Insights: Parables: What the Bible Tells Us About Jesus' Stories

By William Barclay

'Parables' are stories Jesus told using characters and events familiar to his audience. But parables are a special kind of story and Jesus used them for his special purposes. William Barclay unlocks these stories, revealing the hidden depth and meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9780861537402

William Barclay

William Barclay (1907-1978) is known and loved by millions worldwide as one of the greatest Christian teachers of modern times. His insights into the New Testament, combined with his vibrant writing style, have delighted and enlightened readers of all ages for over half a century. He served for most of his life as Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow, and wrote more than fifty books--most of which are still in print today. His most popular work, the Daily Study Bible, has been translated into over a dozen languages and has sold more than ten million copies around the world.

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Teaching in parables

Mark 4:1–2

Jesus began again to teach by the lakeside. A very great crowd collected to hear him, so great that he had to go on board a boat and sit in it on the lake. The whole crowd was on the land facing the lake. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he began to say to them, ‘Listen! Look! The sower went out to sow.’

IN this section, we see Jesus making a new departure. He was no longer teaching in the synagogue; he was teaching by the lakeside. He had made the orthodox approach to the people; now he had to take unusual methods.

We do well to note that Jesus was prepared to use new methods. He was willing to take religious preaching and teaching out of its conventional setting in the synagogue into the open air and among the crowds of ordinary men and women. John Wesley was for many years a faithful and orthodox servant of the Church of England. Down in Bristol, his friend George Whitefield was preaching to the miners, to as many as 20,000 of them at a time, in the open air; and his hearers were being converted by the hundred. He sent for John Wesley. Wesley said, ‘I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit.’ This whole business of open-air preaching rather offended him. He said himself, ‘I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way – having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.’ But Wesley saw that field preaching won souls and said, ‘I cannot argue against a matter of fact.’

There must have been many among the orthodox Jews who regarded this new departure as sensationalism; but Jesus was wise enough to know when new methods were necessary and adventurous enough to use them. It would be well if his Church was equally wise and equally adventurous.

This new departure needed a new method; and the new method Jesus chose was to speak to the people in parables. A parable is literally something thrown beside something else; that is to say, it is basically a comparison. It is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Something on earth is compared with something in heaven, that the heavenly truth may be better grasped in light of the earthly illustration. Why did Jesus choose this method? And why did it become so characteristic of him that he is known forever as the master of the parable?

(1) First and foremost, Jesus chose the parabolic method simply to make people listen. He was not now dealing with an assembly of people in a synagogue who were more or less bound to remain there until the end of the service. He was dealing with a crowd in the open air who were quite free to walk away at any time. Therefore, the first essential was to interest them. Unless their interest was aroused, they would simply drift away. The sixteenth-century poet Sir Philip Sidney speaks of the poet’s secret: ‘With a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale that holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner.’ The surest way to awaken people’s interest is to tell them stories – and Jesus knew that.

(2) Further, when Jesus used the parabolic method he was using something with which Jewish teachers and audiences were entirely familiar. There are parables in the Old Testament of which the most famous is the story of the one ewe-lamb that Nathan told to David when he had treacherously eliminated Uriah and taken possession of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:1–7). The Rabbis habitually used parables in their teaching. It was said of Rabbi Meir that he spoke one-third in legal decisions, one-third in exposition, and one-third in parables.

Here are two examples of Rabbinic parables. The first is the work of Rabbi Judah the Prince (c. AD 190). Antoninus, the Roman emperor, asked him how there could be punishment in the world beyond, for since body and soul after their separation could not have committed sin they could blame each other for the sins committed upon earth. The Rabbi answered in a