# Are New Testament parables supposed to be literally true? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 22, 2012, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678 "2012-05-22T01:29:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/21 "2012-05-22T12:52:06Z")
I don’t think the parables are meant to be taken literally, particularly when Jesus starts so many with “the kingdom of heaven is like” and then makes a metaphor. He put things in terms his audience would understand. The Samaritan was chosen because it portrays a group that his audience would normally look down upon. If Jesus lived in Michigan, he’d tell the story of The Good Buckeye. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/22 "2012-05-22T12:56:18Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Androcles and the Lion. Oh, so sorry but the judges have ruled against including any stories or fables not included in the New Testament, as indicated by the title of the thread. Thank you for playing, and remember, all conetstants will receive a year’s supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat ™. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/23 "2012-05-22T12:59:55Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Take the parable of the good Samaritan, for example. Was Jesus saying that actually happened the way he told it? Or was it a story he made up to illustrate a point? > > Let’s avoid any responses that essentially boil down to “everything in the Bible is made up”. The parables may be more literally true then we can understand. Jesus does explain that He speaks in parables so the people are able to understand things that if He told them directly and openly they would not be able to accept. Jesus, by stating the message in parables, is bypassing filters we have as humans, so often we can look at what we are doing wrong. But I believe it goes deeper then that (as I see it): The parables express what is really happening - so is a more litteral view of what is happening then our filtered view of the world. There are many versions of reality that God has created, they are all interwoven and interconnected with our 3d reality that we know, but these others are just as real and does effect us. Many times Jesus is just stating what He sees and knows is happening in these other dimensions, also knowing that it has the potential to speak to the heart of the listener. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/24 "2012-05-22T13:00:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Take the parable of the good Samaritan, for example. Was Jesus saying that actually happened the way he told it? Or was it a story he made up to illustrate a point? > > Let’s avoid any responses that essentially boil down to “everything in the Bible is made up”. I think Jesus was clearly speaking allegorically, and that it was the intent of the authors to get across the point that Jesus was using allegory was a teaching tool. There is no intention or meaning at all there that suggests Jesus is claiming the events in his parables are real life stories or that anyone listening took it that way. I mean, they’re called “parables” for a reason. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/25 "2012-05-22T13:06:30Z")
For some of the parables, the obvious point is that the people within them don’t behave at all like real people do. A real shepherd would not abandon one hundred sheep just to look for a single lost one. A real employer does not give equal wages to employees who worked a whole day and those who worked half a day. The point of those is to emphasize how different God’s approach to the world is from a human approach. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/26 "2012-05-22T13:20:12Z")
What is Truth? When someone asks if a given parable is “literally true” are they asking whether the lesson or the illustrating anecdote are factual? A lesson can be “true” without needing to be literal or factual. A made-up story can (can, not must, and not always) give more insight into the truths of human nature than any recounting of Just The Facts. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/27 "2012-05-22T13:38:17Z")
Probably not helpful, but I can easily picture an exasperated Jesus saying “Look, I KNOW there’s no such thing as a good samaritan real-ly. Izza bloody PA-rable, innit? You just can’t get the bloody 'postles these days.” I’ve always understood them to be fictional stories used to illustrate a principle, and the [wiki article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable#Etymology) seems to imply the same. It says parable comes from a Greek word meaning comparison, illustration or analogy. I agree with **DrFideleus** that their actual veracity doesn’t really matter. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/28 "2012-05-22T14:02:45Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > The parables may be more literally true then we can understand. Jesus does explain that He speaks in parables so the people are able to understand things that if He told them directly and openly they would not be able to accept. Jesus, by stating the message in parables, is bypassing filters we have as humans, so often we can look at what we are doing wrong. > > But I believe it goes deeper then that (as I see it): The parables express what is really happening - so is a more litteral view of what is happening then our filtered view of the world. There are many versions of reality that God has created, they are all interwoven and interconnected with our 3d reality that we know, but these others are just as real and does effect us. Many times Jesus is just stating what He sees and knows is happening in these other dimensions, also knowing that it has the potential to speak to the heart of the listener. Having lost my copy of _Tales Of The Bibleverse_, I think I’ll stick to the other explanations in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/29 "2012-05-22T14:07:09Z")
> [@Alka\_Seltzer](#): > > Probably not helpful, but I can easily picture an exasperated Jesus saying “Look, I KNOW there’s no such thing as a good samaritan real-ly. Izza bloody PA-rable, innit? You just can’t get the bloody 'postles these days.” This reminds me of the Monty Python film “Life of Brian”, where Brian ends up impromptu preaching in front of a small crowd. He tries to tell them the Parable of the Two Brothers, but the crowd wants to know the brothers’ names. Wish I could find it on YouTube… ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/30 "2012-05-22T15:12:41Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I wouldn’t cite Chick as a definitive authority but he does show that some Christians believe parables are literally true. However, what some Christians believe was not actually the question asked in the OP. I’d be willing to bet that, with not too much effort, we could find a whole range of beliefs by different Christians regarding the ways to view the Bible, most of them in conflict with the rest of them. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/31 "2012-05-22T16:31:03Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > However, what some Christians believe was not actually the question asked in the OP. The problem is, what other answer is there? It’s not like Jesus said whether the events described in his parables actually happened, and we can’t get him to answer that question now. So a description of the range of opinion among Christians about whether the events in the parables actually happened is as close to an answer as the OP is going to get, AFAICT. And yeah, I’ve known Biblical inerrantists who took that belief system to the extreme of believing that if Jesus told a story, then the events in the story had to have happened. (ETA: Even your more typical inerrantists believe that stuff in the OT that are obviously stories, like the books of Job and Jonah, accurately describe historical events. So it isn’t that big a jump, really.) It’s a shame that after asking to see a coin, Jesus didn’t start a parable by saying, “a man once tossed a coin just like this in the air seventy times seven times, and when it landed, the side with the face of Caesar on it was facing up every time.” I have no idea where Jesus would have gone with the story from there, but it would be interesting to have a school of Christianity that held the belief that the laws of probability can occasionally go on holiday. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/32 "2012-05-22T17:20:14Z")
I always assumed stories like the Good Samaritan were just stories meant to convey a lesson. Turning water into wine at a party when they ran out of booze, that was real. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/33 "2012-05-22T17:43:10Z")
You know what would be awesome? If Jesus had flipped the coin, and it came up with Caesar’s head, and then he asked the disciples whether on the next flip the coin would be more likely to come up heads or tails. And then gave a kick in the nuts to Judas when he said the coin would be biased based on the results of the first trial, and then barked that coins don’t have memory. And then told the disciples never to get involved in a land war in Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/34 "2012-05-22T17:44:04Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > For some of the parables, the obvious point is that the people within them don’t behave at all like real people do. A real shepherd would not abandon one hundred sheep just to look for a single lost one. Unless, to paraphrase Pterry, it’s his willingness to devote so much effort to finding one lost sheep that explains _how_ he comes to have a hundred sheep in the first place. As to the Good Samaritan, people had been asking Jesus about the greatest commandments, and he said “Love God with all you have; and love your neighbour as you love yourself”. So someone pipes up “Who’s my neighbour, then?” and Jesus responds with a story whose point is “Duh! You can make _anyone_ your neighbour if you’re looking to do good by someone.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/35 "2012-05-22T17:52:43Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > However, what some Christians believe was not actually the question asked in the OP. I’d be willing to bet that, with not too much effort, we could find a whole range of beliefs by different Christians regarding the ways to view the Bible, most of them in conflict with the rest of them. Most people are going to be able to figure out that a thread on beliefs about the New Testament will be about what Christians believe without needing to be told. I mean seriously, Tom, if I asked a question about what a Menorah symbolizes, would you respond by asking if I meant what a Menorah symbolizes to Jews? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/36 "2012-05-22T18:05:17Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > It’s a shame that after asking to see a coin, Jesus didn’t start a parable by saying, “a man once tossed a coin just like this in the air seventy times seven times, and when it landed, the side with the face of Caesar on it was facing up every time.” I have no idea where Jesus would have gone with the story from there, but it would be interesting to have a school of Christianity that held the belief that the laws of probability can occasionally go on holiday. > [@Lemur866](#): > > You know what would be awesome? If Jesus had flipped the coin, and it came up with Caesar’s head, and then he asked the disciples whether on the next flip the coin would be more likely to come up heads or tails. And then gave a kick in the nuts to Judas when he said the coin would be biased based on the results of the first trial, and then barked that coins don’t have memory. And then told the disciples never to get involved in a land war in Asia. The thing is, it would have been a groundbreaking mathematical concept at the time. People in the first century hadn’t invented the concept of probability yet. Seems surprising, but it’s one of those ideas that’s really obvious in retrospect but nobody thinks of it for centuries. If you had asked a first century mathematician whether you were more likely to roll one six on one die or two sixes on two dice, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. He might not have even understood the question. The concept of probability back then was to divide everything into three groups: things that always happen (one plus one always equals two), things that never happen (one plus one never equals three), and things that might or might not happen (a flipped coin might land on heads). But they had no way of measuring the middle ground between always and never. They could tell you that if you rolled two dice, you might get a two or you might get a seven - but they couldn’t tell you one result was more likely than the other. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/37 "2012-05-22T18:06:11Z")
No link to That Mitchell and Webb Look? All right then… [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/OIVB3DdRgqU/hqdefault.jpg "Jesus Teaches About "The Good Samaritan"") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU) Now to the OP, No- that’s why they’re called ‘parables’. Whether the story of Lazarus & the Rich Man is a parable has been a subject of debate in several Christian circles. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/38 "2012-05-22T20:04:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The thing is, it would have been a groundbreaking mathematical concept at the time. People in the first century hadn’t invented the concept of probability yet. That’s true. I was assuming that Jesus wouldn’t have been making a probability-related point at all, but that the consequences for a _contemporary_ literal interpretation would be that a theoretically possible event happened that would have required large amounts of finite Improbability to have happened even once in the history of a billion parallel Earths. > [@](#): > > If you had asked a first century mathematician whether you were more likely to roll one six on one die or two sixes on two dice, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. He might not have even understood the question. The concept of probability back then was to divide everything into three groups: things that always happen (one plus one always equals two), things that never happen (one plus one never equals three), and things that might or might not happen (a flipped coin might land on heads). But they had no way of measuring the middle ground between always and never. They could tell you that if you rolled two dice, you might get a two or you might get a seven - but they couldn’t tell you one result was more likely than the other. What ‘they’ are we talking about - common people, or guys like Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Euclid? The Greek mathematicians were pretty good at figuring things out from first principles, and figuring out what those principles had to be in the first place. To say that they _hadn’t_ done any work on basic probability doesn’t tell me they _couldn’t_ have answered a question about the likelihood of different rolls of a pair of dice; it tells me they hadn’t had reason to consider such questions. I really can’t believe a question like this would have stumped those guys. I think that, given time and motivation enough, I’d have had a decent chance of coming up with the basics of probability. But I’d have needed several lifetimes just to make progress towards determining the postulates of plane geometry, which is something they were able to achieve. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/39 "2012-05-22T20:13:09Z")
The formal mathematics of probability weren’t worked out at that time, probably because formal mathematicians would have considered such common matters beneath them. But I guarantee you that there were people who had figured out how to use dice to get money from other people. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678/40 "2012-05-22T20:16:10Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > I’m been long amused by that take-away. The point was that this guy is a GOOD Samaritan. Not like all those other Samaritans who keep lowering property values, making the whole neighbourhood smell funny with their cooking, dress oddly, and mind you I know a lot of them are really fine folks but I get nervous when I have to pass a group of them on the street. > > I think Asimov had an essay on Lost in Non-Translation, wher he pointed out that modern readers do not have the cultural prejudice against Samaritans that Yeshua’s audience shared. You know, it would be interesting to read a modern adaptation of the Bible with updated references to cultural baggage. King Herod could be Vladimir Putin. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-new-testament-parables-supposed-to-be-literally-true/622678.md?page=3)