Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 17:1 (Spring 1996)
Article: Finding Some Lost Aspects Of Meaning In Christ’s Parables Of The Lost—And Found (Luke 15)
Author: Ernst R. Wendland

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TrinJ 17:1 (Spring 1996) p. 19

Finding Some Lost Aspects Of Meaning In Christ’s
Parables Of The Lost—And Found (Luke 15)

Ernst R. Wendland *

Part One: What Is Lost and How Can It Be Found Again?

For some time now, reliable exegetes have been emphasizing the fact that no verse of the Bible, no matter how long or short, is fully meaningful on its own—that is, in isolation from the rest of Scripture. Every passage is part of a wider framework of textual organization and semantic significance which encompasses many different facets and levels. The text in question both contributes to the content of the whole even as it is informed by the complete network of meaning of which it is a part. In recent years, scholars have begun to trace the major semantic influences upon a particular passage in much more detail and with respect to a greater degree of diversity in terms of possible “sources.” Among the influences that have received special attention are the discourse structure of the wider text and indeed the entire document in which a passage occurs, texts of a related nature (in the broadest possible sense) both within and without the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, and the surrounding sociocultural (including religious) setting in which the message was (presumably) composed and first transmitted to its intended receptors. All this hermeneutical effort is based on the assumption that a biblical text must first be understood on its own terms and in its own situational milieu before it can be correctly comprehended and properly utilized by a modern constituency.

As new and refined techniques of analysis are applied to the books of the Bible and as the possible sources of influence are more carefully explored, some valuable new perspectives on these often familiar texts are being opened up. As a result, not only are new insights into the meaning of a particular passage being gained, but certain erroneous and misleading notions are being corrected or on occasion completely discarded. That was my own experience recently as I undertook a little study of the well-known pericope of Luke 15, which consists of three closely related parable texts (all

* Ernst R. Wendland ministers at the Lusaka Translation Center in Lusaka, Zambia.

TrinJ 17:1 (Spring 1996) p. 20

introduced by the single term “parable” [παραβολή] in v. 3). I was surprised to discover how much I did not really know about a passage that I had heard so many times before. On the other hand, I was somewhat taken aback by the number of wrong assumptions that I had adopted in relation to several important features of content and function. I was greatly...

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