The Fables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke introduces the world of the ancient fable to biblical
scholarship and argues that Jesus's parables in Luke's gospel belong to the ancient fable
tradition.Jesus is regarded as the first figure in history to use the parable genre with any
regularity-a remarkable historical curiosity that serves as the foundation for many assumptions
in New Testament scholarship. The Fables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke challenges this
consensus situating the parables within a literary context unknown to biblical scholarship:
the ancient fable. After introducing the ancient fable the parables of Jesus in Luke's gospel
are used as a testing ground to demon - strate that they are identical to first-century fables.
This challenges many conven - tional assumptions about parables Luke's gospel and the
relationship of Jesus to the storytelling traditions of the Mediterranean world. This study
offers multitudes of new parallels to the otherwise enigmatic parable tradition opens an
exciting new venue for comparative exploration and lays a new foundation upon which to study
the fables of Jesus.
