Luke's Parables

Bailey's extensive work on Middle Eastern peasant culture has helped him in his attempt to determine the cultural assumptions his audience would have made when he told them the parables. The same values that the parables communicated in Jesus' time, Bailey suggests, can be discovered today in isolated communities in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. By exploring worldviews in these cultures, it is possible to discern, for example, what it meant two thousand years ago for a friend to come calling in the middle of the night, or for a son to ask for his inheritance before his father died. Through a combination of literary and cultural analysis, these studies achieve a great number of profound insights into the interpretation of Jesus' parables.

Bailey's contribution is unique because he sought out several trusted Palestinian nomads to listen attentively to their understanding of the cultural issues behind many of the parables. Bailey's thesis in this book is that the passage of time has barely affected the isolated peasant communities of the Middle East. Therefore, their culture still maintains the values of the people who listened to Jesus. Thus, it is possible to find out what details of Jesus' parables meant to a person of that time. For example, when a friend came to ask for bread in the middle of the night, or a judge refused to hear a woman's case, or someone rejected a king's invitation to his son's wedding feast.

Thanks to his experience, Bailey is perfectly qualified to explain to us the cultural knowledge of those who listened to Jesus, and the impact the parables must have had on their listeners. These explanations of the cultural background shed much light on the meaning of the parables for those first-century peasants and, as a result, on their meaning for today.