The Parables: Their Literacy and Existential Dimension

Parts One will assay to work out a methodology for interpreting the parables, based on an existentialist hermeneutic and on literary analysis; Part Two will make the effort to interpret certain of the parables through this methodology. These parables as literary in nature have certain autonomy (to be fully discussed in Chapter 3) and present a configuration of action and meeting which is a more fundamental form of expression than our theological concepts; therefore it is proper to consider such parables first on their own terms and only after that to raise the question of the relationship to Jesus' non-parabolic teaching about the kingdom of God, thereby reversing the procedure of C. H. Dodd. In the exegetical section, the parables lobby group on the basis of the relationship to some aspect of the kingdom of God or of eschatology but on the basis of their narrative form, thereby altering the procedure of Joachim Jeremias. --- excerpt from book's Introduction