The Parable of the Tenants as a Sociolinguistic Medium of Agrarian Revolution

Abstract

This paper deploys Jeffery M. Paige’s sociological theory of agrarian revolution to understand the collective violence of the parable of the tenants (Mark 12:1–12, Gos. Thom. 65). I begin with the idea that the parable involves a sharecrop-ping relation. I then use Paige’s theory to highlight that sharecropping systems in agricultural export sectors are not only correlated with revolutionary violence in Paige’s work (with statistical significance), but are part of the parable’s realistic fiction. I argue that the economic infrastructure of early Roman Palestine, including Galilee, and the violence in the parable are well explained by Paige’s theory. I also employ V. N. Voloshinov’s sociolinguistic theory of language-ideology to derive the central thesis of this paper: as a semiotic medium of social life, the parable functions as part of the ideological process that creates a fiction of a world in which agrarian revolution is realistic and acceptable.