“Allegorical” Interpretations
“Allegorical” Interpretations
Some complain that several interpretations in the Gospels (such as those in the parable of the four soils, Mk 4:14-20) include multiple points of reference. Many parables scholars traditionally viewed these correspondences as problematic because they followed Adolf Jülicher, who in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century insisted (against previous interpreters) that parables must have one main point.80 By contrast, against Jülicher’s categorization of parables in these strict Aristotelian terms,81 others drew attention to rabbinic parallels, which revealed weaknesses in Jülicher’s line of argument.82 Jülicher began with deductive categories and imposed them on the Gospel data, whereas his critics’ approach was inductive, based on concrete parables.83 The influential parables scholar C. H. Dodd followed Jülicher, but as one expert in rabbinic parables points out, Dodd’s own work unfortunately “betrays not the slightest first-hand acquaintance with rabbinic parables.”84 Another influential parables scholar, Joachim Jeremias, whose knowledge of rabbinic sources might have protected him from the error, admits that he follows Dodd.85
Biblical parables could include multiple points of contact with the original audience’s situation (e.g., 2 Sam 12:1-6). Noting these correspondences is legitimate and need not be confused with the wanton allegorization practiced in much of Christian history.86 Rabbinic parables likewise often have allegorical features, with multiple points of interpretation,87 just as in Jesus’ parable of the four soils.
Robert M. Johnston, toward the end of his massive study of the earliest layer of rabbinic parables, thus complains that “The demand that we must choose between one-point-of-comparison ‘parable’ and every-feature-must-be-decoded ‘allegory’ is artificial, arbitrary, and unreasonable.”88 The vast majority of these Tannaitic parables would be “allegories, by Jülicher’s definition.” 89 One of his most important conclusions bears quotation:
Most importantly, the study of rabbinic parables renders unusable the distinction between parable and allegory in respect to the parables of the gospels: if the parables of Jesus are generically the same as those of the rabbis, which seems inescapable from the standpoint of morphology and inner structure, then the classical Jülicherian model must be discarded as inapplicable to the gospel parables.
There is thus no historical reason to deny the authenticity of parable interpretations of Jesus based on allegorization or multiple extrinsic referents.91