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Introduction

In January of 2016, the fifth volume of my series, A Marginal Jew2, appeared in the United States. Italian, French, and Spanish translations are due to appear in the coming year. Volume Five is dedicated to a single question: which parables in the Synoptic Gospels can, with moral certainty or reasonable probability, be attributed to the historical Jesus? My contrarian answer has already generated a certain amount of debate in the United States, along with some misunderstanding of why I treat the parables the way I do. To understand my approach to the parables, it would perhaps be helpful to begin this essay by stepping back for a moment and situating Volume Five within the overall project of A Marginal Jew.

“In the beginning” – en arch, bršît – I intended to write a single volume on the historical Jesus as a prolegomenon to a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. But then, contrary to my original plans, Volume One of A Marginal Jew itself turned into a prolegomenon for a larger study of the historical Jesus. Surely, I thought, I can complete the project with a large second volume. Well, despite the 1,118 pages of Volume Two, the second volume covered only John the Baptist, Jesus’ key message of the kingdom of God, and the miracle stories. Volume Three likewise fell short of the finish line, comprising only the Jewish followers and opponents of Jesus. I hoped that Volume Four would definitely be the end, until, as in Romans 5:20, the Law slipped in to increase not trespasses but pages. And so the whole of Volume Four wound up dealing with the thorny problem of Jesus’ relation to the Mosaic Torah.

It was at this point that, with clenched teeth, I made a solemn vow: Volume Five would be the last volume. If a Pentateuch was good enough for Moses, it was good enough for me. Volume Five would encompass the three final enigmas surrounding the historical Jesus: the riddle-speech of his parables, the riddle-speech of his self-designations (a better label than “titles”), and the final riddle of his death. But then, for better or for worse, after finishing my treatment of the parables – which was supposed to be only the first part of Volume Five – I sent the manuscript off to my editors at Yale University Press for some initial feedback. Once again, my hopes were dashed when my editors decided that my approach to the parables was so novel that it needed to be published now, with Volume Six to follow. I at first resisted, but after some Roman flee-market bargaining, I agreed to a Volume Five dedicated solely to the Synoptic parables of Jesus.