SUBSIDIA BIBLICA - 32

KILGALLEN John J., S.J.

Twenty Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke

2008, pp. 178

Some of the most profound teachings of Jesus are found in his parables. This book hopes to bring out these teachings, with particular attention paid to the immediate contexts in which Luke puts his parables. These contexts, sometimes only just a sentence and sometimes originating from Jesus as well as from Luke, give the reader an essential guide to the sense of the parables. The nature of a parable, or ‘comparison’, is, by general agreement of exegetes, very often open to more than one interpretation. Considering the manner of the handing on of parable from the time of Jesus to the time of Luke, one can expect that the parable, so often repeated and adjusted to many different circumstances, will have a lesson to give as the later author thought would best fit the needs of their audiences. It is in this sizing up the inner possibilities of the parables to have them speak winningly to their audiences, together with the freedom belonging to an author and his desire to remain faithful to the mind of Jesus – it is with a view to these factors that we strive to interpret Luke’s presentation of a large number of Jesus’ parables.

    

 The Rev. John J. KILGALLEN, S.J., MA, SSD, comes from Chicago, Illinois, USA. After completing the MA degree in Classical Languages and the SSD in Sacred Scripture, he taught introduction to and interpretation of Sacred Scripture at Loyola University of Chicago, from 1974 to 1987, in which year he then was appointed to teach at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, Italy. Over the years John Kilgallen has written 10 books, most of which are exegetical in nature, and over 70 articles, most of all which were, again, exegetical, published in scientific journals. In these last 20 years, his concentration at the Pontifical Biblical Institute has been on the work of St. Luke, Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, as both teaching professor and director of dissertations and licentiate theses. For many years he was the associated editor of the Institute's journal, Biblica, for acceptance or not of articles regarding the New Testament. He has been invited teacher (again at Loyola University Chicago) and lecturer elsewhere, particularly, but not solely in the United States. He has also directed a number of study trips through Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Rome.