As I have done in each of my previous volumes, I begin these acknowledgments with sincere thanks to my surgeons, doctors, and other medical professionals who have enabled me to continue working on this project despite various surgeries and other health problems. Their competence and compassion are deeply appreciated. With equal esteem I acknowledge my colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, whose home departments range from the Department of History to the Department of Economics, with many departments in between. I never cease to be amazed by the number of experts in diverse secular fields who are deeply interested in my work. For their enthusiastic support I express heartfelt thanks.
Above all, though, I must express my gratitude to my friends and colleagues in the Department of Theology, who have shown unfailing patience as I have called upon their expertise again and again. In particular, I am grateful to my colleagues in the program of Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, notably Professors Gary Anderson, John C. Cavadini, Brian Daley, Mary Rose D’Angelo, John Fitzgerald, Blake Leyerle, Candida Moss, Michael (Tzvi) Novick, Eugene C. Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, and Abraham (Avi) Winitzer, as well as Gregory E. Sterling, now Dean of the Yale Divinity School. I owe special recognition to Professor Robert E. Sullivan, Associate Vice President at the University of Notre Dame, for his advice both academic and practical. My present and former graduate assistants, especially Michael Cover, Anthony Giambrone, Justin Buol, and Joshua Noble, have aided and counseled me in countless ways. Thanks are due as well to the hardworking staff of the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame, particularly to Alan Krieger, who carefully oversees acquisitions for the Theology Department. My thanks likewise go to the staff of the library at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where I customarily “camp out” each summer. During my stays at Berkeley, I am generously hosted by the priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross at their Holy Cross Center. Over the years, the Center’s director, the Rev. Harry Cronin, C.S.C., has become a steadfast friend as well as an ever-dependable host. Grateful acknowledgment must also be given to those who have supported my research in very practical, especially financial, ways. These include Mr. William K. Warren, Jr., along with the William K. Warren Family Foundation, whose chair in theology I hold at Notre Dame, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Robert McQuie. Mr. Warren’s support, in particular, has extended far beyond the financial realm. He has repeatedly gone out of his way to express his personal support and encouragement of my work.
I also wish to extend my sincere thanks to the Anchor Yale Bible editorial board, especially Dr. John J. Collins, the General Editor, who is both a great scholar and a good friend. He made many valuable suggestions as the final form of this volume took shape. In particular, he was the one who persuaded me to make my treatment of the parables a separate volume, as opposed to my original hope of finishing the series with one large Volume Five. For efficiency and speed in shepherding the manuscript through production at Yale University Press I am most grateful to Jennifer Banks and Heather Gold.
Grateful acknowledgment is also made to those journals and books in which preliminary sketches of some positions laid out in this volume were first presented in other formats. These include “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants of the Vineyard: Is the Gospel of Thomas Independent of the Synoptics?,” Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul (Frank Matera Festschrift; ed. Christopher W. Skinner and Kelly R. Iverson; Early Christianity and Its Literature 7; Atlanta: SBL, 2012) 129–45; “The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24–30): Is Thomas’s Version (Logion 57) Independent?,” JBL 131 (2012) 715–32; and “Is Luke’s Version of the Parable of the Rich Fool Reflected in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas?,” CBQ 74 (2012) 528–47. In the last stages of the composition of this volume, I was invited to present some of my ideas on the parables to a symposium in honor of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), held on October 24–26, 2013, at the Lateran University in Rome and in Vatican City under the aegis of the Joseph Ratzinger–Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. My lecture was subsequently printed in the collected papers of the symposium as “The Historical Figure of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and His Historical Parables,” The Gospels: History and Christology (Joseph Ratzinger–Benedict XVI Festschrift; 2 vols.; ed. Bernardo Estrada et al.; Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013) 1. 237–60. Thanks are due especially to the three editors of the two volumes, Bernardo Estrada, Ermenegildo Manicardi, and Armand Puig i Tàrrech, as well as to my host and fellow guests at the Domus Sanctae Martae in Vatican City, where I lived during the symposium.
As I finish these acknowledgments, perhaps I should also acknowledge—and indeed explain to any reader new to this series—the special nature of this volume on the parables. There are endless books on the parables of Jesus, most of which offer, pericope by pericope, a detailed critical exegesis and/or a popular explanation of each Synoptic parable in turn. With countless volumes of that type, stretching from past greats like Adolf Jülicher, C. H. Dodd, and Joachim Jeremias down to contemporary scholars like Arland Hultgren and Klyne Snodgrass, there is no need or call to simply repeat their labors with minor variations.
The purpose of this volume is quite different. It pointedly does not offer an exegesis of every single parable attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Rather, as the title of this volume indicates, it seeks to probe the authenticity of such parables. In other words, it asks the basic question that should be asked repeatedly by any quest for the historical Jesus. Put simply, the question is this: some ancient text tells us that Jesus of Nazareth said this or something like this somewhere in the 20s or 30s of the 1st century A.D. But did he? The first four volumes of A Marginal Jew subjected many different kinds of Gospel sayings to a critical evaluation to see whether a judgment of “historical” (or “authentic,” that is to say, coming from the historical Jesus) is more probable than not. The complaint, charge, and burden of Volume Five is that, all too often, the parables have been given a free pass. They have not been subjected to the same exacting scrutiny and criteria of historicity because “we all know that” most if not all of the Synoptic parables come from Jesus. It is that basic—and I would claim groundless—presumption that is weighed and found wanting in this book. Hence this volume seeks to identify those parables that do have a solid claim to authenticity. Those parables alone will be explained in detail, since the exegesis of parables judged inauthentic belongs to commentaries on the Gospels as they stand, but not to the quest for the historical Jesus.