Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes

A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke.

This volume contains Kenneth Bailey's intensive studies of the parables in the
gospel of Luke.

Bailey begins by surveying the development of allegorical,
historical-eschatological, aesthetic, and existential methods of
interpretation. Though figures like Julicher, Jeremias, Dodd, Jones, and Via
have made important advances, Bailey sees the need to go beyond them by
combining an examination of the poetic structures of the parables with a better
understanding of the Oriental culture that informs the text.

Bailey's work within Middle Eastern peasant culture over the last twenty years
has helped him in his attempt to determine the cultural assumptions that the
teller of the parables must have made about his audience. The same values which
underlay the impact of the parables in Christ's time, Bailey suggests, can be
discovered today in isolated peasant communities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and
Iraq. Because time has made almost no impact in these cultural pockets, it is
possible to discern, for example, what it meant 2,000 years ago for a friend to
come calling at midnight, or for a son to ask for his inheritance prior to his
father's death.

In addition to illuminating the cultural framework of the parables, Bailey
offers an analysis of their literary structure, treating the parabolic section
as a whole as well as its individual components. Through its combination of
literary and cultural analyses, Bailey's study makes a number of profound
advances in parabolic interpretation.

Recommended € 28,90