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 for Read More

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 parabl Read More

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). Read More

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 fi Read More

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 Read More

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 c Read More

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