NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 71, Issue 2, 2017

Abstract

This study provides the outline of the Research Project ‘Parables and the Partings of the Ways’, a comparative reading of Rabbinic and synoptic parables (Utrecht and Tilburg Universities, 2014–2019). It delineates the status quaestionis of comparative parable research, focusses on issues of form and rhetoric of parables and argues a multi-faceted methodology to study parables as religious media or ‘sensational forms’ in several contexts of teaching Torah. The development of the genre may also attest to the growth and separation of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

Summary

Some scholars have argued that the parables attributed to Jesus in the New Testament featuring women as characters have had a specifically radical and liberating quality for women within early Christianity. The present article challenges a similar appreciation of the texts by comparing them to rabbinic parables which use the same imagery and narrative techniques. This comparison demonstrates that parables as such cannot simply be used to reconstruct the sociohistorical position of women within either early Christianity or early Rabbinic Judaism.

Abstract

This article takes the narrative nature of parables seriously and looks at their role from this perspective. After theorizing the cognition- and cultural role of stories, four meshalim from the Tanhuma Midrashim are studied: ‘Grasshoppers in a jar’ (about the Tower of Babel), ‘Abraham’s circumcision’, ‘The baby on the table’ (about the sacrifice of Isaac), and ‘The calf and its mother’ (about Joseph and the Egyptian exile). The conclusion of this case study is that the role of meshalim is not to interpret the biblical text as such, but to change the audience’s attitude toward the biblical story. For this, the points of agreement between the mashal and the biblical story need only be minimal. In order to effectuate this new attitude, the meshalim in the Tanchuma Midrashim, which are usually based on earlier midrash on the said biblical text, adopt these existing midrashim while at the same time transforming them into new stories that are more suitable for the Tanchuma audience. Usually this amounts to a ‘softening’ of the message of the existing, earlier midrash.

Abstract

In her book, Levine undertakes a double task: ‘How do we hear the parables through an imagined set of first-century Jewish ears, and then how do we translate them so that they can be heard still speaking?’ Levine astutely exposes anti-Jewish readings of the parables by Christian authors, but she is not equally critical with regard to the cut and dried opinions underlying her own analysis of what would characterize first century Jewish ears and a first century Jewish storyteller. Focusing on the parable of the ‘Workers in the Vineyard’ and on its themes of ‘labour’ and ‘reward’, we discuss Levine’s analysis of this parable and put it side-to-side with some early rabbinic texts featuring the same themes. The outcome is that Levine’s analysis is often steered by her own opinions of how the parable should be read (or not), without true regard for the actual early-Jewish interpretations, which offer a remarkable variety of views on ‘labour’ and ‘reward’.

Abstract

The similes and parables in Islamic tradition are strongly influenced by their Christian or Jewish predecessors. The Arabic mathal is related to the Hebrew mashal and both words convey a broad range of meanings, from proverb to simile and parable as such. Still, slavish copying is not in order here. Older studies of the Jewish sources of Islam often made the mistake to consider the Islamic stories as merely a bad copy of a Jewish original. Hence the specific characteristics of Islamic story-telling remained in the dark. It is clear, however, that the stories, even if relying on pre-Islamic predecessors, have been modelled and transformed in order to convey a message typical of Islam. Quite often, a conscious polemic with their predecessors can be detected. In this article, I have collected some examples of such story-telling from post-Qur’anic Islamic literature. By demonstrating the (often oral) influence of Jewish and/or Christian stories upon these narratives, the Islamic idiosyncrasies come to the fore.

Abstract

The article discusses the ‘key text’ by David Flusser, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse und der Gleichniserzähler Jesus. While the book could have done with a stiff round of editing, it harbours treasures of insight and learning. Flusser’s main partners in discussion are Adolf Jülicher and his interest in fables, and Joachim Jeremias, whose book on Jesus’ parables functioned as a springboard for Flusser. A survey of the twelve chapters leads to a listing of six important points where Flusser’s approach either was accepted as a starting point for further research or remained the subject of debate. Foremost are his twin insights that the parables of Jesus and the rabbis derive from fables and other forms of Hellenistic popular teaching and subsequently came to represent a genre of its own.

This article reviews Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines: Gender and Empire in Judean Apotropaic Ritual, (Forschungen zum Alten Testament, 2. Reihe, 69), , , ; xx+ pp., € 99.