StrongerBible

parabolē

παραβολή

GreekG3850“parable, comparison, ...”

Appears 50 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 13:3Mat 13:10Mat 13:13Mat 13:18Mat 13:24Mat 13:31Mat 13:33Mat 13:34 (2×)Mat 13:35Mat 13:36Mat 13:53Mat 15:15Mat 21:33Mat 21:45Mat 22:1Mat 24:32Mrk 3:23Mrk 4:2Mrk 4:10Mrk 4:11Mrk 4:13 (2×)Mrk 4:30Mrk 4:33Mrk 4:34Mrk 7:17Mrk 12:1Mrk 12:12Mrk 13:28Luk 4:23Luk 5:36Luk 6:39Luk 8:4Luk 8:9Luk 8:10Luk 8:11Luk 13:6Heb 9:9Heb 11:19
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradepah-rah-bo-LAYnoun

What parabolē means

1

a comparison: a saying or story that teaches by setting one thing beside another, from a one-line proverb to a full narrative

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its root this word means a placing side by side, so its core idea is comparison: it sets a familiar scene next to a deeper truth and lets the likeness do the teaching. In the first three Gospels it is the standard label for the way Jesus taught, and it covers far more ground than the modern English "parable" suggests.

What holds the whole range together is not a fixed length or form but the move of comparison itself. A single arresting line ("physician, heal yourself"), a brief picture (the mustard seed, the leaven), and an extended story (the prodigal son, the wicked tenants) are all called by this one word, because each works the same way: it draws the hearer from the everyday picture to the point it illustrates.

The breadth comes from the Hebrew background. The Greek Old Testament used this word to translate a Hebrew term (משׁל) that already stretched across proverb, taunt, oracle, riddle, and allegory, and that elastic range was carried straight into the Gospels. So the word can lean toward a pithy proverb at one edge and toward a veiled, riddle-like saying at the other, while its center stays the illustrative comparison.

A comparison of this kind also asks something of the hearer. It does not hand over its meaning flat; it invites the listener to do the work of carrying the picture across to the truth, which is why the same teaching can open up to one person and stay closed to another.

Nuances

1aan illustrative story or picture that makes its point by comparison, from a brief similitude to an extended narrative
Mat 13:3Mat 13:18Mat 13:24Mat 13:31Mat 13:33Mat 13:34 (2×)Mat 13:36Mat 13:53Mat 21:33Mat 21:45Mat 22:1Mat 24:32
1ba short proverb or pointed saying used to win a point, the brief end of the word's range
Mat 15:15Mrk 3:23Mrk 7:17Luk 4:23Luk 6:39
1ca veiled saying that conceals as much as it reveals, set against open understanding
Mat 13:13Mrk 4:11Luk 8:10
2

a symbol or foreshadowing: something visible that stands for and points ahead to a deeper reality

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The letter to the Hebrews uses the word in a sense the Gospels never do. Here it is not a saying or a story but a thing or an event that functions as a sign, an outward arrangement that carries a hidden meaning and points beyond itself.

In one place the old tabernacle's structure, with its restricted inner room, is read as a symbol for the present age, its very layout signaling that the way into God's presence was not yet open. In the other, Abraham receiving Isaac back from the brink of death is taken as a foreshadowing, a kind of acted-out resurrection that prefigures a greater one. Both keep the underlying idea of one thing set beside another, but the comparison now runs between a visible figure and the deeper truth it represents rather than between a told picture and its lesson.

Heb 9:9Heb 11:19

What scholars say about parabolē

The word is built from "alongside" and "throw" and means a placing side by side, hence a comparison; in classical Greek and in Aristotle's Rhetoric it named an illustrative analogy used to persuade. Its breadth in the New Testament comes from the Greek Old Testament, which used it to render the elastic Hebrew term mashal, covering proverb, taunt, oracle, riddle, and allegory; Hauck made this the central thesis of his foundational study. BDAG accordingly gives two New Testament senses: a comparison or saying of varying length that illustrates a truth (the Synoptic uses), and a symbol or type pointing beyond itself (Hebrews 9:9; 11:19). Modern study of the Gospel parables runs from Julicher's one-point, anti-allegorical reading, through the eschatological recovery of Dodd and Jeremias, the literary parable-as-metaphor school, and the Jewish-context correctives, to the comprehensive recent treatments of Snodgrass and Zimmermann, whose family-resemblance definition built on a bundle of features (narrativity, fictionality, realism, transfer of meaning, an appeal to the hearer, and dependence on context) is the most rigorous current proposal. Snodgrass defines a parable as an expanded analogy intended to convince and persuade.

Where scholars disagree about parabolē

Whether Jesus spoke in parables in order to conceal the truth from outsiders or whether the concealing is a description of how figurative teaching is lost on the unresponsive (the saying at Mark 4:10-12 and its parallels).

  • contestedThe parables are a deliberate instrument of concealment and hardening, fitting Mark's two-age framework drawn from Isaiah 6; the connecting word is genuinely purposive.; Joel Marcus, "Mark 4:10-12 and Marcan Epistemology," Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984): 557-74; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007)
  • contestedThe Greek reflects an underlying Aramaic relative or conditional, so the saying describes those who see and yet do not perceive rather than stating a purpose to harden.; T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge, 1931); C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, rev. ed. (Scribner's, 1961)
  • contestedThe parable is by its literary nature a form that both reveals to the perceptive and conceals from the unperceptive, so the saying describes how the genre works rather than a doctrine of predestination.; Madeleine Boucher, The Mysterious Parable: A Literary Study, CBQMS 6 (Catholic Biblical Association, 1977); Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2018)

Whether the parables make a single point with no allegory (so that any decoded correspondences are later church additions) or whether genuine allegorical features and multiple points belong to many of them from the start.

  • minorityEach parable makes one point of comparison, and allegorical interpretation is a later imposition to be stripped away.; Adolf Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2 vols. (Mohr Siebeck, 1888, 1899)
  • majorityMany parables carry genuine allegorical elements rooted in Old Testament imagery and make more than one point, controlled by what a first-century Jewish audience could have grasped.; Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 2nd ed. (IVP, 2012); Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2018); Hans-Josef Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten, NTA NF 13 (Aschendorff, 1978)
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. παραβολή, 759-60lexicon
  • Liddell, Scott, and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with rev. Suppl. (1996), s.v. παραβολήlexicon
  • Friedrich Hauck, "παραβολή," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 5 (1967), 744-61lexicon
  • Hubert Frankemolle, "παραβολή," in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 3 (1993), 15-18lexicon
  • Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2018)monograph
  • Ruben Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables of Jesus: Methods and Interpretation (Fortress, 2015)monograph
  • Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, rev. ed. (SCM, 1972)monograph
  • C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, rev. ed. (Scribner's, 1961)monograph
  • Adolf Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2 vols. (Mohr Siebeck, 1888, 1899)monograph
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1989), 240-42commentary
  • Joel Marcus, "Mark 4:10-12 and Marcan Epistemology," Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984): 557-74article
  • John W. Sider, "The Meaning of Parabole in the Usage of the Synoptic Evangelists," Biblica 62 (1981): 453-70article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of παραβολή

accusative f s

παραβολὴν, παραβολήν

Mat 13:18, Mat 13:24, Mat 13:31, Mat 13:33, Mat 13:36, Mat 15:15, Mat 21:33, Mrk 4:13

dative f p

παραβολαῖς

Mat 13:3, Mat 13:10, Mat 13:13, Mat 13:34, Mat 13:35, Mat 22:1, Mrk 3:23, Mrk 4:2

accusative f p

παραβολὰς, παραβολάς

Mat 13:53, Mat 21:45, Mrk 4:13, Mrk 4:10

genitive f s

παραβολῆς

Mat 13:34, Mrk 4:34, Luk 8:4

nominative f s

παραβολή, παραβολὴ

Luk 8:9, Luk 8:11, Heb 9:9

dative f s

παραβολῇ

Mrk 4:30, Heb 11:19