ABSTRACT
A nouveau riche mid-westerner took his wife to dinner at a posh French restaurant. Seeking to impress, he grabbed what he thought was the menu and, mispronouncing, rattled off an order. For eighteen centuries the answer was easy: Parables were allegories. From early fathers of the faith to mid-nineteenth century, from Origen to Trench, parables were read and preached allegorically. About 1960, some new questions began to be raised. Nowadays both of Adolf Julicher's basic convictions appear to be in trouble. The change of mind signals no return to allegorical interpretation, but contemporary scholarship does sense that parable form is more mysterious than supposed and that a rhetoric of parable may be intricate indeed. Many preachers read a text and, with congregation in mind, distill from the text a topic on which to preach. The particular sequence of a passage need not be reproduced in sermon design.
