Matthew 13:10

‘And the disciples came, and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” '

The disciples, who had been listening to His stories and were obviously a little puzzled because they were clearly now more complicated and He never seemed to explain them, came to Him and asked Him why He taught the crowds in parables without explaining them. They could not understand why He did not say to the crowds the same things as He said to them. They did not know the hearts of the crowds as Jesus did. He knew that His words to the disciples were not for unrepentant hearts. But it should be noted that had Jesus not been teaching a number of parables in succession this question would never have been asked, thus a series of parables is indicated by the question.

Jesus' method of teaching in parables was certainly not unique. We have examples of parables in the Old Testament, such as Jotham's parable in Judges 9:7; Nathan's parable to David in 2 Samuel 12:1; Micaiah's in 1 Kings 22:19; Isaiah's in Isaiah 5:1; Isaiah 27:1; Ezekiel's in Ezekiel 31:1, and many more, but Jesus' parables are undoubtedly distinctive. The Rabbis also used parables and allegories, although only one is known before the time of Jesus. John the Baptist certainly spoke vividly and parabolically. But none used them as prolifically or as vividly or to as good effect as Jesus did.

That Jesus used parables and parabolic language right from the beginning of His ministry we know. In Matthew the obvious examples are Matthew 7:24; Matthew 9:15; Matthew 11:16, and we might also include Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:25; etc. depending on our definition of parable, while if we include illustrative material it is found almost everywhere. The truth is that Jesus' teaching is steeped in parabolic language from the beginning, and we are therefore very unwise if we think we can decide what He would and would not do in a field where He was clearly an innovator, and used a number of methods. He covered a wide scope of preaching methods and used a wide number of aids such as poetic metre, repetition, parallelism, chiasmus, pithy illustration, simple parable and allegory. Nor can we hope to decide at what point He introduced a particular parabolic or allegoric method, for our material is insufficient for the purpose. What we must beware of is trying to find an interpretation for every single point spoken of in a parable.

With regard to the views of scholars about parables, while this has beneficially made us think much more about them and gain new light on them, there is no doubt that for each scholar who takes up one position there is another who takes up another, and the truth is that if we add all their positions together and then extract what suits us, we can end up believing about them precisely what we want. The only final conclusion that we can actually reach is that none of their positions are so obviously right that they exclude the others, or have convinced the majority that they alone are right, and this might be seen as suggesting that their results are therefore mainly based on the presuppositions that they started out with or built up, or from their predisposition towards the results that they wanted to find, slightly modified by their own researches, rather than on anything intrinsic in the narrative. None, however, convincingly demonstrate that their position is correct and in the end all have to base their final convictions on their own dogmatic position, a position hotly disputed by others. This suggests that the principles on which they proceed are fallible. There are in fact almost as many interpretations as there are scholars. (After all that is what scholars excel at, putting up ideas to be shot down).

Our view is that Jesus' parables are so unique and distinctive in their simplicity and their genius that they point to the same mind as taught the Sermon on the Mount, a mind with a genius that no one else, other than Jesus, could have achieved. The early church certainly never demonstrated the ability to produce such parables in quite the same way. We also consider that there is clear evidence that in some cases a number of points are intended to be learned from them, so that some of them are to that extent allegories. We shall therefore consider them on this basis.