Neotestamentica

On Monday, 19 November 2018, I was fortunate enough to attend a session of the SBL Annual Meeting jointly hosted by the Q Section and the Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament Section, during which two landmark books on the parables of Jesus were discussed. The first book was The Parables of Jesus the Galilean by Ernest van Eck (see my 2016 review of this book in Acta Theologica 37[1]:135–138), and the second was the current book by Dieter T. Roth. The books were first discussed and reviewed [End Page 153] by notable scholars like Paul Foster, Erin Vearncombe and Douglas Oakman, after which Roth and Van Eck deliberated on their own and each other's works. Apart from being a very stimulating and worthwhile session, during which attention shifted at some stage to the parable of the mustard seed in particular, what stood out clearly at the end was the unmistakable impact of preliminary judgments on the direction and outcome of a study. This is particularly true for contested areas of research like the parables of Jesus and the Sayings Gospel Q, where scholars disagree about issues like the existence and nature of Q, the definition of a parable and the layering of the Jesus tradition. No study demostrates this more clearly than the monograph by Dieter T. Roth being reviewed here. It is a real strength of the book that presuppositions and preliminary verdicts are explained at the outset.

The Parables in Q is a revised version of Roth's Habilitationsschrift, which was submitted in 2016 at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz under the supervision of Ruben Zimmermann. Although there have been articles and chapters on the parables in Q, this is the first book-length publication on the subject, which is surprising given the importance of these two fields in historical Jesus studies and NT research in general. The first three chapters lay the foundation for the rest of the book. The first chapter is a general introduction. Chapters two and three are respectively titled Q Parables and Q Parables, with the italicised word indicating the emphasis of each chapter. Roth follows the parable definition provided by the Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (2007, edited by Ruben Zimmermann; Gütersloh: Gütersloher):

A parable is a short narratival (1) fictional (2) text that is related in the narrated world to known reality (3) but, by way of implicit or explicit transfer signals, makes it understood that the meaning of that which is narrated must be differentiated from the literal words of the text (4). In its appeal dimension (5) it challenges the reader to carry out a metaphoric transfer of meaning that is steered by contextual information (6).

(p. 17 in Roth; p. 25 in Zimmermann)

The most significant consequence of using this definition is that Roth includes much more Q material under the umbrella of "parable" than tends to be the case in Q scholarship. For example, Roth includes in his list of Q parables sayings attributed to both John the Baptist and the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his son. It is in the definition and scope of parables in Q that Zimmermann's influence on Roth is most visible. [End Page 154]

Chapter three begins by identifying the two most important questions when it comes to reconstructing the parables in Q: "First, there is the question of which parables, as defined in the previous chapter, were part of the Q document. Second, there is the question related to how one envisions, reconstructs, and 'accesses' the text of those parables" (23). Regarding the first question, Roth considers it most prudent to disregard any Sondergut material that might have been part of Q (e.g., Luke 11:5–8; 12:16–20; 15:8–10). Regarding the second question, Roth expresses considerable doubt about the ability of scholars to reconstruct the precise wording of Q. As a way forward...