Like many of his contemporaries - including Jesus - the gospel author Luke was deeply familiar with narratives in the Hebrew Bible about the founding of Israel, according to biblical scholar Calum MacNeill Carmichael, and used them to express ideas about Jesus.
In a new book, "Luke's Unique Parables: Genesis Narratives and Interpretations of Jesus," published in March by Cambridge University Press, Carmichael, Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences, draws detailed parallels between the 14 parables unique to Luke's gospel - including the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and the Lost Coin - and Genesis stories about figures such as Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers. Carmichael identifies how parables unique to Luke were composed as a response to, and reframing of, problems attributed to the earliest of biblical times, the Genesis accounts of Creation and especially among members of Israel's founding families.
He draws out the distinctive way that moral thinking was communicated by Jesus.
"Luke and Jesus, like the scribes who developed the biblical corpus, would have been highly knowledgeable about sacred texts and cultural traditions," said Carmichael, whose work is primarily on the inseparable relationship between law and narrative. "This book lays out fundamental connections between those parables that are unique to Luke and stories about ancestral conduct in Genesis."
The author of Luke's gospel lived in a Hellenistic milieu, Carmichael said. Classically educated, he was familiar with Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin languages, ideas and writings. He was also familiar with the tradition of storytelling ingrained in Jewish culture.
"His immersion in biblical material is discernible from the many references he makes to it," Carmichael said. "For example, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Luke mentions Abraham, who cites Moses and the prophets (Lk 16:19). Luke's gospel, like so much of the New Testament, is replete with references to the Old Testament. Many discussions articulate 'new' ideas in explicit, detailed contrast with the 'old.'"
At the same time, Luke's Hellenistic cultural background is evident in his writing - for instance the Greeks' love of enigmas and riddles as means of discovery. The word "parable" comes from the Greek "parabolé" - to place something alongside something else, Carmichael points out in the book.
"In a literary analysis such as mine, I demonstrate how, in order to communicate ideas, one story (a parable) is set alongside another story (a Genesis narrative)," Carmichael said. "By unpacking the connections, comparing, and contrasting, I seek to illuminate the ideas expressed via this method of composition and moral reflection."
The resulting study "details how Luke's parables provide precise, hitherto unrecognized instances where Jesus' parables reflect on Scripture," Carmichael wrote in the book's introduction. "Especially influential are the stories of Israel's first ancestor Jacob/Israel, and those of his son Joseph."
As one example, the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke (15:11-32) about the two brothers and their father and the story in Genesis 25-33 about the brothers Jacob and Esau, their father Isaac, and Jacob's dealings with his father-in-law Laban and his family, have much in common, Carmichael said.
In this and many other direct comparisons in "Luke's Unique Parables," Carmichael elaborates on how "the influence of stories in Genesis is an outstanding feature of the parables."
Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
