Metaphors and parables are some of the most powerful theological statements in the Bible. But what are we to make of them? Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey has written extensively on Jesus' parables in his books, like Poet and Peasant and Through a Peasant's Eyes. Bailey spent most of his life teaching and working in the Middle East. He speaks several languages and knows Middle Eastern culture, ancient and present, inside out and backward. Because of his background, he can unveil hidden assumptions at work in the stories of the Bible that are lost on 21st Century Western readers like me. Bailey is also adept at showing literary devices used in the constructions used by biblical authors.
One of Bailey's more fascinating cultural insights is about Jesus' likely education and how this affected his teaching. Jesus was called rabbi. How, exactly, did one become a rabbi?
In Jesus’ day, across the villages of Galilee and Judea, there were associations of serious-minded Jews who called themselves the haberim (the companions/friends). The name was taken from Psalm 119:63, which reads, “I am a companion [haber] of all who fear thee, / of those who keep thy precepts.” These associations were composed of men who were employed in secular trades but who spent their spare time debating the Law and trying to apply it to their world. A young Jew in his early teens had the option of joining such a group. If he decided to do so, he was committed to becoming a “student of the rabbis” and participating in their discussions. Those Jews who wished to spend their spare time in activities other than scholarly debates were not a part of these associations. The rabbis called such types am ha-arets, “the people of the land.” This title was not a compliment, and considerable hostility developed between these two groups. It seems to assume that Jesus joined the haberim. The story about him in the temple at twelve years of age emphasizes his intelligence and his scholarly bent (Lk. 2:41-51). With this pattern of culture in mind, it is easy to assume that Jesus went on to spend eighteen years in sustained discussion with the brightest and best thinkers in Nazareth and the surrounding villages. When, at the age of thirty, Jesus began his public ministry, he demonstrated time and again considerable skill in the rabbinic style of debating, and, therefore, it is not surprising that the community called him “rabbi.”
The title rabbi emerged in first-century Judaism as a title of respect for a scholar. Students used it for a teacher, and the community at large used it for the scribes and sages. Eduard Lohse states, “When Jesus is called Rabbi by His disciples and others, this shows that He conducted Himself like the Jewish scribes. David Flusser, the able Israeli scholar writes, “It is easy to observer that Jesus was far from uneducated. He was perfectly at home both in holy scripture and in oral tradition, and he knew how to apply this scholarly heritage. Flusser goes on to note that carpenters in particular had a reputation for learning. With this in mind Flusser then rejects “the common, sweetly idyllic notion of Jesus as a naïve and amiable, simple manual workman.” (Kenneth E. Bailey, Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story. (Downer's Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003) 24-25.)
Bailey explains that within preliterate Middle Eastern cultures, a set of "stock" stories communicated cultural values. Teachers would teach the stories to students who were expected to memorize the stories to the point they could recite them verbatim. One learning technique was that one student would begin a story and then hand off the story to another student, who was to pick up where the first student left off. He would then recite a portion of the story and hand it to another student. The teacher and other students corrected the slightest error.
The rabbis used "stock" stories to do their theological teaching. They would begin telling a story that everyone had committed to memory, but then they would change elements in the story. The juxtaposition of the rabbi's new story with the controlling story created an alternate reality for the students. Further tweaks might be made to the story, essentially saying, "Well what about this angle?" In his book Jacob and the Prodigal, Bailey shows how Jesus was doing this with his three-in-one parable of Luke 15.
Bailey has observed that it was a conscious decision of rabbis like Jesus not to write down their stories. As soon as teachings were written down, they were out of the hands of the rabbi, and writers could alter them with no rebuttal from the rabbi. Limiting the transmission to oral communication, where disciples memorized and recited the teachings to each other in community, gave the rabbi and his students control over the preservation of the teachings. In the case of Jesus' teaching, only when the Church began to expand, and the apostles were fading from the scene, was there a felt need to put the teachings in writing.
A common assumption among 21st Century Western Christians is that Jesus' parables and metaphors were just illustrations to make a theological point. Some insist that each parable was intended to teach one theological truth and has one theological point. Others insist that the stories were culture-bound. If they don't accurately reflect our present understanding, we can create other stories that better "illustrate" our theology and use them as the controlling metaphors. We can see that both of these perspectives fail to grasp the importance and the nature of these stories in theology.
I just finished reading How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins. He talks about the difference in mathematics between infinite and transfinite. There is an infinite set of numbers. Yet between any two numbers, there is a transfinite set of numbers. For instance, between 1 and 2, there are 1.2, 1.3, 1.4…etc. I see Jesus' metaphors and parables as transfinite stories with endless implications and meanings. Yet being transfinite, they exclude some possibilities and meanings, just like the math example I gave excludes any numbers less than 1 or greater than 2.
The objective is not to distill Jesus' metaphors and parables into an essential teaching that Jesus intended to illustrate. That is our Western scientific rationalism being read back into the text. Neither is the objective for us to decide who we think God is and then pick, choose, or create metaphors/parables that best suit our image of God. That merely results in a projection of ourselves onto God. The objective is for us to sit at the feet of the rabbi and enter into His transfinite metaphors and parables. And as we dwell in them, we let them define us.
Leave a Reply