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Puzzling the Parables of Jesus: Methods and Interpretation. By Ruben Zimmermann

2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 68; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jts/flx144

1477-4607

Chris Keith,

Historical and Religious Studies of Rome

Ruben Zimmermann’s Puzzling the Parables of Jesus is a major contribution to parables and Gospels studies. Zimmermann draws upon his decades of research on the parables, including his editing of the comprehensive 1,120-page Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (Gütersloher, 2007; 2nd edn. 2015). Most of his previous parables research was published in German, and this book is his first book-length publication in English, admirably intended to bridge German- and English-speaking scholarship (p. xiii). Puzzling the Parables of Jesus is primarily a study of the interpretation of parables, and as such it breaks into two major parts. Part I lays the theoretical groundwork for approaching the parables. It includes an Introduction (ch. 1), a history of research on historical, literary, and reader-oriented approaches to the parables (ch. 2), which is then followed by chapters that treat each of these approaches critically and in detail. In these chapters (3–5), Zimmermann argues for his own approach, which necessarily integrates historical, literary, and reader-oriented aspects of interpretation. In terms of a historical approach, Zimmermann argues for a memory approach in contrast to classical form criticism. He builds upon the insights of those advocating social and culture memory theory by incorporating an emphasis upon the parables as a media-based genre, thereby also preserving some aspects of form criticism’s considerable contributions to parable research. Zimmermann argues for genres as ‘forms of re-use’, which both structure media and provide them with a platform for innovation, and for parables as ‘memory genres’. The payoff for this approach is that, in contrast to classical form criticism, the hypothetically reconstructed Sitz im Leben is not the main focus of historical questions. ‘The point of departure remains the canonical parable text’ (p. 87) and any questions about historicity ‘should not be defined outside of or beyond the textual structure but rather because of and in the midst of it’ (p. 88). This approach stands in stark contrast to volume 5 of John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew, focused upon the parables, which was published shortly after Zimmermann’s study, and continues to appeal to the outdated criteria of authenticity from the 1950s. Such a shifting of the locus of critical enquiry is indicative of Zimmermann’s emphasis upon the parables as narratives that must be interpreted in their context. He argues these points more fully in the chapters on the parables as literary media and the significance of the reader. He rejects all previous form-critical attempts to define subgenres of the parables (‘similitudes’, ‘example stories’) and instead argues that parables should be defined simply as narratival, fictional, realistic, and metaphoric, adding that they may also be ‘active in appeal’ and/or ‘contextually related’ (p. 138). In terms of the reader’s role in understanding the parables, Zimmermann embraces their inherent ambiguity, insisting also that interpreters should not force ‘figurative language’ into ‘unequivocal, unambiguous language’ (p. 153). Thus, Zimmermann affirms that, for readers, parables are polyvalent, and it is the exegete’s job to ‘arrive at several different coherent interpretation(s)’, thereby ‘opening up horizons of interpretation’ (p. 204). In the midst of his discussion of readers, he also offers a theological approach to parables, arguing that they open the opportunity for God-speak, in whatever limited fashion it can happen: ‘Parables are not simply an arbitrary way with which we can talk about God’s kingdom, God’s world. They are, in fact, the most appropriate words with which we can do so’ (p. 159).