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

those of the evangelists. “There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents”
(Luke 15:10), “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when
it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations” (Luke 16:9), and “for everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). In
view of the fact that the affective aspects of the parables have been ignored in the past in the
interpretation of the parables, it is very important to take into consideration the “affective
for the audience to feel them.
aspects” 10
2. The Parables must be interpreted within their gospel contexts.
During the last decades, parable research has been done in a way where one takes the
narrative bodies of the parables out of their settings, following Form Criticism’s and Literary
Criticism’s footsteps. Searching for a part of the pure story in the parables, Charles W.
Hedrick puts it on the first step in his principles on interpretation of the parables under the
11
title, ‘Separate the Parable from its Literary context’. The reason he separates the parables
from their literary contexts is because the literary context is not the parable itself, in the same
way that a prose summary or paraphrase of the main idea of the poem is not the poem itself.
It is just narrative responses to the parable. 12 Even though M.A. Tobert deeply realizes the
necessity of interpreting parables within their gospel contexts, she discards the gospel
presentations of the parables, since they do not provide one clear, unambiguous interpretation
but also they add to the difficulties of interpretation. 13
Even though it presents narrative responses to the parables, and seem to be contradicting
10. All communication involves both referential and commissive dimensions. While the former is primarily
informative to convey information in nature, the latter is primarily affective, to bear emotion. The scholars who
emphasize the aspects of affective, accepting this classification, are particularly Robert H. Stein and Klyne
Snodgrass; see Stein, “The Genre of the Parables,” 30-50; Klyne Snodgress, Stories with Intent: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Publishing, 2008).
11. Charles W. Hedrick, Many Things in Parables: Jesus and His Modern Critics (Louisville London, John
Knox Press, 2004), 90-91. This comes to be the first step of his six steps on the guidance of the parable
interpretation.
12. Ibid., 13. He contends that “the poem itself provides access to the poet’s experience, and the summary and
paraphrase are narrative responses to the poet’s experience”, regarding the parables as holding such a poem’s
feature.
13. M.A. Tobert, Perspective on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations (Philadelphia, Fortress,
1979), 54-62. She takes some examples of contradiction such as the parables of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4-6,
Matt 18:12-13, Thomas 98:22-27) in the triple tradition, the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), the Unjust Judge
(Luke 18:2-5), the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:10-13), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35), the Unjust
Steward (Luke 16:1-8a) and the Workers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-15) in the single tradition, arguing the fact
that rarely are the gospel settings suitable for the parables, that the gospel summaries appended to the parables
often contradict the narratives.
18