Title PageUnderstand the Setting of the ParableHistorical SettingCultural SettingUncover the Need that Prompted the ParableAnalyze the Structure and Details of the ParableState the Central Truth and Relationship to the KingdomThe Central TruthRelationship to the KingdomIntended Appeal of the ParableSummaryEndBibliotheca Sacra 155 (Jan.-Mar. 1998) 29-38. Copyright © 1998 by Dallas Theological Seminary. Cited with permission. GUIDELINES FOR INTERPRETING JESUS' PARABLES* Mark L. Bailey A turning point in the study of Jesus' parables came with the work of Adolf Julicher,l who sought to expose the inadequacies of the allegorical method of interpretation and asserted that each parable taught a single moral truth. In answer to Julicher, C. H. Dodd and Joachim Jeremias sought to discern more specific lessons from Jesus' parables by focusing on their major referent, the kingdom of God.2 Dodd and Jeremias attempted to interpret the parables in their historical contexts in the life of Jesus and in the gospel records. More recent trends have tended to see the parables as literary art at the expense of historical interpretation.3 Consequently some writers have returned to the approach that sees multiple meanings based on the subjective philosophical self-understand- ing of the interpreters rather than the historical objectivity of Je- sus and His message. The past fifteen years or so have been dom- Mark L. Bailey is Vice President for Academic Affairs, Academic Dean, and Professor of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas. *This is article one in an eight-part series, "The Kingdom in the Parables of Matthew 13." 1 Adolf Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wis- senschaftliche, 1963). 2 C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner & Sons, 1961); and Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, trans. S. H. Hooke, 2d ed. (New York: Scribner & Sons, 1954). 3 For example Dan Otto Via, The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Di- mension (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967); John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973); idem, "The Servant Parables," Semeia 1 (1974): 17-62; and idem, "Parable and Example in the Teaching of Jesus," Semeia 1 (1974): 63-104. 2930 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / January—March 1998 inated by a "sophisticated" literary criticism and structuralism which seems to be more concerned with the style of argumentation than the historical interpretation. From the pendulumlike ex- tremes of Julicher and the multiple meanings allowed by the ex- tremes of the philosophical linguistic movement, a more cautious balance is being sought by recent conservative writers. Though authors such as Robert Stein, David Wenham, Craig Blomberg, and John Sider4 have sought to interpret Jesus' parables more conservatively, it remains to be seen how many will join their ef- fort. Parables are distinguished from other literary figures in that they are narrative in form but figurative in meaning. Parables use both similes and metaphors to make their analogies, and the rhetorical purposes of parables are to inform, convince, or per- suade their audiences. Pedagogically Jesus utilized parables to motivate hearers to make proper decisions. To Jesus' original audiences the parables both revealed and concealed new truths regarding God's kingdom program. Those who rightly re- sponded were called disciples and to them it was granted to un- derstand the mysteries of the kingdom. The same truth was con- cealed from those who, because of hardened hearts, were unrecep- tive to the message of Jesus. A parable may be briefly defined as a figurative narrative that is true to life and is designed to convey through analogy some specific spiritual truth(s) usually relative to God's kingdom pro- gram. A proper interpretation of Jesus' parables should give atten- tion to the following five steps. UNDERSTAND THE SETTING OF THE PARABLE Conservative hermeneutics proceeds on the premise that lan- guage is meaningful and that the words in God's biblical com- munication carry "historical, cultural, spiritual, and moral meaning and values."5 As an interpreter approaches the Scrip- tures, he is conscious of the words and endeavors to discover the meaning carried by them. Sometimes Jesus supplied the interpre- tation (e.g., Matt. 22:14; 25:13), and on other occasions the Gospel 4 Robert H. Stein, An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981); David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989); Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1990); and John W. Sider, Interpreting the Parables (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). 5 A. T. Cadoux, The Parables of Jesus: Their Art and Use (London: Clarke, 1930), 45.Guidelines for Interpreting Jesus' Parables 31 writer made an editorial comment. Often the key to interpreta- tion can be found in the prologue to the parable (e.g., Luke 18:1, 9; 19:11). Other times the epilogue gives a clue to the proper interpre- tation (Matt. 25:13; Luke 16:9). And in some parables the prologue and epilogue form an interpretive parenthesis around the story (e.g., Matt. 18:23-24, 35; Luke 12:16-21). HISTORICAL SETTING In recent years many writers have misunderstood the parables because they have not given adequate attention to their historical setting. Doerksen notes forcefully that "the modern critical method is to remove the parable from the setting."6 Whether alle- gorized or taken with a totally aesthetic bias, the historical set- tings of the parables have been overlooked in favor of seeking to find existential implications for the present. In contrast to the lib- eral tendency to generalize the lessons of the parables, Dodd maintained, "The task of the interpreter of the parables is to find out, if he can, the setting of a parable in the situation contemplated by the Gospels, and hence the application which would support it- self to one who stood in that situation."7 Stein correctly commends the contribution of Dodd, who stressed the parables for Jesus’ ini- tial hearers and for the initial readers of the three Gospels. It was Dodd, who, more than anyone else, pointed out that to understand the parables correctly one needed to interpret them first of all in