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

assistant for him, or the shepherd is rich. 28
A comparison between (‘to have lost’)
and (‘to have gone astray’) shows that the perfect participle in Luke strongly
underlines the lost, desperate state of the sheep.
Would a shepherd leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness to seek the one that had been
lost? Interpreters’ opinions are divided here into a few alternatives: That the shepherd
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abandoned the ninety-nine sheep, showing that the parable is unreasonable, or God’s mercy
is a mystery 30 and the shepherd is irresponsible, 31 and that the shepherd did not in fact
abandon the ninety-nine sheep, suggesting that they were driven into a cave or left in the care
of another, 32 and the ninety-nine sheep should be reckoned in the light of Ezek 34:13-14, 23-
25, where the flock is tended securely on the mountains of Israel. 33
The shepherd is portrayed as the one who seems to act recklessly in an atypical fashion,
in which he takes a great risk by leaving the ninety-nine in the wilderness in order to seek out
the sheep that has been lost. On a literary level however, it is a means of showing that not
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only the lost sheep, but each sheep is so valuable that the shepherd takes great risk to find it.
If, after taking safe measures for the ninety-nine, the shepherd sets off to seek out the lost
sheep, the parable would, in this case, become a commonplace story reducing the value of the
lost one and a tension in the story as well. However, it is not important in this story how the
security of ninety-nine would be, and whether the shepherd took them to his house, for such
matters are not of concern in the story. Parables, like other literary works, are often more
concise so as to focus on the point that it wants to convey.
The action of the shepherd when he finds the lost sheep, as he carries the sheep on his
28. While Jeremias sees the one hundred sheep as a medium size, Bailey as large size, but in Bedouin shepherd
world today in the Middle East, the one hundred sheep is considerably less on condition that a shepherd alone
tends the flock. Jeremias, Parables, 133; Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 148; Hultgren, Parables, 53; Snodgrass,
Stories with Intent, 102.
29. David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 219.
30. F.H. Agnew, “The Parables of Divine Compassion,” BibTod, 27 (1, 1989), 35-40, here 37-38.
31. Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 415-17; Hedrick, Many Things in Parables: Jesus and His Modern Critics, 14,
19.
32. E.F.F. Bishop, “The Parable of the Lost or Wandering Sheep: Mattew 18:10-14; Luke 15:3-7,” ATR 44
(1962), 44-57, here 45, 54; F. Bussby, “Did a Shepherd Leave Sheep upon the Mountains or in the Desert? A
Note on Matthew 18:12 and Luke 15:4,” ATR 44 (1963), 93-94; B. Smith, The Parables of the Synoptic Gospels,
188, n. 2; Jeremias, Parables, 133; Wenham, The Parables of Jesus: Pictures of Revolution, 100; and Bailey,
Poet and Peasant, 149-50; idem, Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1992), 72-73.
33. Derrett, “Fresh Light on the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin,” NTS 26 (1979), 36-60, here 59.
34. Hultgren, Parables, 53-54; Stephen C. Barton, “Parables on God’s Love and Forgiveness (Luke 15:1-32),”
205; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 105.
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