Jesus’ Parabolic Speech Forms

Jesus of Nazareth often used parabolic speech forms in order to articulate his teachings using fabricated examples that the people he was teaching to could understand. To refer to one of Cosby’s examples, he speaks to how he used to wear shrink-to-fit jeans, so he had a good understanding of the parable of shrunk and unshrunk clothes. On the other hand, Jesus also speaks of fermenting grape juice into wine via the use of animal skins, which is something I’m assuming the people of Israel and the other nearby nations were well acquainted with. I believe these examples sum up again how we are to interpret biblical readings. Understanding more and more of the ancient context helps us to get a better grasp of what Jesus means when he’s using these olden examples.

For instance, in Mark 6:21 when Jesus used aphorisms to communicate distilled wisdom into society, he refers to the idea that no one can serve two masters. By doing this, he alludes to slavery, which was accepted at that time. However, I would conjecture that if Jesus were here today in our American society, he would teach more Westernized parables that would make more sense to us in our current cultural context. Surely in 2,000 years from now, education will be more advanced and the culture of whatever dominant society prevails at that time would certainly be different. This is just how the passage of time works. Furthermore, I noticed how imperative it is to be aware of when Jesus uses hyperbole, sarcasm, and even grotesque comical imagery to illustrate points. I took notice that Jesus is a pretty funny guy when it comes to calling people out on their pious law-keeping nonsense, especially the Pharisees. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize when Jesus uses hyperbole, and not to just take what he says literally always. To provide a case, I’ll refer to when Jesus commands us to cut our hand off, or gouge our eyes out if they cause us to sin. I think it’s important to recognize he was using hyperbole here, and not commanding us to legitimately disfigure ourselves if we sin.