In | Workbook: Characteristics of Jesus’ Parables

Grab your Workbook Journal!

[Record your answers in the workbook provided at the beginning of this course.]

Dr. Klyne Snodgrass offers a comprehensive list of criteria for identifying biblical parables. While the content and meaning of Jesus’ parables vary, they all have a number of things in common:

1) Jesus’ parables are first of all brief, even terse.

2) Parables are marked by simplicity and symmetry.

3) Jesus’ parables focus mostly on humans (they mirror the commonness of first-century Palestinian human life).

4) The parables are fictional descriptions taken from everyday life, but they do not necessarily portray everyday events.

5) Parables are engaging; they were told to create interest, and various schemes are used to draw hearers in and compel dealing with the issues at hand.

6) Since they frequently seek to reorient thought and behavior, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere parables often contain elements of reversal.

7) With their intent to bring about response and elements like reversal, the crucial matter of parables is usually at the end.

8) Parables are told in a context. Unlike Aesop’s fables, Jesus’ parables are not general stories with universal truths.

9) Jesus’ parables are theocentric (and have everything to do with God’s Kingdom).

10) Parables frequently allude to OT texts.

11) Most parables appear in larger collections of parables.

Source: Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2008, pp. 17-21.

5. How many of these points are true for the parable you listed as your favorite above?