Book Review: The Power of the Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus

A significant portion of the abundant scholarship of John Dominic Crossan has focused on two of the more celebrated areas of New Testament study: the historical Jesus and the stories he told. This book draws heavily on Crossan's earlier work in both areas.

After a prologue in which he defines parable as a metaphorical narrative that points beyond itself – and takes the reader away from “here,” wherever that “here” may be - the book is divided into two major sections. The first (six chapters) focuses on parables by Jesus; the second (four chapters) examines four “parables” (Gospels) about Jesus.

Crossan begins by developing yet another typology for parables. This time there are three types: riddle parables, example parables, and challenge parables. Riddle parables—or allegories—are those in which both a whole story and the various elements in it must be carefully decoded, putting readers to a potentially lethal test: success gains one the kingdom of God while failure insures condemnation (19). Crossan's prime example is the story of the sower in the Gospel of Mark, each element of which requires careful decoding by the reader. Crossan argues emphatically the historical Jesus did not intend his to create “incomprehension” and guarantee “condemnation” (p. 24); Mark got it wrong.

Second, Crossan describes “example” parables, citing sentence-length, paragraph-length, and even book-length exemplars from both biblical and extra-biblical sources. The three parables of Luke 15 provide examples, though once again Luke misunderstands Jesus' intention by construing these stories in relation to each other and to Luke's unique narrative context.

Finally, Crossan describes what he calls “challenge”parables—the category he believes best displays the intention and purpose of Jesus (43). He uses the parable of the Good Samaritan as a test case, citing instances of it interpreted as a riddle, an example story and a challenge. Because the parable itself, taken out of Luke's literary context and reinserted into the social context of Jesus, upsets common expectations, prejudices and presuppositions, he concludes it was originally a challenge parable. It takes the reader away from the “here” of common social judgments.

Two chapters conclude the first major part of the book. The first offers an analysis of four parables by Jesus: the Pharisee and Tax Collector (Lk. 18:10–13), Lazarus and the Rich Man (Lk. 16:19–26; vss. 17–31 are bracketed as a later Lukan/Christian addition), the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt. 20:1–15) and the Master's Money (Mt. 25:14–30, Lk. 19:12–26 and Eusebius, Theophany 4:12). Little is new here to those familiar with parable studies (though footnotes/sources/acknowledgements are annoyingly non-existent throughout), however Crossan's intent in using this material is to make the case that challenge parables were Jesus's characteristic way of teaching. The big point, one that has been articulated in a variety of ways throughout Crossan's long years of work on the parables, is that Jesus's intention was to “make us probe and question, ponder and wonder, discuss and debate, and, above all else, practice that gift of the human spirit known as thinking.” His own summary states it clearly: “Challenge parables foster not periodic doubting, but permanent questioning” (111).

The final chapter in part one seeks to reinforce the idea that Jesus's fundamental intention was to challenge all (religious, theological, social, economic, and political) human absolutes by arguing a fundamental consonance between Jesus's medium and his message. The medium of parabolic challenge is intrinsically connected to the message about the transcendental challenge of the kingdom of God. The chapter summary then makes the claim that challenge parables are pedagogical and instructive but emphatically not polemical or aggressive. They challenge, but they do not attack. Only later does the reader recognize that this point sets up the conclusion Crossan wishes to draw about the canonical Gospels.

The second major part of the book is introduced with an interlude discussing seven ancient accounts of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The example is used to demonstrate ancient precedent for stories about factual-historical incidents that include fictional and factual-historical characters and incorporate both fact and fiction in the narrative (152). This prepares the reader for the final four chapters which examine the canonical Gospels, claiming that they are parables about Jesus that show the same characteristics as the stories about Caesar.

Each canonical Gospel is then treated as a book-length parable with the primary question being whether it is a “challenge” parable (good) or and “attack” parable (bad). While Mark is acknowledged to be a diatribe against community leadership, nonetheless on balance it is characterized as hard criticism rather than simply an aggressive attack. Professing to be “sad” about it, Crossan then characterizes each of the other Gospels as (rhetorically) violent attacks. The pedagogical Jesus of Matthew 5 morphs into the rhetorically violent Jesus of Matthew 23. Luke-Acts launches a violent attack on Judaism while simultaneously approving of Rome. Though challenging Roman imperial authority, John is nonetheless a sweeping attack on both Judaism and Christianities that differ from his own. None of the four understood the historical Jesus.

While much in each of these final chapters can be challenged and debated, especially the highly selective, textual cherry-picking that undergirds the characterization of each Gospel (done in order to register the author's disappointment that they do not match his vision of the historical Jesus), full examination of that topic must await a different venue. Perhaps even more problematic is the author's use of the term “parable” to designate the genre of the Gospels. It is used because “parable” is a popularly recognized term for “fiction” - which is the way the author wants the reader to understand the Gospels.

Is there fiction in the Gospels? Of course. But there is also history, interpretation, viewpoint, selective memory, bad memory, rhetorical convention, opinion, tradition, and all the limitations of author, audience and socio-historical situation. As used here, both label “parable” and the term “fiction” lack the nuance that would make them understandable. They have simply become generalizations without meaning. For a general audience they misrepresent the complexity of the Gospel literature and serve the agenda of the author rather than the understanding of the reader.