Jesus from the Deesis Mosaic (Photo credit: jakebouma)
Read through a paper last night by Doug McComiskey, "Exile and the Purpose of Jesus' Parables" - 29 pages of goodness! His basic thesis was that Jesus thought the Jews of his day were still in exile and his parabolic teaching was used in part to underscore that fact to his audience. McComiskey draws on the work of NT Wright, understandably so, but does his own heavy lifting in connecting Jesus' words/parables to the original Old Testament texts. In doing so, he makes two significant points: 1) The original context/meaning of the OT was broad enough to include the generation of Jesus (and beyond). Therefore Jesus did not have to pour some "new meaning" into the older text. 2) Jesus saw himself connected tightly to the OT story and didn't simply use the OT to "proof text" his point.
These two points run contrary to much of the scholarly discussion today which leans more heavily on finding a deeper meaning in the OT text, on the one hand, and reducing Jesus' appropriation of the OT to simply prooving theological points on the other (proof texting - having a point and attempting to find a verse for support, usually without respecting the context). For McComiskey meaning and context work together to form a narrative, organic whole with Jesus at the heart of the story.
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