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Proportional Analogy in the Gospel Parables1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

In its original application to literary language παραβολή evidently denoted analogy: ideas ‘laid side by side’ for comparison or contrast. In the Budding Fig Tree (Mk 13. 28–9; cf. Mt 24. 32–3, Lk 21. 19–31) the form of statement makes this rhetorical juxtaposition most obvious:

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

NOTES

[2] Jülicher, Adolf, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 1 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1910), reprint of 2nd ed., 1899; 1st ed., 1888) 69.Google Scholar All quotations of this work are from vol. I, and are my own translations.

[3] Jeremias, Joachim, The Parables of Jesus, 2nd rev. English ed., trans. Hooke, S. H. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972) 150.Google Scholar

[4] Mowry, L., ‘Allegory’and ‘Parable’, The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962) 1, 84; III, 652Google Scholar. The quotations following are from Henry, Matthew, Commentary on the Holy Bible (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, [197–?], 5, 470Google Scholar; Wilson, R. McL., ‘Mark’, Peake's Commentary on the Bible, ed. Black, Matthew (London: Thomas Nelson, 1962) 804Google Scholar – on the Markan interpretation; and Montefiore, C. G., The Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1968) 2, 100.Google Scholar

[5] Jülicher, , 70Google Scholar; the reference following is to Richards, I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric (London: Oxford University Press, 1936) 96.Google Scholar

[6] Via, Dan Otto Jr., The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 76, 92Google Scholar, has consciously tried to play down the role of analogy as much as possible, for the sake of the vehicle as artifact.

[7] Dodd, C. H., The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet & Co., 1935) 16.Google Scholar

[8] Jülicher, , 72.Google Scholar

[9] Among the former are Jülicher, Linnemann, Eta, Parables of Jesus: Introduction and Exposition, trans. Sturdy, John (London: S.P.C.K., 1966Google Scholar), and Kahlfeld, Heinrich, Parables and Instructions in the Gospels, trans. Swidler, Arlene (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966Google Scholar); among the latter, Crossan, John Dominic, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1973Google Scholar), Funk, Robert W., Jesus as Precursor (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975Google Scholar), and TeSelle, Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975).Google Scholar

[10] Perrin, So Norman, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976) 194.Google Scholar

[11] Scharlemann, Martin H., Proclaiming the Parables (St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1963) 16Google Scholar; the quotation following is from Tannehill, Robert C., The Sword of His Mouth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975) 94.Google Scholar

[12] Jesus' examples (e.g. the Good Samaritan) are non-proportional analogies. For the affinity between examples and equations, see The Meaning of Parabole in the Usage of the Synoptic Evangelists’, by Sider, John W., Biblica 62 (1981) 453–70.Google Scholar

[13] Jeremias, , 120.Google Scholar

[14] Vööbus, Arthur, ‘Exegetical Studies’, The Gospel in Study and Preaching, by Arthur Vööbus and Henry Grady Davis (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966) 241.Google Scholar

[15] Cadoux, A. T., The Parables of Jesus: Their Art and Use (London: James Clarke, 1931) 47.Google Scholar

[16] Honig, Edwin, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) 10.Google Scholar

[17] Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) 124.Google Scholar

[18] Jeremias, , 104. The quotation following is from the same place, n. 70.Google Scholar

[19] Here is the affinity between two senses of the word analogy: the popular sense, employed in this study, of ‘ideas juxtaposed for effects of similarity or contrast’; and the technical sense of philosophers, denoting verbal usage midway between univocation and equivocation. Bill is used univocally to denote citizen A's proper name and citizen B's, because it has exactly the same significance in both cases. Bill is used equivocally to denote a bird's beak and a notice of payment due, because there is no similarity of meaning – only of sound and spelling. Bill is used partly univocally and partly equivocally to denote a notice of payment due and a five-dollar United States Federal Reserve note: both are slips of paper and instruments of legal obligation, but their purpose and mode of value are different. In many analogies, what we call the point of resemblance is likewise partly univocal and partly equivocal; on this consideration Frye may have hesitated about treating courage as one term, since human and animal courage are both like and unlike, as God's judgement of Israel's leaders is both like and unlike the owner's punishment of the tenants. When atheists tell Christians: ‘It is non-sense to say “God is good” because we do not know what good means, as predicated of God’, they mean that good is used equivocally of God and humans – that there is no (knowable) connection of meaning. But this is just an elaborate denial that revelation is possible. Theologians tend to be more hopeful: admitting that good applied to God and humans is partly equivocal, but insisting that it is partly univocal too. Talk about God and man as ‘fathers’ is an example of what some philosophers call ‘things named analogically’ (e.g. McInerny, Ralph M., The Logic of Analogy: An Interpretation of St Thomas [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961] 71); the tradition includes Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas, and Cajetan. All ‘analogies’ of God (in the general sense) and some on other subjects employ one or more terms ‘analogically’ (in the philosophical sense).Google Scholar

[20] E.g. Jülicher, , 120Google Scholar; Cadoux, , 19.Google Scholar

[21] Funk, , 60–3.Google Scholar

[22] Jülicher, , 52–4.Google Scholar

[23] Frye, , 123.Google Scholar

[24] Jülicher, , 115.Google Scholar

[25] Idem.

[26] Jeremias, , 151–2.Google Scholar

[27] Linnemann, , 23–4.Google Scholar

[28] Jülicher, , 56 n. 1.Google Scholar

[29] Kee, Alistair, ‘The Old Coat and the New Wine: A Parable of Repentance’, Novum Testamentum 7 (1970) 19Google Scholar. Formal analysis of Jesus' analogies in the practice of interpretation is exemplified in Interpreting the Hid Treasure’, by Sider, John W., in the Christian Scholar's Review 8 (1984).Google Scholar

[30] Linnemann, So, 23–4.Google Scholar

[31] Jülicher, , 94–6, discusses Aristotle's examples from Aesop: of the Horse, Stag, and Man, and of the Fox and Hedgehog.Google Scholar