Grace
Theological Journal 9.2 (1988) 191-204
Copyright © 1988 by Grace
Theological Seminary. Cited with permission.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF JESUS'
NARRATIVE PARABLES:
A CONSERVATIVE APPROACH
CHRISTIAN R.
DAVIS
Recent
structuralistic criticism of Jesus' parables usually
uses
naturalistic assumptions, but structuralism can also use conservative
assumptions about the text. If the Bible is inerrant, then Jesus' parables
can be analyzed as they stand as units within the gospels. Underlying
structures of the parables can reveal their "deep meanings."
Twenty-seven
parables are reduced in five steps to "actantial
schemata," then classified into four categories based on the
completions
or
negations of schemata and the relationships between schemata
within each parable. Each category teaches a different underlying
message. Further structuralistic study might
supplement traditional
biblical hermeneutics.
*
* *
Ever since
the disciples asked Jesus, "Why do You speak
to them in parables?" (Matt 13:10b), interpreters have
struggled with Jesus'
parables. Early exegetes, including Tertullian, Origen, and Jerome,
generally allegorized them, as did nearly all writers who dealt with
them before the nineteenth century. Even in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries,
critics such as Trench, Dods, and A. B. Bruce con-
tinued to treat
them as primarily allegorical. In the late nineteenth
century, the German theologian Adolf Julicher proposed that Jesus'
parables had to be treated as classical parables, teaching a single,
central lesson-a principle that has become widely though not univer-
sally accepted. Since then, form critics, such as Bultmann
and Dibelius,
and redaction critics, such as Cadoux,
Dodd, and Jeremias, have
tended to treat the parables as human rather than sacred texts, useful,
perhaps, in the search for Jesus' original words but not trustworthy as
accounts of God’s special revelation.1
.
1For a brief survey of interpreters of
Jesus' parables, see Jack Dean Kingsbury,
"Major
Trends in Parable Interpretation," CTM 42 (1971) 579-89.
192 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
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Most recently,
experimental hermeneutical approaches have flour-
ished. In a 1983
survey of recent literature, David L. Barr claims that
recent studies "form a veritable spectrum of hermeneutical options:
from a positivist reading of the text which takes meaning as obvious
and referential to a semiotic reading which takes meaning to be
polyvalent and autonomous-with several shades in between.”2 One
of
these recent approaches is structuralism. Defined in simple terms,
structuralism is a critical methodology that seeks to understand phe-
nomena (such as
myths, folk customs, or literary texts) in terms of
their structures: the systems or patterns that relate individual phe-
nomena to each
other. Structuralism has grown out of the linguistic
studies of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson, the anthro-
pological studies of
Claude Levi-Strauss, and the studies of simple
literary forms (such as folk tales) by Andre Jolles,
Etienne Souriau,
and Vladimir Propp. Among the leading
proponents of literary struc-
turalism today are
A. J. Greimas, Claude Bremond, Tzvetan
Todorov,
Gerard Genette, and Roland Barthes. Daniel and Aline Patte and
Alfred M. Johnson, Jr., have written texts
applying structuralistic
methods to the Bible.3
Several
biblical scholars have attempted to apply these structur-
alistic methods to
Jesus' parables. Such studies published since 1975
include works by John Dominic Crossan (1975),
Daniel Patte (1976),
"The Entrevernes Group"(1978), Gary A. Phillips (1985), and
John W.
Sider (1985)4 This approach is
attractive because the parables--as a
set of short, diverse, yet related narratives (like Propp's Russian folk
tales and Levi~Strauss's
"myths")-provide the kind of matenal that
is
most suitable for structural analysis.
Unfortunately,
most structuralists assume that the meaning of a
text lies not in the text itself but in the culture of which the text
is a
2David L. Barr, "Speaking of Parables: A Survey of Recent
Research," TSF
Bulletin 6 (May-June 1983) 8.
3For a general introduction to structuralism, see Jonathan Culler, Structuralist
Poetics (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1973); Robert Scholes,
Structuralism
in Literature:An Introduction (New Haven: Yale Univ., 1974). For texts on structuralism
in Biblical criticism, see Daniel and Aline
Patte, Structural
Exegesis: From Theory to
Practice (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); Alfred M.
Johnson, Jr., ed. and trans., Struc-
turalism and Biblical Hermeneutics: A Collection of Essays (
1979).
4John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story (
delphia: Fortress,
1976); The Entrevernes Group, Signs and Parables: Semiotics and
Gospel Texts, trans. Gary Phillips
(Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1978);
"History and Text: The Reader in
Context in Matthew's Parables Discourse," Semeia
31 (1985) 111-38; John W. Sider, "Proportional Analogy in the Gospel
Parables," NTS
31 (Jan. 1985) 1-23.
part. They claim that the interpretation of any given structure is
dependent on culture and is therefore relative, not absolute. As a result
structuralism has been applied to Jesus' parables mostly by critics who
reject conservative assumptions about biblical inspiration in favor of
naturalistic assumptions about the text of the NT. Crossan,
for in-
stance, has written that "we have literally no language and no
parables
of Jesus except insofar as such can be retrieved and reconstructed
from
within the language of the earliest interpreters.”5
However,
structuralism need not begin with such assumptions. It
is a method for analyzing texts which can be applied as well by
those
who believe that the Bible is inspired and inerrant as by those who
see
it as a human, fallible document. In fact, structuralistic
methodology is
inherently neutral, espousing no particular hermeneutical presupposi-
tions. It merely
claims that the underlying meaning of a text--
whatever that may be-can be revealed by methodical analysis of the
structural relationships within the text.
Interpreters
who hold to the divine inspiration of the Bible have
probably shied away from structuralism both because it has been used
mostly by critics with naturalistic assumptions and because of its
reductionist tendencies:
treating texts as mere linguistic artifacts to be
analyzed. However, structuralism is no more opposed to the doctrine
or inspiration than is the diagramming of sentences from the Bible
(which is itself
a structuralistic type of method). Just as
diagramming a
sentence might help to reveal the meaning of the sentence, so structural
analysis of a set of parables might help to reveal the meanings of the
parables.
Hence, this
paper will attempt to analyze some of Jesus' parables
using a structuralistic approach, beginning
with three assumptions: (1)
that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, (2) that
particular
passages in the Bible can be isolated from their contexts and treated as
independent units of discourse, and (3) that the structure of a unit of
discourse is related to the underlying meaning of that unit. These
assumptions need some explanation
The first assumption is not just a
point of faith but also a useful
heuristic principle. If the Bible is inspired and inerrant, then the words
recorded in the gospels as Jesus' words must represent Jesus' actual
words. Therefore, this principle eliminates the approach used, for
instance, in Crossan's book In Parables: The Challenge of the Histori-
cal Jesus, which compares the variants of each
parable in Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and Thomas (!), decides what
must be Jesus' original
parables (before their supposed redactions), and then analyzes the
5John Dominic Crossan, In Parables:The Challenge of the Historical
Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) xiii.
194 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
structures of these "rediscovered" (if not invented) parables.6
However,
based on the assumption of inspiration and inerrancy, the present
study will analyze Jesus' parables as they stand. (Their texts as given
in
the NASB will be used here as adequate approximations of the original
texts.)
Furthermore,
this first assumption supports the second assump-
tion: particular Bible
passages can be isolated from their contexts and
treated as independent units. Although attempts to determine how the
parables function within the overall structure of the gospels can be
valuable (see for instance Elizabeth Struthers Malbon's
1986 study of
this issue),7 they are not the only way to approach the
parables. If the
parables were the re-creations of the gospel authors, they might well be
meaningless outside their gospel contexts, but if Jesus himself created
and told them, then they can validly be treated as independent units
that are contained in a larger context. Hence, they can be isolated
and
analyzed with valid results.
Unfortunately,
identifying all of Jesus' parables is a nearly insur-
mountable task in itself.8 Therefore, this study is limited to
only
twenty-seven texts, each one a narrative told by Jesus in a past tense
(primarily the
Greek aorist). (See the Appendix for the list of texts
used.) Not included are non-narrative metaphors, such as "You are
the
salt of the earth" or "You are the light of the world"
(Matt
present- or future-tense narratives, such as the "unclean
spirit" (Matt
goats" (Mark 25:31-46); and narratives about historical figures
such as
David (Mark
these texts could be used for structural analyses, but they are
excluded
here mainly to simplify this study.
The third
basic assumption of this study is the foundational
principle of structuralism: that units of discourse are built on under-
lying structures, the discovery of which can reveal the "deep
meaning"
of the discourse. This "deep meaning" is not simply the
interpretation
of the text. Rather, it is the underlying pattern or idea that all
texts
with the same structure elucidate. Therefore, if the texts under con-
sideration, or any
subset of them, reveal a common structure, they can
be taken as expressions of the same basic idea. In other words,
structuralism is used here as a method for finding sets of narratives that
all express, in varying ways, a common concept.
6Crossan, In Parables, pp.1-34 and passim.
7Elizabeth Struthers Malbon,
"Mark: Myth and Parable," BTB 16 (Jan. 1986)
8-17.
8Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1955 ed., s.v. "Parable
(Introductory and
Biblical)," lists counts of Jesus'
parables ranging from Trench's thirty to Bugge's
seventy-one.
sender®
object® receiver
↑
helper→ subject ←opponent
The same actant
(human or non-human), may fill several of the six roles
shown above, and some roles may be unfilled in any given narrative.
FIGURE
1. A. J. Greimas' Actantial
Schema
To identify
a text's underlying structure, structuralists have
pro-
posed various schemata as foundations for all narratives. For example,
Vladimir Propp,
one of the forerunners of structuralism, focused on
thirty-one "functions of dramatis
personae," which he saw as elements
of the Russian folk tales that he studied.9 Later structuralists, such as
Claude Bremond and Tzvetan
Todorov, have sought simpler para-
digms based on
the essential action of resolving a.conflict.10 Among the
most popular schemata today are the "semiotic square" and A.
J.
Greimas' "actantial schema.”11 The semiotic square is a diagram used
to analyze the semantic oppositions of a narrative, pairing some
fundamental term with its contrary, its contradictory, and its homo-
logue.12 Because it deals with semantic elements and because its
schematization does not vary (always being a square), the semiotic
square does not serve the purpose of this study.
However, Greimas' actantial schema can
elucidate the structure of
a narrative's action without specifying any semantic levels in the
text,
and it can reveal a variety of narrative patterns. Hence, it provides
a
useful paradigm for analysis and classification of the set of texts
under
consideration. This schema is diagrammed as in figure 1. Greimas'
schema is certainly not the only possible paradigm for elementary
narratives-it is simply a useful one for the purposes of this study.
The method
for reducing each text to this schema follows five
steps. First, a text is identified and isolated from its context in
order
9Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, rev. 2nd
ed., edited by Louis A.
Wagner, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin:
Univ. of Texas, 1968),25-65.
10Claude Bremond, Logique du Recit (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973) 131-33;.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (
well, 1977) 108-19.
11Among critics of Jesus' parables who use these two schemata
are Corrina
C) Galland (in
Johnson, ed., Structuralism and Biblical
Hermeneutics 183-208), The
Entrevenes Group (Signs and Parables),
Daniel and Aline Patte (Structural Exegesis),
and John Dominic Crossan (The Dark Interval).
12Corrina Galland, "A Structural
ed., Structuralism and Biblical Hermeneutics.
GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL 196
sender (man)→ object (command)→ receiver (doorkeeper)
↑
helper (Ø) subject
(man) opponent (Ø)
This diagram represents a simple action in
which a man, who is both the
originator (sender) and motivator (subject) of a command,
gives a command
to a doorkeeper (receiver). No helpers or opponents are
given.
(Other apparent actions in Mark 13:34 are
Greek participles and are
therefore treated descriptive elements.)
FIGURE 2. Actantial Schema of Mark 13:34
to treat it as a self-contained unit.13 Second, the text
is segmented,
with one segment for each definite action.14 Third,
passages that do
not add action (such as descriptive or informative passages) are
separated out of the elementary narratives of actions.15 Fourth,
the
actors in each segment are placed within actantial
schemata. In very
simple, one-segment narratives, such as Mark 13:34, this is the final
step, resulting in a schema like figure 2. In most cases, a fifth step
is
necessary: identification of the relationships between elementary nar-
rative segments.
The two basic relationships to be identified here are
sequence (either casual or temporal-represented by " →")
and
comparison or equality (represented by" ↔").
Once the
texts are reduced to schemata (with letters representing
each actor to reduce semantic interference in the isolation of the
structure), the patterns of the chosen texts are compared. The criteria
for comparison used in this study were the completion or negation of
the narrative (i.e., whether the receiver in the schema does or does
not
receive the object) and the sequences or comparisons of the schemata.
13I believe that this procedure is critically justifiable, based on
the assumption that
the gospel accounts are inspired and
inerrant, since Jesus himself delivered several very
similar parables (or forms of
the same parable) in different contexts: see the narratives
of the mustard seed (Matt
dinner (Matt 22:2-14 and Luke
14Defining a
"definite action" is necessarily imprecise because every action can
be
divided into smaller actions or combined to form larger actions. Thus
"the sower went
out to sow" may be seen as two actions (going forth and sowing),
as a single action
(sowing), or as
many implied actions (leaving a place, going to a field, entering the
field, taking seeds in hand, etc.). Structural analysis must presuppose
a general seman-
tic understanding of the text that allows the reader to determine
what constitutes each
"definite
action." For further discussion, see The
Encyclopedia of Religion, 1987 ed.,
s.v.
"Structuralism," by Edmund Leach.
15Galland,
"Suggestions for a Structural Approach to the Narrative," 190, in
Johnson,
ed., Structuralism and Biblical
Hermeneutics.
Few texts were identical in structure, and all
had some resemblances.
In general, however, four classes of
narratives emerged. Class A con-
tains only
completed narrative schemata with no comparisons in-
volved. Class B is
similar but centers on a negated narrative (an act of
refusal or. opposition). Class C consists of a
comparison of two simi-
lar narratives: one a
completed narrative, the other, negated. Class D
uses a sequence of two class-C comparisons, one leading to the other.
Class A is
the simplest but is interesting because, unlike most
narratives, it involves no apparent opposition, at least in the essential
action (Conflict of values may occur on a semantic level, but for
simplicity, this study is considering only actions, not values.) Its
pattern is the basic actantial schema (as in
figures 1 and 2), with the
subject normally the same as either the sender (motivating an act of
giving) or the receiver (motivating an act of taking). Texts that fit
this
class include the narratives of the mustard seed (Matt
(Matt
(Matt 20:1-16), the traveler putting his
slaves in charge (Mark
the two debtors (Luke
the unrighteous steward (Luke 16: 1-8), and the widow and the judge
(Luke 18:2-5). Some of these involve
several sequential actions, but
all emphasize the transfer of a single object (not necessarily a
material
object) to a single receiver. Some, such as the mustard seed, the
leaven, the hidden treasure, the pearl, and the traveler consist of only
one or two closely connected elementary narratives. Others, such as
the laborers in the vineyard, the prodigal son, and the unrighteous
steward, include a longer sequence of narratives. But all express
completed transfers of one object to one receiver. The only one in
which an act of direct opposition is expressed is the widow and the
judge-which could therefore be put in class B-but because its em-
phasis seems to be
on the final act of giving (i.e., the judge gives legal
protection to the widow), it has been placed, at least tentatively, in
class A.
Perhaps the
most interesting example in class A is the prodigal
son (Luke
narratives, but each one is completed: the man gives wealth to his
son; the son gives away wealth; the son gives himself to a citizen;
the
son gives himself to his father; the father receives him and then
gives
him gifts. Though the older son expresses anger, he never acts out
his
opposition. A structural diagram with letters for each actor might
look like figure 3. The significance of this example is that it shows
in
an objective way how this relatively complex narrative expresses the
same type of pattern (hence the same basic idea) as that in such
simple narratives as the mustard seed or the hidden treasure. In fact,
198 GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
a → b →c & d
vv
11-12: father (a) gives wealth (b)
↑ to sons (c & d)
Ø
c Ø
c → b→ Ø
↑ v 13:
son (c) gives away wealth (b)
Ø
c Ø
c→ c → e
vv 14-16: son (c) gives himself to
↑ citizen (e)
Ø
c Ø
c → c → a
vv 17-20a: son (c) gives himself to
↑ father
(a)
Ø
c Ø
a → b → c
vv
20b-31: father (a) gives wealth (b) to son (c) (helped by slaves
↑ opposed
by other son [d])
f
→ a ← d
The narrative is represented as a series
of completed elementary narratives.
Some segments could be united or
subdivided; this figure merely approximates
the total structure of the parable.
FIGURE 3. Actantial
Schema of Luke 15:11-32 (the prodigal son)
by condensing the intermediate segments in the sequence, the narra-
tive of the prodigal son
could be reduced to a single, completed
actantial schema
(like figures 1 and 2) with the father as sender,
wealth as the object, the younger son as the receiver, the father and
younger son combined as the subject, slaves as helpers, and the older
son as an unsuccessful opponent.
a
→ b → c
↑
Ø
a ← d
The key element in class B is the segment in which the transfer of
the
object (b) to the receiver (c) is negated (→). There is often
opposition
(d), and the subject is often the same as the
sender
FIGURE 4. Actantial Schema Typical of Class-B Narratives
Class B is similar to class A in that its
narrative segments are
arranged sequentially. However, in B, a key segment is a negated
narrative, as schematized in figure 4. Examples with this structure are
the narratives of the unforgiving slave (Matt
owner and the vine-growers (Matt
16), the marriage feast (Matt 22:2-13),
the rich fool (Luke
the barren fig tree (Luke 13:6-9), the dinner (Luke
rich man and Lazarus (Luke
key segment-usually the last one-is negated. Thus, the unforgiving
slave negates his fellow slave's plea for mercy (Matt
king subsequently negates the slave's plea for mercy (Matt
Matt 21:33-40, the vine-growers refuse to
receive the landowner's
slaves-a negation that implies a further negation of the transfer of
fruits to the landowner. (The landowner's destruction of the vine-
growers is related in future tense, outside the narrative proper-Matt
An unusual
example of a class-B narrative is that of the marriage
feast (Matt 22:2-13). Most class-B narratives contain either a single
act of negation (as in the landowner and the vine-growers) or a
negation leading to a second negation (as in the unforgiving slave).
But in Matt 22:2-14, the marriage feast
has three basic negations: the
guests' rejection of the feast (vv 3, 5-6), the king's subsequent destruc-
tion of the guests' city (v
7), and the weakly connected rejection of the
man without wedding clothes (v 13). If vv 11-13-the man without
wedding clothes-are separated from vv 2-10-the guests' rejection
of the feast-the two resulting narratives both fit class B. In light
of
this apparent structural aberration, a comparison with the similar
narrative of the dinner, recounted by Luke (Luke
Luke's narrative has different details but
has essentially the same
structure as Matthew's until the end, when Luke's narrative leaves
out the man without wedding clothes.
200 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
a → b → c
↑
Ø a Ø
d
→ b → c
↑
Ø
d Ø
In most class-C narratives, a sender/subject (a) gives an object
(b) to a
receiver (c), and a different sender/subject (d) fails to
give (→) the
same object (b) to the same receiver (c).
FIGURE 5.
Actantial schema Typical of Class-C Narratives
While some
critics take this variation as evidence of editorial
redaction, structural analysis suggests another possible explanation.
If, as has been suggested, narratives with
the same basic structure
express the same underlying idea, Jesus may well have been expres-
sing the same idea in different ways for didactic force. In the
context
of Matthew 22, Jesus juxtaposes two different expressions of the
same idea.16 (He apparently did the same thing in Matthew
13, where
he juxtaposes the narratives of the mustard seed and the leaven and
those of the hidden treasure and the pearl.) In Luke 14, in a different
context, he used yet another expression for the same idea. If one
accepts the premises that different expressions of the same structure
communicate the same underlying idea and that Jesus sometimes
juxtaposed two different expressions of the same idea, then the un-
usual structure of Matthew 22 and the variations in Luke 14 are
easily explained as normal manifestations of Jesus' uses of narratives.
In class C,
two separate narrative segments-one completed and
one negated-are compared. Figure 5 shows the basic structure.
Narratives of this type include the two
foundations (Matt
Luke 6:47-49), the sower
(Matt 13:3-8; Mark 4:3-8; Luke 8:5-8), the
dragnet (Matt
16Such juxtaposition seems to be typical of
the Hebrew mind, as evidenced by
the parallelism often used in the Psalms and Proverbs.
Samaritan (Luke
the sower, the two sons, the good
Samaritan, and the minas, there is
also a preliminary narrative segment that introduces the comparison,
but in each case it is obviously no more than a device to establish
the
situation (e.g., “the sower went out to
sow"-Matt 13:3b). Also, in
two cases-the sower and the good
Samaritan-the negated narrative
is repeated before the final, completed narrative segment occurs.
For
example, the seeds beside the road, upon the rocky places, and
among the thorns all fail to yield a crop before the seeds on the good
soil do finally yield a crop. However, the pattern is still
essentially a
comparison of a negated narrative (which is repeated) with a com-
pleted narrative.
Perhaps the most useful fact to notice in Class C is that complex
narratives such as the sower and the good
Samaritan have the same
structure as such simple narratives as the two foundations and the
two sons. If the structuralistic method is
valid, hermeneutical inter-
pretation should find
close similarities among these narratives.
The final
class, class D, consists of combinations of classes B and
C. In particular, a comparison of
completed and negated narratives
(as in class C)
leads sequentially (as in class B) to another comparison
of completed and negated narratives. While the specific narrative
roles vary, the basic structure is given in figure 6. There seem to be
only three examples of this class in the gospels: the tares among the
wheat (Matt
(Matt 25:14-30). This class is the
smallest but also the most complex
of the four.
One
interesting problem in class D lies in a comparison of the
narrative of the talents with the class-C narrative of the minas (Luke
Luke retell two
different narratives with obvious structural similari-
ties in two different situations. Matthew's narrative of the talents
(told during the
Passion Week) is a definite example of class D, with
a comparison of the slaves' handling of the talents leading to a
comparison of the man's subsequent treatment of the slaves. How-
ever, Luke's narrative of the minas (told before entering
while very similar to the second half of Matthew's narrative, leaves
out the narratives of the slaves' handling of the money and inserts a
seemingly unrelated narrative about the citizens' rejection of the
nobleman. Luke's version is probably best seen as a class-C narrative
(comparing the
faithful slaves' completed narratives with the worth-
less slave's negated narrative) with an inserted class-B narrative
(the
citizens' delegation leads to the nobleman's rejection of the citizens).
An obvious lesson to be learned here is
that the boundaries between
202 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
a → b
→ c
↑ comparison
Ø
d Ø
e
→
f → g
↑
Ø
h Ø
sequence
i → j
→ k
↑
Ø
l Ø
m→ n → o comparison
↑
Ø
p Ø
In class-D narratives, a comparison (as in
class C) leads to another
comparison (as in class C). The same sets of characters usually act
throughout the four segments, but the roles of each
character may vary.
FIGURE 6.
Actantial Schema Typical of Class-D Narratives
the classes are arbitrary and flexible, with one kind of
narrative easily
combined with or transformed into another.
Such
arbitrariness could arouse objections to the method. How-
ever, structuralism does not claim to find the only structures or
classification schemes applicable to the texts. It only claims to find
possible structures and schemes, with the further claim that if they are
found by application of consistent rules of analysis, they will reveal
patterns that reflect the underlying ideas of the texts. Different rules
of
analysis may reveal different structures, but if, as this study assumes,
there is an absolute truth underlying each text, then any consistent
structural analysis of the texts should lead toward that truth.17
Another
possible objection to this study is that the classes of texts
and their underlying ideas could be determined by more intuitive
17The opposite assumption-that there is no absolute truth underlying
any lin-
guistic text and
that different structures will therefore reveal different ideas-has led to
the radical deconstructionist movement.
hermeneutical methods. While this objection has some validity, it
misses the point that structuralistic methods
do not replace hermeneu-
tical methods but
supplement them. Structural analysis attempts to
reveal and objectify the linguistic foundations upon which hermeneuti-
cal interpretations are built.
In conclusion,
although the purpose of this study is only to
suggest how conservative Bible scholars might employ structuralistic
methods-not to take the further step of interpreting the ideas repre-
sented by the
patterns that have been identified-a few suggestions for
interpretation might help clarify the study's results. For
instance, the
narratives in class A, whether simple or complex, all reveal a pattern of
completed transferral of object to receiver. It
may therefore be inferred
that in each one, Jesus was emphasizing an act of giving. Hermeneuts
can determine what is given, by whom, to whom. (God's gift to man of
eternal life is an obvious possibility.) Class-B narratives all emphasize
a
negated act. Again, hermeneuts can determine
what is negated and
what the negative force (the opposition) is. (Rejection of salvation
because of man's sinful nature is a possibility.) Class C reveals two
equal but opposite forces: a dualism that seems to be part of Jesus'
message (perhaps distinguishing two types of people, such as the
regenerate and the unregenerate). Class-D narratives seem to reveal
the consequences of oppositions between the two groups identified in
class C (probably God's rejection of the unregenerate).
These
suggestions reveal nothing new or surprising; however,
that does not mean the method is unsuccessful. On the contrary, new
or surprising results, contradicting established interpretations,
would
make the method suspect at best. Yet this study has shown that
structuralism can work within conservative assumptions about the
Bible to
reveal new ways of looking at Jesus' narrative parables.
Further uses of structuralism in biblical
study could be almost limit-
less. Undergraduate Bible students might find elementary structural
exercises helpful for developing their analytical skills. For advanced
students, much more detailed analysis of Jesus' narratives remains to
be done, and other biblical narratives, such as accounts of miracles
or
dreams, the gospels themselves, the apocalyptic visions of Daniel or
Revelation, or the historical accounts in the OT or Acts might con-
tain significant structural
patterns. Though more difficult to analyze,
non-narrative passages such as didactic discourses and poetic pas-
sages can be approached structuralistically.
In short, the entire Bible
is open ground, largely untouched by structural analysis, at least
insofar as conservative theologians are concerned. With increasing
refinement of our methods, structuralism may help us to refine our
understanding of God's word.
204 GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
APPENDIX
LIST OF TEXTS
USED
Class A
mustard seed Matt
leaven
Matt 13:33; Luke 13:21
hidden treasure Matt
pearl
Matt 13:45-46
laborers in the vineyard Matt 20:1-16
traveler putting his slaves in charge
Mark 13:34
two debtors Luke
prodigal son Luke
unrighteous steward
Luke 16:1-8
widow and the judge Luke 18:2-5
Class B
unforgiving slave
Matt
landowner and vine-growers
Matt
Luke 20:9-16
marriage feast Matt 22:2-13; Luke 14:16-23
rich fool
Luke 12:16-20
barren fig tree Luke 13:6-9
dinner
Luke
rich man and Lazarus Luke 16:19-31
Class C
two foundations Matt
sower
Matt 13:3-8; Mark 4:3-8; Luke
8:5-8
dragnet
Matt
two sons
Matt 2-1:28-30
good Samaritan Luke
Pharisee and the publican Luke
minas
Luke
Class D
tares among the wheat Matt 13:24-30
ten virgins Matt 25:1-13
talents Matt 25:14-30
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
Grace
Theological Seminary
www.grace.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
thildebrandt@gordon.edu