3 - Parabolic Forms

Summary

The parable, which in its various forms is so prominent, and so characteristic of the teaching of Jesus, in the Synoptic Gospels, is but feebly represented in the Fourth Gospel. The use of standing symbols for certain abstract ideas–light, water, bread, and the like–belongs to a different way of thinking from the realistic observation of nature and human life which supplies the material of the Synoptic parables. We have noted one true example of a parabolic saying (Bildwort) which is comparable with those of the Synoptics–τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ κ.τ.λ. (iii. 8). It would not, however, be true to say that parables do not occur, unless the term be restricted to instances where the material offered for illustration or analogy is presented in a continuous narrative, with the use of historic tenses (like the Sower, the Great Feast and the Prodigal Son). This may perhaps be regarded as the classical type of gospel parable. But there is no good reason for restricting the term so narrowly. It is equally applicable where the illustration or analogy is suggested by the description of a single scene, with the use of primary tenses (like the Children in the Market Place), or where a typical or recurrent incident in human experience is brought to mind by means of a compound sentence with ὅταν or ἐπάν in the protasis (like the Returning Demon, or the Marcan form of the Mustard Seed), or by means of a conditional sentence with εἰ, ἐάν in the protasis (like the Matthaean form of the Lost Sheep).