Abstract
John Dominic Crossan is probably well known to many readers of this journal for his previous thought-provoking publications on the historical Jesus and the New Testament. This volume is a study both of the major parables recorded in the gospels, and of the meaning and purpose of the gospels themselves. Thus, Part one explores some of Jesus’ parables in two ways: firstly, by drawing out illuminating parallels between them and stories found in the Jewish tradition and in literature from a wide range of historical and cultural settings, including the tale of Oedipus and the Sphinx and Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Secondly, Crossan attempts to categorize the parables into several main types, including riddles, as in the allegorical interpretation of the Parable of the Sower in Mark Chapter 4, and example parables, such as the man who finds the lost sheep or the woman the lost coin in Luke Chapter 15. He argues, however, that in their original intention, Jesus’ parables were challenge parables, spoken to prompt his hearers ‘ … to think long and hard about their social prejudices, their cultural presumptions, and yes, even their most sacred religious traditions’ (p. 62). Crossan sees challenge parables as an essential medium for Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God, which calls for a radical, but collaborative and non-violent, shift in thinking. He makes a very interesting link between Jesus’ parables and Old Testament books such as Ruth, Jonah, and Job which also challenge the theological certainties and cultural attitudes of their audience. The approach taken in this section will be familiar to those who have read Crossan’s other work, and many of his gifts as a writer and a theologian are clearly in evidence here. His narrative is compelling and exciting, his knowledge of the gospels deep, and his interpretation of the parables greatly enhanced by his ability to place them in the social and religious context of the first century. In this strength, however, is perhaps also his weakness, as his argument is often sweeping and general rather than detailed and exhaustive, and there is no space for engagement with alternative positions about the meaning of the parables or the first-century Galilean context, although this is an area of considerable scholarly contention.
Inspired by the insight that the parables told by Jesus seem similar to the stories told about Jesus in the gospels, especially the resurrection narratives, Crossan moves on in Part two of this volume to argue that each of the four canonical gospels should be read as a book-length mega-parable about Jesus. He thus presents Mark as a parable challenging Christian leaders, calling them to a style both less authoritarian and more inclusive of gentiles. His main evidence for this view is the criticism levelled throughout Mark’s gospel at the twelve, and the presentation of nameless and unexpected characters as examples of faith, such as the woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany (Mk. 14:3) or the centurion at the cross (Mk. 15:39). In discussing Matthew’s gospel, Crossan argues that the author has intensified the accounts of violence directed against Jesus during his lifetime, as in the account of Herod’s search to kill him at birth, and presents Jesus as offering a serious challenge to, or even an attack on, Pharisaic Judaism, a rival group to early Christianity (see e.g. Mt. Chapter 23; cf. Mt. 27:24–26 ‘… his blood be upon us and our children’). Luke-Acts is understood as one connected narrative written by a former gentile ‘godfearer,’ challenging with its universalistic outlook the narrowness of Judaism, but also confronting Roman society for its lack of compassion and charity, for instance, by emphasizing almsgiving as a prominent virtue of the Roman centurion Cornelius (Acts 10:2–4, 31). The Fourth Gospel is also read by Crossan in a similar light, as a challenge parable or attack on both Judaism and Roman imperial authority, as seen most clearly in passages such as the criticism of the ‘blind’ Pharisees (Jn. 9:40–41) and the dialogue between Jesus and the representative of Rome, Pilate (Jn. 18:33–38). This way of reading the gospels is helpful, in that it points up key themes of each author and throws some light on their overall narrative strategy and aims. It does, however, seem unnecessarily limiting to reduce each gospel to just one main point, and many would contend that a work of book-length does not qualify for the designation ‘parable.’ Crossan is on sure ground in arguing that a narrative or parable form can serve well as the medium for an important message, and that the gospel writers may well have used and even created stories to express their understanding of who Jesus was. To move beyond this, however, and claim that each was written as a long parable does not appear to take sufficient account of the complexity of the formation-history of the gospels, nor of the many and varied community and theological issues which the evangelists sought to address.
This book is written in a very accessible and engaging style, with no dense footnotes to deter the non-academic reader. It opens up the parables of Jesus in an illuminating way and challenges the certainties and presuppositions of the reader. Crossan presents here an interesting hypothesis on the formation of the gospels, one which is refreshingly free from literalism, but in the opinion of this reviewer, the case for seeing entire gospels as ‘mega-parables’ has not been convincingly made.