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 demonstrate that they are identical to first-century fables. This challenges many conventional 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.

Praise for the Book
Winner of the 2022 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award
"Strong’s monograph on the fables of Jesus is a work whose value cannot be overstated."
- Aaron Lockhart (Denver University, Iliff School of Theology), Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"After over a century of surgical attention to the Lukan parables, it is difficult to imagine such a new and reinvigorating treatment as Strong’s book ... In its contents and organization, this tome has the potential to all but reset the study of Luke’s—and, by extension, Mark’s and Matthew’s—parable literature."
- Margaret Froelich (Claremont School of Theology), Religious Studies Review

"Justin Strong has put on our tables not only a solid and richly documented study but also the ambitious claim, as bold as it is simple, to provide “a new foundation” for the study of parables, in particular those of Jesus … a potentially revelatory experience that I gladly leave for other readers to make."
- Peter Tomson (KU Leuven), Review of Biblical Literature
Read Sample Now