parable

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The Greek that is usually translated as “parable” in English is translated in other languages in a number of ways:

In British Sign Language it is translated with a sign that combines the signs for “tell-a-story” and “compare.” (Source: Anna Smith)


“Parable” in British Sign Language (source: Christian BSL, used with permission)

Scot McKnight (in The Second Testament, publ. 2023) translates it into English as analogy because “the Greek word has the sense of tossing down something alongside something else. Hence an analogy.”

See also image and figures of speech.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

The following is a stained glass window depicting The Parable of the Rich Fool by Arthur J. Dix, 1898. From St John’s church, Bowness-on-Windermere, England:

Hosted by Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Stained glass is not just highly decorative, it’s a medium which has been used to express important religious messages for centuries. Literacy was not widespread in the medieval and Renaissance periods and the Church used stained glass and other artworks to teach the central beliefs of Christianity. In Gothic churches, the windows were filled with extensive narrative scenes in stained glass — like huge and colorful picture storybooks — in which worshipers could ‘read’ the stories of Christ and the saints and learn what was required for their religious salvation. (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum )

complete verse (Luke 12:16)

Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 12:16:

  • Noongar: “Then Jesus told this parable: ‘One man owned much money. His land bore good grain.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
  • Uma: “From there, Yesus spoke to them with a parable, he said: ‘There was a rich man whose farming gave good yields.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “Then he told them a parable, he said, ‘There was a rich person who had fields. All that he had planted gave a very good yield.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And then Jesus told them a parable; he said, ‘There was a person who was very rich because he had some land that harvested very heavily.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “Then Jesus related to them this parable. He said, ‘There was a rich-man whose harvests were many and good.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Jesus added on an illustration saying, ‘The soil/land of a rich person was good. That’s why he was always able to harvest a lot.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

Honorary "are" construct denoting God (“speak”)

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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.

One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, hanas-are-ru (話される) or “speak” is used.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Scriptures Plain & Simple (Luke 12:15-21)

Barclay Newman, a translator on the teams for both the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, translated passages of the New Testament into English and published them in 2014, “in a publication brief enough to be non-threatening, yet long enough to be taken seriously, and interesting enough to appeal to believers and un-believers alike.” The following is the translation of Luke 12:15-21:

Jesus stood up and warned the crowd, “Don’t be greedy!
Wealth won’t get you where you want to go.”

       Then he told them this story:

       “At harvest time a rich man had an abundant crop,
              but he didn’t have enough room to store it all.

       After thinking things over for a while,
       he finally decided to tear down his old barns
              and build super sized storage bins.

       “Once I do this,” he smiled and said to himself,
       “I’ll have enough set aside for years to come.”
              So he decided to live his life to the max.

       But as he celebrated, the voice of God thundered,
              “Stupid fool! Tonight you die. Then who will get it all?”

Jesus concluded by saying,
“This is what happens to people who pile up wealth
       without weighing the thunderous judgment of God.”

Translation commentary on Luke 12:16

Exegesis:

eipen de parabolēn pros autous ‘and he told them a parable.’ de marks continuation since the ensuing parable serves to illustrate the saying of v. 15. For parabolē cf. on 4.23. autous refers to the same group as autous in v. 15.

anthrōpou tinos plousiou euphorēsen hē chōra lit. ‘of a certain rich man the land yielded well.’ anthrōpou etc. is possessive genitive with chōra but is placed emphatically at the beginning of the clause because the man is the main personality of the parable.

euphoreō ‘to bear a good crop,’ ‘to yield well.’ The aorist tense refers to a punctiliar event, i.e. to one good crop (cf. The Four Gospels – a New Translation, “one year”).

chōra (cf. on 2.8) here ‘cultivated land,’ ‘farm land,’ ‘farm.’

Translation:

Parable, see 8.4.

The land of a rich man …, or since the man rather than the land is in focus, ‘there was once a rich man who had produced for him very much by his field’ (cf. Shona 1966), ‘once there was a rich man. His lands…,’ ‘a certain (see on 7.41) rich man had land which….’

The land … brought forth plentifully, or, ‘gave heavy crops,’ ‘plentiful was his crop (lit. the strength of his-field)’ (Batak Toba), ‘the field … made much food’ (Sranan Tongo).

Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.