the claim that they originated in the ministry of Jesus. The consequence is that the parables receive a free pass into the exclusive club of authentic material from Jesus.

   3. In short, this book is a search for the historical parables of the historical Jesus. Let us remember that we must distinguish between the "real" Jesus, i.e., everything he said, did, and felt during the thirty-six years of his life, most of which escapes us and will always escape us, and the "historical" Jesus, the one who is accessible to us through the documents left behind by rigorous application of historical-critical methods. We have good reason to believe that the historical Jesus that emerges after the application of historical-critical methods coincides at least partially with the "real" Jesus. Thus, in volume one we imagined a "non-papal" conclave of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and agnostic historians trying to reach a consensus based solely on historical sources and arguments. For example, there would be a consensus that Jesus "was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died as a result," because this fact is supported by non-Christian historians such as Flavius Josephus and Tacitus, as well as by a number of independent strands of the Christian tradition. On the other hand, a longer statement that would add the significance of this death "for us human beings and for our salvation" escapes investigation and empirical verification, and is a matter of Christian faith and Christology, not of the historian in his capacity as historian.

   4. We are therefore referred to the question of sources. Unfortunately, apart from the four gospels, they are few. Paul and Flavius Josephus offer us only crumbs. Claims that the later apocryphal writings and the gnostic material of Nag Hammadi offer us independent sources are totally fanciful. All of this forces historians to return to the four gospels for information about the historical Jesus. Knowing that the gospels are above all a catechesis to support the faith of believers, composed between forty and seventy after the death of Jesus, they can only be approached by rigorously applying the criteria of historicity and authenticity. It is time to present them again.

   5. The five main criteria
      1. The criterion of embarrassment refers to gospel material that could not have come from the early church because it would have been an embarrassment and presented a theological problem, such as the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry, or the death of Jesus as a convicted criminal at the hands of the Roman authorities, a fate reserved for slaves, bandits, and rebels, and one that could render Christians suspicious before the political authority. This was scandalous. So we can see that the first Christians developed different strategies, which go in all directions, to deal with this source of embarrassment. The earliest traditions, preserved in Peter's sermons in the Acts of the Apostles, clearly distinguish between the crucifixion (an evil act of men permitted by God) and the resurrection (God's saving action against human wickedness); these sermons do not discern anything salvific in Jesus' crucifixion in itself. But early on, seeing the shortcomings of such a presentation of the cross, some pre-Pauline formulations of faith emerged, probably in the late 30s, which interpreted the crucifixion as a kind of sacrifice for sins (see 1 Cor 15:3-5; Rom 3:24-26; the epistle to the Hebrews has developed this approach extensively). For Paul, it is only by accepting this shameful death as an instrument of salvation that the sinner, without merit on his part, is justified by faith in Christ. More simply, the Q document associates Jesus' death with the martyred prophets of the OT: he is the eschatological prophet, the last in a long line of martyrs who bring salvation history to its completion. The sources of the passion narratives associate Jesus with other figures, such as the suffering righteous man in the psalms of lamentation and extolled by Wis 2:20-3:9, or the suffering servant of Yahweh of Isa 52:13-53:12. In a radically different approach, John's gospel makes the cross the place of exaltation and glorification, a triumph over the world that mistakenly thought it had defeated and condemned him. All these strategies testify to the uneasiness of the way Jesus died, because it did not correspond to the expected type of messiah, and made it difficult to recruit new followers.

      2. The criterion of discontinuity refers to words or deeds of Jesus that cannot be derived from the Judaism of Jesus' day or the early church. A typical example discussed in our first volume is the rejection of voluntary fasting. Another example is the title "Son of Man" which appears in all four gospels and by which Jesus refers to himself. This title replaces the personal pronoun "I" in Jesus' mouth and suggests a special mission of Jesus. One would look in vain for a parallel of this usage in the Hebrew or Aramaic Scriptures or in the Jewish literature that precedes the period of Jesus. And this title disappears in the rest of the New Testament and its Christology. In the Church Fathers, the title became a way of designating the double nature of Jesus, human and divine. We are thus faced with an example of a double discontinuity, the first in relation to Jewish usage, the second in relation to Christian usage.

      3. The criterion of multiple attestation refers to words or actions of Jesus that receive testimony (i) from more than one independent literary source (Mark, Q, Paul, or John) and (ii) in more than one literary form or genre (sayings, narratives). A typical example in this fifth volume concerns the parables: the fact that Jesus taught in parables is confirmed by the narrative of all the synoptic gospels as well as by the redactional part of all the synoptic gospels. Moreover, some of the parables are attested by multiple sources: Mark, Q Document. The same is true of the title "son of man" which is found in Mark, Q Document, M and L, as well as in John, with a slight variation. Finally, we can mention the death of Jesus on the cross reported by Paul, the Deutero-Pauline writings (Colossians, Ephesians), 1 Peter, the four evangelists, and by Flavius Josephus (and implicitly by Tacitus).

      4. The coherence criterion comes into play only after selecting material using the previous criteria and pinpoints some consistency in the words and deeds of Jesus that have been so selected. For example, the fact that Jesus would have spoken of his upcoming violent death, whether in a direct or veiled manner, is supported by multiple attestation, but this fact is also consistent with Jesus' view of himself as an eschatological prophet, following all of Israel's martyred prophets, and consistent also with the fate of his mentor, John the Baptist, an eschatological prophet executed by Herod Antipas.

      5. The rejection and execution criterion seeks to identify the words and actions of Jesus that fit with or explain his trial and crucifixion. For example, Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his prediction of the destruction of the temple, and his prophetic intervention in the cleansing of the temple take on major significance in light of his arrest and crucifixion in Jerusalem.

   6. Secondary criteria (sometimes dubious)

      These secondary criteria can only be used after the five main criteria to provide some kind of confirmation. Among these secondary criteria are traces of the Aramaic language in the words of Jesus or the echo of a first-century Palestinian environment. One could add the vivid or concrete nature of the story, or the observation that a story tends to grow with time, and thus the more concise a story is, the older it is. Unfortunately, these secondary criteria will not be of any use in the study of parables.

   7. Alternate Approaches

      A number of biblical scholars have expressed skepticism about the use of criteria in general. This skepticism is probably born of the disappointment of not arriving at certainty in an area where there will never be any. How can one be surprised that even the use of criteria does not lead to consensus when one looks at the lack of consensus on the synoptic problem (which gospel depends on which gospel) or the lack of agreement about the various stages of tradition and redaction in the Fourth Gospel. This skepticism has led some biblical scholars to prefer to make do without criteria in their analysis, relying on their scholarly instinct. Others wanted to use modern studies on phenomena such as common memory and the oral transmission of a tradition, ignoring the fact that the type of society of the early Christians is very different from that of the Homeric or medieval epics described by these studies. Still others have tried to redefine the criteria of historicity, proposing for example that of plausibility, but have found themselves reintroducing the traditional criteria by the back door. Moreover, since every historical novel always seeks to be plausible, or what a clever liar says is always plausible, or all the various reconstructions of the historical Jesus are all plausible, this criterion of plausibility does not really allow us to make a judgment of probability about the historicity of a story.

      All this leads us to reaffirm the value and importance of the criteria we have used in our search for the historical Jesus. They are not perfect and their application is more of an art than a science, but they allow us to arrive at a degree of probability. Most importantly, they sometimes force the researcher to accept conclusions that he or she did not anticipate, or perhaps even did not want. This was the case for us in the study of the parables, where we had not imagined that most of them could not be traced with a good degree of probability to the historical Jesus. Without holding to these criteria, we would probably have repeated the majority position that pleases everyone, but is not proven by anyone. To those who would reject completely the need for criteria of historicity in the quest for the historical Jesus, we offer a simple definition and a question: the word "criteria" means "rules for making a judgment"; and if one has no rules for making a judgment on material claiming to be traced to the historical Jesus, how will the judgment he makes avoid being totally arbitrary?