ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to shed some fresh light on the parables of Jesus themselves with special reference to their linguistic forms and functions. In his approach to the parables, Ernst Fuchs begins with the point that the language of Jesus creates a 'world' into which he draws his hearers. In Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, as well as in Fuchs, 'language-event' stands in contrast to all modes of language which function to convey concepts or ideas, as information. New Testament hermeneutics remain 'the hermeneutic of faith'. The dispositional approach is not familiar but virtually dominant in linguistic philosophy in Britain. Some kind of parallel to Gadamer's approach can be found outside as well as inside hermeneutical philosophy. The work of L. Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin has confirmed that, in general outline, Fuchs understands of the parables as language-event stresses, or at least gropes after, several important points in biblical hermeneutics.
