This literary study considers how the ‘voice’ of Jesus has been heard in different periods of parable interpretation, and how the categories of figure and trope may help us towards a sensitive reading of the parables today.

This book explores what it means to seek the voice of Jesus in his parables through the interpretive keys of literary tropes. Through a detailed discussion of significant periods of parable interpretation, with reference to six narrative parables peculiar to Luke’s Gospel, it demonstrates the continued necessity of a creative response to an intention when confronted with figures of speech. Drawing on the long tradition of interpretation, a fresh hearing of the tone of the parables as exemplary tales is suggested, rooted in both the conditions of Jesus’s contemporary culture and the Old Testament Scriptures.