Without a Parable Spake He Not
The Teaching
And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.
— Mark 4:33–34
Commentary
The verse gives two rules, and the second matters as much as the first. Jesus taught the crowd only in parables, as they were able to hear it. Then, in private, someone explained them.
Psychologists rediscovered both halves nineteen centuries later. In a 1980 study, people read a story with the answer to a puzzle hidden inside it. Without a hint, only about one in five used the story. Told it might help, nine in ten solved it. The image did its work only when someone pointed at it. Mark’s gospel already knew that: the parable for everyone, and then the pointing.
It also explains why the parables have lasted. A plain statement of a moral is used up as soon as you’ve understood it. A story about a sower, a mustard seed or a lost son keeps giving, because each time you come back to it you bring a different life. As they were able to hear it applies to everyone, every time.
Themes
Connections 6
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. No known exchange while either’s teachings took shape. The Buddha’s life later reached Christian Europe as the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat (10th–11th c.), and a Christian church in Tang China used Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781).