the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

and challenges the audience’s values and beliefs as well as ours. 91
Through the honour-shame background and the parallel reading with the parable of
Prodigal Son, Landry and May claim that the master dismisses his steward squandering his
property, since his honour in the community is threatened by the public perception that he
cannot control his employees. Given statements that “superiors were judged by the behaviour
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of their subordinates” by Xenophon, Socrates and Seneca, it is reasonable enough to take
such an assumption into consideration. The steward confronted with a crisis seeks to reduce
the debts of the debtors, so as to salvage his reputation as a loyal steward in the community.
Irrespective of what side interpreters take, that is to say, removing part of usury or the
steward‘s own commission, or the principal part of it, honour is brought to his master by the
debts reduction. 93 Eventually the steward’s plan makes a great coup to elicit his master’s
praise for restoring his master’s honour by his wise actions, whereby the steward’s reputation
is also recovered as loyal and good. 94
Herzog regards the accusation brought against the steward as the charges of hostile intent,
not moral charges in the situation that “the master will always keep a suspicious eye on this
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steward, but also the tenants will continuously envy the steward’s power over them.” The
master summarily dismisses his steward, whereby he is faced with a borderline situation to
drop out of the class of retainers into the class of expendables. In spite of belonging to the
system of injustice, he never leaves it, nor does he just give up. He gives both the debtors and
his master benefits by removing the hidden interest against the prohibitions of the Torah and
oral torah. 96 The steward as the vulnerable struggles against his own survival in the world
that elites as his master govern, by means of the weapons of the weak, namely, by the debts
reduction of the debtors in his restricted acts. The parable shows “how the weapons of the
weak can produce results in a world dominated by the strong.” 97
Wright, following Herzog, argues that it is prophetic and practical because the steward
subverts an unjust system by means of an act of justice removing hidden interest in keeping
with the prohibitions of the law. In doing so he simultaneously benefits his master, the
debtors and himself, because it is something that “an ordinary person under pressure can do
91. Ibid., 304.
92. David Landry and Ben May, “Honor Restored: New Light on the Parable of the Prudent Steward,” 299.
93. Ibid., 301.
94. Ibid., 309.
95. Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech, 224.
96. Ibid., 257.
97. Ibid., 258.
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