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

After the appearance of literary-critical approaches to parable interpretation, D.O. Via and
J.D. Crossan are opposed to the parables as allegories or at least are reluctant to speak of the
parables as allegories. In viewing the parables as aesthetic objects that possess an existentialtheological
dimension, Via claims that to approach the parables as allegories reduces the
parables to a collection of propositional truths contained in its multiple references and miss
the function of the narrative whole of the parables which projects a world. 25 Crossan too tries
to make a distinction between allegories and the parables by illustrating and creating the
function of metaphor: That is to say, a metaphor may illustrate the information given about
the metaphor’s referent to fulfill a didactic purpose, and on the other hand, the metaphor may
create a new possibility, that is, participation. In this category, allegories belong to the former
and the parables the latter. 26
Apart from the elements of allegorizing (allegorese), to borrow Hans-Josef Klauck’s
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phrase which allocates hidden meanings excessively and anachronistically to a text that the
author never intended, I believe, however, that the parables contain allegory and point to
referents beyond the story. First of all, I would touch on the need to correct a thought biased
against allegory that sees it as an artificial and outmoded form of literature, particularly under
influence of Romanticism. Allegory has often been treated as inferior literature to others, for
particularly the limitation of meaning and simplicity. Also it seems the excessive reflection on
allegorizing of the church fathers which misled them to arbitrary interpretation. However, in
the course of time, allegory bears testimony to be not less aesthetically pleasing and
artistically elegant than the other literary type’ works: Note such masterpieces of allegory like
Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress, C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund
Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and
Melville’s Moby Dick and so on. 28
A.T. Cadoux, The Parables of Jesus: Their Art and Use (London: J. Clarke, 1930), 19; Joachim Jeremias, The
Parables of Jesus (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972); C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the
Kingdom (New York: Scribner’s, 1936).
25. Dan Otto Via, The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia: Fortress: SPCK, 1967),
4-25, 83-84.
26. J.D. Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1973), 9-
22; “Parable, Allegory, and Paradox,” in ed., Daniel Patte, Semiology and Parables: An Exploration of the
Possibilities Offered by Structuralism for Exegesis (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1976), 264-277.
27. H-J. Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in Synoptischen Gleichnistexten (NTAbh, 13; Münster: Aschendorff,
1978), 4-28; C.E. Carlston, “Parable and Allegory Revisited: An Interpretive Review,” CBQ 43 (1981), 228-242.
28. Leland Ryken persuasively explains the allegorical nature of the parables, comparing the parables with the
above secular masterpieces of allegory. Leland Ryken, How to read the Bible as Literature (Grand Rapids:
Michigan; Zondervan, 1984), 199-203; Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Eassays (Princeton:
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