{"id":484,"date":"2014-02-20T22:46:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T22:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=484"},"modified":"2014-02-21T12:05:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T12:05:06","slug":"the-power-of-parable-and-metaparable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Parable – and metaparable"},"content":{"rendered":"

At “By Common Consent”, there is a review<\/a> of John Dominic Crossan’s “The Power of Parable: How fiction by Jesus became fiction about Jesus”.<\/p>\n

This interests me particularly for two reasons, firstly because BCC is a Mormon site, and I don’t get to look at Mormon sites very often. The more important reason, though, is that I read this book last year and would unhesitatingly recommend it as a radical new look at the Gospels.<\/p>\n

I go along with most of what that review says; I love the direction of thinking Crossan is pursuing, but do not think he supports his hypotheses sufficiently rigorously for me to say “Yes, this is the way it was”.<\/p>\n

But Crossan tells a wonderfully engaging and convincing story about how and why the Gospels were written, and one which is well worth considering as a possible way of reading them, and a new way which gives an additional and sometimes surprising set of insights. At the least, it can be regarded as a parable of its own (about writing parables about a teller of parables one of which is perhaps itself about parables – which is even more “meta” than the comment which starts the review).<\/p>\n

I’m not sure I want to try to suggest what kind of parable it is, though. In a way, it’s a challenge parable, the “marginalised person” here being parables themselves. In a way it’s a riddle parable, because the stories themselves become significant of something other than what they first appear to be. I don’t at the moment see any indication of example parable there, but wouldn’t be surprised if someone were to correct me.<\/p>\n

One thing Crossan does do here, however, is use the texts we know well to tell us some stories about the early development of Christianity and its transformation from being a Jewish sect to being a religion crossing divides of ethnicity, and to underline a particular understanding of Jesus. It’s an understanding of Jesus which resonates extremely well with me, and I like the book fine for that. It is, however, too limited an understanding of Jesus to reflect all that I consider Jesus to be to us now, even if (as I rather suspect) it may reflect a very substantial part of what Jesus was during his lifetime ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At “By Common Consent”, there is a review of John Dominic Crossan’s “The Power of Parable: How fiction by Jesus became fiction about Jesus”. This interests me particularly for two reasons, firstly because BCC is a Mormon site, and I don’t get to look at Mormon sites very often. The more important reason, though, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,8,3,7,23],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible-study","tag-biblical-history","tag-christianity","tag-historical-jesus","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}