Sárospataki Füzetek 18. (2014)
2014 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK
Győri István Around the same era, depending on the region, regnal years were in place - the method of counting years from the date the monarch came to the throne. We find a few examples of this method in the Gospels, specifically in the Christmas accounts but these data are not always reliable. In ancient times the practice was to count every year started as a whole. If a monarch started his reign in November and then died two years into his reign in February, according to the concept of time today, then he was on the throne for less than a year and a half. However, in New Testament times they would have understood this time period as three whole years, since he was the king for three different years. Understanding time is made even more difficult knowing that for Jews the year started in the Autumn, while for the Romans and Greeks the year started in. Since we don’t know which one of these methods each author was, it is almost impossible to develop the correct chronology of the New Testament. At the beginning of the 20th Century, without the aid of a computer, Hans Lietzmann established a table overlooking the different calendars used in Biblical times. Since these findings, researchers studying the Bible have not been able to make one step forward regarding the question of time. This is a clear example of hitting a boundary in our studies. Another difficult question is understanding the parables of Jesus. Scholars studying this area, such as A. Jülicher, J. Jeremias and Dodd, do not recommend taking the message of the parables allegorically. It is certainly true that allegory can give way to arbitrary interpretations. On the other hand, it is also true that Jesus only ever gave direct explanations to two of his parables; one of them being the ’wheat and the tares’ and the other being ’the sower’. Both of these stories Jesus explained allegorically because without the allegorical translation the parable would mean nothing. Bloomberg suggests that in order to understand the parables of Jesus, first we need to familiarise ourselves with the way people who listened to Jesus’ stories, such as the disciples, understood common metaphors and pictures of the time. If we are able to do this, we will react to the parables the same way the disciples would have reacted. It is often the case that commentaries deal with minor issues and questions to the greatest extant. In that case, interestingly, the pursuit itself hinders the knowledge. An excellent example of this comes from Mark 10:25:the famous saying of Jesus that ’it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’ Most of the commentaries assume Jesus was talking about a smaller gateway through the wall of Jerusalem called ’the eye of the needle’ where a camel could pass through but only after all the weight was lifted from him first. 18 Sárospataki Füzetek 18. évfolyam | 2014 | 4
