Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Meier's Three Crucial Blunders* in Analyzing the Parables: One

John P. Meier has published five books under the general title A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus (1991- 2016). Each book is given an independent title. The independent title of his fifth book in the series is Probing the Authenticity of the Parables (Yale, 2016). The challenge of this book is that it charges the guild with largely assuming the historicity of the parables attributed to Jesus (p. 56). Meier, on the other hand, has come to the conclusion “that most of the parables lacked solid arguments for authenticity” (p. 20). And this in turn leads him critically to sift the parables as to whether or not they originated with Jesus, and he finds that only four parables originated with Jesus. By my count there are forty-one individual narrative parables in all (others count them differently); fourteen exist in multiple versions and twenty-seven exist only in single versions.1 Meier’s four authentic parables are: the Mustard Seed, the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, the Great Supper, and the Talents/Pounds (p. 231). His prime criterion for sorting the parables is the criterion of “multiple attestation of sources” (pp. 16, 48, 49, 55, 56), which states: “when a motif or teaching attributed to Jesus appears in more than one literary form or more than one independent literary source, the possibility of its originality is increased, provided it is not characteristic of the early church or Palestinian Judaism.”2 Meier applies this criterion only with respect to independent strands of the tradition (that is, literary texts), and in the sorting does not address the ideas reflected in the parables. This enables him to relegate all the singularly attested parables (27 in all) to a category of what he calls non liquet; that is, they must be discounted from consideration because they appear in only one literary text (p. 8). There are, however, more parables that appear in multiple independent sources than just these three3 but he eliminates those texts from consideration for various reasons.

Here briefly is a critique of his first blunder permitting him to draw the conclusions he does. Meier excludes all singularly attested parables, although he admits that some of them may have originated with Jesus (p. 8). Nevertheless, the multiple-attestation criterion does not prove that a parable originated with Jesus. It only proves that a particular parable did not originate with the writer in whose text it appears, since it appears in at least one other text not literarily related to the first. The criterion only proves that the parable was accessed independently from the tradition by each writer rather than from each other, and only takes one “back to early elements in the tradition, not necessarily to Jesus himself.”4 An additional step is required to show that a given parable probably originated specifically with Jesus. For this proof Norman Perrin preferred the criterion of dissimilarity, which states: “Sayings and parables may be regarded as original with Jesus if they are dissimilar to characteristic emphases in Palestinian Judaism and early Christianity.”5 Perrin found the multiple-attestation criterion to be “less effective” and “restricted”; hence he used it in only a limited way, because “it will not often help with specific sayings but rather with general motifs.”6 Perrin states that “the application of the criterion of dissimilarity enable[s] us to reconstruct major aspects of the teaching of Jesus beyond a reasonable doubt: [they are:] the parables, the kingdom of God teaching and the Lord’s Prayer tradition.”7 Meier takes no second step in arguing authenticity.

The parabolic form was not used by the earliest Christians. They used other literary forms.8 The parables are principally realistic narrative fictions whose content was expressed in terms of the peasant culture of Palestinian antiquity.9 The early church, however, was able to make use of them particularly by interpretive introductions and conclusions, the literary settings in which they were placed, and by allegorical glosses or allegorical rewriting, among other things.10

Here is what leads me to the conclusion that Jesus is probably the originator of the parables. Parables appear in multiple independent strands of the Jesus tradition: Mark, Thomas, Secret James, and Q. The fact that we have forty-one separate parables for which no authorship other than Jesus has ever been asserted argues that Jesus is the putative author. Not that all are from Jesus but responsibility shifts to those who wish to deny that a particular parable did not originate with Jesus. Jesus popularized the parabolic form but the form was not unique to Jesus since it also appears in ancient Israelite texts.11 The fact that the stories attributed to Jesus bear the stamp of Palestinian culture rather than the Hellenistic culture of the authors of the gospels who preserved them and who had so much difficulty understanding them argues that they did not originate them.12 The gospels abound with allegory and Christian theology, but the stories of Jesus themselves as a whole do not, and that makes them strikingly different from the sources in which they appear.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*Meier accused the Jesus Seminar of a “major blunder” in describing Jesus as sage (p. 40).

1 Hedrick, “Parable,” NIDB, 371. 
2 Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide, 141-42. See in particular: N. Perrin Rediscovering the Teachings of Jesus, 46-47 and M. E. Boring, “The Historical-Critical Method’s ‘Criteria of Authenticity’: The Beatitudes in Q and Thomas as a Test Case,” Semeia 44 (1988): 12-14.
3 Hedrick, “Parable,” NIDB, 4: 371.
4 Boring, “Criteria of Authenticity,” 14; see also Perrin, Rediscovering, 46.
5 Hedrick, History and Faith, 139-41. See in particular Perrin, Rediscovering, 39-43 and Boring, “Criteria of Authenticity,” 17-21
6Perrin, Rediscovering, 46.
7 Ibid., 47.
8 Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus, 31-43.
9 Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom, 104. Compare Meier, Marginal Jew, 42.
10 These insights are only possible because of the writing of the parabolic tradition by Jeremias, Parables of Jesus, 23-114. Perrin, Rediscovering, 47.
11Hedrick, Many Things in Parables, 17-18.
12Ibid., 26.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Charlie,

I agree with your comments about the dissimilarity criterion, but probably the only part of the longer narrative stories that go back to Jesus is the central attitude or theme found within. After all there is general agreement that the tradition was oral for at least 20 years after Jesus' death. It seems improbable to me that very long parables like the Prodigal Son and Vineyard laborers could any longer exist in word for word memory. But they could represent the attitude that Jesus conveyed to his followers which they would have then repeated in behavior across time. The attitude would have been: in God's family we all stand first before God: the older and younger brother, the laborers who worked one hour and those that worked all day.

Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.

Charles Hedrick said...

The theory I work with is that Jesus composed a parable; the audience heard and remembered as best they were able and repeated it to others. This process continued until it reached the ears of the synoptic evangelists, who wrote it down. The words undoubtedly changed as did the size of the parable in transmission. Hence the nameless multitude who passed along the parables were as much authors of the parables as Jesus. He simply originated it.
Cordially,
Charlie

Anonymous said...

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for sharing your theory of parable development. Makes sense.

May I ask what Meier's approach to the Q Gospel (material common to Matt and Lk) and to the Gospel of Thomas is, and did he address the work of Mark Goodacre. Goodacre views Thomas as dependent upon the synoptics (Mark-Matt-Luke), asserting, for one thing, that the synoptic's editorial work is evident in Thomas, and he has also questioned the very existence of Q, pointing for one thing to the hundreds of minor agreements between Matt and Luke against Mark, suggesting that Luke simply copied directly from Matt, rather than each having a separate document Q.

Mark Goodacre. Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas' Familiarity with the Synoptics (Eerdmans, 2012), and The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan priority and the Synoptic Problem (Trinity Press International, 2002).

Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.

Charles Hedrick said...

Good afternoon Gene,
He follows the two source theory, and thinks that there is a Q. He mentions the work of Mark Goodacre several times mostly in footnotes. And he thinks that Thomas is dependent on the Synoptic Gospels. My next Blog discusses Meier's view of Thomas.
Cordially,
Charlie

Anonymous said...

Two thoughts...
It seems to me that parables were a function of prophets in their role of critiquing and trying to bring change, in the literature of the Tanakh. (One example of this duty is found in Hosea 12.11, JPS version), "When I spoke to the prophets; for I granted many visions and spoke parables through the prophets.") In producing a Jesus that would fit the parameters of those he would have been associated with, like Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, etc., it seems reasonable that Jesus would have been presented by the authors as not only a healer, exorcist, controller of natural phenomena, but also as a teller (and explainer) of parables.

I would argue that a parable without context probably wouldn't have been remembered. Memory is learning, and memory needs context. That has to do with the importance of "understanding" in the encoding into long term memory. One needs a context to understand and to store information into a meaningful unit for long term retrieval. That would make me wonder about the claim that many parables without a lesson or allegorization attached would have come to the gospel writers from an oral historical Jesus around 30 c.e. It seems the lesson would have been more relevant than the metaphor.
Dennis Dean Carpenter
Dahlonega, Ga.

Charles Hedrick said...

Hi Dennis,
Thanks for engaging. The New Revised Version does not translate the latter half of Hosea 12:10 (your 12:11 in the JPS version) with the word "parable." They translate it as : "and through the prophets I will bring destruction."
With respect to your second paragraph: it nevertheless seems to be the case that the parables have not preserved either the social contexts in which Jesus delivered the parables or the lessons he drew from them if any.
Cordially,
Charlie

Elizabeth said...

Good Evening Charlie,

You said to Gene that the nameless multitudes who passed along the parables were as much authors of the parables as Jesus... How can we ever separate what came from Jesus and what came from the multitudes? And how many of this nameless multitude were evangelists- all of them?

Is it your understanding that nothing Jesus said verbally was written down during the time he was alive? In other words- were all of the 41 parables passed along by oral tradition? Fascinating as always, thank you! Elizabeth

Charles Hedrick said...

Good Morning Elizabeth,
So far as I know if anything was written down when Jesus was alive (assuming that any of his associates even knew how to write) it has not been preserved. The earliest Jesus text is the gospel of Mark dated around 70 on the basis of logic. What protected his parables from disappearing into their passage through tradition were the plots, and the fact that they were found to be useful for the faith of those who passed them on. If anything remained of the mind of Jesus in the parable it was the plot which tended to maintain its stability through the passage through many minds. We know nothing about those who passed on the tradition except that they were Jesus people.
Thanks for asking.
Cordially,
Charlie

Anonymous said...

That's interesting, since the versions I looked at either use "parable" (ESV (12.10), Jewish Tanakh I mentioned above, from the Masoretic (12.11), RSV 12.10 ["I spoke to the prophets; it was I who multiplied visions, and through the prophets gave parables"]), or "similitudes" (KJV, Lamsa's Peshitta,12.10), with a version of the Septaguint at the Penn U website which has either "made similar" or "was portrayed symbolically" at the end. The footnote in my Tanakh, which is a translation of the Hebrew text states, "The reference to the LORD speaking in 'parables' to the prophets helps us to understand the way in which prophetic words were understood in antiquity."

Dennis Dean Carpenter
Dahlonega, Ga.

Charles Hedrick said...

Good Afternoon Dennis,
I don't usually work with Hebrew texts and reached to my colleague who is an expert in the Hebrew Bible. I asked him what is the problem with the last word in Hosea 12:11. Here is his response:
"In the Hebrew text it is 12:10. The last word is, dama [long mark over first a and circumflex over last a], is variously translated as 'compare, be like, equal, match, meditate, plan, and told parables.' The latter translation is used in the NIV while the JPS translates it as 'similitudes.' Mayes, in his Hosea commentary (p. 166, n. b) translated it as 'shall destroy' comparing it to Hosea 4:5, 6; 10:7, 15). Wolf's commentary (p. 207) disputes that comparison and suggests that the word in a terminus technicus for the 'telling of parables,' following Buber "or better, for the proclamation of God's plans."
In short the translation of the passage is question is disputed and does not include the Hebrew word usually translated parable: masal (long mark over first a and circumflex over s).
Cordially,
Charlie

Charles Hedrick said...

Dennis I forgot to give you the name of my colleague; He is Professor Victor Matthews, Dean of the College of Humanities and Public Affairs at Missouri State university.
Charlie