Galilean Imagery in Jesus’ Parables
Galilean Imagery in Jesus’ Parables
As for the Palestinian Jewish setting of the content of Jesus’ parables, a few images may suffice. The woman baking bread (Matt 13:33//Lk 13:21) can fit Jesus’ rural setting: although Roman cities had bakeries, Galilean village women baked their own families’ bread.92 Jesus’ use of harvest for the end of the age is likewise relevant: thus one later Jewish writer depicts the end-time as a harvest when the seed of the evil ones and of the good ones is ripe for harvest;93 a later rabbinic tradition depicts Israel as wheat gathered at the age’s end but the wicked nations as the field’s straw and stubble to be burned and scattered.94 In some other Jewish texts, the final harvest would be when God will gather the wicked for judgment.95
Although we could look at parables in Mark, I will cite here a few parables that appear only in Matthew to illustrate that, even when not multiply attested, Jesus’ parables often show signs of authentic Palestinian tradition. The farmer who sold everything to buy a field with buried treasure in it (Matt 13:44) may fit Palestinian custom revealed in some legal contracts, which could specify the sale of not only the land but of “all that is in it,”96 freeing him to later “rediscover” the treasure.97 Jewish teachers also recounted stories that included items like the pearl of great price (Matt 13:46).98
More extensively, the parable of laborers in the vineyard appears only in Matthew, but Matthew did not likely invent it. He frames it with a principle in Mk 10:31, that the first will be last and the last first (Matt 19:30; 20:16);99 yet starting with the principle alone, one could have created a parable that would have illustrated it with a much closer correspondence than a parable about equal pay for unequal labor!
Whatever this parable’s point, it clearly resembles the parables of some other Jewish sages. One may for example compare one early rabbinic parable: a king paid other workers a modest wage, but to an especially hard worker, symbolizing Israel, he provided much pay. The rabbis concluded that God repaid Gentiles for their little good in this life, but would repay Israel all she deserved in the coming world.100
The setting also fits Galilean life; although some of the following features could fit rural life anywhere in the Empire, the Christian movement outside Galilee started in cities throughout the Empire, only gradually and slowly spreading to the countryside. Rural features of the Jesus tradition would thus tend to be early.
Other features in this parable tend to fit this setting. Vineyards101 and hirelings were important features of Galilean life in this period.102 Other Jewish teachers also laid heavy emphasis on fieldowners showing concern for the poor,103 and, more to the point, could portray God as the master of one’s labor, who would pay the reward of one’s work.104 While many Galileans seem to have worked their own fields or crafts,105 many others were peasants working the estates of a handful of well-to-do absentee landlords.106 The harvest required an influx of extra workers,107 for which landowners typically drew on the ranks of the landless poor for such brief and urgent tasks.108 In Jesus’ day the average harvest wages may have been a half drachma or lower,109 so it could be understood that the landowner in this parable has been generous to all the laborers.110
Urban writers who lived on rural estates could write accurately about rural life, but one would not expect as much insight from non-elite Christians in cities outside Galilee as from a storyteller genuinely in touch with the Galilean countryside. Nor would one expect later writers to look for authentic rural features to add to Jesus’ teachings; one would not even expect them to focus on such matters. By way of comparison, the later gnostic sayings collections do not typically concern themselves with accumulating such features.