Lukan Parables of Reckless Liberality by Amanda Brobst-Renaud

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lukan Parables of Reckless Liberality by Amanda Brobst-Renaud C. Anthony Ziccardi amanda brobst-renaud, Lukan Parables of Reckless Liberality (New Testament Monographs 42; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2021). Pp. ix + 172. £65/$85/€70. This monograph is a revision of Amanda Brobst-Renaud's doctoral dissertation of 2018. Written under the direction of Mikael Parsons, it is marked by great consonance with his work, especially his volume published in the same year and co-authored with Michael Wade Martin, Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament: The Influence of Elementary Greek Composition (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018). Foundational to B.-R.'s methodology, as also to Parsons's approach, are at least two principles. First, because the Gospels were written in the Greco-Roman world, their authors and auditors/readers were attentive to their rhetorical constitution, the elements of which they either imbibed unconsciously or learned intentionally through the curricula of the paideia that prepared students for eventual oratorical declamation by preliminary exercises. Second, the fables (mythoi), which consisted of "fictional stories imaging truth" and figured prominently among these progymnasmata, were sufficiently akin to Jesus's parables, so that the evangelists handled them compositionally and rhetorically in similar ways. Brobst-Renaud begins by comparing Greco-Roman fables with Luke's parabolic material, and she evinces similarities of form, content, subject, and utilization; often embedded in larger narratives, fables served rhetoric's subsidiary goal of moral formation by providing exempla or behavioral models to be avoided and/or emulated. Then, by attention to classical fables and rhetorical devices, B.-R. considers how Luke attempts to form his readers/auditors morally through his characterization of the personages in three lexically and semantically related parables unique to him in Luke 15–16. Treating 15:11–32, B.-R. marshals the parable's rhetorical traits to show that the younger son exhibits, according to cultural canons rooted in Aristotle, the vices of shamelessness and prodigality, but then also change; the elder son, who is both dutiful and reasonable, simultaneously shows miserliness and meanness; and the father displays prodigality toward both sons. Yet, in the wider context of Luke's own ethic of unjustifiable and unrequitable generosity (6:30–35; 10:25–37; 14:12–24) and the immediate context of Jesus's seeking the lost (15:1–2), the father's modeling becomes a summons to transcend the classical virtue of liberality and adopt evangelical, reckless liberality. By concluding the parable with the father's speech, Luke leaves open the invitation to the elder son and the auditors/readers to join him in the party by liberality. Next, B.-R. explains 16:1–13 against the backdrop of fables favorably presenting tricksters and other characters acting shrewdly to secure their interests. Accused justly of [End Page 355] profligacy, the steward bests his master. While still in the master's employ, the steward consumes more of the master's property by liberality to debtors with a view to securing his future. In contrast to the younger son's example of change, the consistently unrighteous steward corners his master into magnanimous debt reduction, so that the master commends his shrewd behavior, and Jesus holds up for emulation his reckless liberality with unrighteous mammon as faithfulness in little that merits much: eternal habitations. The shrewdness and liberality of the steward meet their negative counterpart in the rich man of 16:19–31, who fails to display such to Lazarus. Linking this parable to the prior two by highlighting their similarities, B.-R. also rehearses the variety of classical views on the rich and poor. Then, through attention to narrative details, such as Lazarus's place in Abraham's bosom and the rich man's permanent separation therefrom, B.-R. maintains that Luke characterizes Lazarus as righteous and the rich man as unrighteous for his failure to heed the Law and Prophets' summons to reckless liberality such as Jesus himself enacts. The rich man's irreversible fate contrasts with the elder brother's situation: the father's invitation to him to enter the party signals the open-ended nature of his destiny. In addition, Abraham's refusal to send Lazarus to the rich man's brothers...