Posted by PS on July 08, 2002 at 21:26:17:
In Reply to: a life less ordinary!?!?!?!?!?!??!!?!? posted by Mister Metal on July 08, 2002 at 11:38:17:
: eh....what do yall mean by myths?? i kinda have a hard time believing that all the parables or any of the parables were myth...that would be like jesus bsing you..dont think he would do that..i would not wanna bs someone into believin..i aint a JW...so..why would jesus bs someone into believin?? paster disaster..if you are here...help me out here...mister theoligical man you..thanks
Parable = Myth. A parable IS a myth, a fictional story, created to communicate a deeper truth. Many truths can not be effectively defined in our finite words and concepts, but these can often be very compellingly portrayed in myths and parables. For instance, was the prodigal son in Luke 15 a real person? No. (At least I don't think we have any archaeologists now searching for his actual grave!) Rather, he was every person, in one way or another. The story was told in response to real attitudes Jesus was encountering, and the characters represent those attitudes. The older brother in the story was meant to represent the legalistic Pharisees' response toward the son's return. The father in the story represented God's response to the son's return. Jesus crafted the perfect story to make his point.
By using parables Jesus was enabling people to apprehend truth in the context of a story they could personally identify with, which would evoke a real response from them, much more effectively than any systmatic theological statement ever could. The response of the hearer is the goal of the parable. Understanding this is paramount to understanding the parables and hearing what Jesus is trying to communicate. The response could be anything from sympathy to anger depending who you "were" in the story, but either way, the response is the goal.
If you are interested, I can recommend some reading. You might be interested to learn about the different types of writing in the bible and how to read and interpret them (as the hearers would have at the time they were written).