Indirect Speech

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house 

who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day,

he sent them into his vineyard. 

(Matt 20:1-2)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

At one point in graduate school before the Berlin Wall came down in the early 1980s, a Russian friend of mine invited me to a vodka party. My friend’s Russian, ex-pat friends affectionally referred to him as Boris the spy because of his strong family ties to the KGB. At this party, an inebriated Russian friend of his came up to me and began translating an article from Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the USSR.

He started saying: How could Pravada be so openly critical of the government? The article read: How could the government of Beethoven, Brahms, and Goethe so opening lie about the murder of so many innocent civilians in concentration camps by Adolf Hitler? The professor immediately substituted: How could the government of Tchaikovsky, Rimsy Korsakov, and Dostoevsky opening lie about the murder of so many innocent civilians in Ukraine by Comrade Stalin? He said that for Russians used to lying and doublespeak, the allegorical implications of this article were as transparent as they were astounding.

Under the threat of death for offering comments critical of the power structure of his day (e.g. Mark 6:27), Jesus spoke in parables. Indirect speech—circumlocution, similes, metaphors, poetry, proverbs, and allegory—are common genres in the New Testament. The most extreme form of indirect speech is seen in the apocalyptic literature of the Book of Revelation. It is no secret why the countries with the most repressive governments often generate the best poetry—indirect speech is the language of repressed people.

Circumlocutions

Explicit in some parables and implicit in others are the words: The kingdom of God is like… Because the covenantal name of God, YHWH, is sacred in Jewish thought, the Bible uses numerous circumlocutions—indirect references—for God’s name. The most common circumlocution is Lord, which in Hebrew is Adoni. Another common circumlocution is The Name, which in Hebrew is Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which begins the Jewish daily prayer, is also called: The Shema.

Jesus began speaking in parables after the Pharisees began to plot against him (Matt 12-13). In this sense, a parable is an elegant form of circumlocution.

New Testament references to the Kingdom of God (Mark, Luke) or the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew) are circumlocutions for the name of God. Its like modern media reporting informed sources is the White House— everyone assumes that directly or indirectly such references come from the President. Almost all of Jesus’ parables refer to the kingdom of God, while rabbinic parables typically elucidate a passage of scripture (Blomberg 2012, 77). What was unique about Jesus’ parables was their focus on God.

Allegory

Allegory can be thought of as a pattern where the context has been switched. In the parable of the vineyard, a landowner recruits workers at different times during the day of the harvest but pays them all the same wage. For any business, this would be odd. Here, a vineyard or garden is a frequent metaphor for the nation of Israel and the landowner in the parable is a reference to God, which is obvious because of the circumlocution: “For the kingdom of heaven is like.” (Matt 20:1) The hard part in interpreting the parable is to see that the denarius, a Roman coin, is a symbol of eternal life (Kissenger 1979, 2-3).

Interpreting the denarius as a symbol of eternal life gives spiritual meaning to the parable. As a unit of monetary value, the denarius makes the landowner out to be extremely generous, but the missional interpretation of the parable is hidden. Thus, a believer is likely to understand the inference immediately, while a nonbeliever might only engage in a bit of head scratching. For the believer, the gift of eternal life is something of infinite value that is not easily divided, not something likely to evoke jealousy on the part of laborers hired early in the day as described in the story. This caveat  suggests a limit on the allegory, even though the primary message is clear.

References

Blomberg, Craig L. 2012. Interpreting the Parables. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.

Kissenger, Warren S. 1979. The Parables of Jesus: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarcrow Press, Inc. and American Theological Library Association.

Indirect Speech
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
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Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com





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