absrtract-3.1.3

Hamilton More

ABSTRACT
Jesus taught in many different situations and used various form of teaching, including often parables. This article discusses the nature of parables and the history of their interpretation. This history outlines early allegorical interpretation, the Middle Ages, the time of the reformation, and their treatment in modern Biblical scholarship in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century. With modern approaches to the study of the text we find recent existentialist, artistic and literary approaches to the parables. Often the reconstructing of any historical context for the parables is understood as a misguided goal since the parables ought to be understood solely as units of literature. Yet this article still wishes to hold to authorial intent, to place the story in the culture and context of the life of Jesus and to endeavour to look for the point of the parable which Jesus intended it to make. All this leads to guidelines as to how these Gospel parables ought to be approached today.
KEY WORDS: Parables, allegory, the new hermeneutic, Palestinian culture, preaching.
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