Or rather, on the politics of transfiguration. Jesus, Luke writes in 9.28b-31,

took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. [NRSV]

Several elements engage the reader to compare the story of the transfiguration to that told about Moses and the people in Exodus 34. But before going to them, here is the end of this Exodus chapter which recounts how Moses went back up the Sinai mountain to get a second set of stone tablets of the law, the imperishable kind written by the divine finger or tachygraphed under divine dictation:

34²⁹Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. ³⁰When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. ³²Afterwards all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. ³³When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; ³⁴but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, ³⁵the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. [NRSV]

The elements inviting a serious comparison are the following. We have a limit character (to be defined, because he is beyond the usual boundaries), whether Moses, Elijah the Tishbite at a lesser degree, and Jesus; the mountain; prayer (worshipping in the case of Moses in Ex 34.8); the dazzling or shining of the face for Moses and of clothing for Jesus. In Jesus’ case, the face is not said to glow, but it does sort of, hendiadycally. The idea of brilliance is indicated by two effects, that on the face and the clothes.

I read the Exodus chapter as part of a text created by a priest group after the fall of the Judaean kingdom. It mentions no kings, contrary to what one would normally expect in ancient societies whose kings guaranteed the application of divinely-expressed laws (presented as coming from the divinity, or inspired in some way by it). Moses is no king, no prophet normally (in spite of the tradition), and no priest (in spite of his Levite-ness). Surprisingly in regard to the latter, it is his brother Aaron who is imagined to start the priesthood line. I can’t go in the detail of all these questions here, but the short of it is: the writers of the book of Exodus have thought long and hard about their political condition under the Babylonians and the Persians, after the collapse of their own kings and temple(s) and god(s), and are re-thinking the type of mediation likely to work for them and the people. Moses is their hero-mediator, but this mediation itself is a problem. Direct access to the ground for authority (religious and political, since Moses is the founder of the nation) must be mediated, hence the veil on his face. Hence also the story on the death of Moses in Moab, and his burial by God in a grave not to be found. Access to the founder is denied by the story: no monumentalization (think of any political system’s representation of its own foundations, be it the Kremlin with the Lenin mausoleum and mummy, “to this day,” or the Washington Mall, the Vatican, etc.), no relics, no political derivation by touching metonymically the imaginary source of power.

One could do a similar reasoning for Elijah (end of the first book of Kings), the resident or marginal prophet (Tishbite, a toshav), who does some shocking things such as being fed by crows or living with a foreign/enemy widow, and who is taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2), like Enoch (Gen 5.24).

Back to the transfiguration scene. The disciples are invited up the mountain in this story of re-foundation. So one could see this as some political progress: the people are there up with the founder, this time, though it is only the male part of the people, through their three paradigmatic representatives. Remember that three disciple women were named by Luke also, but disconnected (somewhat) from hearing and preaching the new word, and made part of a life of service and support. No veil between these male representatives of the disciples and Jesus in all his power. No tents either, which I take to mean: no monuments or relics or temple on a mountain top, no memorializing of this brief vision and contact with the imagined source of power. This is a story about someone who somewhat like Moses and Elijah (and Henoch could be added) leaves no monument or relics of his body after his death. The tomb will be empty. Of course, this was unacceptable to many and hasn’t prevented Christianity at all, especially with Constantine and his numerous past and present successors, from looking for that tomb and “inventing” (=finding) the true cross. The story of the transfiguration, in spite of its being rooted in a reflection on the absence of fixed ground for any political system, will become a source of power transmitted through the church organization, from apostles and disciples to early episcopal authorities. But the worm is in the fruit, let’s call it the sign of Jonah.

Luke 9.10–17:

When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.

The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, ‘Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.’ But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.’ For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.’ They did so and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

The communion meal rituals influenced this text, in the way it reports about organizing, and expanding a modicum of food that exists. This story is not quite about manna falling from heavens, as in Exodus. Rather it is about the sharing a new community can begin and develop.

One comment about “he looked up to heaven”: this gesture is often spiritualized and hence normalized in modern interpretations, as a ritual gesture and therefore a rather unimportant detail. But what if this looking up is actually expressing a direct demand for the miracle, and is done or reported by the evangelist in full awareness of what it meant in a society in which goods were limited, and miracles were to be compensated? I suggested that someone had to pay for the disturbance caused to the “limited good” economy, in the ancient view. I mentioned a story found in the talmud which neatly shows what was at stake. It is found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ta`anith 24a (Soncino translation):

Once R. Jose had day-labourers [working] in the field; night set in and no food was brought to them and they said to his son, `We are hungry’. Now they were resting under a fig tree and he exclaimed: Fig tree, fig tree, bring forth thy fruit that my father’s labourers may eat. It brought forth fruit and they ate. Meanwhile the father came and said to them, Do not bear a grievance against me; the reason for my delay is because I have been occupied up till now on an errand of charity. The labourers replied, May God satisfy you even as your son has satisfied us. Whereupon he asked: Whence? And they told him what had happened. Thereupon he said to his son: My son, you have troubled your Creator to cause the fig tree to bring forth its fruit before its time, may you too be taken hence before your time!

Aramaic and Hebrew:
ומא חד הוו אגרי ליה אגירי בדברא נגה להו ולא אייתי להו ריפתא אמרו ליה לבריה כפינן הוו יתבי תותי תאינתא אמר תאנה תאנה הוציאי פירותיך ויאכלו פועלי אבא אפיקו ואכלו אדהכי והכי אתא אבוה אמר להו לא תינקטו בדעתייכו דהאי דנגהנא אמצוה טרחנא ועד השתא הוא דסגאי אמרו ליה רחמנא לישבעך כי היכי דאשבען ברך אמר להו מהיכא אמרו הכי והכי הוה מעשה אמר לו בני אתה הטרחת את קונך להוציא תאנה פירותיה שלא בזמנה יאסף שלא בזמנו

Among the things discussed in class, I suggested that Jesus’ recommendations to his disciples in Luke 9.3, repeated with serious differences in Luke 10, extend rules of behavior which applied strictly to the temple in Jerusalem: He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.[….]’ Here is what Mishnah Berakhoth (“Blessings”) 9.5 says:

One should not enter the Temple mount with his walking stick, his shoes, his money-bag, or with dust on his feet. And one should not use [it] for a shortcut. And spitting a fortiori. [….] And they ordained that an individual should greet his fellow with [God’s] name.

Even though the tradition has been significantly changed in the Lucan text, the parallel is still valid. An additional argument is the business about dusting one’s feet as a testimony (Lk 9.5). The meaning then would be that Jesus is sending his disciples in the whole territory or world as if it was the sacred precinct of the Jerusalem temple. This would be similar to what Pharisees of his time are understood to have been doing, at least by Jacob Neusner et alii, namely extending the system of priestly purity rules obtaining at the temple to some of the “profane” times and places: the meals. Jesus is re-interpreting the dynamics of sacredness and commonality (profaneness) and extending sacred space and time to the whole land. Divine protection and care, which was normally mediated by the Temple in Jerusalem, could from now on be mediated by people anytime, anywhere.

An indication of this expansion is the story of the hemorrhaging woman who touched the fringe of his clothes (Lk 8.44). The word used, κρασπεδόν, denotes the special fringes made of a very minimal special mixture of animal and vegetal fibers (linen and wool) which were forbidden in normal life (in profane or common life). They were a reminder of a sophisticated embroidery demanded only at the temple, which consisted of the systematic mixing of not only fibers but also metallic threads (gold and silver) and precious stones (at least on the high-priest, and on the veil, or parokhet)—a sort of super-recomposition of the cosmos, as Josephus intimates—. The touching by the woman, to my mind, reminds one of the normal structure of ancient healing stories (touching spirit-loaded statues, trees, objects, people, etc.), yes, but also reminds one of the temple. Here the temple as source of healing has become highly mobile and flexible.

A wise word from Kafka in The complete stories (NY: Schocken, 1946, p. 457; translated by W. and E. Muir):

Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.
Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

And a shorter one:

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie sleekly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can’t be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.

In class I spoke briefly about the following topics for the 2d paper on Luke:

1. An analysis of the way the author presents women from chapter 1 to where we are (chapter 8-9). This entails reflecting upon three areas: the biblical background (as we saw in the author’s presentation of Elizabeth and Mary), the social expectations of the time regarding women, whether from the Greco-Roman or Hellenistic background or the Palestinian side, and finally the practices of the early Christian communities that the author is familiar with and is addressing or reflecting (to change them or support them).
2. A literary and sociological commentary on one of the healing stories we have seen so far. One may look at the structure of the story proper, its location and role in the larger Lukan framework, the possible imitation of either biblical or Hellenistic models of healing stories, and the author’s use of the story.
3. Thirdly, a literary and philosophical reflexion on the nature of language, and especially parabolic language, through the study of the parable of the sower in Luke 8.4-15. Isn’t all language parabolic?

Green will be very helpful for the three topics. But the most important source is the Lukan text itself, and your reflections on it.
Please let me know if you have questions (comment button below).

The gospel parables appear to be the mark of a new genre of literature in the Aramaic- and Greek-speaking Near East. It’s not entirely true, see more on this below.

They bring four aspects of life to the hearer’s attention: One, the hidden nature of life, especially in its most commonly accepted aspects. Secondly, its irrevocable dynamism and its urgency (the parables are almost all about urgency: this has often been seen as part of the apocalyptic slant of Jesus and the gospels, but it is wider than this). Thirdly, the event encapsulated in a parable, however small, leads to a definition or re-definition of human relations and justice. Finally, all parables raise the possibility of radical change and reparation.

But first, what constitutes a parable? Is it identifiable by its shape? It would have a distinctive opener, for instance, or a chiastic structure, without firm conclusion, and would be in need of explanation? How would it be different from a simile or an allegory? Does one think immediately of a didactic point, a moral point? But what do we mean by “moral?” A lesson obvious to all, easy to point to and to remember and transmit to others? But then, why speak in parables?

Secondly, is it “self-determined” text, or is it intended? that is, an authorial voice or intention underlies the text.

A short history of the genre

Fables have along history:

• for instance contest fables in Sumerian and Akkadian, as in the the debate between the Date Palm and the Tamarisk: (unknown no. of lines missing)
  

  Lines 1-10 The Tamarisk opened his mouth and spoke. He addressed the Date Palm: “My body …. the bodies of the gods. (The reference is to statues of tamarisk wood.) You grow your fruits but someone places them before me like a maid approaching her mistress. You do not provide the measuring vessels. You are …. minor crops, but I …. Your attendants …. before me for you.”
  Lines 11–19 In his anger the Date Palm answered him. He addressed his brother the Tamarisk: “You say: ‘If people build daises for me and beautify them too, they certainly do not swear by the gods before clay (?).’ — You may be the body of the gods in their shrines and people may name with a good name the daises of the gods, but it is silver that can pride itself as the overlay of the gods. …., describe your beauty!”

• There are fables in Hebrew Bible: Judges 9.8-15 (Yotham); 2 Kings 14.9-10.
• Parables using humans: there is a small number in the Hebrew Bible, which could all be seen as blame stories (blame mashals), used as legal stratagems:
  • Prophet Nathan and David, 2 Sam 12.1-14
  • the woman of Tekoah, 2 Sam 14.1-20
  • 1 Kgs 20.35-43
  • Isaiah 5.1-7 (see 27.2-6), the song of the vineyard (involving humans and plants): see below.
• The fact that there are a few parables in the Hebrew Bible as well as in post-biblical Jewish literature means that the form was not borrowed from Hellenistic literature in Palestinian literature. Neither did Jesus invent the form, which would have been borrowed later by the rabbis. Indeed, D. Stern suggests that the small number of texts in this form in the Hebrew Bible and in early post-biblical Jewish literature might be due to “the social status of the literary form” (see D. Stern, Parables in Midrash, p. 187.). It was perhaps despised by a sophisticated scribal tradition writing for narrow audience. In fact, the popularity of the parable or mashal and the social status of its practitioners: popular preachers, may have led to its being discounted by scribes, though one would expect to see traces of this putative contempt or rift.
  The parables attributed to Jesus, then, would be the first extensive, abundant, and socially significant, evidence of a phenomenon that would be quite accepted as a literary form later in Talmudic literature, especially in the Midrashim.

Gospel parables

A list (among many possible lists. Note that it is possible to construct a
list on the basis of formal characteristics. See Via et al, as well as Propp):

1. the Sower: Mk 4.38, 13–20 // Mt 13.3–8a
2. the unforgiving slave: Mt 18.23–35
3. the workers in the vineyard: Mt 20.1–16
4. the lost sheep; lost coin; lost son (Mt / Lk)
5. the good Samaritan: Lk 10.25–37
6. the rich fool: Lk 12.16–21 and Thomas 63
7. the rich man and Lazarus: Lk 16.19–31
8. “parables of wisdom”
9. the unjust manager: Lk 16.1–8
10. faithful servant: Mt 24.45–51
11. the ten maidens: Mt 25.1–13;
12. cf. waiting slaves, Mk 13..34–37 and Lk 1.35–38
13. the two sons (Mt 21.28–32)
14. the friend at midnight (Lk 11.5–8)
15. the unjust judge (Lk 18.2–8)
16. the father’s good gifts (Mt 7.9–11 // Lk 11.11–13)
17. the barren fig–tree (Lk 13.69); other stories of fig-trees;
18. the slave at duty (Lk 17.7–10)
19. the talents (Mt 25.14–30);
20. the pounds (Lk 19.12–27)
21. the weeds in the wheat (Mt 13.24–30, 36–43, Thomas 57);
22. the dragnet (Mt 13.47–50)
23. final judgment (Mt 25.31–46)
24. the great banquet (Lk 14.16–24);
25. the wedding feast (Mt 22.1–14)
26. the wicked tenants (Mk 12.1–12; Mt 21.33–46 // Lk 20.9–19; Thomas 65–66)
27. Parables of the kingdom: growth
28. joy of finding…

The sower, Luke 8.4–8

Why does Jesus speak in parables? To be deliberately confusing? Ex. of Mk 4.1–9 // Mt 13.1–9 // Lk 8.4–8. We move backwards in a “night of time” towards a beginning, to moments of illumination lived at the dawn of language, to a well of being. The nature of life is hidden and tamed from the earliest moment by well-learned images and phrases. Parables are first of all a revelation of life as an gift made with some urgency and that claimed our attention and our response. The image of the sower is at the beginning of parables. I take this to be a serious invitation to consider these initial words in the light of our own lived “dawn of language” as we remember it.

Structure: Jesus is teaching by the sea of Galilee. Note the basic elements: sea, seed, soil, and rock. A great crowd gathers. Luke has no sea of Galilee, no climbing on a boat. The structure of the story in Luke goes something like this:

> The sower went out to sow. It happened that the seed fell:
(1) on (by) the path.
was trampled
birds ate it
(2) on the rock
grows
dries up
(3) in the middle of thorns
grows together
asphyxiated
(4) in good soil
grew
made fruit (x 100)

Still 3 negative soils and a positive one, but with pairs of verbs for each stage.

The interpreter’s goal is to transcend the historical, philological, and theological approaches and take seriously the recent developments in the study of language (Saussure? Jakobson? Austin?). See A.N. Wilder, “Telling from depth to depth: the parable of the sower,” ch. 3 of his Jesus’ Parables (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), pp. 89–100.

First of all: How does it echo, what response does it evoke in us (?), in “the original listener,”or ‘reader,” since it becomes text early on and was framed within a particular frame of reference (though this frame would not be necessarily precise, since it is the function of language, esp. poetic language, to construct the frame of reference while giving new power to language).

The parable, according to Wilder, addresses two “deep sounding boards:” first, the relationship of human beings to the earth, but a mediated one, involving tilling, planting, the mystery of “tricking” nature, and its willingness to respond. Two, the effort of human beings to go out of themselves, to take a risk and yet trust there will be a response. How deeply?

At this imaginary level, it would be detrimental to allegorize. There is no need to think of the sower as being the divinity (God: what does this mean?), the “King.” The sower going out and meeting with four types of soil (one being not a soil exactly, the other a pretend-soil, the third a soil with the requisite depth). The parable tells about something deeply felt but differently expressed. The anguish of risking all (sowing is risk-taking; agriculture everywhere, and especially in dry-farming zones, is about trying to reduce risk, by using different crops, staggering, changing plots or exchanging them, etc., and distributing the yield widely), the risking failure is an effort, a conatus, as Wilder says.

It is noteworthy that in the use of the “sowing grain” metaphor, no weeding or hoeing can happen once the field has been sown. The essential work is done, it is hoped that the rains will come in time, and diseases and pests won’t attack the crop.
One just has to wait for the results (a long season). The crop is seen as bounty, miracle, grace. It is perhaps because there has been that period of waiting and worrying, without direct care and in the impossibility of changing the fateful sowing and field?

The mystery of this story is the absence of a middle point, an average yield. The reality of farming was of low averages, precisely because of birds, disease, lack of soil, weed competition. Yet Jesus and successors tap into a basic ground here: the hope, which drives the peasant (anyone) to see plenitude when things work “right,” and celebrate it. Perhaps this is less true of our times of plenty, when we have become experts at seeing rarity everywhere, beginning with our economics textbooks, because enough of us (with power) are in a world of plenty.

The extraordinarily fruitful response (to history? can one conflate the individual and the society at this point, because surely all ancient thinking was organically centered around the group’s needs) takes time. Sowing itself must be done at a certain time in the year, and there is an urgency to it as there is to harvesting and all other possibilities. Growth itself, up to fruitfulness, is long delayed, a theme often taken up in other parables of growth and frustration (see e.g. the story of the fig-tree). In this parable too, the fruitfulness is not only a matter of depth of soil or hearing, it is a matter of patience.

The bird doesn’t sow or “harvest” but just picks as it goes from the path. Agriculture, and so risk and worry, are absent. More on the path: it is trampled, and would be set away from the good soil. There is no process at this point, but also little seed having this fate.

The rocky part of the field—rock ledges on terraced fields all through Palestine—is the area with a little soil, so there is the beginning of germination (and a hope on the part of this uncalculating sower), it takes some time for the grain to germinate, grow, and die. In this respect, one has here more of a loss than before with the birds, because there was some hope of a yield, and it is likely to be a more common situation.

The third type of soil is deep but “thorns” (of several kinds in Palestine, and quite common, as all of agriculture is a struggle with weeds) grow also and take advantage of the richness of the cultivated soil. The thorns and weeds grow together with the good grain and cannot be removed easily. It takes time, right up to the harvest, to realize one gets only “thorns” rather than grain or fruit.

The fourth kind of soil is just right, like the brick house in the story of the three little pigs or the food in the story of the three little bears. The farmer or sower has done his best to ensure its receptivity to the seed. When it gives fruit, it will be in time, and the labor, worry, and long wait will be forgotten while hope will be transformed into joy. An exaggerated joy? Or just the feeling that the abundance of nature is to be celebrated. The sower’s work and inherent risk-taking are forgotten, or rather take their proper place as a service of preparation. The harvest is a miracle. In the seed proper, there is the miracle of something dry that will “fall” and “die” to become another plant that feeds many.

The preceding remarks are based on paying close attention to the concrete situation of the sower: the time factor, the risk and hope versus the plenitude of the harvest, the lack of “average” or middle way when it comes to fruiting.

Allegorizations are possible. Narrowly conceived, i.e. term to term, it is possible to equate the sower with the divinity, the seed with the “word” or Torah, the first soil or path as those too brutish to understand, and the birds as Satan, the second soil as the enthusiasts, the third soil as the worriers and busy bodies, etc., as the gospel does already. Another possibility is to allegorize as previously done the notions of sower, seed, soil, but adding the implicit ideas of risk, time, plenitude, and lack of a middle position or average. The allegory in this case is more open and deals with more dynamic quantities. The parable could be widened to a view of history—assumed by a culture steeped into the Torah, its Exodus story, especially the Deuteronomy and the Prophets—in which the seed or ferment is the word indeed, that is to say, the revelation that has been kept, treasured, sifted and refined (filtered), repeated, and then cast, repeatedly throughout history, and orientates or vectorizes everything. One can’t but respond. The more urgent responses are not necessarily the more fruitful.

[I have to translate this] Toujours à propos du semeur et en continuant à allégoriser: la métaphore de la semence exprime l’idée que la parole constitue l’audience dans l’acte de l’écoute. Là où il n’y a que passage, préoccupations, soucis de mille ordres, il peut aussi y avoir attention, écoute qui peut devenir profonde et donner naissance à une grande générosité. Mais il n’y a pas de milieu. La semence ou se perd ou fructifie. Une fois “mise en terre,” elle ne peut être “capitalisée” ou “mise en réserve.” Ceci est proposé comme métaphore pour toute parole ou tout geste humain, pour la Torah, inspirée de Dieu.

The sower goes out to sow grain. The preparation of the seed and even of the soil is bracketed out, or assumed. Worrying about having enough and a seed of good quality, plowing and composting, weeding, hoeing, for a hoped for harvest, for an eventual return, full and joyous. Home, the room at home is the goal of the voyage. Sowing is an emptying, a casting out of something precious that has been saved (perhaps in spite of hunger), it is a risk, a fateful gesture. On the horizon, there may be the Yizreel of Scripture, not the plain itself, but the stories in which God is the sower of life.

The word for sower is masculine in Aramaic and Greek (a male activity), whereas the earth or soil is feminine. But it is a complex soil, whose complexity is beyond gender, comprising a path, rocks, weeds. The grain falls, though note that grain is never mentioned: Anything can happen. It is the virtue or miracle of grain that, given a little soil and humidity, it will grow, no matter what.