The Parables of the Kingdom
Continued from prior post↑
To be continued...
Continued from prior post↑
We may first ask, how far the evangelists themselves help us to relate the parables themselves to their setting. It might be thought that the place in which a parable comes in the order of the narrative would give a decisive clue. But in the first place, the evangelists sometimes give the same parable in different settings; and secondly, recent research has tended to show that the materials of the Gospels were at first transmitted in the form of independent units, the framework being supplied by the evangelists who wrote not less than a generation after the time of Jesus. While I think myself that this judgment needs qualification, and that more of the framework was traditional than some recent writers suppose, yet it is clear that we cannot without question assume that the setting is which we have a parable is it original setting in history. It is only where something in the parable itself seems to link it with some special phrase of the ministry that we dare press the precise connection. More often we shall have to be content with relating it to the situation as a whole.
To be continued...
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