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

outside the story. Depending on who here addresses the statement, the opinions are divided
into two at least. If the pronouncement in v. 24 is an address of the host, it then conveys no
strong threat to the audience of Jesus, nor to those in the banquet who have snubbed him.
On the other hand, Jeremias who sanctions the above opinion argues that it could take a sense
only in the occasion of addressing it to the excluded Jew from the eschatological banquet. 24
Of course, as Linnemann claims, it may be that the master “steps as it were on to the apron of
the stage and addresses the audience” as rhetorical device. 25 It is, however, most likely that
Jesus would have addressed the pronouncement 26
are very significant.
5-3. The Interpretation of the Parable
and if so, the Christological implications
On the grounds of Greco-Roman literary and culture, Braun views the parable as the story
retold by Luke about the conversion of the host. The host gives a dinner to the wealthy urban
elite, namely the prosperous stratum in a quest for honour, but when his invitation is declined
to damage his reputation and honour, he discards the whole system of valuation on the basis
of honour and shame and transfers his social life to a different group. Given this view, for him
the parable is directed at the rich in Luke’s church who are reluctant to hang around with the
27
poor in the church in order to maintain their social status. To focus on the change of the
host is a distortion of the parable in that he fails to consider the eschatological context and the
emphasis on election language, and in that I cannot find out any allusion in the parable that
the host gave the banquet in a quest for honour.
Viewing the banquet in the parable as the eschatological banquet, the parable then serves
to emphasize the presence of the kingdom in the ministry of Jesus, in particular by Him
eating with sinners and tax-collectors. It is meant that the eschatological banquet is already
ready, and not only a future event like the anonymous guest thought in v. 15. ‘Come now,
God has certainly rejected Israel. For more detailed contradiction, see Victor E. Vine, “Luke 14:15-24 and Anti-
Semitism,” ExpTim 102 (1991), 262-63.
24. Jeremias, Parables, 171.
25. Linnemann, Parables of Jesus, 90.
26. Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes: More Lucan Parables, Their Culture and Style, 109.
27. Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 64, 84-85, 127-31. For the same view, see Richard L.
Rohrbaugh, “The Pre-Industrial City in Luke-Act: Urban Social Relations,” in ed., Jerome H. Neyrey, The
Social World of Luke-Acts (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991), 137-47; Schottroff, The Parable of Jesus, 204-9.
Scott also argues that the parable reverses and subverts the system of honour, since the host who gave the
banquet loses his honour and joins the poor, unlike the expectation of audience to the messianic banquet that
those who have suffered at the hands of Israel's enemies will be restored to honour by the power of God. Scott,
Hear Then the Parable, 173-74.
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