Crossan, John Dominic. 2002. "The parables of Jesus." Interpretation 56, no. 3: 247-259.
THE PARABLES OF JESUS JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN Professor Emeritus DePaul University
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The parables of Jesus are an ethically appropriate genre for his claims about the kingdom of God. But our fascination with gospel parables by Jesus may be extended to gospel parables about Jesus. Especially in parables about Jesus, questions of historical accuracy may lead one to avoid questions about parabolic challenge.
was invited by this volume's editor to revisit my earlier work on the parables of Jesus and to give my "sense of where we are in parable interpretation today, and its significance for apprehending the message of Jesus." That specific mandate exempts me from a full thirty�year review of contemporary parable research,1 allows me to focus on a dialectical "then and now" across that period, and invites me to at least a modicum of autobiographical as well as exegetical commentary. My emphasis will be twofold: parables by Jesus and parables about Jesus.
PARABLES BY JESUS In the late spring of 1973, In Parables was between first and second page�proofs. Norman Perrin had read it in manuscript and, since he, David Tracy, and Paul Ricoeur were then conducting a graduate seminar on the parables, he invited me to sit in on one of their sessions. From his two co�leaders, and from several graduate students, I heard this message (paraphrased in retrospect): Your parable interpretation is great, but the historical Jesus is somewhere between unknowable and unnecessary—lose it. I knew that was impossible,
*For a review up to about 1992, see C. L. Blomberg, "The Parables of Jesus: Current Trends and Needs in Research," in Studying the Historical Jesus Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. Β. D. Chilton and C. A. Evans, NTTS 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 231�54.