Source basis: Gospel text links into the hosted reader; history, prophecy, and world-perspective pages cite records inline and separate evidence from belief or lore. Sources
Browse this sectionExplore this sectionParablesSources & method
Source basis: Gospel text links into the hosted reader; history, prophecy, and world-perspective pages cite records inline and separate evidence from belief or lore. Sources
38 parables, each in every Gospel that tells it. Open one to read the accounts side by side, with the setting the Gospel gives and his own explanation where it records one.
Stories
Short sayings the Gospels call parables
How this list was made
The 31 stories are the parables treated in Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent (2008), and Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord (1882). Both books treat 27; 3 are in Snodgrass only and 1 in Trench only. In 2 cases Trench treats as two parables what Snodgrass treats as one; each appears here once, with both Gospels’ texts.
The 7 short sayings are in neither book. Each is here because the Gospel text calls it a parable, in the verse marked on it.
Matthew uses the Greek word for parable, parabolē, 17 times, Mark 13, and Luke 18. John never uses it; he uses paroimia, “figure of speech,” 4 times. Counted in the SBL Greek New Testament hosted on this site.
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