Talk:Parable of the Mustard Seed
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I've also heard this passage interpreted differently. Supposedly a mustard seed grows into a shrub, not a tree, and it's a very modest shrub at that. This parable was said to mean that the kingdom of heaven was actually not as grand as some people believed. MMX 05:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Do you know who holds that interpretation (i.e. which religious group)?Clinkophonist 22:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- Should it be mentioned that the mustard seed is in fact, not the smallest of all seeds?--Andrew c 13:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
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- Luke doesn't say it's the smallest [1]. Mark and Matthew say it is "least" among seeds [2], [3] in the literal translation, although some versions translate it as smallest in the world. Thomas says it is the smallest [4]. It was certainly the smallest seed anyone in the area at the time knew about [5]. Roy Brumback 10:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
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- Excellent info. Should it be included in the article?--Andrew c 20:04, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
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Jesus is most famous, I think, for parables and aphorisms. And both of them are really ways of teaching ordinary people. Now, if you read them in the New Testament, it might take a minute to read; I imagine them as maybe an hour long interaction between Jesus and an audience, who are probably talking back to him, and interrupting him and debating with him and disagreeing with him and fighting with him. And the parable is a way, really, of getting them to think. It's a way of provoking people to think for themselves....
[For example], Jesus tells a parable about somebody who takes a mustard seed, plants it in the ground, and it grows up to be a great tree, or a bush at least, a weed, though, in plain language. Now, imagine an audience reacting to that. Presumably the Kingdom is like this, and you have to figure out, "What's it like? You mean, the Kingdom is big? But you just said it's a big weed. So why don't you say a big cedar of Lebanon? Why a big weed? And besides, this mustard, we're not sure we like this mustard. It's very dangerous in our fields. We try to control it. We try to contain it. Why do you mean the Kingdom is something that the people try to control and contain?" Every reaction in the audience ... the audience fighting with themselves, as it were, answering back to Jesus is doing exactly what he wants. It's making them think, not about mustard, of course, but about the Kingdom. But the trap is that this is a very provocative, even a weird, image for the Kingdom. To say the Kingdom is like a cedar of Lebanon, everyone would yawn, say, "Of course." It's like a mustard seed ... "What's going on here?"
Is this [style of teaching] unique to Jesus?
The parables are unique only in a very limited sense, in that the primary teaching of Jesus is not taking texts out of the Hebrew scriptures and explaining them, blasting them, commenting on them. What he is doing is telling a perfectly ordinary story. And using that as the major teaching. "The Kingdom of God is like this." Now you have to think, well, I hear the story, but how on earth is the Kingdom of God like that? That's your job as the hearer. So it's open to anyone. And that's, I think, the point of the parable.
So right from the start his teaching depends on interpretation?
If you teach in parables, you give yourself to interpretation. If you really want to tell people what to think you preach them a sermon. If you tell them a parable then you're leaving yourself open, inevitably, to interpretation.
