this is literally what like every Jew who reads the parables has been trying to tell you

but y'all keep insisting these stories are about how Judaism is bad https://twitter.com/ErinGreenbean/status/1354933835666837510

like these are stories from a teacher addressing an audience suffering under a brutal and exploitative occupation and they're literally about "you know how the Torah tells us to take care of each other? if we're gonna survive, we have to do that"

like, we have a text that uses the language of divine kingship frequently to convey a moral imperative

if God is truly your leader, you will follow these laws

Jesus talks about the "kingdom of God" and Christians are like HE IS TALKING ABOUT THE AFTERLIFE

no, he's fucking talking about a community that existed in his here and now and was suffering and desperate and being militarily and economically and socially pressured to abandon their principles and exploit each other as they were being exploited by the Romans

and he's fucking reminding them that while the Romans may be *occupying* them, they don't have to *rule* them

resisting hegemony and not letting it reshape you always involves, in a way, creating and choosing to occupy a different reality

In a society that--to use the language of the time, which I will be upfront that I do NOT like--acknowledges God as king, no one starves unless literally everyone is starving, because there are laws insisting that we *share*

Like, that's the whole POINT of every Jewish law touching on economics: what we have, even if it doesn't feel like much, can BE enough when we understand that WE are enough for each other.

So there's the lost sheep, coin, and son(s) narratives: you don't leave anyone behind.

There's the two men on the road to Jericho: the Samaritans are actually our family. We remembered that once, when they put Jewish prisoners on donkeys and sent them home with wine and oil.

We have to take care of each other. https://www.sefaria.org/II_Chronicles.28.15?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

All of these fucking stories are about remembering that we're supposed to be family and taking care of each other and upholding a society that's an alternative to the hegemonic Roman war machine.

Christians: how do we make these stories about how being Jewish is bad?

we're in a whole different MILLENNIUM and y'all are still insisting that Judaism was the problem Jesus came to solve

Jesus tells a trilogy of stories about *noticing* when you've lost track of someone or something and Christians are like "this must be a story about how Judaism hates the idea of accepting someone's repentance"

excuse me while I go build a menorah constructed of middle fingers

Jesus tells a story about the *relationship* between two men in the Temple in which the real question is *what does each of them do next and what is their responsibility to each other?* and Christians are like this is about how the tax collector is good and the Pharisee is bad

like y'all want so badly to make these stories about an us vs. them when the focus of most of them is just about "how can we do better as an 'us'?"

Like look at the fucking parable of the four fates for seeds--what was actually happening to most of the harvest was that people were *taking* it, but Jesus puts it in terms of natural phenomena to take focus off that and put it on the hardship itself

most of the time, when there IS an implied "them" to the "us" he's focused on, he tries to portray it as if it's inevitable/natural/etc

the focus isn't on "what are they doing to us?"

it's on "what are we doing FOR each other?"

And you know what we know now, what we have terms and framing and concepts for?

we know that in the wake of disaster, human beings get really GOOD at caring for each other. We suck at being a society when things are good, but if a monsoon hits? We fucking GET TO WORK.

But you know what got documented in heartbreaking detail after the Exxon Valdez spill?

When the disaster is *human-caused*, communities tend to fall apart.

so what's the difference?

well, we can frame it in terms of human-created versus natural disasters

but we can also frame it in terms of the victims' response

it seems like, if we feel like it wasn't anyone's fault, it was just chance or nature or whatever, we get energized to take care of each other

if, on the other hand, we feel like it *was* someone's fault, we fracture

Now, I don't think people around the Mediterranean in the first century CE were thinking in terms of disaster trauma or spontaneous prosocial behavior

but that doesn't mean they weren't thinking about what to focus on when they were suffering

And to be honest, I don't see a consistent through-line in 100% of Jesus's parables. I don't even believe that all of the parables attributed to him were actually his, if he even existed as portrayed.

But I do see a throughline in MOST of them.

And that throughline is a direction of attention to the needs of others and not to blame.

And I genuinely believe that was because he was trying to keep his community whole and hopeful.

and it's ironic to me that even supposedly progressive Christian interpreters are still sitting there being like "he as calling out problems with Judaism"

no, he was doing exactly the opposite.

Anyway, I've been writing about this for a while, and if you want it in non-Twitter form, with way more citations, enjoy: https://www.betterparables.com/