WHAT IS A PARABLE?
Because there’s no firm agreement among Christian scholars on what constitutes a parable in Jesus’ teaching—with parable lists widely ranging from 35 to 65 parables in His teaching—we need a definition that narrows the field. This definition will be limited to Jesus’ teaching, as opposed to a more general definition used for parables that we might find in secular literature.
In Jesus’ teaching, a parable is a story Jesus fabricates to convey a spiritual truth about God, or the Kingdom of God, or what it means to be one of His followers.
Parables are not actual