Self-Help or Deus ex Machina in Mark 12.9?

Abstract

The conclusion to the parable of the tenants in Mark (12.1b–9) involves the vineyard owner killing the refractory tenants and re-letting his vineyard to others. In legal terms the man employs ‘self-help’ – the satisfaction of a real or pretended claim without the permission of the defendant or the intervention of a court. Most advocates of a metaphorical approach to the parable (Pesch, Snodgrass, Evans, Hultgren), and some who argue that Jesus spoke in realistic fiction, have argued or assumed that Mark 12.9 is an original part of the parable, believing it to be a ‘realistic’ element of Mark's story. But an examination of Greek, Roman, Graeco-Egyptian, and biblical legal rulings indicates that resorts to self-help were discouraged and even criminalized in this period. Mark 12.9 is not a realistic component of the parable, but is part of its secondary allegorization.