An Atheistic Bible Study Of The Gospels The Parable Of The Growing Seed

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I have now covered most of the miracles of Jesus aside from a few occurring in relation to the Passion (crucifixion) and the resurrection periods, which I’ll look at later. When I was a Roman Catholic, in my pre-teen years, I liked the parables better than the miracle stories. Jesus the speaker and story teller was more likable than the mysterious wizard who seemed to love everyone but threatened to send us to Hell if we doubted him. There are a handful of parables in the Old Testament but Jesus made use of them in many of his talks with the masses and in private chats with the Apostles. A parable is a story told as an example or illustration of a point being put across. Some of the parables given by Jesus are quite straight-forward while others are more cryptic. This may be used in part to mistranslation by early theologian but it is more likely that Jesus was encoding the stories with references that some of his closer followers would understand and appreciate but which he kept hidden from the general listener or newer converts. It is common in modern cults for some beliefs and practices to be kept secret to avoid ridicule or criticism and to reward good work by more respected elite followers. The exact number of parables in the Bible is a subject disagreed on by many commentators. Some see over 60, others 45, and most set the number at 37 (possibly to match the number of miracles). Some parables in containing stories within stories get counted more than once, and some commentators interpret every allegory, entrance and utterance of Jesu as a parable. While Mark, Matthew and Luke share several parables, nothing in John’s Gospel is seen as being a parable. Among the first recorded, though only in Mark 4:26-29, is the parable of the growing seed, as an example of the development of the Kingdom Of God on Earth. A farmer scatters his seeds in the field but he then doesn’t see the results until the crop grows, be it wheat, corn or barley. Jesus sees the Kingdom Of God doing likewise. Our good actions now might seem unrewarded but one day the reward will manifest itself. God’s work is as invisible as the germination and underground growth of the seed. The message is one of reward upon death (the harvest of souls rather than seeds) and our actions now (planting seeds) are seen as dictating our fate in the afterlife. Bad seeds just won’t make it. The parable indicates that God & Jesus are growing and preparing fate for us all the time even where we see nothing going on. It could also mean the seed fails to grow of course, landing on infertile soil, crushed by rocks, eroded, eaten by crow, etc. We may well still get nothing and see no Kingdom of Heaven however good we are. We should be good of course, to each other, but Jesus and his horticultural parable become irrelevant. Arthur Chappell