the invention of a saying like this, which implies so very much more!
If there are no better grounds than that for calling in question Mark's theory of the parables, then the parables of Mark iv., the only ones from which it is possible to extract the admission of a present Kingdom of God, remain what they were before, namely, mysteries.
The second volume of Julicher's "Parables"[1] found the eschatoloeical question already in possession of the field. And, as a matter of fact Julicher does abandon "the heretofore current method of modernising the parables," which finds in one after another of them only its own favourite conception of the slow and gradual development of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is for Julicher a completely supernatural idea; it is to be realised without human help and independently of the attitude of men, by the sole power of God. The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven are not intended to teach the disciples the necessity and wisdom of a development occupying a considerable time, but are designed to make clear and vivid to them the idea that the period of perfecting and fulfilment will follow with super-earthly necessity upon that of imperfection.
But in general the new problem plays no very special part in Julicher's exposition. He takes up, it might almost be said, in relation to the parables, too independent a position as a religious thinker to care to understand them against the background of a wholly different world-view, and does not hesitate to exclude from the authentic discourses of Jesus whatever does not suit him. This is the fate, for instance, of the parable of the wicked husbandmen in Mark xii. He finds in it traits which read like vaticinia ex eventu, and sees therefore in the whole thing only a prophetically expressed "view of the history as it presented itself to an average man who had been present at the crucifixion of Jesus and nevertheless believed in Him as the Son of God."
But this absolute method of explanation, independent of any traditional order of time or events, makes it impossible for the author to draw from the parables any general system of teaching. He makes no distinction between the Galilaean mystical parables and the polemical, menacing Jerusalem parables. For instance, he supposes the parable of the Sower, which according to Mark was the very first of Jesus' parabolic discourses, to have been spoken as the result of a melancholy review of a preceding period
- ↑ Ad. Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2nd pt. (Exposition of the Parables in the first three Gospels.) Freiburg, 1899, 641 pp. Chr. A. Bugge, Die Hauptparabeln Jesu (The most important Parables of Jesus), German, from the Norwegian, Giessen, 1903, rightly remarks on the obscure inexplicable character of some of the parables, but makes no attempt to deal with it from the historical point of view.
