The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia

The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia

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

The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia

by David B. Gowler

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Overview

Jesus's enigmatic and compelling parables have fascinated their hearers since he first uttered them, and during the intervening centuries these parables have produced a multitude of interpretations. This accessibly written book explores the varying interpretations of Jesus's parables across two millennia to demonstrate how powerfully they continue to challenge people's hearts, minds, and imaginations. It covers more than fifty imaginative receptions from different eras, perspectives, and media, showing how the use of Jesus's parables affects society and culture and offering a richer appreciation for Jesus's most striking teachings.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781493406661
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/31/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

David B. Gowler, PhD, is the Dr. Lovick Pierce and Bishop George F. Pierce Chair of Religion at Emory University, where he also directs the Pierce Institute for Leadership and Community Engagement and is senior faculty fellow for the Center for Ethics. He has authored numerous books, including What Are They Saying about the Parables? and James through the Centuries.
David B. Gowler, PhD, is the Dr. Lovick Pierce and Bishop George F. Pierce Chair of Religion at Emory University, where he also directs the Pierce Institute for Leadership and Community Engagement and is senior faculty fellow for the Center for Ethics. He has authored numerous books, including What Are They Saying about the Parables?, What Are They Saying about the Historical Jesus?, and James through the Centuries.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction
1. The Afterlives of Jesus's Parables in Antiquity (to ca. 550 CE)
Irenaeus
The Gospel of Philip
Clement of Alexandria
Tertullian
Origen
John Chrysostom
Augustine
Macrina the Younger
Ephrem the Syrian
The Good Shepherd in Early Christian Art
Oil Lamp
Roman Catacombs
Dura-Europos House Church
Illuminations from the Rossano Gospels
Byzantine Mosaics, Christ Separating Sheep from Goats, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna, Italy)
Romanos the Melodist
2. The Afterlives of Jesus's Parables in the Middle Ages (ca. 550-1500 CE)
Gregory the Great
Sahih al-Bukhari
Wazo of Liège
The Golden Gospels of Echternach
The Laborers in the Vineyard
The Wicked Tenants
The Great Dinner
The Rich Man and Lazarus
Theophylact
Hildegard of Bingen
Chartres Cathedral
Bonaventure
Thomas Aquinas
John Gower
Antonia Pulci
Albrecht Dürer
3. The Afterlives of Jesus's Parables in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Martin Luther
Anna Jansz of Rotterdam
John Calvin
John Maldonatus
William Shakespeare
Domenico Fetti
George Herbert
Roger Williams
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
John Bunyan
4. The Afterlives of Jesus's Parables in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
William Blake
Søren Kierkegaard
Frederick Douglass
Fanny Crosby
Leo Tolstoy
John Everett Millais
Emily Dickinson
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Adolf Jülicher
5. The Afterlives of Jesus's Parables in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Thomas Hart Benton
Parables and the Blues: Rev. Robert Wilkins
Flannery O'Connor
Martin Luther King Jr.
Godspell
Latin American Receptions
The Peasants of Solentiname
Elsa Tamez
David Flusser
Octavia Butler
Thich Nhat Hanh
Conclusion: What Do Parables Want?
Appendix: Descriptions of the Parables Cited in the Interpretations
Indexes

What People are Saying About This

Mikeal C. Parsons

For most of its history, parable research has, perhaps rightly, focused on the composition history of Jesus’s parables from the oral period in which they were spoken to their placement in the Christian Gospels. David Gowler has studied, taught, and written about the parables for many years, and in this fascinating study he has trained his eagle eye on the latter part of the parables’ ‘career’—the impact of their afterlife on the literature, music, and art that stand as heirs to this remarkable corpus of stories. Arranged chronologically, Gowler’s study spans two thousand years of reception. This treasure trove belongs in the library of anyone interested in the ways Jesus’s parables have challenged our hearts, minds, and imaginations, and it confirms that the world the parables has produced is no less interesting and complex than the world that produced the parables.

Matthew L. Skinner

If the parables stimulate your mind, feed your soul, upset your values, and occasionally confuse you, you’re in good company. Exegetes, poets, hymn writers, allegorists, social reformers, novelists, and painters feature in this brisk tour through two thousand years of parable interpretation, often urging readers to see more in the parables or to view them through a different set of eyes. As a knowledgeable guide through a lively history, David Gowler highlights the evocative interpretations that emerge when a parable encounters a fertile imagination.

Duane F. Watson

David Gowler invites us to participate in a two-thousand-year-old dialogue with those seeking to understand and implement the simple, yet often perplexing, parables of Jesus. Gowler has assembled fifty conversation partners from literature, poetry, hymns, the visual arts, and theater that span the Christian era. These voices hail from a broad and diverse range of historically, theologically, and culturally significant contexts. By entering into this dialogue, Gowler hopes that rather than find what we expect to find in the parables, we can take off our own interpretive blinders and come to a fuller understanding of the meanings and applications of the parables to our lives. He succeeds! The conversation in which he engages us here is truly an eye-opening and enriching experience.

Christine Joynes

This wonderfully engaging volume offers a rich array of insights, as the author introduces us to a chorus of diverse voices from a wide variety of media. David Gowler’s immense learning is expressed with superb clarity, making interpretations of the parables across two millennia accessible to all. Highly recommended.

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