Keith Watkins
Stories That Change the World A Response to The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus, by John Dominic Crossan
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arly in his academic career, John Dominic Crossan developed an interest in par-‐ ables, which resulted in a book, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (published in 1973). Four decades later, he continues these studies in The Power of Parable ((New York: HarperOne, 2012) in which he uses parable as the primary method for understanding the content and character of Jesus’s message. He then employs this literary form to develop master narratives for the four gospel accounts and inspire his critique of the ways that the gospel writers reshaped Jesus’s message in response to theological and political challenges they were encountering. Response to The Power of Parable Most of this review consists of a précis of Crossan’s book that I have prepared in order to understand and remember his thesis and the way he develops it. Before offering this personal summary, however, I want to indicate my general response to the book. Crossan shows how fiction and fact often are woven together, sometimes wittingly and often unwittingly, so that they can serve as metaphorical narratives. Crossan’s analysis of one set of writings suggests a way to recognize a similar pro-‐ cess in many other writings in academic history, secular literature, and religious literature. Although Crossan believes that the historicity of narratives is an im-‐ portant issue to be settled, he makes it possible for readers to suspend temporarily the need for historical validation of narratives in order to recognize their parabolic functions. Not only does this approach help Christians understand the character and power of their religious tradition, but it also provides a way to understand literature that is outside of their experience, such as the Qur’an and Book of Mormon.
_________________ Keith Watkins writes on history, theology, and bicycling. He lives in Vancouver, Washington, just north of the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.
[email protected] Copyright © 2012 Keith Watkins
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While reading the book, however, I kept wondering if Crossan proves too much. His discussion of parabolic form and the various kinds of parable are convincing and helpful. His claim that the four gospel accounts are also parables, however, shifts the conversation into a more speculative mode. This, too, I find helpful, but interesting rather than convincing. Despite this hesitation about The Power of Parable, Crossan’s exposition will henceforth provide a framework for my personal and public use and interpretation of parables in the Bible. Précis of the Book Early in the book, Crossan states the “generative questions” that inspire its outline: “Where does factual history end and fictional parable begin? Does that interaction of fact interpreted by fiction, of history interpreted by parable, of human event inter-‐ preted by divine vision extend to the full content of a gospel? Could that be why we have only one gospel given in multiple versions?” (p. 5) Crossan draws upon a wide range of ancient literature as well as the Bible in order to develop his definition of parable as a literary form and then develop a threefold typology of parable. In his Epilogue, he summarizes the elements of the parabolic form that he has previously identified in the literature. 1) It is a story, “a tensive sequence of beginning, middle, and end in a narrative that lures you into its plotted microworld to participate as an outsider-insider.” 2) Metaphor is “seeing as” and metaphors “extend from most trivial clichés…to imagining worlds and proposing reality itself.” 3) A parable is “a metaphoric story and, as such, it tends to generate a special mode of participation by hearers or readers.” 4) Metaphors can function in three modes—as riddle, as example, and as challenge. Riddle Parables: These parables are lethal stories with profound consequences, with Samson’s parable (sweeter than honey, stronger than a lion) as an example. Crossan uses the parable of the sower in Mark 4 as an example. As Mark presents it, this parable is intended to be used as the model for all of the parables. It showsthe dire consequence of rejecting Jesus. Crossan compares Mark’s presentation of this parable with Luke’s, noting that Luke gives it a better ending, and concluding that Mark’s preference for riddle parables was his own understanding and that Jesus had a different intention that was better shown in Luke. Example Parables: These metaphorical stories are presented as “moral models or ethical stories that consciously and deliberately point metaphorically beyond them-‐ selves…from one clear context to far, far wider implications and applications” (p. 30). Crossan uses the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin in Luke 15 as exam-‐ ples, and then connects them with the parable of the lost son (prodigal son) to drive the point home. He also calls attention to the different presentation of the lost sheep
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in Matthew to support his claim that the “tight fit” of the story and the context as Luke presents this material may have been Luke’s contribution rather than an exact description of how Jesus used this parable and the others that he also told. Challenge Parables: A challenge parable “challenges us to think, to discuss, to ar-‐ gue, and to decide about meaning as present application” (p. 47). Crossan uses the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 to develop his ideas. He distinguishes the story itself from the setting that Luke gives it and then shows post-‐biblical interpre-‐ tations in which it appears as riddle, example, and challenge. He then goes back to the gospels and does some fancy reconstruction, first separating the story from the social context that Luke gives it and then inserting it into the social context in which Jesus lived. In that context, Samaritans were outsiders Crossan believes that this story “becomes an example story only in Luke’s context and interpretation. Rather, it is better understood as a challenge parable, a story that challenges listeners to think long and hard about their social prejudices, their cultural presuppositions, and, yes, even their most sacred religious traditions” (62). Although all three forms of the parable can be seen in Scripture and in the gospel accounts of Jesus, Crossan is primarily interest in challenge parables, both the short ones and the book-‐length parables such as Ruth, Jonah, and Job in the Old Testament and “the hour-‐long oral ones of Jesus in the New Testament.” These “case studies,” Crossan points out, emphasize “the oblique and indirect, the delicate and gentle way in which great sweeping absolutes of habit and custom, law and culture, presump-‐ tion, presupposition, and prejudice were subverted by simple parabolic narrative that recorded a single, but different vision” (p. 244). This transformation of vision comes into focus in Crossan’s discussion of the rela-‐ tion of Jesus to John the Baptist and of their respective messages concerning the kingdom of God. “My interpretation,” Crossan writes, “is that Jesus watched, Jesus learned, and Jesus changed, because of what happened to John. The Baptist had an-‐ nounced the imminent advent of God, but God did not come. John was executed, and God did not intervene to prevent his martyrdom. In response, Jesus radically rein-‐ terpreted eschaton—what was it to be?—apocalypse—when was it to be?—and messiah—who was it to be? He changed his understanding not only about the king-‐ dom of God, but about the God of the kingdom. When he finally spoke with is own vision and his own voice, Jesus differed profoundly from John by proclaiming a par- adigm shift within their contemporary Jewish apocalyptic eschatology” (p. 125). Crossan proposes that the primary pedagogical tool that Jesus used to present his new message was the challenge parable. “In summary, therefore, Jesus’s challenge parables are not only profoundly appropriate, but even rhetorically necessary as a collaborative invitation for a collaborative eschaton and as a participatory invitation for a participatory kingdom of God. They are equally necessary as a nonviolent me-‐
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dium for a nonviolent message. They are short stories that delicately subvert the great story of the Bible. They do not deny it or even destroy it. But, as ‘word against the word,’ their quiet voices remind us that the Bible is still our story about God rather than God’s story about us” (p. 136). It becomes clear that Crossan has a second purpose in mind, which is to provide a new framework for understanding the four canonical versions of the one Gospel of Jesus Christ. His transitional section uses seven accounts of Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon as an illustration of how one set of historical facts can give rise to sharply different accounts and interpretations. He describes three of the ancient accounts of a momentous event in Roman history as factual and four as parabolic. In the latter group the facts of the event are intertwined with meanings that have significant moral and political import, so much so that the facts tend to blur in the mind while the metaphorical meaning becomes the memorable aspect. Crossan proposes that this same intermixture of fact and fiction—parable is the neutral word—is at work in the four gospels, each of which, he believes, is a chal-‐ lenge parable that aims in two directions. First, they challenge the existing empire, the world of the caesars. Second, they challenge the inner life of the church, and this challenge, Crossan believes, is the more important. He notes that the earliest of the four gospels was written around the year 70, forty years after the events it de-‐ scribes. He is persuaded that each of the gospels is an example of parabolic history, with challenge as the primary character of the story. Three of the gospel megapara-‐ bles, however, move progressively along the line, which Crossan finds distressing, from challenge to attack. Mark: Crossan focuses his exposition of Mark’s parabolic approach on 8:22-‐10:52. It is framed, he points out, with twin stories about Jesus’s healing blindness, and inside of the frame there are three “cases of unhealed—or, better, unhealable—blindness. If Jesus successfully heals blind outsiders in 8:22-‐26 and 10:46-‐52, he fails disas-‐ trously to heal blind insiders—the Twelve—in 8:31-‐10:45” (163). This is Crossan’s summary of the message of the gospel according to Mark: “In all of that—from Mark 10 through Mark 16—the named ones fail where the un-‐ named ones succeed. But gender is evenly balanced. The twelve named males and the three named females fail. But the unnamed female and the unnamed male suc-‐ ceed. The issue is not gender, but name. Mark’s parabolic challenge to and within Christianity is an exaltation of leaders who liberate over leaders who dominate, a transcendence of charismatic over institutional leadership, and a hymn for the nameless over the named” (172). Matthew: Crossan shows that Matthew begins with Jesus using the challenge form of parable, with Matthew 5 as the primary example. Later in the gospel, however, with Matthew 23 the primary example, this gospel writer shows Jesus using attack
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parables. Crossan believes that the shift in parabolic type has to be attributed to Matthew rather than to Jesus, and he proposes an explanation. At the time this gos-‐ pel was written, an “intra-‐familial clash in Judaism” was taking place, “between Christian-‐Jewish scribes and Pharisaic-‐Jewish scribes.” Following the Roman de-‐ struction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, “the centrality of priests and sacrifice in the Temple was replaced—forever—by that of rabbis and study of the Torah” (p. 193). At this point, Matthew probably considered himself as still part of the Jewish community; thus the debate as to who were the faithful teachers of the Torah and guardians of the tradition would have been an issue of critical importance. Luke-Acts: On the basis of archaeological studies, Crossan believes that there were three classes of people related to Judaism: Jews, Gentiles converted to Judaism (which meant that the males were circumcised), and God-‐fearers—“Gentiles who, while remaining as such—that is if males, uncircumcised—had accepted Jewish mono- theism and Jewish morality and regularly attended the synagogue” (p. 198). In one Roman city, evidence can be adduced to show that 43% of the contributing mem-‐ bers were in this third classification. There was, Crossan concludes, “a very signifi-‐ cant middle way or third option between being Jew (both born and converted) and Gentile. Crossan concludes that Luke had been one of these in the third or middle way. Crossan locates the writing of this two-‐part gospel at the time when serious ques-‐ tions were arising concerning the privileged status that Jews had enjoyed in the Empire. Contrary to what had been required of adherents to other religions, Jews had been allowed to continue practicing their religion in relative openness. As long as Christians were considered to be Jews, they enjoyed these protections, too. As they emerged from this Jewish umbrella, however, the issues arose as to who they really were and should they be allowed to enjoy the Jewish protections. “The fun-‐ damental response,” Crossan writes, is that Christians were now the only true Jews, because Jews rejected their own Messiah and therefore their destiny. Accordingly, Christians should be full heirs to all those ancient privileges and religious exemp-‐ tions once given alone to Judaism. Christianity is, says Luke-‐Acts, the true Judaism, the only valid continuity of that ancient and revered religion and not the arrival of some upstart new religion” (p. 213). A key passage indicating the use of attack parables against the synagogue is Luke 4:16-‐30. The conclusion of the story appears in Acts 23:23 ff. when Paul is taken into Roman custody in Jerusalem. The climax is that Paul openly preaches the gospel in Rome without hindrance. In contrast to Jewish insider Matthew, Luke is a “convert-‐ ed Gentile God-‐worshiper.” For him, the “present validity in Judaism” comes only as it is “absorbed into and thereby replaced by Christianity” (p. 216). Luke-‐Acts is an attack on Judaism and a challenge to Rome.
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John: Crossan suggests that John was a Samaritan who converted to Christianity, which would explain why he knew so much about Judaism but was “clearly outside it and against ‘the Jews’” (p. 241). Crossan comes to this conclusion about John’s gospel: “John’s megaparable is, in conclusion, both an attack parable directed against and from outside Judaism—like Luke-‐Acts—but also, and even more so, a challenge parable directed against but from inside Christianity—like Mark. It is also, as are all the gospels in their different ways, a challenge parable to the Roman Em-‐ pire…It does not simply request noninterference as Christianity replaces Judaism with Roman approval. It is not about accommodation with Rome’s violence, but about replacement or transformation of that imperial normalcy” (p. 242). Throughout this book, Crossan shows that both fictional stories and historical ac-‐ counts can serve as the carrier of parabolic metaphors. Does it make any difference, he asks, if the narrative is true? The question arises because parables “involve fic-‐ tional characters in fictional stories (challenge stories by Jesus) and factual charac-‐ ters in fictional stories (gospel stories about Jesus).” A third possibility is “fictional characters in factual stories.” Did Jesus really exist, and does it make any difference to faith? Crossan presents his reasons for believing that Jesus did exist and then shows how historically reliable details have been intertwined with fictional elements that to-‐ gether serve as the narrative base for parables about Jesus. “I conclude that Jesus really existed, that we can know the significant sequence of his life—from John the Baptist to Pilate the prefect—but that he comes to us trailing clouds of fiction, para-‐ bles by him and about him, particular incidents as miniparables and whole gospels as megaparables” (251). Whether or not Jesus actually lived and embodied the central message of these par-‐ ables, the vision they provide for the kingdom of God would be compelling. In a simi-‐ lar way, the message of Martin Luther King, Jr., would be a compelling vision for America even if King had never lived. If King had been fictional rather than real, however, the message could be dismissed “with the offhand comment that it was all very lovely, but would not work—not now, not here, and maybe not anywhere.” Because King was a real person who really lived the way his vision anticipated, we have no choice but to say that others can do it too. “The power of Jesus’s parables challenged and enabled his followers to co-‐create with God a world of justice and love, peace and nonviolence. The power of Jesus’s historical life challenged his followers by proving at least one human being could cooperate fully with God. And if one, why not others? If some, why not all?” (p. 252).
