Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. By Klyne Snodgrass. Pp. xviii + 846. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. $50.00.

Abstract

Klyne Snodgrass's Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus is just what the subtitle claims: a guide for pastors, teachers, and other interested readers needing some initiation into Jesus' parables; and a comprehensive guide at that (a point which bears stating in case the 800-plus-page length is not indication enough). The discipline of gospels studies is of course a sub-specialty unto itself, a methodologically eclectic region within the larger realm of New Testament studies. And within gospels studies, to draw the lines even more tightly, is the distinctive quarter of parable scholarship, with its own questions and concerns. For those navigating the winding and variegated streets of this quarter for this first time (or the first time since seminary), Stories of Intent presents itself as a kind of tour guide, presenting the range of options but also, at the end of the day, willing to propose an interpretive place for the weary teacher to lay his or her head. Snodgrass begins by way of introducing a parable, is "in its broadest sense. .. an expanded analogy," which is "used to explain or convince" (p. 2, emphases here and throughout are original). Against interpretations of Jesus' parables which have forced them "to serve various purposes-for ancient theological purposes to modern ideological ones and pastoral ones," our author hopes to get after "the intent of the teller-Jesus himselfwith all the power and creativity of his teaching" (pp. 2-3). What matters above all is what the good teacher meant by his parables; more precisely, how "did Jesus seek to change attitudes and behaviors with this [or that] parable" (p. 3). Thus, interpretive pride of place goes to the Sitz im Leben Jesu, less so to the Sitz im Leben Evangelium, and within the post-New Hermeneutic and post-post-structuralist discussion, the author's sympathies align with an author-centered hermeneutic. Jesus' parables are not simply propositions tailored ex eventu to the church's situation, but historically retrievable speech acts, whose historical specificity is no bar to present-day application. The Introduction proceeds by taking up a brief history of parable interpretation (pp. 4-7), further definitional questions (pp. 7-9), strategies for classification (pp. 9-13), reflections on allegorization (pp. 15-17), a cataloguing of parable characteristics (pp. 17-22), and some analysis of the distribution of the parables within the gospels (pp. 22-24). Right up front certain important markers are set down. The author invokes Kierkegaard's observation on the indirect quality of parables and writes: "most of Jesus' parables are double indirect communication" in that "they do not speak of the hearer/reader or the subject at hand" (p. 11). This insight in turn serves as a partial basis for Snodgrass's classification system. Distinguishing himself somewhat from those reiterating the old form-critical taxonomies, the author suggests five broad categories: aphoristic sayings, similitudes, interrogative parables, narrative parables, ...