The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia by David B. Gowler

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia by David B. Gowler Matthew Hauge david b. gowler, The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017). Pp. xv + 320. Paper $29.99. The Parables after Jesus is a celebration of the imaginative receptions of the parables of Jesus from the second-century church father Irenaeus (ca. 140–ca. 200) to the twenty-first century Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–). The book is organized chronologically into five chapters: the afterlives of the parables in antiquity, the Middle Ages, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In total, Gowler draws our attention to fifty-seven interpreters who employ fifty “modes” of reception to tease out the ongoing meaning of thirty-three parables. Many of the interpreters of antiquity reflect the allegorizing tendencies of the early church. The primary emphasis of this period is on Jesus and the elucidation of his life, ministry, and teaching. Greek fathers, Latin fathers, and a Syriac church father are included here, but also Macrina the Younger and the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. In addition, and this is true of the book as a whole, Gowler includes nonliterary receptions—frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, and music. In the fourth century and beyond, the Bible assumes a more prominent role as a locus of identity and meaning making within the church. In the Middle Ages, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus, and the wise and foolish virgins receive special consideration because of the widespread attention given to these four parables. Fourfold interpretations are characteristic of this period ―historical-literary, allegorical/typological, anagogical, and tropological. These four “senses” enabled the interpreter to penetrate the intransient truths of each parable. The allegorical method was preferred for centuries but began to wane as the voice of Thomas Aquinas waxed in the thirteenth century. In particular, he challenged the fruitfulness of the fourfold interpretation of Scripture and claimed that this method added nothing to the foundational truths of faith. The afterlives of the parables in this chapter are embodied in literature (including the Islamic Sahih al-Bukhari), commentaries, plays, and sermons. As allegory waned, humanism waxed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scholars were now studying the Bible in its original languages and nonscholars had unprecedented access to private copies of the Bible because of the invention of the printing press. Luther and Calvin figure prominently during this period, but also John Maldonatus, Anna Jansz, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, William Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Domenico Fetti, and George Herbert. These voices span the various movements of the ever-shifting landscape of these two centuries. The Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and “Radical Christianity” are well represented here with selections from literary and nonliterary sources. Despite the growing symbolic significance of the Bible within the church as a whole and the accessibility of the Bible to scholar and nonscholar alike, the modern era bears witness to a surprising degree of biblical illiteracy. Historical criticism, however, emerges during these two centuries and parable interpretation would undergo a seismic shift as a result. G. specifically treats the categories of parables developed by Adolf Jülicher (i.e., Gleichnis, Parabel, and Beispielerzählung) alongside William Blake, John Everett Millais, Fanny Crosby, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Spurgeon, and Frederick Douglass. [End Page 508] The decline of the use and influence of the Bible continues into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Outside the church, the parables are further diminished in terms of their wider cultural consumption, interpretation, and application. Not surprisingly, interpretive methods vary widely, and diversity of readings expands. This diversity is reflected in the figures chosen by G. in the final chapter of the book: Thomas Hart Benton (painter), Rev. Robert Wilkins (songwriter), Flannery O’Connor (novelist), Martin Luther King Jr. (homilist), Godspell (musical), José Arana (painter), Elsa Tamez (professor), David Flusser (professor), Octavia Butler (novelist), and Thich Nhat Hahn (monk). It seems fitting that this illuminating collection of afterlives would conclude with the Buddhist monk and Christian admirer Thich Nhat Hahn. The final question that Gowler asks―what...