Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi

Certain basic questions emerge: Jesus’ message is evaluated, not for its timeless significance, but for the meaning it must have had for the audience of his own day, who had their minds full of poverty and politics, and would have had little time for theological abstractions or timeless verities.

At stake throughout was the question: who would inherit the age to come? In other words, who would benefit when YHWH brought in the kingdom? The parable answered this question with sharp clarity. Outsiders were coming into the kingdom, and—at least by implication—insiders were being left out. More specifically, there was a way of being Israel which

To this strand within the kingdom-story belong those short parables that envisage people giving up everything to follow Jesus. Pearls of great price can only be bought when one has sold everything else; the buried treasure is worth all else that one might have to abandon.210 The various mammon-sayings function in the same way: following Jesus meant

membership. Jesus’ exchange with this one young man thus contained several central aspects of his kingdom-story, which is no doubt why the synoptic evangelists all give it such prominence. It focused on to one particular person and incident three features: the implied eschatology (the age to come/‘eternal life’), the place of Torah (fulfilled stran