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

Peasant and The Oriental Versions. 39 Bailey also maintains that it is crucial for exegetes to
discover a literary structure which the author is using, and he takes up Four Types of Literary
Structures 40 as a useful tool for the interpretation of the parables. He is indebted in many
ways to the views of Bligh 41 , Lund 42 and Miesner 43 . He, in reality, provides the literary
outline of the travel narrative of Luke’s Gospel which is constructed in ten sections and
follows a precise inverted outline. With regard to his fundamental stance of the parables in
general, he contends that a parable has three basic elements: Symbols 44 , response and
theological cluster. He argues that the purpose of a parable is to evoke a response from the
listener, not an illustration, and that the response is a single response in a cluster of
theological motifs and offers the unity of the parables. 45 On the above bases, Bailey analyses
six parables unique to Luke but makes no attempt at a synthesis of the Lukan parables. 46 His
contention has been often criticized in that the ‘paraboblic ballad pattern’ applied to the
Lukan parables is subjective and also that many parallels proposed by him are forced. 47
Although C.L. Blomberg’s concern, at first glance, seems to be the authenticity of the
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Lukan parables in his PhD dissertation, he in reality, is enthusiastic about tradition history’s
studies rather than the authenticity of the Lukan parables. He points out that what a text
means today cannot be determined apart from what it meant originally, and what it meant
39. A certain aspect of Middle Eastern culture proposed by Bailey may have an exception to the standard rule. In
the parable of the prodigal son, the running act of his father is highly proper behaviour, not surprising in such a
situation when the lost son returned home. Whoever is in the same position could act so and such an act is not a
thing that dishonors himself.
40. Bailey’s claims, to be exact, are as follows: “Longer or shorter of prose that use the inversion principle for
an outline. Poetic sections that use a variety of parallelistic devices in a variety of forms. Sections that have a
tight parallelism in the center but are encased with one or more sets of matching sections of prose. The parables
in Luke usually follow a Parabolic Ballad form that is distinct from the above.” K.E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant,
49.
41. John Bligh, Galatians in Greek: A Structural Analysis of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Detroit:
University of Detroit Press, 1966).
42. N.W. Lund, Chiasmus in the New Testament (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942).
43. D.R. Miesner, ‘Chiasm and the Composition and Message of Paul’s Missionary Sermons,’ (ThD dissertation,
Concordia Seminary in Exile, 306 North Grand, St. Louis, 1974).
44. Bailey uses the term ‘symbols’ as ‘comparison’ or ‘point of contact’, giving credit for the fact that the
parables do have allegorical elements in them through recent studies. Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 40.
45. Ibid., 40-42.
46. Ibid., 86-206.
47. For a critique of Bailey, see M.A. Tolbert, Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple
Interpretations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 82; C.W. Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions: The
Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 44-46.
48. Blomberg, ‘The Tradition History of the Parables Peculiar to Luke’s Central Section’.
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