Other articles from this issue | Version in English | Version in French

Presentation
The editors

Jesus readily made use of parables as a teaching method; one might even say that it was his most characteristic method, his chosen way of speaking both to the crowds and to his disciples, as he tried to bring alive for them the realities of the Kingdom. In actual fact, about a third of the teaching contained in the Gospels is made up of parables, and Jesus explained why on a number of occasions (cf. Mt. 13:10-16; Mk. 4:10-I2; Lk. 8:9-10). Even for many Christians the teaching of Jesus (what is still remembered from childhood catechism classes) is above all that of the parables (the Good Shepherd, the Good Samaritan etc.), simply because the parables appeal to the imagination and remain fixed in the memory.
But Jesus did not invent the parabolic genre. It was a type of teaching method much used in the Jewish world of his day where, according to the Notes issued by the Holy See in 1985, he used "methods of reading and interpreting Scripture and of teaching his disciples which were common to the Pharisees of (his) time." Thus the parables of Jesus and those of Jewish tradition, as the article of D. de La Maisonneuve (p. 8 ff.) so ably demonstrates, are similar in the way they translate a truth into imagery, "Since nature and super-nature are one order, you can take any part of that order and find in it illumination for other parts" (C.H. Dodd). One finds the same (or only slightly differing) formulae for introducing the comparison; the same use of common themes or images, which belong to a specific period and a particular society; there is also the same care to introduce only one point of comparison (the focal point), without attempting to make every detail of the story correspond with it - even if some of the parables of Jesus were allegorized at a later date; finally, there is to be found the same method of involving the listeners, of leading them to question themselves, to make a judgment, to commit themselves.
This last point is important, especially when it is question of education for faith. We may be tempted to explain the parable, to imprison it within our own categories, when by its very nature it is susceptible to many meanings, and can speak to the heart of every human being, however diverse (cf. article by S. Cavalletti p. 16 ff.). In its essence, the parable is in fact linked with the Jewish approach to reading Scripture, which is to open up its meaning or possible meanings by use of midrash, this loving reading-research of a Word of God which has unlimited powers of expansion, an inexhaustible capacity for fulfilment (cf. article by A. Piattelli p. 5 ff.).
For Jew as for Christian, the parable is a privileged way of expressing, simply and directly, the realities of faith, or of eliciting a faith-response, but it is always linked with the interior disposition of each individual; it is only welcomed and grasped by someone whose heart is open, who is really seeking the truth.