Biblical Hermeneutics

OUTLINE
As I am neither an exegete nor a theologian, I

shall try to make a contribution to the discussion appro-
priate to my relative competence in the field of the philos-
ophy of language.
0*. 1 Structural Analysis
I should like first to clarify the formal struc-
tures of narrative parables on the basis of the kind of
structural semiotics which has already been applied to non-
Biblical texts by the Russian formalists (Propp) and the
French structuralists (Greimas, Barthes) and which is be-
ginning to be extended to the Biblical texts and even to
the parables under the title of a Biblical semiotics
(Giittgemanns in Germany, and Louis Marin in France) .
This first approach is intended to be a critical
addition to the approach of Dan O. Via which was mainly
based on American literary criticism.
It will be quickly apparent that it is not so
easy to add a formal analysis, in the structural sense of
the term, to "historico-literary criticism," as Via attempts
to do. He puts "historico-literary criticism," "literary-
existential analysis," and "existential-theological inter-
pretation" together. But the kind of intelligibility ex-
pressed by structural semiotics is anti-histori cal by na-
ture and it tends, in its most extreme and fanaticist use,
to dismiss all historical inquiry concerning the redaction-
al stages of the text and even, in a kind of provocative
way, to emphasize the last text, the one we now read. I
shall use the example of the "Parable of the Sower," struc-
turally explained by Louis Marin, to illustrate this.
29
30 Semeia
On the other hand, a formal analysis makes the

conjunction between an existential and a structural point
of view equally difficult. (And even more so the addition
of an existential-theological interpretation!) In fact,
this method tends to dissociate what Dan 0. Via considers
as a unified level, his so-called literary-existential ap-
proach. I myself am in favor of a hermeneutics which grafts
an existential interpretation on a structural analysis; but
this articulation calls for a distinctive kind of justifi-
cation and cannot be simply taken for granted. In what
follows the kind of aporia created by structuralism will
be used as a means of pointing to the necessity of consider-
ing the credentials of a possible existential interpreta-
tion.
0.2 The Poetic Approach
Here I shall try to identify the intermediary

link between a formal explanation and an existential inter-
pretation as being the metaphoric process at work in the
structure of the narrative. The parable, it seems to me,
is the conjunction of a narrative form and a metaphorical
process. Later I shall add a third decisive trait.
The explanation of this complex structure may be
approached from both ends:
0.21 To call a certain narrative a parable is to say
that the story refers to something other than what is told;
it "stands for..." something else. But how is the "sense"
of the story as story connected to its "reference" as para-
bolic reference? The problem is much more difficult than
it seems. If it is true that the inner structure of the
narrative "closes" the story in on itself and makes it into
a "self-contained unity" (N. Frye), how do we know that the
narrative stands for... something else? Without already
discussing the theological content of the expression "the
Kingdom of God is like...," how does the similitude, the
likeness work in conjunction with the "inner" structure?
Are there, within the text itself, some "marks" of its
"outer" reference? Or must we rely only on the fact that
Ricoeur : Outline 31
the parables are narratives within a narrative (the Gospel)

to the extent that the Gospel-form is a narrative form? Or
are there "inner" traits which are already implicitly di-
rected towards existential meanings and which become expli-
cit only when put in convergence with other modes of dis-
course in the rest of the Gospel? In other words, how does
the narrative of itself start the interpretative process
which makes it into a parable?
0.22 Starting from the other end—the metaphorical
process—it must be asked how a metaphor may take the medi-
ating form of a narrative. The modern theory of metaphor
only partially solves the problem. It makes the function-
ing of metaphorical statements understandable on the basis
of some inner "tensions" which are solved by means of a
"semantic innovation." But these metaphorical statements
are limited to sentences and are transient, vivid expres-
sions which become trivial, then dead. The theory of par-
able requires a distinctive expansion in order to apply it
to a "work" of discourse, which has a composition of its
own, at a higher level than that of the sentence, and to
metaphorical values which become traditional without be-
coming trivial or dead. (At least, not so sooni)
In order to understand how the epiphor and the
diaphor (Wheelwright) are processes applied directly to
the narrative form, it will be necessary to introduce the
theory of models. My contention will be that a metaphor
works as a model when it is mediated by a "literary genre"
which puts it on the same footing as the highly structured
network of meanings implied in a model.
This detour through the theory of models will
provide the key concept of a heuristic fiction which serves
as a means of redescribing reality (Mary Hesse).
My attempt will be to apply the pair fiction-
redescription to the narrative form of the parable. (The
discussion concerning the ultimate referent of this rede-
scription will be postponed for reasons which will appear
later.)
32 Semeia
I call this second approach a poetic approach

because it draws attention to the productivity of the nar-
rative, its call for interpretation. This productivity had
been called Vo%esis by Aristotle in his theory of tragedy
understood as a mimesis of serious action by means of a
mythos invented by the poet. In the same way the parable
is a mythos (a heuristic fiction) which has the mimetic
power of "redescribing" human existence.
0.3 Parables and Religious Discourse
If parables are kinds of "poetic" texts, what

makes them specifically "religious" forms of discourse?
This question raises the problem of the meaning
of the phrase "Kingdom of God" in the expression parables
of the Kingdom.
I shall offer a hypothesis based on a comparison
of the way in which several modes of discourse point toward
the meaning Kingdom of God: proclamatory sayings, proverbial
sayings, and parabolic sayings. Is there in these different
modes of discourse a common procedure, a common strategy, in
spite of the fact that a proclamatory saying is not a pro-
verbial saying and that the parable is the only narrative-
metaphor ic form? Norman Perrin has shown how, as used by
Jesus , the mythical framework of the apocalyptic discourse
explodes and the symbolic power of the temporal meanings
mediated by the myth is liberated, thanks to, and in spite
of the mythical medium. In the same way Beardslee shows
that proverbial sayings, used by Jesus, undergo a kind of
intensification, based on hyperbole and paradox. Looking
for the corresponding trait of the parable, I was struck by
the contrast between the realism of the narrative and the
extravagance of the dénouement and of the main characters.
Is not "extravagance" the specific "religious" trait of the
parable, similar to the "intensification" in the proverb
and to the liberation of the temporal symbols beyond the
literal interpretation of eschatological myths?
And if this is true, is it not then possible to
join these three modes of "transgressing" the ordinary or
Ricoeur : Outline 33
traditional usages of the corresponding forms of discourse

under a single phrase, namely the one which Ian Ramsey ap-
plied to properly theological statements (e.g., that God
is immutable, etc.) and which he called the "qualifiers"
coupled to "models"?
Then we should be led to say that the Kingdom
of God is the "odd" meaning used by different modes of dis-
course, as the "qualifier" which confers on them their spe-
cific "religious" usage. This would imply that it is only
in conjunction with other modes of discourse that the par-
able functions as a Parable of the Kingdom. As such, the
parable could remain a "poetic" kind of discourse and could
be applied directly to ordinary life without any specifical-
ly "religious" meaning.
By saying that the Kingdom of God is the common
element of several modes of discourse I do not at all mean
to imply that it is the ultimate referent of parables,
proverbs, or proclamatory sayings which deal with this no-
tion in one way or another. By calling it a "qualifier" of
each of these modes of discourse, I am still treating it as
a symbol which calls for an interpretation which makes it
into a part of the "sense" of the parable, the proverb, or
the proclamatory saying. It is the "index" which points
beyond the structure, beyond even the metaphorical dimen-
sion, and which calls for a corresponding factor of radi-
cality in the "redescription" of human reality.
This trait of radicality will be the subject of
the next section.
Let me first summarize the three traits which
seem to me essential to the definition of the "literary
genre" of the parable: the narrative parable relies on the
conjunction between a narrative form, a metaphorical pro-
cess, and an appropriate "qualifier" which ensures its con-
vergence with other forms of discourse which all point to-
ward the meaning "Kingdom of God."
We may now inquire into the ultimate referent
of the parable.
34 Semeia
0.4 The Ultimate Referent of the Parable
Let us return to our previous statement concern-

ing the connection between fiction and re de s crip ti on. We
took this connection as the key for solving the problem
raised by structural analysis: How to get the referent when
we are caught in the sense? The metaphorical process, we
said, is the epiphor or the diaphor which "transposes" or
"transfers" the meaning of the story from fiction to real-
ity. But this way of solving the problem was appropriate
to all kind of "poetic" discourse, inasmuch as it fiction-
ally redescribes reality. What about a poetic language
which functions as a model plus a qualifier?
Could we not say that a poetic language, such as
that of the parables, proverbs, and proclamatory sayings,
redescribes human reality according to the "qualification"
conveyed by the symbol Kingdom of God? This would indicate
that the ultimate referent of parabolic (proverbial, proc-
lamatory) language is human experience centered around the
limit-experiences which would correspond to the limit-ex-
pressions of religious discourse.
The task of hermeneutics, defined as the task
of displaying the kind of "world" projected by a certain
type of text, would find its fulfillment at this stage:
in the deciphering of the limit-experiences of human life
(as well as the peak experiences of creation and joy and
the tragic experiences called boundary experiences by Karl
Jaspers: suffering, death, struggle, guilt). At the same
time, the task of connecting the interpretation of the text
and the interpretation of life would be satisfied by a
method of mutual clarification of the limit-expressions of
religious language and the limit-experiences of human life.
This suggests an extension of our previous def-
inition of the parable, which took into account the sense
more than the reference. The referent, we could say, of
the parable (and of other non-narrative modes of discourse)
is human experience, conceived as the experience of the
whole man and of all men, as it is interpreted in the light
Ricoeur: Outline 35
of the mimetic resources of some realistic and extravagant

fictions, themselves embedded in specific narrative struc-
tures.
0.5 From Religious to Theological Discourse
What prompts "religious" discourse—as a symbolic
mode—toward "theological" clarification?
In raising this question I am assuming two things:
first, that there is a legitimate problem linked to the rec-
ognition of two levels of meaningful discourse, one called
"religious," the other "theological"; second, that the real
issue concerns the dynamism of the transition from the first
level to the second. I am therefore inclined to look once
more to the inner constitution of parabolic discourse, and
in general of religious discourse, to delineate the traits
which call for theological clarification.
0.51 First of all, religious language is not itself
a one-level mode of discourse. It implies a tension between
"image" and "meaning" which calls for interpretation. No-
where is religious discourse freed of a minimal attempt to
interpret it. Kerygma and hermeneia go hand in hand. In
this sense the connection between the narrative form and
the metaphorical process paves the way for an open-ended
series of interpretative attempts. Segments of "prose com-
mentaries" get inserted in "poetic declaration." Didactic,
apologetic, and dogmatic components expand these "prose
commentaries." Even if these "additions" belong to the
phase of redaction, they are not quite exterior to the
text, but prolong what I should like to call its producti-
vity. The initial tension is not abolished; it only works
at a level closer to conceptual elaboration. For this rea-
son the opposition between "allegorical interpretation" and
metaphorical interpretation must be submitted to scrutiny
and maybe to revision.
0.52 From interpretation we pass to "translation,"
where the meaningful content is exploited as the basis of
concepts and notions belonging to a train of thought
36 Semeia
distinct from the symbolic basis. Translations from one

language into another are not only translations into a for-
eign language, but also "inner" translations. I shall take
as my example the kind of relation which Jüngel establishes
between Paul's concept of the "Justice of God" and Jesus'
symbol of the "Kingdom of God."
0.53 I should like next to resume the problem of the

"qualifiers" already at work at the level of religious dis-
course. Do they not orient us toward a certain kind of
concept, or a certain use of conceptual thought, which would
preserve the tension between "image" and "meaning"? Could
we not say that the relation between limit-expressions and
limit-experiences calls for the mediation of limit-concepts?
This suggestion leads in the direction of Kant
rather than that of Hegel. O r — i f I dare say so!—it calls
for a post-Hegelian return to Kant, in the sense that we
owe to Hegel the formulation of the problem of the Vor-
stellung-Begriff in the seventh chapter of the Vhenomenol-
°9V of the Spirit and that we can no longer understand
limit-concepts as purely negative concepts, the function of
which would be merely to prohibit their "objective use"
(their use as referring positively to objects out there).
But, against Hegel, we have to find concepts which preserve
the tension of the symbol within the clarity of the concept.
Hence the suggestion of a specific use of conceptual tools
as an "approximation" of the "sense" and "reference" of
religious symbols, with the acknowledgement of the inade-
quacy of these concepts.
Between the concept which kills the symbol and
pure conceptual silence, there must be room for a conceptual
language which preserves the tensive character of symbolic
language. This problem will be the topic of my third chap-
ter.
Ricoeur: The Narrative Form 37
1. The Narrative Form

1.1 The Formal Principles of Via1s "Historico-
Literary Criticism."
1.10 The best way to introduce the kind of problems
involved in a structural approach derived from linguistics,
or more precisely from semiotics, is to start from the
structural components of Via1s interpretation, to the ex-
tent that they offer the beginning of a formalization of
these components. Afterward I shall introduce a series of
structural models arranged according to their degree of
structural formalization.
1.11 Via approaches the problem from the standpoint
of American literary criticism (Wellek, Wimsatt, Northrop
Frye, Brooks, the Chicago "neo-Aristotelians," etc.). His
first methodological decision is to treat the parable as an
autonomous aesthetic object, presenting an organic unity:
"because the literary work is fictitious and is an inwardly
organized structure capable of attracting non-referential
attention, it is...autonomous" (77). Aesthetic, in this
context, is synonymous with "intrinsically autotelic" (78),
"centripetal" (79), "intransitive or non-referential"
(ibid.), and "self-sustained" (89). In the case of the
parable this aesthetic discussion is attached to the lit-
erary genre of "narrative fiction," "they are freely in-
vented stories" (96).
1.12 "Plot" is the structure characteristic of nar-
rative fiction. The distinction between "comic" and "tra-
gic" proceeds from the two basic kinds of plot movement:
upward movement toward well-being, or downward movement
toward catastrophe.
1.13 Encounter and dialogue—mainly as conflict—
give fiction its dramatic quality.
1.14 The protagonist's power of action furnishes the
key to the concept of low mimetic mode (or realistic mode)
as opposed to the high mimetic of epic and classical tra-
gedy. This definition is taken from the field of action
38 Semeia
of the protagonist (the real, ordinary life-world) and the

equality (the lack of superiority) between the protagonist
and his field of action.
1.15 This implies a similar homogeneity in the imagery

or symbolism associated with the field of action: "the
images are drawn from ordinary experience, and the organiz-
ing ideas are making and working" (98).
1.16 A decisive function belongs to the scenes of

recognition, i.e., to scenes in which the principal char-
acter comes to self-knowledge, to self-identification
("coming to himself") and discovers whether he is tragic
or comic. "By recognition is meant the enlightenment of
the protagonist with regard to the true nature of his ac-
tions at the moment of catastrophe" (116). A typology
based on the recognition scene allows us to locate the
Christian image of the "tragic" among several possibilities;
according to this image: "the protagonist is not expecting
catastrophe and realizes after it is too late that his down-
fall is now inescapable" (116). This kind of axiom gives
a constitutive function to the principal character.
1.17 The temporal structure is ruled by the "plot,"

particularly by a kind of causality which overcomes the
mere chronological succession of events. We do not ask,
"And then?" but "Why?" "Tragic action, recognition scene,
downfall" is the typically tragic sequence (167). But there
are combinatory possibilities between beginning, middle, and
end. In the Prodigal Son (a comic parable), "it is tragic
action, downfall, recognition scene" (167); this combina-
tion makes the Prodigal Son "a comedy which involves and
overcomes tragedy" (167). The range of combinations are
implicitly ruled by the conjunction between two considera-
tions: tragic vs. comic, and the sequence : beginning, mid-
dle, end. The recognition scene is the connecting factor
between the two basic kinds of plot movement linked to the
principal protagonist and the triadic sequence. In this
sense the story as told is the "surface" of the text and
the combination between the two structures rules the "deep-
structures" of the text.
1.18 A last formal consideration may be extracted

from Via's treatment of the parables; it concerns the pair
of figures—principal and subsidiary—which give the text
a quasi-elliptical form. This configuration emerges only
when we bring the figures to the level of "types." We then
have two series: a Lord-King-Father figure who initiates
the action and bears the "power of action," and a Servant-
Steward-Son figure, whose fate confers its formal "Gestalt"
on the narrative. The combinations between these two type-
figures belong to the depth-structures of the text, too.
I have extracted, in a kind of axiomatic way,
the formal principles of Via's analysis. These formal
principles are not discussed for their own sake by Via.
He offers no attempt to systematize them or to derive them
from more primitive structures. This is the task of a more
formalistic approach. But the price of such an analysis
will be the dissolution of the very concept of a "literary-
existential analysis." A gap will appear between the "in-
ner" structure and the "outer" ex.istential reference. My
own reflections will begin from the full recognition of
this gap which is still concealed in a semi-formal analysis
such as Via's literary-existential analysis.
1.2 The Formal Analysis of the Story: Propp
V. Propp is the ancestor of the structural analy

sis of stories. Taking Goethe (who provided the epigrams
for his chapters) and especially the labor of classifica-
tion characteristic of botany, zoology, and minerology as
his model, Propp wanted to become the Linnaeus of folklore.
Their goals, in effect, were identical: to discover the
marvelous unity hidden in the labyrinth of appearances.
This project implied that all questions of genesis and, in
general, of history be subordinated to those of structure.
Therefore the parallel with Saussure is striking: "We can-
not speak of the origin of any phenomenon without having
first described that phenomenon." "The structural study
of every aspect of the folktale is the necessary condition
for its historical study. Study of formal rules pre-deter-
mines the study of historical rules." Classification has
40 Semeia
to follow from description and we cannot classify things

arbitrarily, but only according to real characteristics,
thereby renouncing all intuitive classifications. Then we
can reach a "system of formal signs" upon which the classi-
fication can be established. For these reasons Propp re-
fused to classify folktales according to subject or "mo-
tifs"—that is, according to the immediately-given units
of the story. The stable element must be sought elsewhere,
in the functions and not in the characters and their actions.
Description, therefore, is not to be taken in its immediate,
empirical sense, but in the sense of subordinating variable
values to constant values. What we describe are the struc-
tural laws and not some superficial catalog of surface char-
acteristics. This enterprise has to be characterized as an
"analytical labor" which "carves up a folktale according to
its constitutive parts." At this price new genetic possi-
bilities can be opened up, to the extent that the formal
analysis gives us access to something like an original form
of the folktale.
The actual carrying out of this project is built
upon a few basic hypotheses.
1.21 "The constant and permanent events of the folk-

tale are the functions of the characters, whoever these
characters may be and however these functions are carried
out. These functions are the fundamental constitutive
parts of the folktale." By function, Propp means "the ac-
tion of a character defined from the point of view of its
signification for the unfolding of the plot."
1.22 "The number of functions which comprise the fan-

tastic tale is limited." Here is a postulate common to all
the formalists. Appearances are abundant, but the underly-
ing structures are finite. We find the same hypothesis,
for example, in Dumézil who divides the various appearances
of the changing gods into a small number of functions. The
same thing holds for the fairy tale where the characters
are numerous and the changes of plot even larger. We must
therefore strip the action of its many modalities, detach
it from the actors, and only consider it from the point of

view of its contribution to the concatenation of the whole.
1.23 The order of the functions is not just any old
way; it follows typical concatenations, and moreover, "the
succession of the functions is always identical." This
syntagmatic hypothesis will divide Propp's successors.
Those who follow Propp cling to a logic of the narration;
others who follow Lévi-Strauss tend to reduce even the nar-
ration to an underlying combination which is not necessarily
chronological.
1.24 The functions neither exclude nor contradict one

another. Therefore we cannot divide them according to prin-
ciples of exclusion. All together they form a single story.
"All the fantastic tales belong to the same type as regards
their structure." Or in other words, "all the functions
are arranged in a single and continuous story." And it is
therefore possible to consider all the Russian folktales
under consideration as variations of a single tale. This
fourth hypothesis allows Propp's'successors to oppose struc-
ture and form. The form is that of a single story; the
structure will be a much more independent combinatory sys-
tem with regards to the particular cultural configuration
of the Russian folktale. And this is why Propp has to rec-
ognize that his analysis does not hold for other folktales,
such as those of Grimm or Andersen, and in general for "ar-
tificially created folktales."
1.25 We will not consider here the analysis Propp
made of the one hundred folktales taken from Afanas'ev's
collection. We will only retain those points which are of
interest for our own discussion.
1.251 The functions (Propp isolates thirty-one) are
capable of being described, named, and given a conventional
sign: absence, interdiction, violation, reconnaissance,
delivery, fraud, and complicity, to name only the first
seven which, in Propp's eyes, constitute the preparatory
part of the plot.
42 Semeia
1.252 The action is tied to a function that Propp calls

the mischief and which "gives the tale its movement." Be-
fore the mischief there is an initial situation—even though
this situation is not a function, it still represents an
"important morphological element." The notion of mischief
is properly speaking a category created by the morphologist
himself. Today we would call it a metalanguage structure.
It allows Propp to collect under a single title the "ex-
haustive list" of such forms as kidnapping, theft, pillage,
rape, bodily injury, murder, etc. of which Propp counts at
least nineteen forms! On the other hand, mischief does not
cover all the possibilities of the plot. It has its paral-
lel in a situation of lack—or penury—which can equally
give rise to a quest. But, in both cases, something is
missing through a lack created from outside (as in kidnap-
ping) or inside (as in penury).
1.253 Beginning with the mischief, a sequence is open-
ed which will only be closed through reintegration. From
mischief to reintegration develops the quest which brings
the hero-seeker and the hero-victim on stage. The inter-
polated actions constitute changes in plot such as the call,
dispatching, or departure of the hero, the revelation of
evil, etc. (which puts the hero-seeker into movement), and
the detention, secret liberation, plaintive song, etc.
(which concern the hero-victim). Here is the beginning of
what those who come after Propp call the "logic of possible
narratives," a logic that Propp still took at the level of
the unique story underlying all the folktales in his reper-
tory. This is why Propp could not clearly distinguish be-
tween the series which constitutes the logic of the action
and the concatenations uniquely characteristic of the type
of myths he considered. Taken ensemble, the functions con-
stitute a single axis. It is true, however, that Propp
already spoke of "logical and aesthetic necessities" of the
concatenation in virtue of the principle that no function
excludes any other function and that the whole scheme works
like a "unit of measure."
1.254 In spite of the unique character of the concate-

nation, Propp isolated some modes of liaison among the func-
tions which are not necessarily of a successive character:
exchange between different characters, tripling (three
heads, three tasks, three sisters), motivation—that is
motives and goals of the characters which constitute a less
determined element than do the functions and their liaisons.
1.26 The decisive step is marked by the passage from

functions to characters. This passage is assured by the
intermediary of "spheres of action," and there are as many
spheres of action as there are actors. Propp discovered
seven: the villain, the donor, the helper, the sought-for
person, the dispatcher, the hero, the false hero. A char-
acter may occupy one or more spheres and the sphere may be
divided among several characters. Beyond this, each char-
acter has his manner of coming on stage: showing himself,
being met, being part of the initial situation, etc. (a
manner of introducing the hero-seeker is his miraculous
birth, etc.). As a result of thé relation between functions
and characters, the attributes of the characters (their ex-
terior qualities) are variable values (looks and name, par-
ticularities of coming onstage, home, etc.). And one char-
acter may replace another according to fixed metamorphoses.
1.27 If we eliminate the variables and save only the

fundamental forms, we obtain the folktale of which all the
fantastic tales are just variants. This is the "proto-form
of the fantastic tale." Here we rejoin the historical the-
sis that "the fairy tale, in its morphological base, is a
myth." But we arrive at this conclusion by way of the
morphological analysis. The morphological definition of
the fairy tale is applied to the proto-form: every develop-
ment begins with some mischief or lack and passes through
the intermediate functions to end in a marriage or other
function utilized as a dénouement. And it is on the basis
of this canonical form that Propp envisages dealing with
the problem of the origin of the folk tale. "The absolute
uniformity of the structure of the fantastic tales" seems
44 Semeia
in effect to postulate a unique source. Thus it is the

morphological thesis itself which suggests the genetic one.
Extrapolating from this a bit, Propp glimpses a possible
relation with the comparative history of religions, if it
is true that "a culture dies, a religion dies, and their
content is transformed into a folk tale." But to verify
this hypothesis we would have to combine structural analy-
sis with a historical approach and a comparative method.
1.28 Propp also catches sight of the import of a final
problem, that of the relationship between constraint and
freedom in the composition. If, in effect, the mischief
and the reintegration are linked by their dependence upon
each other, as in the case of combat and victory, the other
elements present freer possibilities of combinations. What
is not free is the order of the functions; hence the obli-
gation to choose from the repertory of examples of each
function, to define the characters as a function of their
role within the total story, and to open and close the
story in terms of the initial situation. In return, the
story teller is free to omit some functions, to realize
those chosen through various means, to vary the characters—
"this freedom is the specific trait of each folk tale"—and
to vary the style of the tale.
1.29 The decisive phenomenon is the introduction of

the distinction between deep-structure and surface-structure.
This distinction may help us to clarify some of the ambigui-
ties of Via's work. However, I,am less sure than is Erhardt
Giittgemanns that Propp's methodology may be incorporated
directly along with Via's into a higher order theory that
he calls a Generative Poetik, to which I shall return later.
1.291 Are the parables really related to one another as
are the various folktales within a corpus, or do they con-
stitute a set of a different kind? To answer this question
it would be necessary to (a) discover the invariants under-
lying all of the parables, (b) to define them independently
of their characters, and therefore to dissociate the func-
tions (the invariants) from the roles (the variables),
(e) to enumerate the finite set of these functions, and

(d) to write down the unique sequence which constitutes the
parable. If all these operations could be carried out,
then we would have to discover the transformation rules
thanks to which (a) the "plot" in Via's sense, (b) the op-
position between tragic and comic, (c) the combinations be-
tween this first pair and the pair crisis-denouement, and
(d) all the semi-formal traits described by Via would appear
as the derived surface-structure.
1.292 There are some reasons for thinking that this
cannot be done. One reason is that the parables may consti-
tute a quite different constellation than does the Russian
corpus, but this would have to be proved by attempting to
apply the paradigmatic method. And another reason is that
the form of which Propp speaks (the sequence of thirty-one
functions) is not yet a deep-structure but rather an arti-
fact of the surface structure: the folktale underlying all
Russian folktales. This confusion between form and struc-
ture was exposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in a critical review
of Propp*s work. The "form" in Propp's sense is a unique
"tale," ruled by a rigid concatenation of an irreversible
order of functions. The teller always follows the same
route, because there is only one, and it is the Russian
folktale. This form is, of course, a type because it al-
lows for variable actualizations, but these are the vari-
able actualizations of only one tale.
1.293 For that reason the followers of Propp had to
choose between two radical moves: either to reconstruct the
system on the basis of the spheres of action of the princi-
pal characters, and to drop the sequence of functions; or
to consider this sequence itself as a surface-structure and
to look for a deep-structure deprived of chronological mean-
ing, and therefore of any narrative character.
1.3 Greimas' Syntax of "modèles actantiels"
1.31 The first option is the one followed by some
French structuralists of the school of Algirdas Julien
46 Semeia
Greimas, Roland Barthes, and Claude Bremond. Greimas' aim

is to elaborate a syntax of "modeles actantiels," i.e., of
the reciprocal relations between typical roles defined at
the level of the deep-structures and the transformation
rules of these fundamental relations. For this reason, he
inverts the order followed by Propp and starts from the
relation between the spheres of action and the main charac-
ters. As we saw, Propp reduced the number of characters to
seven: the villain, the donor, the helper, the sought-for
person, the dispatcher, the hero, and the false hero. This
inventory provides an "actantial" definition of the Russian
folktale as being a story with seven characters. The next
question is whether this list is merely contingent or wheth-
er it is founded on some universal characteristics of human
action. Now, if we do not want to proceed to an exhaustive
description of the combinatory possibilities of human ac-
tions at the surface level, we must find in discourse it-
self the principle of the construction of the depth level
model. Greimas thinks that he may derive this matrix from
Lucien Tesnière's work. According to Tesnière, the simplest
sentence is a drama which includes a process, actors, and
circumstances. These three syntactic components engender
the classes of the verb, the "actants" (those who take part
in the process), and the "circumstants." This basic struc-
ture makes the sentence "a spectacle that homo loquens gives
to himself."
Greimas, comparing Propp's list of type-charac-
ters (which is a posteriori , being derived from a given
corpus of texts) with Tesnière's syntactical structures
(which are a priori) , attempts to construct in a less con-
tingent way the matrix of "actants." In his inquiry he
applies the principle of binary opposition widely used in
linguistics, mainly by R. Jakobson, and arrives at "Lord"
vs. "sought person," "dispatcher" vs. "addressee," and
"helper" vs. "opponent," or six roles in all. In the myth-
ical universe, helper and villain correspond to benevolent
and malevolent forces. They have their counterpart in the
"aspect" categories of grammar (expressed sometimes by
adverbs such as "readily" vs. "nevertheless") and more gen<-

erally by the circumstances of the action.
1.32 Greimas concedes that this is a tentative frame-

work which has to prove its "operational" value. He also
concedes that it implies a schema of human action in which
(a) an object of desire, aimed at by a subject (b) is
situated, as object of communication, between a "destina-
teur" (dispatcher) and a "destinatoire" (the one who bene-
fits from the action of the hero), and (c) is either "helped"
or "harmed" by the desire of other beings. This schema is
in fact that of the "Quest."
Therefore it is difficult to have a model which
would not be too simplistic (if reduced to the syntactic
structure) or already "invested" in domains defined by em-
pirical features which cannot be derived from the model it-
self (an economic system, a mythical system). In other
words, the "syntactic" model calls for a "thematical" in-
vestment and the "Quest" is already such a ".thematically"
invested system. The consequence is that the "actantial
model" is not easy to disentangle from the qualitative an-
alysis of a "micro-universe."
1.33 In the case of the parables it is easy to see

that the three types. Father vs. Son, King vs. Steward, and
Lord vs. Servant are already "thematic," according to roles
"invested" in different "micro-universes" (family, state,
ownership, etc.). But what seems to be promising is the
fact that the kinds of action displayed by the parables are
ruled by the organizing ideas of making and working (Via:
98). The question remains whether the schematism of the
"actors," attempted by Via, could be formalized according
to this matrix of Greimas' "actants" and derived, by trans-
formation, from the interplay of figures (Güttgemanns: 175).
But are the parables of such a kind that they allow, if not
a unique underlying sequence (Propp), at least a unique
"logique actantielle" (Greimas), which would constitute,
in the words of Güttgemanns, the " A q u i v a l e z - K l a s s e n einer
'Basis'-Grammatik"? (175).
48 Semeia
We have not yet made use of the first—and prin-

cipal part—of Propp's analysis, namely, the description of
the "functions": absence, interdiction, violation, recon-
naissance, delivery, fraud, complicity, villainy, lack,
etc. up to thirty-one! Greimas turns his analysis to this
problem, but on the basis of his own "actantial model,"
with the expectation that he will be able to construct a
more limited and at the same time less rigid sequence.
Here too he applies a binary principle of distribution, on
the basis of the "episodic" units presenting an alternative
choice: injunction vs. acceptance, confrontation vs. suc-
cess, etc. These "coupled" functions correspond, at the
same depth level, to the fields of action of the "actants."
The advantage of this procedure is to liberate
the analysis—to a certain extent at least (see b e l o w ) —
from the temporal order of succession essential to Propp's
unique sequence of functions. The system of alternative
choices constitutes rather the "semic" basis for the "se-
mantic" segments of the action told at the surface level.
1.34 Now, it may be argued either that the list is
too short to cover the whole field of possible narratives,
or that it is already too much "invested" in a specific
cycle of stories, say, stories implying the dispatch of a
hero, a contract, a trial, episodes of deception by a
traitor, the glorification of the hero. Such a combination
is precisely that of the Russian folktale. But it may just
as well be argued that it belongs to the narrative "genre"
to tell stories initiated by a kind of "lack," or "mischief,"
or "alienation" and to work toward some kind of "reintegra-
tion," by removing the "lack." Only the transposition to
new material may prove one or the other thesis. For this
purpose the case of the parables would be appropriate.
Even if the model did not work, this would mean much for
the understanding of the narrative structure of the par-
ables.
1.35 But the important issue, to my mind, lies else-
where. It concerns the relation between the surface-struc-
ture and the deep-structure. As we just saw, the claim is
that the system of relations between "functions" is "achron-

ical," and therefore that it overcomes the "chronological"
appearance of the narrative. In other words, the structural
analysis replaces the syntagmatic sequence by a paradigma-
tic order.
But to what extent? Greimas here is much more
cautious than are the structuralist authors whom we will
consider later. For him, it is not true that all "dia-
chronical" elements have been and can be removed. On the
contrary! The "achronical" structure makes more prominent
the "diachronical residue" of the analysis, namely, the
pair confrontation vs. success, which is the "semic" pair
underlying the "semantic" element of struggle, present in
every kind of "trial" (épreuve). With "trial," temporal
sequence returns, and with it the freedom of the hero, for
whom the logical pairs are free alternatives. All six "ac-
tants" find their field of action crossing in the trial of
the hero. Starting from this diachronic nucleus, the tem-
poral expansion of the narrative is secured by all the de-
vices constituting the art of telling, which unfold, delay,
distance and dis-tend the achronic structure ("ecartements
fonctionnels," [Greimas: 207]). The dramatic tension, at
the surface structure, expresses this strategy of dis-ten-
tion between opposite terms of an achronical pair (mischief
vs. reintegration).
What strikes me, here, is that structural analy-
sis does not at all dissolve the dramatic element, but
rather enhances its meaning by contrast with the achronic
meaning of the tale. "Only after this completed analysis
does the true meaning of the folktale appear: as in the
myth (Lévi-Strauss has forecast and confirmed this point)
it unfolds contradictions, devices equally impossible and
unfulfilled. In the context of the Russian folktale, this
mythical contradiction may be formulated in these terms:
the freedom of the individual has alienation as its corol-
lary. The reintegration of values has to be paid for by
an installation of order, i.e., by giving up this freedom"
(210).
50 Semeia
1.36 Could we not say, then, that the function of

structural analysis is to disclose the diachronic kernel by
means of the achronic structures? This diachronic kernel
would constitute the depth-semantic s of the narrative on
which an existential interpretation could readily be grafted.
In fact, this is not the direction which struc-
tural analysis takes. It tends rather to consider the dra-
matic element as the manifestation in discourse of the ac-
tantial model and the anthropomorphization of the achronic
structure itself, thanks to which the narrative appears as
a succession of events and actions in time. All that struc-
tural analysis is interested in is the complex structure
which is ex-posed and dis-tended and which implies as such
no figurative elements. The "trial" recedes then to the
status of mere "figurative expression of the transformation-
model" (212).
However, the possibility of two interpretations,
the one emphasizing the diachronic element, the other the
achronic structure, is rooted in the narrative itself as a
"mediation": mediation between structure and behavior, be-
tween permanence and history, between society (contract,
etc.) and individual (hero, helper, and traitor). As such
the mediation of narrative consists either in "humanizing
the world," by giving it an individual and event dimension
— " T h e world is justified by man, man is integrated into
the world" (213)—, or the existing order is held as un-
bearable. Then the schema of the narrative offers "the
archetype of a mediation as promise of salvation" (213).
1.37 Do not these last quotations come as a strange

theological aftermath? But whatever may be the importance
of these personal interpolations by Greimas, the methodo-
logical question arises: for our hermeneutical purpose how
are these two interpretations (diachronic and achronic) re-
lated to each other? Can an existential interpretation be
connected to the achronical interpretation without the
mediation of the diachronical one?
Before returning to this difficult problem, let

us consider a further step in the development of structural
analysis.
1.4 French Structural Analysis of Narratives
A new step was taken when some French structur-

alists combined the structural method with a structuralist
ideology. By this latter term I mean a general conception
concerning the philosophical status of discourse as "text."
1.41 For them, the autonomy of the text is not only a

factor of distanciation in human communication, but it has
the meaning of completely abolishing the referential dimen-
sion of language. Following a remark of Roman Jakobson
(according to which the "poetic" element in communication
is the emphasizing of the message for its own sake, i.e.,
at the expense of its referential function), Roland Barthes
(1966, 1970, 1971) and his followers declare that the mean-
ing of a narrative is nothing other than the integration
of its elements within the closure of its form. This imma-
nence of the sense excludes all mimetic function. "A nar-
rative does not show anything, it does not imitate. The
passion which influences us...is not that of a vision, but
that of the meaning, i.e., of a higher order of relations
which develops its own range of emotions, hopes, threats,
and triumphs. What happens in narratives is from the ref-
erential standpoint actually NOTHING. What happens is lan-
guage alone, the adventure of language, the advent of which
keeps being celebrated" ("'ce qui arrive', c'est le langage
tout seul, l'aventure du langage, dont la venue ne cesse
jamais d'être fêtée" [1966:27]). This text expresses in
the least ambiguous way how a methodological choice becomes
a dogmatic decision.
The transition from the former to the latter may
be expressed as a preference for the code over the message.
If the message has lost its referential function, there re-
mains only one possibility: the message manifests its under-
lying codes. Barthes (1970) goes so far as to say that the
message is the mere quotation (citation) of its underlying
codes.
52 Semeia
1.42 This second step is encouraged by the whole work

of Claude Lévi-Strauss who takes the second way left open
after Propp. Instead of formalizing the narrative episodes
and preserving a diachronic factor (as Greimas still does),
let us proceed to a radical dechronologization of the nar-
rative, by extending to the units of discourse longer than
the sentence the combinatory rules which have been so suc-
cessfully applied at the level of units of language shorter
than the sentence, the phonemes and the lexemes. In other
words, let us treat "texts" as analogous to the system of
signs which de Saussure called la langue in opposition to
la parole.
This extension of the structural model to texts
is a daring endeavor. Is not a text more on the side of
parole—or speech—than of langue? Is it not a succession
of utterances, thus, in the last analysis, a succession of
sentences? These questions show at least that the exten-
sion of a structural model, borrowed from the level of la
langue, and transferred to the level of la parole and of
discourse, either spoken or written, does not exhaust the
field of all possible attitudes in regard to a text. We
must therefore take this extension of the linguistic model
to the domain of texts as one possible approach to the no-
tion of text. This approach relies on the general presup-
position that the units of a higher order than the sentence
are organized in a way similar to that of the small units
of an order lower than the sentence, those precisely which
belong to the domain of linguistics.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1967:206-7) formulates this
hypothesis in the following way in regard to one category
of texts, that of myths: "Myth, like the rest of language,
is made up of constituent units. These constituent units
presuppose the constituent units present in language when
analyzed on other levels—namely, phonemes, morphemes, and
sememes—but they, nevertheless, differ from the latter in
the same way as the latter differ among themselves; they
belong to a higher and more complex order. For this reason,
we shall call them gross constituent units." By means of
this working hypothesis, the large units which are at least

the same size as the sentence and which, put together, form
the narrative proper to the myth, will be able to be treated
according to the same rules as the smallest units known to
linguistics. It is in order to insist on this likeness that
Lévi-Strauss speaks of mythemes, just as we speak of pho-
nemes, morphemes, and semantemes. But in order to remain
within the limits of the analogy between mythemes and the
lower level units, the analysis of texts has to perform the
same sort of abstraction as that practiced by the phonolo-
gist. For the latter, the phoneme is not a concrete sound,
in an absolute sense, with its acoustic quality. It is not,
using Saussure's language, a "substance" but a "form," that
is, an interplay of relations. Similarly the mytheme is
not one of the sentences of a myth, but an oppositive value
attached to several individual sentences which form, in
Lévi-Strauss' terms, a "bundle of relations." "It is only
as bundles that these relations can be put to use and com-
bined so as to produce a meaning" (207). What is here
called a meaning is not at all what the myth means, its
philosophical or existential content or intuition, but the
arrangement, the disposition of mythemes, in short, the
structure of the myth.
Let us recall here briefly the analysis which
Lévi-Strauss offers using this method of the Oedipus myth.
He separates the sentences of the myth into four columns.
In the first column he places all those sentences which
speak of an over-esteemed parental relation (for example,
Oedipus weds Jocasta, his mother; Antigone buries Polynices,
her brother, in spite of the order not to do so). In the
second column are to be found the same relations, but with
the opposite sign, an under-esteemed parental relationship
(Oedipus kills his father, Laios; Eteocles kills his broth-
er, Polynices). The third column is concerned with mons-
ters and their destruction. The fourth groups together all
the proper names whose meanings suggest a difficulty in
walking (lame, clumsy, swollen foot). A comparison of the
four columns reveals a correlation. Between one and two.
54 Semeia
we have parental relationships by turns overesteemed or

underesteemed. Between three and four, we have an affirma-
tion and then a negation of man's autochthony. "It follows
that column four is to column three as column one is to
column two .... the overrating of blood relations is to
the underrating of blood relations as the attempt to escape
autochthony is to the impossibility to succeed in it" (212).
The myth thus appears as a sort of logical instrument which
draws together contradictions in order to overcome them.
"The inability to connect two kinds of relationships is
overcome (or rather replaced) by the assertion that contra-
dictory relationships are identical inasmuch as they are
both self-contradictory in a similar way" (212).
We can thus say that we have explained the myth,
but not that we have interpreted it. We can by means of
structural analysis bring out the logic of the operations
which relate the four bundles of relations to one another..
This logic constitutes "the structural law of the myth
under consideration." It will not fail to be noticed that
this law is pre-eminently an object of reading and not at
all of speaking, in the sense that in recitation the power
of the myth can be reenacted in a particular situation.
Here the text is only a text thanks to the suspension of
its meaning for us due to the postponement of all actuali-
zation by present speech.
1.43 Let me now give an example of this ultra-struc-

turalist approach that combines Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, and
Barthes. The example proposed is that of the Parable of
the Sower in Matthew 13:1-23 as explained by Louis Marin
(1971a). The choice of this parable seems provocative.
For reasons which will appear in a little while, the at-
tempt to isolate a primitive text of this parable as spoken
by Jesus is purposely ignored. The so-called allegorical
interpretation becomes a part of the text, since the text
is the last text (from a historico-critical standpoint),
i.e., the one which we read in the Gospel of Matthew as
being itself the given text. If this text is inconsistent
from a historico-critical standpoint, it is highly signifi-

cant for a structural approach: its parts are not merely
put in a successive order, but they present several levels
of discourse related to one another according to specific
laws of transformation. The system of transformations is
the referent of the analysis itself. We shall see later
why the author thinks that this approach is particularly
appropriate for Biblical texts.
What we want to analyze, therefore, is not a
parable, but a segment of the text known as the Gospel of
"Matthew."
The dismissal of all historical inquiry allows
us to raise the first question, that of the limits of the
text (in structuralist jargon its "closure" [cloture]).
The decision to start at 13:3a, "And he told them many
things in parables...." (RSV), implies that the text in
Matt 13:1 is a narrative about Jesus. It introduces Jesus
as the speaker of the parable and the parable as a quota-
tion. It also introduces the audience (crowds, designated
at 13:9) and a geographical setting within which some sig-
nificant movements will occur: Jesus went out of the house
(13:1). The movements between Jesus, the crowds, and the
disciples are part of this "topology" and of this "cinema-
tics." Finally, if we open at 13:3, we must close at 13:23,
when Jesus comes back. This implies that the three other
segments (why Jesus speaks in parables, the interpretation
13:18-23, plus a quotation of Isaiah, 13:10-17) are enclosed
in the segment opened in the way we just said.
The author readily admits that he was already
led, in the choice of this strategy, by the interplay of
correspondances and transformations which are at stake.
(This concession does not imply an objection: the expected
efficacity of an hypothesis is a part of its "raison
d'être.")
If any objection could be raised at this initial
stage, it would be the following: To isolate a text is at
the same time to compare it with similar texts with which
it constitutes a corpus (the parables). Now the initial
56 Semeia
decision not to disconnect the parable from the whole se-

quence and in particular from the allegorical interpretation
may harm the second operation, the "pairing" of this text
with similar texts within a unique corpus. If Marin does
not consider this objection, it is because he was literally
amazed by the interplay of retroactive effects among the
different segments and by the opportunity given by this
retroactive action (for example, of 13:9 on the choice of
13:3a as a starting point) to break the linearity of the
surface structure.
We must also say that our attention is diverted
from the very beginning from looking at the specific drama-
tic composition of the parable as such and at the "plot"
which could identify its structure. On the contrary, the
features which will be emphasized are those which are ho-
mologous to the structures of the other segments. This
lack of interest in the "plot" will be the counterpart of
the (excess) interest in the laws of transformation at work
between 13:3a and 13:23. The specificity of the "intrigue"
will be swallowed up in the interplay of correspondences.
But the author not only disregards the specific
composition of the narrative-parable, but in general the
diachronical character of the whole fragment. Following
Barthes rather than Greimas (who preserved the possibility
and legitimacy of two interpretations, achronical and dia-
chronical) , Marin chooses univocally in favor of the a-
chronical interpretation, with the argument that the analy-
sis of a message is for the sake of the code, that the in-
ventory of the codes is the only important thing, and that,
ultimately, a narrative is the manifestation of its own
codes in the form of quotation. The syntagraatic aspect of
the "plot" must therefore disappear in favor of the para-
digmatic "models" and their "transformation," the whole of
which make the "structure" of the text. The coding of the
message becomes the message. Here are some striking exam-
ples: "le texte éclate dans ses codes où il se désigne"
(48); concerning the movement from the corpus toward this
text and from the codes toward the message, he speaks of
the réseau or the place where the codes "s'implicitent"

(48); "où ils se citent, par l'investissement succesif et
ordonné des modèles dans ce texte qui les efface dans sa
totalité individuelle (analyse integrative par laquelle
le texte parle les codes en les configurant dans son unité);
le moteur de ce double mouvement étant l'établissement des
corrélations et leur coordination dans l'organisation syn-
tagma tique du texte choisi" (49, my emphasis). It would
be difficult to say more strongly that the message becomes
a kind of epiphenomenon of the only important thing: the
codes, the operations of transformation, the structure.
The full details of the analysis cannot be given
here. Suffice it to give some hints of what goes on.
1.431 The opposition, Jesus came out...Jesus came back,

implies a system of movement in space based on the opposi-
tion closed/open, with a disjunction (Jesus/the crowd) and
a conjunction (disciples/Jesus). For Marin, these are not
insignificant details but clues for the correlation between
three "semantic" relations in which the "semic" pair (open/
closed) is inverted: in the collectivities (crowd/disciples),
the space (to come in/to come out), and the word (hidden/
disclosed). A unique "semic" category (open/closed) rules
the three inverted fields. At the same time, Jesus appears
as the "operator" of the whole system of oppositions: his
movements in space are homologous to the movement from the
narrative to the disclosure of its meaning—"les déplace-
ments dans l'espace miment—représentent—les déplacements
du sujet de 1'énonciation entre deux niveaux de sens du
message, entre deux formes de collectivité" (53). (You
may notice that the opposition open/closed is so vague that
the allegorical character of the relation between the nar-
rative as "closed" to its explanation as "open" becomes
unessential. But for Marin, a "semic paradigm" must have
this kind of generality.)
1.432 The parable itself (13:3b-9) appears as a nar-
rative within a narrative, told by the principal character
of the first narrative, but written in direct style. This
58 Semeia
sequence is closed by the request for information (13:10),

which will be information (given to the disciples) about
information (given to the crowds), linked to a disjunction
and a conjunction (in space).
For the structuralist the important feature to
be noticed is the "topography" of the distance covered and
of the places (path, rocks, thorns, good earth), to which
the second piece of information will apply a corresponding
series of symbolic meanings. But before considering this
system of correlations the author superimposed the "topology"
of this fragment on the "cinematics" of the first fragment,
which appears in that way as a taxonomy mediating between
the first and the third fragment.
Using Greimas' "actantial" model, he notices
that the act of "sowing," which replaces that of "talking,"
thanks to the preceding correlation, specifies the traversed
places in function of the opposition between "opponent"
(birds, sun, thorns) and "helper" (good earth). The func-
tion of "sowing" becomes the operator of equivalence be-
tween "space" and "language." All deep structures are
homologous and the structure of the text is ruled by the
successive transformation of its partial models.
1.433 The third fragment (13:10-17) is a metalinguis-

tic discourse, preparing the "transcodage," from 13:3b-9
to 13:18-23, of the same communication designated as the
parable of the sower (13:18). For the structuralist this
fragment is in a ruling position: it is "the central ker-
nel" from which the second and the fourth fragment consti-
tute the "successive transformations." At the same time,
a new "destinée" (or audience) is substituted: the reader
of the Gospel for the first narrative (13:l-3a), the crowds
for the parable, the disciples for the "transcoded" narra-
tive. But, as the first narrative encompasses the other
fragments, and establishes the communication at the level
of writer ("Matthew") and reader (us), all the operations
of transcodage belong therefore to this all-inclusive com-
munication.
As concerns the inner structure of this frag-

ment, the analyst underlines the system of opposition
"given" vs. "not-given," "you" vs. "they" which governs
the modality of the communication, as a "supplement" to
"hearing." The lack of understanding then appears as a
"subtraction" from "hearing." Such is the rule of compe-
tence for the use of the code.
The correlation with the other fragments is se-
cured by the typology which develops the rule of competence
(to see and hear without seeing or hearing; to see and to
hear truly, directly; to have wished to see and to hear and
not to have done so; to have heard and to have refused to
understand). A temporal axis ("then" vs. "now") rules this
typology and prepares the temporal transformation of the
previous distinctions (their application to Mosaic law, to
the ancient prophets, to "tepid" Christians, to true believ-
ers) .
1.434 The fragment 13 :18-23 ,represents the "transcod-
age" of 13:3-9 included as a "quotation" in the first nar-
rative, and designated as the same parable (13:18). It
lets the code of the message emerge, but as invested in a
"typological" narrative. The four articulations of the
first and the second narrative may be recognized easily
through some transpositions which I will skip in order to
focus on the main notion, namely the "coming out" of the
"meaning," out of its "figure." The coming out of Jesus,
the coming out of the sower, the coming out of the truth
are homogeneous.
According to Marin this new discourse is not
exactly a decoding, „as is what we just did, but a "retell-
ing" of the parable—hence the expression "transcodage"—
which mixes code-elements and message-elements in a hybrid
isotopy, "the one who received the seed in..."; "he has no
roots in himself." The system of equivalences (seed=word,
birds=the devil, sun=tribulations, thorns=mundane care)
leads to a "typology" not completely disinvested from its
"topology." The expression "the one who received" secures
60 Semeia
the homogeneity between typos and topos and reasserts the

equivalence word/space already observed, but this time as
a "vertical" relation between message and code.
1.435 A last remark about this fragment: only one fig-
ure is not decoded—the Sower, absorbed in the seed-word.
This empty place is that of the speaker of the parable,
Jesus "qui s'y désigne metamorphiquement par cette absence
dans l'espace du texte" (65). Jesus becomes the ou-topos,
"lieu de parole hors lieu" (ibid.), the "void center" in
the network of the interferences between code and message.
The character of the first narrative (13:l-3a) who is also
the speaker of the second narrative (13:3b-9), and the giver
of the rule of competence of the metalinguistic fragment,
is absent in the transcoded narrative: "le texte...se laisse
ainsi trouer par le point utopique du sujet, transcendant
à toute textualité" (66, my emphasis).
1.436 This last remark leads to some interesting ob-
servations concerning the prophetic quotation in 13:14-15.
Its function is to open the text in the direction of other
texts and to start the interplay of "intertextuality."
Considered in itself the quotation repeats and achieves all
the oppositions manifested by the models underlying each
fragment ("you" vs. "they," "seeing and understanding" vs.
"seeing and not understanding," etc.). At the same time
this text in the text, this "foyer du foyer" is like
"l'écoute d'une autre voix" (56). The narrator (Matthew)
becomes, so to speak, narrated and dispossessed from his
discourse. The semic category "open/closed" (eyes, ears,
the word itself) governs the text from the place of another
text. At the same time the prophet is included among those
who wanted to see and did not see. But it is his discourse
which is inclusive of the whole, which appears as the "re-
writing" of the "quotation" which it contains. In this
way the quotation refers to an "other"—the discourse of
Isaiah—and plays the same role as the absent figure of the
Sower in the fourth fragment.
If we consider that it is Jesus who speaks the

discourse of Isaiah as a quotation and that Isaiah himself—
in the other text—speaks the discourse of Jahweh, a "pro-
phetic ego" is indirectly designated: "Autrement dit, le
'je' n'est plus celui du prophète, mais pas encore tout à
fait celui de Jesus, 'je' oblige qui ... signale le sujet
dans son absence, la Parole qui parle dans et par cette
absence" (71). Thus the interplay of quotations refers
back to three speakers as constituting a unique ego absent
from each narrative. The text "marks" in this way a "trans-
textuality, a form of transcendence" (72).
1.44 Let me now make my own remarks about this subtle

analysis.
1.441 At first sight it leaves no room for an inter-

pretation of the parable in terms of metaphorical transpo-
sition. The system of transformations from model to model
which displays the underlying structure is the meaning.
The "plot," which would be the starting point for an exis-
tential interpretation, is ignored. The "plot"—if there
is any in this parable which is not a parable, but an alle-
gory—is contained, it seems to me, in the remark of 13:8
and 13:23 concerning the amazing yield of the seed in the
good earth as opposed to the triple failure of the seed on
the path, the rocks, and among the thorns. The pair "los-
ing"/"winning," dramatized by the excess in losing (sub-
traction from having) and by the excess in winning (supple-
ment to having) gives the parable a "plot"—structure which
founds its kinship with the other parables. In Via's lan-
guage, this parable offers side by side the tragic and the
comic issues of all parables.
1.442 For a second consideration, this analysis not

only neglects and ignores the dramatic existential poten-
tialities displayed by the narrative, but offers an alter-
native interpretation which includes it. In fact, the
analysis is in itself and as such a substitutive hermeneu-
tics. The underlying hypothesis is that the analyzed text
is the "communication of a message concerning communication."
62 Semeia
And the author adds this decisive remark: "But is not the
Gospel first of all a news?" (37). Some pages later, speak-
ing of the third fragment as a message about the code, he
makes the remark that "this may be one of the characteris-
tics of parabolic narratives" (48). Then, the meaning may
be disclosed in a kind of "mirror-game", "which is perhaps,
within the text, the game of meaning, the miroitement du
sens" (54). And further, considering the equivalence be-
tween "space" and "word": "il y a là une sorte de miroite-
ment structural 'à l'infini' ou en abysme qui est sans
doute caractéristique du texte évangélique, that is to say
of a text of communication about communication (Good News=
Gospel)" (63, note 34) .
This thesis is already a hermeneutical thesis:
there is nothing existentially meaningful to inquire about,
because a Gospel is a communication about communication.
1.443 This hermeneutical thesis is expressed most
strongly by Louis Marin (1971b) in his structural analysis
of the narrative of "The Women at the Tomb" (Matt 28:1-8,
Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-11). The narrative is a kind of
"Quest," begun by the "desire" (to find the body), and end-
ing in the frustration of the "desire", as a desire of po-
sessing the body, through the symbolic substitution of a
word. "The substitution of the message for the object of
desire" (45) is, in Hegelian terms, "the transformation of
the desire of the object into the communication of the mes-
sage" (46). The factum is the dictum: "The Lord is risen."
But this means only that "a linguistic object" is substi-
tuted for "the object of desire" (47). The message is the
v
dead body as negated.
Here Marin thinks that he hits upon the speci-
ficity of the Christian text: a surface narrative about a
supernatural event tells of another narrative, which tells
the communication itself of the message. "C'est le moment
exceptionnel dans le récit où les choses, le réfèrent,
les corps s'effacent et manquent et où, à leur place, ap-
paraissent—comme des corps, comme des choses—les paroles,
les messages, bref où les mots deviennent des choses" (48).
This statement, I think, is the key to the claim

that the Gospel is a communication on communication and for
the dissolution of all referential values in the interplay
of correlations. Here the anti-hermeneutical stance be-
comes a hermeneutical thesis. And this thesis is the ul-
timate expression of the absence of existential content,
the proclamation of existential meaninglessness.
1.444 But as soon as we have said this, a new possi-
bility emerges for a third consideration, which suddenly
reveals a strange kinship between the notion of communica-
tion about communication and Fuch's concept of Sprachereig-
nis. This third consideration is enhanced by the various
remarks of Marin concerning the "empty" place, the "other
voice," the openness of the text toward the other text
"which is, in its own core, like its 'other'" (1971a:70;
the hierarchy of egos: Jesus, Isaiah, Jahweh), the word
which speaks in and through absence, the transtextuality as
a form of transcendence (72), and his last sentence: "But
is this not the most general meaning which we may draw from
a parabolic discourse: the communication to the 'present'
reader of the network of communication of the Other, of the
Wholly-Other than man?" (74) . This intriguing conclusion
leaves open two possibilities: either the Other is only a
"hole" in the texture of the text, or it is designated as
an extra-linguistic being by the residues of the system of
interplay and interaction and then the structural analysis
has to open itself to another kind of interpretation which
takes seriously the movement of transcendence of the text
beyond itself.
1.5 Structuralism: An Intermediary Stage or an
Alternate Way?
1.50 Structuralism raises two connected questions: is
it a kind of approach which cannot be connected in any way
with hermeneutics and which must be simply disregarded by
existential hermeneutics as an alternative way of doing
hermeneutics? And if it is a radically alien mode of ap-
proach, is it a new beginning or a dead end, the surest way
of killing texts?
64 Semeia
I know that existential thinkers have taken these

two strong stands against structuralism and I shall develop
the reasons which could account for a sheer dichotomy be-
tween structuralism and hermeneutics, but this will not be
my own position. The analysis of the parables will give us
a new opportunity to try the more difficult way, according
to which a structural analysis—disconnected from structur-
alist ideology—may enrich an existential hermeneutics.
1.51 But let me first present the case of those who

would claim that structuralism is a quite "other" way of
approaching a text and eventually a dead end which does not
merit as much attention and labor as we devoted to it in
the preceding sections.
The least thing to be said is that, after struc-
turalism, it is no longer possible to connect a structural
analysis either with an historical approach like Jeremías'
one (even one rebaptized historico-literary as with Via),
or with an existential approach, even under the complex
headline of "literary-existential analysis." What collapses
is precisely the link between historical and literary analy-
sis and the link between literary and existential approaches.
The dividing line passes between the methodological cate-
gories. On the one hand, the structural approach may be
applied to any stage of the redactional process, leaving
no privilege to the presumed "primitive" stage. As we saw,
the last text—the text we now read—is as relevant as any
other text. The choice of the text to be examined is a free
choice. The main consequence is that "the quest for the his-
torical Jesus," the fate of which is linked to the recovery
of the "initial text," is taken as irrelevant, as are in
general all inquiries concerning the presumed author of
this or that text. A text sends back to its "codes," not
to its "speaker." The following consequence seems unavoid-
able: an interpretation of the parables such as that of
Jeremías which relies on the reconstruction of Jesus' ip-
sissima verba is incompatible with structural analysis.
No less invalid is Via's interpretation relying
as it does on the continuity between literary criticism and
existential analysis and interpretation. The epistemologi-

ca! concept of "literary-existential analysis" falls to
pieces. This radical consequence is made explicit in Louis
Marin's structural analysis which reduces the "diachronical"
residues of Greimas' analysis to mere superficial phenomena.
Therefore if we want to go on with existential interpreta-
tion, the best thing to do would seem to be to turn our
backs on structural analysis and consider it as an irrecon-
cilable alternative to hermeneutics.
1.52 In spite of the apparent strength of this argu-

ment, I want to explore another way and to raise the follow-
ing question: to what extent or under what conditions could
a structural approach be helpful for hermeneutics? My ans-
wer will be: the conditions under which a structural ap-
proach may be helpful for hermeneutics are exactly the same
conditions which prevent it from becoming a mere dead-end.
Structuralism, to my mind, is a dead end the
very moment when it treats any "message" as the mere "quo-
tation" of its underlying "code." This claim alone makes
structural method structuralist prejudice. Structuralism
as ideology starts with the reversal in the relation between
code and message which makes the code essential and the mes-
sage unessential. And it is because this step is taken that
the text is killed as message and that no existential inter-
pretation seems appropriate for a message which has been re-
duced to a pure epiphenomenon of the "codes." Only the way
back from code to message may both do justice to the message
as such and pave the way to the move from structure to pro-
cess, such as the one which the understanding of the parables
requires. I call dead end not all structural analysis, but
only the one which makes it irrelevant, or useless, or even
impossible to return from the deep-structures to the surface-
structures.
I want now to support my claim by specific argu-
ments that structural analysis may be disconnected from
structuralism ideology and that structural analysis may be
connected to existential interpretation. These two arguments
66 Semeia
together imply the way back from code to message for the
right understanding of the text as text.
1.521 The first preparatory step is to remind ourselves

that the source of the notion of text is "discourse." I
take "discourse" to mean the actualization of language in a
speech-act based on a kind of unit irreducible to the con-
stituents of language as "code." This basic unit of lan-
guage as speech or discourse is the sentence.
This origin of the text in discourse must be re-
called because it is discourse which simultaneously raises
the question of the reference forward to an extra-linguistic
reality, the reference backward to a speaker, and the com-
munication with an audience. Language or discourse has a
speaker, a world, and a vis-à-vis. These three traits
together constitute discourse as an "event" in a threefold
sense: the speaker is brought to language; a dimension of
the world is brought to language; and a dialogue between
human beings is brought to language.
The dimension of the speech-act, along with its
triple event character, is not abolished by the actualiza-
tion of discourse as text. A minimal distanciation is al-
ready present in "oral" language, which is only reinforced
by writing, but which is not a pure creation of writing.
The intentional correlate of any sentence, its proposition-
al content, may be identified and reidentified as the "same"
from one speech-act to another. Even its "illocutionary"
traits (the sentence as "descriptive" or "performative"; as
"order" or "wish") can be isolated apart from the event it-
self and understood as meaningful by themselves to the
hearers. Such is the kind of intentional exteriorization
by which a speech-event lends itself to all forms of separ-
ate fates, among which material fixation in writing is only
the most striking.
But, as far as the autonomy of the text may go
as regards the intention of the author, the Sitz im Leben
of the initial speech-event, and the socio-cultural context
of communication, the distanciation which occurs between a
text and the author, the initial situation, and the primi-
tive audience cannot abolish the dimension of discourse
which still holds texts within the sphere of language. Even
writing, which appears as the consecration of distanciation
more than its cause, and which is even lacking in some forms
of oral transmission, does not alter radically the discourse-
character of language. It only accomplishes a trait which
is virtual in all discourse: the distanciation of meaning
and event. In that case, the task of hermeneutics is to
bring back to discourse the written text, if not as spoken
discourse, at least as speech-act actualized in the act of
reading.
If this first condition holds, then it is false
to say, with Roland Barthes, that in narratives only the
codification of "la langue" below the level of the sentence
and the codification of the "text" above the level of the
sentence count: "entre le code fort de la langue et le code
fort du récit s'établit, si l'on peut dire, un creux: la
phrase" (1966:26). The sentence is not just a "depression
between two strong codes"; it confers the character of dis-
course on the whole.
This dimension of discourse is so essential that
the "actantial model" of Greimas relies on the syntax of
the sentence. Even in the most formalized types of struc-
tural analysis, such as the one elaborated by Lévi-Strauss,
the "bundles of relations" which constitute the "mythemes"
proceed from an analysis of sentences and from a grouping
under paradigms which make sense only in sentences. The
overestimation of blood relationships in the structural
analysis of the Greek Oedipus myth is an example.
I conclude that the object of hermeneutics is
not the "text" but the text as discourse or discourse as
the text.
1.522 The second preparatory step concerns the status
of "literary genres" (such as narrative) in the production
of discourse. With this second step I introduce some cate-
gories which are much more important than the distinction
68 Semeia
between oral and written language. Literary genres concern

language whether oral or written. Some of them are defi-
nitely oral, such as the parable. The "new utterance,"
which according to Amos Wilder promoted the Early Christian
Rhetoric (this is the British title of his wonderful little
book. The Language of the Gospel) covered both written and
oral discourse (10), with an advantage to oral speech.
("Jesus was a voice not a penman, a herald not a scribe...."
[21].) We must not therefore mix the problems of the "modes
of discourse" (or of the literary genres) with those raised
by the distanciation secured through writing. Nevertheless
these modes of discourse introduce in discourse a distancia-
tion of a specific kind which makes possible a structural
treatment of the speech-acts embedded in those modes, but
not necessarily a structuralist interpretation of the phe-
nomenon .
Why a structural approach? Because, thanks to
these modes, discourse appears as a work. Here I speak of
a work of discourse in the sense that we speak of a work
of art. The concept of work must be taken literally. It
implies the extension to discourse of categories proper to
the world of production and labor. To impose a form upon
a material, to subject a production to specific codes, to
produce those unique configurations which assimilate a work
to an individual and which we call a style, these are ways
of considering language as a material to be worked and
formed. They are ways in which discourse becomes the ob-
ject of a praxis and a technique.
A specific kind of ob jectifi cation and of dis-
tanciation results from this imposition of a "form" on
discourse. Aristotle called taxis, "composition," this
second-order mode of organization which affects discourse
at a level higher than that of the sentence and makes a
text into a complex organism. The literary genres are
codifications ruling these second-order units of discourse.
To produce discourse as a poem, or as a narrative, or as
an essay, is to "encode" it according to the rules of the
appropriate mode of discourse. A structural approach is
not only possible, it is necessary, to the extent that the

codification at work belongs to the production of discourse
as a poem, or as a narrative, an essay, etc.
However—and at this point I introduce my major
argument against the structuralist ideology—a mode of dis-
course, a literary genre is nothing more than a means to
produce singular messages, to give a style to individual
discourses. This point has been overlooked even by the
literary critiques which are not "structuralist" in the
specific sense of French structuralism. For most of them,
literary genres are merely devices used by the literary
critics themselves to classify individual works of art (in-
cluding works of discourse). Rene Wellek and Austin Warren
have great difficulty in finding the proper place for the
notion of literary genre in their theoretical framework
(which follows more or less Ingarden's theory of the liter-
ary work). The difficulty stems from an improper concept
of what a literary genre is. It is not a class in a taxi-
nomy, it is not a means of classification, but a means of
production.
Now, as we learned from Aristotle, to produce
is to generate an individual: "All practices and all pro-
duction relate to the individual. It is not man (in gen-
eral) who is healed by the doctor, unless accidentally, but
it is Kallios or Socrates or some other individual so de-
signated who is at the same time a man"{Metaphysics A,
981a, al5). The advantage of an access to the notion of a
"mode of discourse" through a practical category is to re-
fute directly the fallacy typical of the structuralist
ideology, which I shall call the "for-the-sake-of-the-code
fallacy."
We can confirm this conclusion through a com-
parison between grammatical and literary codes. Both are
generative codes: the first one at the level of the sen-
tence, the other at that of the taxis of discourse. They
rule the production of discourse as a sentence or a work.
In the same way as the function of grammar is to preserve
the grammaticality of discourse and on that basis to insure
70 Semeia
the communication by guiding the semantic interpretation

of the message, so is it the function of literary genres
to provide rules for encoding and decoding a message pro-
duced as a poem, a narrative, or an essay.
This conception of the generative function of
literary genres for producing discourse as a work may be
of tremendous importance for exegesis. Such modes of dis-
course as narratives, proverbs, and oracles, must be looked
at as encoding processes, not as classificatory devices.
I am not sure but that Erhardt Güttgemanns of Bonn has the
same idea in mind when he speaks of a "generative poetics,"
echoing Noam Chomsky's "generative grammar," but I will
readily assume the expression if by "generative poetics"
is meant the set of rules of "competence" which govern the
"performance" of specific texts as parables, proverbs,
oracles, etc.
Whatever the different ways of using the phrase
"generative poetics" may be, we are prepared to say that
modes of discourse are for the sake of individual, singular
messages which they help to produce, and not the contrary.
This conclusion may seem to run against the
natural trend of both grammar and literary criticism, which
seem to study sentences and discourses for the sake of the
underlying codes. But the very nature of the grammatical
and the literary codes is to generate sentences and dis-
courses. It is only for an abstractive point of view that
grammar and codes become the object of a metalinguistic
discourse. The fallacy begins with the oblivion of the ab-
stractive nature of the metalinguistic procedure and the
shift from a generative to a taxonomic point of view.
I conclude my second point by saying that it is
the task of hermeneutics to identify the individual dis-
course (the "message") through the modes of discourse (the
"codes") which generate it as a work of discourse. In
other words, it is the task of hermeneutics to use the dia-
lectics of discourse and work, or performance and competence,
as a mediation at the service not of the code, but of the
message.
In this way we are prepared to subordinate this

new factor of distanciation (maybe more important, and at
least more primitive than writing) to the process of com-
munication.
Literary genres fulfill several functions as
concerns communication: first, they provide a common ground
of understanding and of interpretation, thanks to the con-
trast between the traditional character of the "genre" and
the novelty of the message. Second, they preserve the mes-
sage from distortion, thanks to the autonomy of the form as
regards speaker and hearer. This explains why Jeremías
could claim that the parables contain the sayings of Jesus
more surely than any other mode of discourse. Third, the
"form" secures the survival of the meaning after the dis-
appearance of its Sitz im Leben and in that way starts the
process of "decontextualization" which opens the message to
fresh reinterpretation according to new contexts of dis-
course and of life. In this sense the "form" not only es-
tablishes communication, thanks bo its common character,
but it preserves the message from distortion thanks to the
circumspection which it imposes upon the work of art, and
it opens it to the history of its interpretation.
1.523 This last remark prepares our third preparatory
step. It concerns the functioning of narratives themselves
among all other modes of discourse. If a mode of discourse
is a generative device aiming at the production of a singu-
lar message, a structural analysis is truncated if it does
not proceed both ways, from message to code and from code
to message. Then the message is no longer the "quotation"
of its codes, but its codes are the "mediation" of the mes-
sage. This implies that the surface-structure of the "plot"
is not an epiphenomenon, but the message itself. A struc-
tural analysis is complete only when it gives more meaning
to the "plot" than does the first naive reading.
I find a certain confirmation of this thesis in
a remark of Roland Barthes (1966:18, 21). According to
Barthes a structural analysis implies three hierarchical
72 Semeia
levels: the "functions" (in Propp's sense), i.e., the basic

units of action; the "actions" (in the sense of Greimas'
logic of "actants"); and finally the level of "narrative
communication." This last level concerns the way in which
the narrator gives the narration and the way in which the
audience receives it: "In the same way as, within the nar-
rative, there is a large exchange function (between the
"donor" and the "receiver"), in an homologous way, the
narrative, as an object, is at stake in communication: there
is a "donor" and a "receiver" of the narrative.... The nar-
ration-level is designated by the signs of narrativity and
by the set of operations which reinsert functions and ac-
tions in narrative communication, articulated on its donor
and its receiver." I agree with Barthes that the "signs
of narrativity" have to be sought within the narrative it-
self. But they are signs for an exchange which envelops
the narrative from the outside. In other words, more fam-
iliar to the English-speaking reader, the sense of the nar-
rative is complete without its use in a narrative situation
(in the same way as the proposition "the present King of
France is bald" changes its truth-value for Strawson ac-
cording to the situation in which it is used).
The consequence of this distinction between the
narrative as such and the narrâtional communication is that
many more questions may be raised about the narrative than
its structure. Could we not say that it is at the level of
narration as communication that the question of the "speak-
er" makes sense as the donor of the narrative? And also
the question of the "hearer" as that of the receiver? Fur-
thermore, does not the question of the "reference" of the
narrative make sense as a dimension of the "exchange" or
of the "gift," to the extent that this "gift" occurs within
a certain "situation" which it expresses, articulates, or
interprets in a new way?
That the referential dimension is reintroduced
with the notion of narrative communication may be easily
proved on the basis of Propp's analysis. There is no doubt
that, by telling stories, men acquired a certain mastery

of the chaos of human behavior. The mimesis of tragedy,
according to Aristotle, is already at work in folktale; or
to speak like Nelson Goodman in Languages of Art, fiction
is "reality remade." A mimesis of action and of actors is
started on the basis of codes which are models for control-
ling human complexities. What we call a "plot" is the
crossing-point of a mimesis of actions and of a mimesis of
characters.
In the case of the Russian folktale, as analyzed
by Propp, the role of mischief and of lack has a powerful
mimetic significance. As deep-structure it rules no less
than nineteen species at the surface-structure: theft,
plundering, damage, extortion, substitution, cannibalism,
war, imprisonment, rape, etc. The conjunction of trial and
success, helper and opponent, provider and traitor, means
much concerning the antagonistic aspects of human life.
These remarks bring us back to the distinction
between low mimetic and high mimetic which Dan 0. Via bor-
rows from Northrop Frye. This distinction makes sense at
the third level described by Roland Barthes. But, with the
mimetic function we are no longer on a structural ground.
As Barthes says, the level of narrational communication is
the last one. It "closes" the narrative by linking "la
parole" to "la langue" in accordance with its own inner
metalanguage. What is the last level for structural analy-
sis is the threshold of hermeneutics, because the same func-
tion which "closes" the narrative "opens" it toward the
world, namely toward a situation and a human experience
which receive a new power of interpretation from the mime-
tic dimension of the narrative.
If this analysis is true, the symbolic dimension
of the parable belongs only to this third level, as an as-
pect of narration as communication. Certain narratives are
"given" by their "donor" to their "audience" as parables,
i.e., as displaying their mimetic function in a metaphori-
cal way.
76 Semeia
Ricoeur: The Metaphorical Process 75
2. The Metaphorical Process

2.0 In the opening OUTLINE section I proposed to de-
fine the parabolic mode of discourse as the conjunction of
a narrative and a metaphorical process. (A third component
will be considered later under the title of "limit-expres-
sions" and linked to the character of extravagance of the
parables of Jesus.) Under the title of "metaphorical pro-
cess," I intend to identify the intermediary link between
a formal explanation (section 1), based on the structural
features of the narrative form, and an existential inter-
pretation (section 3) based on the functioning of "limit-
expressions. "
Two main problems are involved here, each of
which, in turn, involves two subordinate questions:
2.01 The first problem concerns the relevance of
a theory of metaphor for the study of biblical discourse.
Two claims will be made: (a) that metaphor is more than a
figure of style, but contains semantic innovation; (b) that
metaphor includes a denotative or referential dimension,
i.e., the power of redefining reality.
2.02 The second problem concerns the articulation
between the narrative structure and the metaphorical pro-
cess. The problem may be approached from both ends: (a)
from process to structure: what do we mean when we say that
in parables the narrative has to be taken metaphorically
and not literally?; (b) from structure to process: which
inner or outer clues compel us to interpret a narrative as
a parable, if that means to interpret it metaphorically?
2.1 The Semantics of Metaphor
The first part of this study will take us from
a rhetoric to a semantics. Or, more precisely, as we shall
see in a moment, from a rhetoric of the word to a semantics
of discourse or of the sentence.
2.10 In the rhetorical tradition, metaphor is classed
among the tropes, that is, among those figures which con-
cern variations of meaning in the use of words, and more
76 Semeia
precisely in the process of naming. The concerns of rhe-

toric are of the following sort. Words themselves have
their own meanings, that is to say, meanings common to a
speaking community, fixed by the norms of usage in this
community and inscribed in a lexical code. Rhetoric be-
gins where this lexical code ends. It deals with the fig-
urative meanings of a word, i.e., those meanings which de-
viate from ordinary use. Why these variations, these devia-
tions, these figures of speech? The ancient rhetoricians
generally answered in this way: It is either to fill a se-
mantical lacuna, or to ornament discourse. It is because
we have more ideas than we have words that we need to ex-
tend the meaning of those words which we do have beyond
their ordinary usage. Or, we may have a correct word, but
we prefer to use a figurative word to please and seduce.
This strategy is a part of the function of rhetoric, which
is persuasion, i.e., influencing people by means of dis-
course which is neither the means of proof nor of violence,
but rather the means of rendering the probable more accept-
able.
Metaphor is one of these figures, the one in
which resemblance serves as a reason for the substitution
of a figurative word for a literal word which is either
lacking or omitted. Metaphor is distinguished from other
figures of style, such as metonymy, where contiguity plays
the role which resemblance plays in metaphor.
This is a very schematic summary of a long his-
tory which begins with the Greek sophists, moves through
Aristotle, Cicero and Quintillian, and which ends with the
last treatises on rhetoric of the 19th century. What re-
mains constant in this tradition can be summarized in the
following six propositions: (1) Metaphor is a trope, i.e.,
a figure of discourse which concerns naming. (2) Metaphor
is an extension of naming by a deviation from the literal
sense of words. (3) The reason for this deviation in meta-
phor is resemblance. (4) The function of resemblance is
to ground the substitution of the figurative meaning of a
word borrowed from the literal sense of a word which could

have been used in the same place. (5) The substituted mean-
ing does not include any semantic innovation; we can thus
translate a metaphor by restoring the literal word for the
figurative word which was substituted. (6) Since it admits
of no innovation, metaphor gives no information about real-
ity; it is only an ornament of discourse, and therefore can
be categorized as an emotional function of discourse.
All of these presuppositions of rhetoric are
called into question by a modern semantics of metaphor.
2.11 The first presupposition which should be corn-
batted is that metaphor is only an accident of naming, a
displacement, a shift in the meaning of words. In so treat-
ing metaphor, rhetoric describes only an effect of meaning,
that is, the impact of the word on a production of meaning
which involves a complete statement. This is in effect the
first discovery of a semantics of metaphor. Metaphor de-
pends on a semantics of the sentence before it concerns a
semantics of the word. Metaphor is only meaningful in a
statement; it is a phenomenon of predication. When a poet
speaks of a "blue angelus," or of a "white twilight" or a
"green night," he places two terms in tension, which we may
call with I. A. Richards the tenor and the vehicle, and of
which only the whole constitutes the metaphor. In this
sense we must not speak of words used metaphorically, but
of metaphorical statements. Metaphor proceeds from the
tension between all the terms in a metaphorical statement,
2.12 This first thesis implies a second. If metaphor
concerns words only because it first happens on the level
of an entire sentence, then the first phenomenon is not the
deviation from the literal or proper meaning of words, but
the very functioning of predication at the level of the
whole statement. What we have called a tension is not just
something which occurs between the two terms of the state-
ment, but between the two complete interpretations of the
statement. The strategy of discourse by which the meta-
phorical statement obtains its meaning is absurdity. This
78 Semeia
absurdity is revealed as an absurdity for a literal inter-

pretation. The angelus is not blue, if blue is a color.
Thus metaphor does not exist in itself, but in an interpre-
tation. Metaphorical interpretation presupposes a literal
interpretation which is destroyed. Metaphorical interpre-
tation consists in transforming a self-defeating, sudden
contradiction into a meaningful contradiction. It is this
transformation which imposes on the word a sort of "twist."
We are forced to give a new meaning to the word, an exten-
sion of meaning which allows it to make sense where a lit-
eral interpretation does not make sense. So metaphor ap-
pears as an answer to a certain inconsistency of the state-
ment interpreted literally. We might call this inconsis-
tency a "semantic impertinence," to use an expression more
supple and comprehensive than that of contradiction or ab-
surdity. Because in using only the ordinary lexical value
of words I can make sense only by saving the entire state*-
ment, I make the words undergo a sort of labor of meaning,
a twist by which the metaphorical statement obtains its
meaning. We can thus say that metaphor, considered only
as its words, consists in a shift of meaning. But the ef-
fect of this shift is to reduce another shift at the level
of the whole statement, this shift which we just called a
semantic impertinence, and which consists in the mutual
unsuitability of the terms when interpreted literally.
2.13 It is now possible to return to the third theme

of the rhetorical conception of metaphor, the role of re-
semblance. This has very often been misunderstood. It has
been reduced to the role of images in poetic discourse.
For many literary critics, especially among the ancients,
to study the metaphors of an author is to study the nomen-
clature of the images which illustrate his ideas. But if
metaphor does not consist in clothing an idea with an image,
if it consists rather in the reduction of the shock between
two incompatible ideas, it is in this reduction of the
shift, in this rapprochement, that we must look for the
play of resemblance. What is at stake in a metaphorical
statement is making a "kinship" appear where ordinary vi

sion perceives no mutual appropriateness at .allφ Here
metaphor operates in a way which is very close to what
Gilbert Ryle has called a "category-mistake." It is a
calculated error. It consists in assimilating things which
do not go together. But precisely by means of this calcu
lated error, metaphor discloses a relationship of meaning
hitherto unnoticed between terms which were prevented from
communicating by former classifications. When the poet
says that "time is a beggar," he teaches us to "see as
if...," to see time as, or like, a beggar. Two categorical
classes which were hitherto distant suddenly become close.
To render close what was "distant" is the work of resem
blance*. Aristotle, in this sense, was correct when he said
that "to make good metaphors is to perceive likenesses."
But this seeing is at the same time a construction: good
metaphors are those which institute a resemblance more than
those which simply register one.
2.14 From this description of the labor of resemblance

in a metaphorical statement results yet another opposition
to the purely rhetorical conception of metaphor. For rhe
toric, you will remember, the trope was a simple substitu
tion of one word for another. Now, substitution is a ster
ile operation, but in metaphor, on the contrary, the ten
sion between the words and especially the tension between
two interpretations, one literal and one metaphorical, in
the whole sentence, gives rise to a veritable creation of
meaning of which rhetoric perceived only the end result.
In a theory of tension, which I am here opposing to a theory
of substitution, a new signification emerges which deals
with the whole statement. In this respect, metaphor is an
instantaneous creation, a semantic innovation which has no
status in established language and which exists only in the
attribution of unusual predicates. In this way metaphor is
closer to the active resolution of an enigma than to simple
association by resemblance. It is the resolution of a se
mantic dissonance. We do not recognize the specificity of
80 Semeia
the phenomenon if we only consider dead metaphors which are

no longer true metaphors, for example, the foot of a chair,
or the leg of a table. True metaphors are metaphors of in-
vention in which a new extension of the meaning of the
words answers a novel discordance in the sentence. It is
true that the metaphor of invention tends through repiti-
tion to become a dead metaphor. Then the extension of
meaning is noted in the lexicon and becomes part of the
polysemy of the word which is thereby simply augmented.
But there are no living metaphors in the dictionary.
2.15 Two conclusions follow from this analysis which

will be of great importance for the second and third parts
of this section. And these two conclusions are opposed to
the themes drawn from the rhetorical model. First, true
metaphors are untranslatable. Only metaphors of substitu-
tion are capable of a translation which restores the proper
meaning. Tension metaphors are untranslatable because they
create meaning. To say that they are untranslatable does
not mean that they cannot be paraphrased, but the paraphrase
is infinite and does not exhaust the innovation in meaning.
2.16 The second consequence is that metaphor is not

an ornament of discourse. Metaphor has more than an emo-
tional value. It includes new information. In effect, by
means of a "category mistake," new semantic fields are born
from novel rapprochements. In short, metaphor says some-
thing new about reality.
It is this last conclusion which will serve as
the basis for the second step in this section, which will
be devoted to the function of reference or the denotative
power of metaphorical statements.
2.2 Metaphor and Reality
To investigate the referential or denotative
function of metaphor is to bring to bear a number of gen-
eral hypotheses about language which I would like to lay
out, although I cannot justify them here.
2.21 First, we must admit that it is possible to dis-

tinguish in every statement between sense and reference.
We owe this distinction to Frege who postulated it as a
logician. Sinn is the ideal objective content of a propo-
sition; Bedeutung is its claim to truth. My hypothesis is
that this distinction is of interest not only to the logi-
cian, but concerns the functioning of discourse in its
whole scope. Meaning is what a statement says, reference
is that about which it says it. What a statement says is
immanent within it—it is its internal arrangement. That
with which it deals is extra-linguistic. It is the real
insofar as it is conveyed in language; it is what is said
about the world.
The extension of Frege's distinction to the whole
of discourse implies a conception of the whole of language
close to that of Humboldt and Cassirer, for whom the func-
tion of language is to articulate our experience of the
world, to give form to this experience. This hypothesis
marks our complete break with structuralism where language
functions purely internally or immanently, where an element
refers only to another element of the same system. This
vision is perfectly legitimate as long as we can treat the
facts of speech and of discourse as being homogeneous with
the phenomena of language, and consequently as different
only in the dimension of the units at stake—phonemes,
lexemes, sentences, discourse, texts, works. And in fact
certain discourses, certain texts, certain works function
like a language, that is, on the basis of structures closed
in upon themselves, like the interplay of differences and
oppositions homologous to the differences that the phono-
logical schema presents with a sort of crystalline purity.
But this homology ought not to make us forget a trait fun-
damental to discourse, namely, that discourse is based on
a unit of genre completely different from the units of
language which are signs. This unit is the sentence. Now,
the sentence has characteristics which are in no way a re-
petition of those of language. Among these characteristics
the difference between reference and meaning is fundamental.
82 Semeia
If language is closed in upon itself, discourse is open

and turned toward a world which it wishes to express and
to convey in language. If this general hypothesis holds
and is significant, the ultimate problem raised by metaphor
is to know in what respects the transposition of meaning
which defines it contributes to the articulation of exper-
ience, to the forming of the world.
Furthermore, the conception of the whole of lan-
guage implied by the distinction of logical origin between
meaning and reference implies a hermeneutical conception
which I laid out in the preceding section. If we admit
that the hermeneutical task is to conceptualize the prin-
ciples of interpretation for works of language, the dis-
tinction between meaning and reference has as its conse-
quence that interpretation does not stop at a structural-
ist analysis of works, that is, at their immanent meaning,
but that it aims at unfolding the sort of world that a
work projects. This hermeneutical implication of the dis-
tinction between meaning and reference becomes completely
striking if we contrast it with the romantic conception of
hermeneutics in which interpretation aimed at recovering
the intention of an author behind the text. The Fregeian
distinction invites us rather to follow the movement which
conveys meaning, that is, the movement of the internal
structure of the work toward its reference, toward the
sort of world which the work opens up in front of the text.
These are the sort of semantic hypotheses of the
philosophy of language and of hermeneutics which are at the
basis of the present reflections on the referential scope
of metaphorical statements.
2.22 That metaphorical statements can make a claim
to truth must meet serious objections which cannot be re-
duced to prejudices issuing from the purely rhetorical con-
ception discussed above ; the claim that metaphor contains
no new information is purely ornamental. To that sort of
objection I shall not return. But to those prejudices of
rhetorical origin is added an objection which concerns the
functioning of poetic language itself. It is not surpris-

ing that an objection should come from this direction, since
metaphor is traditionally tied to the functioning of poetic
language.
Here we run up against a very strong tendency in
contemporary literary criticism to deny that poetic language
aims at reality or that it says anything whatsoever about
something exterior to itself, since the suppression of
reference, the abolition of reality seems to be the very
law for the functioning of poetic language. Thus Roman
Jakobson in a famous essay on "Linguistics and Poetics"
dlaims that the poetic function of language consists in
accentuating the message for its own sake at the expense
of the referential function of ordinary language. "This
function," he says, "by promoting the palpability of signs,
deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects"
(356). There are numerous literary critiques from this
point of view. The conjunction of meaning and sound in
poetry seems to make a poem a solid object closed upon it-
self, where words become the material for the shaping of
the poem as stone does for sculpture. In poetry, say the
most extreme of these critics, it is a question of nothing
outside of language itself. Thus we might oppose the cen-
tripetal movement of poetic language to the centrifugal
movement of descriptive discourse, as Northrop Frye does,
and say that poetry is a "self-contained" language. From
this perspective metaphor is a privileged instrument for
suspending reality by means of the displacement of the
ordinary meaning of words. If a descriptive claim is tied
together with the ordinary meaning, the abolition of the
reference is equally tied to the abolition of the ordinary
meaning.
2.23 I would like to oppose to this conception of

poetic function another hypothesis, namely, that the sus-
pension of the referential function of ordinary language
does not mean the abolition of all reference, but, on the
contrary, that this suspension is the negative condition
84 Semeia
for the liberation of another referential dimension of lan-

guage and another dimension of reality itself.
Jakobson himself, referred to above, invites us
to explore this direction. "The supremacy of the poetic
function over the referential function," he says, "does
not obliterate the reference (the denotation), but renders
it ambiguous." Again, he says that poetry is "reference
split in two."
Let us take our point of departure from the ear-
lier thesis that the meaning of a metaphorical statement is
produced by the failure of the literal interpretation of
the statement. In a literal interpretation, the meaning
destroys itself, and so does the ordinary reference. The
abolition of the reference of poetic language is thus re-
lated to the self-destruction of meaning for a literal in-
terpretation of metaphorical statements. But this self-
destruction of meaning, by means of absurdity, that is, by
means of the semantic impertinence or the inconsistency of
the statement, is only the reverse side of an innovation
of meaning on the level of the entire sentence. From this
point onward can we not say that the metaphorical interpre-
tation gives rise to a re-interpretation of reality itself,
in spite of, and thanks to, the abolition of the reference
which corresponds to the literal interpretation of the
statement?
Thus I propose to extend to reference what I
said about meaning. I said that the metaphorical meaning
instituted a "proximity" between significations which were
hitherto distant. I will say now that it is from this
proximity that a new vision of reality springs up, one
which is resisted by ordinary vision tied to the ordinary
use of words. Then it is the function of poetic language
to weaken the first-order reference of ordinary language
in order to allow this second-order reference to come forth.
But reference to what? Here I propose two de-
tours in order to prepare an answer to this question.
2.231 I will follow a first suggestion which comes
from the relationship between metaphor and models. I owe
this to Max Black in his Models and Metaphors and to Mary

B. Hesse in her Models and Analogies in Science. The gen-
eral idea is that metaphor is to poetic language as model
is to scientific language. In scientific language a model
is essentially a heuristic device which serves to break up
an inadequate interpretation and to blaze a trail toward a
new, more adequate interpretation. In Mary Hesse's terms,
it is an instrument of "re-description." This is the ex-
pression I will retain for the following analysis. But it
is important to understand the meaning of this term in its
strictly epistemological use.
The power of redescription of models can only
be understood if we, along with Max Black, carefully dis-
tinguish three sorts of models: scale models, which mater-
ially resemble the specimen,for example, a model boat;
analogical models, which conserve only the structural iden-
tities, for example, a diagram; and theoretical models,
which consist in constructing an imaginary object more ac-
cessible to description and in transposing the properties
of this object onto a domain of more complex reality. Now,
says Max Black, to describe a domain of reality in terms
of an imaginary theoretical model is a certain manner of
seeing things "otherwise," by changing our language on the
subject of these things. And the change of language goes
through the construction of a heuristic fiction and the
transposition of this heuristic fiction to reality itself.
Let us now apply to metaphor this world of the
model. Our guiding thread will be the connection between
the two notions of heuristic fiction and of redescription
by transference of the fiction to reality itself. It is
this double movement which we find in metaphor. "A memor-
able metaphor has the power of cognitively and affectively
relating two separate domains by using language appropriate
to the one as a lens for seeing the other" (237). Through
this detour of heuristic fiction, we perceive new connec-
tions in things (238). The rationale for this is the pre-
sumed isomorphism between the model and a domain of appli-
cation. It is this isomorphism which grounds the "analogical
86 Semeia
transfer of a vocabulary" (238) and which allows metaphor,

like the model, to "reveal new relations" (238).
2.232 A second detour in the direction of a theory of
metaphor consists in showing that a language of the arts
exists and does not differ fundamentally from the general
language. The first detour passed through the comparison
between poetry and science, the second passes through the
comparison between plastic art and ordinary language.
This detour is proposed by Nelson Goodman in his Languages
of Art. In this work, he opposes the facile solution which
consists in saying that only scientific language denotes
reality and that art is limited to adding purely subjective
and emotional connotations to "denotation." A painting
represents reality no less than a discourse on reality does.
Not that the painting imitates what it represents; on the
contrary, like all description, the pictorial representa-
tion organizes reality. And its organizing power is all
the greater when the denotation is the more fictional, that
is, in logical language, when the denotation is of zero
quantity. But multiple denotation, unique denotation, and
null denotation are equally denotations, that is, they re-
fer to, or in the last analysis, they organize the real.
Nelson Goodman places this analysis under a title which is
shocking at first glance: Reality Remade. This title
applies to all symbolic functioning.
Then what is metaphor? It is an extension of
denotation by a transference of labels to new objects which
resist the transfer. Thus a painting can literally be said
to be grey and metaphorically to be sad. Metaphor is noth-
ing other than the application of a familiar label to a new
object which first resists and then surrenders to its appli-
cation. Here we recognize an essential point of the earlier
analysis which compared metaphor with a calculated error.
But this point is now inserted into the framework of a
theory of denotation. This calculated error untracks the
literal application of the predicate. In effect, paintings
are literally neither happy nor sad because they are not
feeling beings. Literal falsity is thus an ingredient of
metaphorical truth. A counter-indicated application puts

us on the track of a transferred application. I will re-
tain in what follows this strong expression of Nelson Good-
man, "literal falsity and metaphorical truth." Literal
falsity consists in the misassignment of a label; metaphor-
ical truth, in the reassignment of the same label by trans-
ference.
2.24 After these two detours through the notion of
model and that of a transfer of labels, we can return to
the question which we left in suspense, that of the "ambi-
guous reference," or the "split" reference of poetic lan-
guage .
Poetic language also speaks of reality, but it
does so at another level than does scientific language.
It does not show us a world already there, as does descrip-
tive or didactic language. In effect, as we have seen, the
ordinary reference of language is abolished by the natural
strategy of poetic discourse. But in the very measure that
this first-order reference is abolished, another power of
speaking the world is liberated, although at another level
of reality. This level is that which Husserlian phenomenol-
ogy has designated as the Lebenswelt and which Heidegger has
called "being-in-the-world." It is an eclipsing of the ob-
jective manipulable world, an illumining of the life-world,
of non-manipulable being-in-the-world, which seems to me to
be the fundamental ontological import of poetic language.
Here I rejoin the great idea of Aristotle in his
Poetics. There poetry is depicted as a mimesis of human
action. (Aristotle has tragedy in mind.) But this mimesis
passes through the creation, through the poiesis of a fable
or a myth which is the very work of the poet. In the lan-
guage which I have adopted here, I would say that poetry
imitates reality only by recreating it at a mythical level
of discourse. Here fiction and redescription go hand in
hand. It is the heuristic fiction which bears the func-
tion of discovery in poetic language.
88 Semeia
2.25 I will conclude this second part of the section

with three remarks: (1) The rhetorical and the poetic func-
tion of language are reciprocally inverse. The first aims
at persuading.men by giving to discourse pleasing ornaments;
the second aims at redescribing reality by the twisting
pathway of heuristic fiction. (2) Metaphor is that strategy
of discourse by which language divests itself of its ordi-
nary descriptive function in order to serve its extraordi-
nary function of re-description. (3) We can speak cautious-
ly of metaphorical truth to designate the claim of attaining
reality which is attached to the power of redescription of
poetic language. When the poet says, "Nature is a temple
where living columns...," the verb "is" is not limited to
relating the predicate "temple" to the subject "nature."
The copula is not only relational. It implies that this
relation redescribes what is in a certain way. It says
that such is the case.
Are we thereby falling into the trap which lan-
guage holds out for us by confusing two senses of the verb
"to be," the relational and the existential senses? This
would be the case if we took the verb "to be" in a literal
sense. But there is also a metaphorical sense of the verb
in which the tension we have found between words (nature
and temple) is retained, as well as the tension between
interpretations (literal and metaphorical). The same ten-
sion resides in the verb "to be" in metaphorical state-
ments. The "is" is both a literal "is not" and a metaphor-
ical "is like." The ambiguity, the splitting, is thus ex-
tended from sense to reference and across the latter to the
"is" of metaphorical truth. Poetic language does not say
literally what things are, but what they are like. It is
in this oblique fashion that it says what they are.
2.3 The Metaphorical Transfer of the Narrative
Structure
The parable has been tentatively defined as the
mode of discourse which applies to a narrative form a meta-
phor ic process. This definition conveys in a more techni-
cal language the spontaneous conviction of the lay reader
that he has to do at the same time with a freely created

story and with a transfer of meaning which does not affect
this or that part of the story but the narrative as a whole,
and which becomes in that way a fiction capable of redescrib-
ing life. For a rhetoric of biblical discourse the main
difficulty is to articulate in an appropriate way the narra-
tive form and the metaphoric process, therefore to combine
correctly the theory of "genres," which rules the narrative
form, and the theory of "tropes," which rules the transfer
of meaning from the story as a whole to the existential
sphere to which it is "applied." Our tentative definition
of the parable as the metaphoric functioning of a narrative
only expresses the task to fulfill in a rhetoric of biblical
discourse.
In fact, it is not so easy as it first seems to
explain what we mean when we say that in the parables the
narrative has to be taken metaphorically and not literally.
Furthermore it is not obvious which inner or outer clues
compel us to interpret a narrative as a parable, if that
means to interpret it metaphorically. We shall reserve
this second part of the question to the last section of
the present essay, since it implies a comparison between
the parabolic sayings and some other modes of discourse in
the synoptic tradition.
2.31 It is only very recently that scholars have ap-

plied the concept of metaphor to parables (cf. Perrin:
1967). A. Jülicher, the founder of the modern exegesis of
parables, explicitly discarded the notion of metaphor as
inappropriate to characterize the functioning of Vergleichen
or Verähnlichen at work in the Gleichnisreden Jesu. For
Jülicher, Metaphor is the rhetorical device of Allegorie,
which is itself the way in which Mark and the primitive
church interpreted the parables, i.e., as an obscure
(dunkel) kind of comparison-discourse, aiming at conceal-
ing the true message and calling for an interpretation
(Deutung). Metaphor is the rhetorical device that an alle-
gorical interpretation reads into the parables. It is de-
fined by Jülicher as the substitution (Ersetzung) of a word
90 Semeia
by another which is similar for the sake of concealing the

meaning. Allegory, therefore, characterizes the kind of
interpretation required by the mode of discourse, and meta-
phor is the corresponding trait in the mode of discourse
when it is interpreted in an allegorical way. For Jülicher,
and for almost all modern critics, a parable is not an
allegory. It does not aim at concealing "mysteries"; on
the contrary, it seeks to illustrate (Veranschaulichen) a
certain teaching. Its function is figurative (bildlich),
not concealing. The consequence, for Jülicher, was that
parables exclude "metaphor" as well as "allegory" and "in-
terpretation." These three concepts have a common fate.
The task therefore is to construe the concept
of Vergleichung in a non-metaphorical way. In order to
solve the problem Jülicher looked for a solution by using
not Aristotle's Poetics, but his Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter
20, concerning the KOINAS PISTEIS, i.e., "common means of·
providing conviction." These instruments of proof "support"
or "reinforce" previous judgment by weakening objections
raised by doubt. They are therefore Erkenntnishilfe', they
"help knowledge." The simile (Gleichnis) in the technical
sense of the word is the simplest of these auxiliary means.
It links two sentences put in parallel thanks to a tertium
comparationis . From this figure of speech we get one of
the three kinds of parables, the non-narrative kind, the
"simile," which puts two statements side by side (Neben-
stellung) , the first one being literal (sachhaft) and the
second figurative (bildhaft). For Jülicher, the first
sentence, defined by the subject matter itself (die Sache) ,
is a universal proposition of ethics.
The narrative parables (Gleichnis er Zahlungen) —
i.e., the parable in the narrow sense of the term—are
nothing other than expanded "similes" where the second
statement—the "figurative" one—is a narrative. Hence
the definition proposed by Jülicher: "The figure of speech
in which the efficacy of a statement (or a thought) is se-
cured by the juxtaposition of a fictional story displayed
in another domain, in which the concatenation of thoughts
is similar to the one of the former proposition" (I, 98).

In this sense the parable interprets (deutet) the thought,
but cannot be interpreted (gedeutet). The thought which
is "clarified" (deutet) by the narrative, because of the
similarity of structure, is the point of the parable.
(I will skip the third kind of parable, the
"exemplary narratives" which raise quite different problems
and which, perhaps, simply do not exist, if Crossan is cor-
rect in his interpretation of the typical exemplary narra-
tive, the Good Samaritan.)
The problem raised by Jülicher concerns the sta-
tus of the "comparison" itself (the Vergleichung in the
Gleichnis). For Jülicher, the comparison is between two
sentences and two streams of thought. It calls for a
"third," which is its "ratio." The "third" is the factor
common to the subject matter (Sache) and the figure (Bild).
Ultimately the strategy at work here is that of persuasion.
It consists in increasing the force of an argument by
"creating clarity" (Klarheit schaffen). It proves by
clarifying. It seems to me that such an analysis is doubly
mistaken. It is mistaken about what a metaphor does and
mistaken about what a parable does.
2.32 As Eberhard Jüngel has convincingly demonstrated
in his Paulus und Jesus, the parable is not an auxiliary
means to proof. There is no literal thought, no sachlich
statement to disentangle, which the parable would clothe
in a figurative garment, the so-called bildlich statement.
The initial mistake is to identify the maschal of Hebrew
literature with the parabole of Greek rhetoric, which is
itself a part of Aristotelian logic (rhetoric as the "coun-
terpart" of dialectic, which is itself the logic of prob-
able, not of necessary arguments). The Hebraic maschal
links directly the meaning of the saying and a correspond-
ing disposition in the sphere of human existence, without
the detour through a general ethical statement which the
parable would illustrate. In other words, the parable is
not an auxiliary means of knowledge. Therefore if there
92 Semeia
is something "figurative" in the parable, this is not in

the rhetorical sense of a "figure" which would duplicate a
thought. If the parable is "figurative" (bildlich), it is
not as the rhetorical "figure" of a subject matter (Sache),
but as a "figure" for a mode of being which can be displayed
in human experience. The Sache—the issue—is not a
"thought," not a "proposition," which could be written down
in "juxtaposition" to the narrative. The "Sache" is the
referent in human experience.
Therefore we must forget the dualism "subject
matter" and "figure of speech," forget its transcription as
"thought" and "image." But as concerns its existential
referent, are we able to construct his figurative function
as metaphor?
The example of Jülicher clearly shows that we
cannot do it directly without a drastic revision of the
concept of metaphor, as drastic as that of the concept of
figure, but such that both could merge in the concept of
metaphorical statement which I have elaborated in the first
parts of this paper. Indeed, the theory of metaphor impli-
citly assumed by A. Jülicher is a substitution theory, com-
plicated by the contention that the aim of substitution is
to conceal the meaning. The close kinship established by
Jülicher between metaphor and allegory disappears if meta-
phor is not a substitutive process.
2.33 But it is not enough to refute the rhetorical

construing of metaphor as substitution to obtain an appro-
priate notion of metaphor ready to be applied to "narra-
tives." The theory of metaphor which I advocated earlier
still requires some qualifications in order to expand the
metaphorical process not only from words to sentences, but
from sentences to narrative structures and in general to
discursive modes of discourse.
2.34 Metaphors as they are constructed in a tension
theory remain local events of discourse. In spite o f — o r
rather thanks to—their new affiliation with sentences
rather than with isolated words, they still remain connected
to the use of words in a sentence, therefore according to

a specific strategy which takes as its starting point the
polysemy of the words . Tension metaphors make sense at the
level oí the sentence because they "twist" the meaning of
the words. I insist on this point, in order to warn against
a hasty transposition from a tension theory of metaphor to
parabolic discourse.
2.341 Three main discrepancies must be considered be-
tween metaphorical sentences and parabolic discourse. The
first one concerns the difference of level in the hierarchy
of forms of discourse. The tension theory has been con-
structed at the level of the sentence; parabolic discourse
functions at the level of "composition" (Aristotle spoke
of taxis) which is characteristic of a work, i.e., of wholes
which have meaning as wholes (an essay, a play, a poem,
etc.). Literary genres belong to this level of composition.
2.342 A second difference has to be emphasized. Meta-
phors—as tension metaphors—have an instantaneous exis-
tence. They last as long as the semantic clash is per-
ceived between the words. Their semantic innovations have
no status in established language. As soon as they become
common and taken for granted, they also become trivial and
die as metaphors. Therefore, they must remain events of
discourse, transient events. It seems that according to
the theory of tension, traditional figurative stories should
be dead metaphors. Of course this may be the case. Never-
theless, they do not seem to die in the same way, or at
least as soon as might be expected on the basis of this
theory. Therefore they seem to rely on some other kind of
"tension" than the tenor/vehicle tension of Richards and
others; it may be that this other kind of tension offers
other means of regeneration than just verbal rejuvenation.
2.343 This remark draws our attention to a third fact.
The parable displays none of the tension described above.
We cannot say that in a parable some words are taken liter-
ally and some metaphorically. On the contrary, the whole
narrative is told at the level of ordinary life events.
94 Semeia
If in the parable (as opposed to the myth, according to

Marianne Moore's statement) we have "imaginary gardens with
real toads in them," then the garden may be imaginary, but
all the toads are real. Then the "tension" has to be placed
elsewhere, say between imaginary and real gardens!
2.35 Of course, metaphors are not always these isolat-

ed events of discourse which we described for the sake of
simplicity. There are often clusters or networks of meta-
phors underlying either a whole poem, or the entire work
of a poet, or even a culture and—why not?—the poetic ex-
pressions of mankind taken as a unique poet. The ancient
rhetoricians had an idea of this level of the problem when
they spoke of "sustained metaphors." In effect, a metaphor
never comes alone. One metaphor calls for another and al-
together they remain alive thanks to their mutual tension
and the power of each to evoke the whole network. For ex-
ample, in the Hebrew tradition, God is called King, Father·,
Husband, Landlord, Shepherd, Judge, and jJLeo' Rock, Fortress,
and Redeemer, etc. In this way certain metaphors emerge
which gather several partial metaphors borrowed from dif-
ferent fields of experience and provide them with a kind of
equilibrium. These "root" metaphors have a particular
capability to engender an unlimited number of potential in-
terpretations at a more conceptual level. Thus they both
gather and diffuse. They gather subordinate metaphors and
diffuse new streams of thought.
2.36 Fictional narratives seem to constitute a dis-

tinctive class of metaphorical processes. The bearers of
the metaphor are not the individual sentences of the narra-
tives, but the whole structure, the narratives as a whole,
what Aristotle had called the mythos in the poem. We could
therefore speak of the scenic function of parable, in the
sense that Professor Lorenzer gives to this word in his
interpretation of psychoanalysis (where he speaks of "neu-
rotic scene," of "primitive scene," of "transference scene").
We could say, in the same way, that what works metaphori-
cally in the parable is nothing other than the narrative
taken as scenic. This explains why there is no tension

between some words taken literally and some other words
taken metaphorically, but how the figurative function is
assumed by the narrative as such, and how the tension then
obtains between the scene and everyday life and reality.
2.37 At this point, the parable is the closest meta-
phorical counterpart of what appears as a model in the
theory of science. Only clusters of metaphors and narrative-
metaphors display an articulatedness and a stability similar
to that of scientific models, as we described them in the
.second part of this section. The great advantage of this
rapprochement is to emphasize the referential claim of the
figurative narratives, and therefore their existential-
referential dimension. If a model is a heuristic device
which serves to break up a previously inadequate descrip-
tion and to blaze a trail toward a new, more adequate de-
scription, the metaphor comes closest to this heuristic
function when the metaphorical process is channelled by a
fictional narrative. Then it displays the same power of
connecting fiction and redescription.
The parallelism goes further than it seems at
first sight. It concerns not only the articulatedness of
both model and narrative fictions, not only the imagina-
tive status of both theoretical models and literary fic-
tions, but the tension introduced at the level of reality
itself between description and redescription. The theory
of models allows us to extend our notion of "tension" far
beyond a mere tension between tenor and vehicle, i.e., be-
tween words within the sentence, and even beyond a tension
between a literal and a metaphorical interpretation of the
same message. "Tension" affects the referent itself as
described and redescribed. This is the kind of tension
which can be found in the parables which offer no inner
tension between tenor and vehicle because of the "normalcy"
of the narrative and little tension between literal and
metaphorical interpretation of the message itself. The
"tension" is entirely on the side of the vision of reality
96 Semeia
between the insight displayed by the fiction and our ordi-

nary way of looking at things.
2.4 Clues to Metaphor in the Narrative Structure
We may now turn to the fourth and final question

of those proposed at the start of this second chapter. The
question was the following: If to call a certain narrative
a parable is to say that the story refers to..., stands
for... something else in human experience, then, how does
the narrative "sense" imply its metaphorical "referent"?
2.41 There is a way of eluding this difficulty. It

is merely to ignore the structural approach. This is what
Crossan chooses to do in his work In Parables. He begins
immediately with the figurative dimension of the parables
and assumes at the very beginning a notion of symbol (con-
ceived) as a participation in the symbol's referent. The
referent is master, says Crossan.
In a sense he is right. If we do not start with
the conviction that "metaphor articulates a referent so new
or so alien to consciousness that this referent can only be
grasped within the metaphor itself" (13), then we shall
never receive this conviction from a further investigation
of the linguistic structure of the parable. The thrust
toward the referent must, in a sense, precede any attempt
to derive it from a better knowledge of the inner structure.
It is because the poetic experience comes to metaphorical
expression that language "imposes a credible order" (T. S.
Eliot) upon ordinarvv experience. The structure is nothing
else than this credible order. Therefore the natural order
of the inquiry would be to proceed from the participation
in the referent back to the analysis of the "inner" struc-
ture.
This conviction is also mine, to a certain ex-
tent. I also took it for granted in the first part of this
section that the narrative stands metaphorically for the
poetic experience which comes to language.
But, if this conviction was able to reverse the
order of priority between the two questions raised in
2.0, this does not allow us to cancel the other question:

how do we know that a parable is a parable and not merely
a narrative? This question can no longer be denied, once
there exists a structural analysis independent of the poetic
approach. Of course we may decide never to start a struc-
tural analysis in order to avoid trouble with questions con-
cerning the transition from "sense" to "reference." But
the present state of the problem no longer allows us to by-
pass this difficulty. The only rule which may help us not
to remain caught in the structural dead-end is to raise
this question as the counterpart of the one which we dis-
cussed in the first part. How does the symbolic reference
work through the narrative structure? The new question will
then be this: What clues does the narrative provide for the
understanding of its referent in a metaphorical way? My
main hypothesis is that the inner clues provided by an iso-
lated narrative are too implicit and elusive to be noticed
beside the interference of the most important clues given
by the context. I shall, however,, go as far as possible
with the search for the "signs of metaphoricity" of a single
narrative (2.42) before considering the "contextual clues"
(2.43-2.46).
2.42 The signs of metaphoricity given by a single
narrative, if there are any, have not to be found elsewhere
than in the plot (in Via's sense), in the challenge which
this plot displays for the main characters, and in the ans-
wer of these characters to the crisis situation. The dra-
matic approach, better than the pure formalist approach of
structuralism, provides an appropriate basis for the meta-
phorical process. This basis is the dramatic structure of
the narrative, i.e., the plot. The "plot" is not, like the
forms and the codes of the followers of Propp, an underly-
ing structure which makes the told story unessential, as a
mere epiphenomenon of the codes themselves; the plot is the
very structure of the narrative. The dramatic structure is
the dynamism of the narrative and, in that sense, is homo-
geneous to it. As Jeremías has convincingly shown, if the
98 Semeia
Kingdom of God is like something, it is not like the man

who..., the woman who..., the yeast which..., the pearl
which..., but the Kingdom is like what happens in the story.
The Kingdom of God is not as who, but as when. In other
words, it is the "plot" as such which is the bearer of the
metaphoric process. More precisely, the metaphoric process
starts from those traits of the plot which make the parable
either tragic or comic, namely the movement "downward" or
"upward" from crisis to dénouement. In that way, any exis-
tential transparities which can be advocated later have to
be rooted in the dramatic structure itself. It is this
dramatic structure which means that the existence may be
"lost" or "gained." Existence, as it were, has to be re-
described according to the basic plot movements. If this
is true, a structural analysis of the deep-structure is of
no help as long as it does not provide a better understand-
ing of the crisis at the surface-structure. Once more (of.
the discussion in Chapter 1 ) , the way back from deep-struc-
ture to surface-structure is the only decisive move for a
hermeneutics of the parables.
But even if this condition is satisfied, the
question remains: what compels us to take "plot," "crisis,"
"challenge," and "answer," within the narrative as referring
to some similar structure of human experience outside the
narrative?
Crossan's answer was that we are motivated to do
so by the "normalcy" of the story. If this normalcy was
not symbolic, he said, the telling of the story would be
pointless. As we assume that it is not pointless—perhaps
because we listen to the warning: "let those who have ears
hear"I—we look for an interpretation which makes sense.
Surely there is much truth in this answer. The
mode of discourse of parable becomes a case of understate-
ment—to mean the most by saying the least—or better, of
irony. The parable should be interpreted metaphorically
because it pretends to be plain and trivial.
But, once more, how do we know that someone is
speaking ironically if he gives us no further clues of his
double-talking?
Let me suggest another hypothesis which is in

fact not contrary to but complementary to the preceding
one. (Unfortunately, I cannot develop it thoroughly be-
cause it implies an interpretation of the symbol "Kingdom
of God" which links together several modes of discourse
[declaratory, proverbial, and parabolic].) My suggestion
is that the trait which invites us to transgress the nar-
rative structures is the same as that which specifies the
parable as a "religious" kind of "poetic" discourse. This
trait is, to my mind, the element of extravagance which
makes the "oddness" of the narrative, by mixing the "extra-
ordinary" with the "ordinary."
Could we not say that this dimension of extrava-
gance delivers the openness of the metaphorical process
from the closure of the narrative form?
Let me insist on this contrast between openness
and closure.
The first item is strongly linked to what a
literary genre does at the level which we called, in Chap-
ter 1, the level of discourse as work. The literary genre,
we said, provides distance, autonomy, and form. The meta-
phorical process, on the contrary, "opens" discourse toward
the outside, namely, toward both the infinity of life and
the infinity of interpretation (Chapter 3). The parabolic
message proceeds from this tension between a form which
circumscribes it and a process which transgresses the nar-
rative boundaries and points to an "other," to a "beyond."
Now, this contrast between closure and openness
constitutes a kind of paradox which is partially solved by
this specific trait which I call the extravagance of the
narrative because the presence of the extraordinary within
the ordinary makes the structure itself unstable and even
inconsistent. In the tension between the narrative as form
and the metaphor as process, the specific narrative incon-
sistency tends to break up the narrative pattern and to
generate the transgression from "inner" sense to "outer"
reference.
100 Semeia
Whatever may be the reliability of this sugges-

tion, which is no more than a suggestion, I readily concede
that this extravagance itself could not be identified in
itself without the help of the other kinds of sayings and
without the symbol "Kingdom of God" which provides them
with a common horizon. Nevertheless it is not utterly use-
less to consider a while the narrative pattern of the par-
ables as unstable, as polarized between the "closed" and
the "open," and to look at the dimension of extravagance as
the kind of narrative impertinence (or irrelevance, or in-
consistency) , which "winks" (as Heidegger would say!) in
the direction of a metaphorical interpretation, echoing in
that way the warning "Let those who have ears hear!"
2.43 The parables as "corpus." But, if there are

inner clues for a metaphorical understanding of the par-
ables, these clues are too elusive and dubious to be iden-
tified only on the basis of a single parable. My guess is
that parables make sense if and only if they are taken to-
gether. An isolated parable is an artifact of the historico-
critical method. Parables constitute a collection—a "cor-
pus"—which is fully meaningful only as a whole. We cer-
tainly have not preserved all the parables of Jesus, but
the selection which has been made by the tradition of the
church seems to be enough to let a common pattern of sense
appear.
In this sense, Crossan is right when he takes
the whole collection of parables as a field of articulation
to which he applies the temporal sequence, borrowed from
Heidegger's ontology, of Advent, Reversal, and Action.
I only want to add one remark which is suggested
to me by what we said earlier about the notion of metaphor-
ical network. The parables do not constitute a set in the
same sense as do the Russian folktales studied by Propp,
which are reducible to only one fundamental tale. There is
rather between the parables a dynamic relation of conver-
gence and divergence. We should have to speak of clusters
rather than of a system. This means that there is tension
not only within a parable (between narrative and metaphor),

but between several parables. They do not say the same
thing. The network of their inter signi fi cations is an im-
portant source of non-literal interpretation.
If we consistently follow this track, there is
no hermeneutics of a parable, but of the parables. One of
the main clues for a metaphorical interpretation is then
the tension between the different patterns of crisis and
response. Some speak of a "treasure" which does nothing
to be found, some others speak of "seeds" which grow like
natural beings, and some others of "sheep," which are less
passive. Others speak of "tenants" and "servants" who take
significant initiatives, and one even speaks of a "son" who
displays the entire paradigm of metanoia. How many g o o d —
and bad!—theologies are potentially suggested—and denied!—
by the whole network of mutually supporting and conflicting
parables!
2.44 Close to the preceding suggestion a new hypothe-

sis comes to mind. We have not only to take the "corpus"
of parables as a whole, but also the corpus of "sayings"
attributed to Jesus by the Synoptics. As Norman Perrin
(1974:277-303) says, the eschatological sayings, the pro-
verbial sayings, and the parabolic sayings point together
in the same direction. The symbol "Kingdom of God" (to
which I shall return later for its own sake) designates
the common horizon of these three modes of discourse. This
remark is enormously important. It implies that the dif-
ferent modes of discourse may be translated into one another.
This transi at ab Hit y from one mode of discourse into another
as soon as it is perceived liberates the hearer from any
attempt to stick to the literal understanding. It opens
the eyes and the ears. The convertibility between proverb-
ial sayings and parabolic sayings is of particular impor-
tance. The proverbial sayings extend to parabolic sayings
their own irony, their paradoxical and hyperbolic texture,
their art of disorienting the hearer. I propose to say
that a narrative may be understood as a parable if it may
102 Semeia
also be converted into a proverb or an eschatological say-

ing. The equivalence between parable, proclamation, and
proverb helps to break up the narrative structures. It
explodes the "closure" of the structure. Then the narra-
tive structure recedes to the background and the metaphori-
cal process proceeds to the foreground. This reversal in
the priority between structure and process could not be
achieved without these mutual exchanges between several
modes of discourse, since the attention should be drawn
beyond the narrative at the same time that it is captured
by the plot itself. To think inside and outside the form
is made possible by the attraction exerted on one form of
discourse by another.
2.45 If we enlarge a bit further the contextual back-

ground of the parables we are led to the following hypothe-
sis: the process of "intersignification" which goes on be-
tween the parables as a distinctive corpus, then between
this corpus and the other "sayings" of Jesus, must be fol-
lowed a step further to the intersignification between the
"sayings" themselves considered as a larger corpus and the
"deeds" of Jesus. By this remark we do justice to an im-
portant idea of Jeremías that some parables—if not most
parables—are apologies and justifications for his own way
of dealing with publicans, prostitutes, and pharisees. Now,
someone will object that we fall back to the "historical" or
"biographical" interpretation in terms of Sitz im Leben.
I emphatically deny that this is the case. The "deeds" of
Jesus are no less accessible—as meant by the texts—than
are the parables and the other sayings of Jesus. The pro-
cess of "intersignification" remains itself contained with-
in the boundaries of "textuality": it interprets a text
through another text within another larger text.
If we follow this suggestion, we must not hesi-
tate to put under the heading of "deeds" not only the ordi-
nary deeds—which are in fact as extravagant, as hyperbolic,
as ironic as the sayings, therefore as extraordinary in the
ordinary as the stories told in parables—but even the mir—
acles. Miracles, indeed, are stories given as true stories.
Parables are stories given as fictions. But what they

mean is the same: the course of ordinary life is broken,
the surprise bursts out. The unexpected happens; the au-
dience is questioned and brought to think about the un-
thinkable. If we bracket the differences between the two
different claims as regards the relation to actual reality
and focus on the "meaning" of sayings, ordinary deeds, and
miraculous deeds, then could we not say that the parables
draw the attention to the "miraculous" dimension of time,
at the same time as miracle stories receive from preaching
their "parabolic" dimension? It is not by chance that the
Gospel of John will call the miracles Semeia (signs). And
it is not by chance either that we are able to read the
"seed parables" as pointing to the miraculous gift of the
harvest: "And other seeds fell into good soil and brought
forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty-
fold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold" (Mark 4:8; Luke 8:8;
Matt 13:8).
2.46 We are led step by step to raise the unavoidable

question of the function of Gospel itself—as a literary
framework—for the understanding of the parables.
My question is not a historical one, but a her-
meneutical one.
Even if the Gospel as a text is the last result
of a redactional process (and I assume that such is its
status for a historico-critical approach), the question
remains whether the insertion of the parable within the
larger framework of the Gospel contributes to its meaning
as a parable. The problem, once more, is not one of his-
tory, but of meaning. This is why I call it a hermeneuti-
cal problem.
2.461 This problem has several sides. First of all
the Gospel form provides the common and limited "place" of
intersignification for the different kinds of discourse
which come into consideration and for the convergence of
meaning between "deeds" and "sayings."
104 Semeia
2.462 Secondly, the Gospel, to the extent that it is

itself a narrative (and I assume, with Norman Perrin, that
it is something more and something else), includes the nar-
ratives in a narrative. The structuralists make a good
point here: the parables come to us as quotations inserted
within a text. This means that the speaker who "tells"
the parable is also the "hero" of the inclusive narrative.
By this means the parable is ascribed to its speaker as the
one about whom the narrative of the second order (which is
in fact the "first" narrative) is speaking. This identifi-
cation of the speaker—which allows us to speak of the par-
ables as the parables "of" Jesus—is therefore the crossing
point of two processes. On the one hand, the singularity
of the speaker is designated by the singularity of his vi-
sion of reality. A unique world-view implies a twofold
reference, a backward and a forward reference, a forward
reference to the mode of being which it opens up in front
of the text, and a backward reference to the speaker who
expresses himself by way of an indirect confession. Or,
to say the same thing in terms of the previous discussion
of structuralism, the speaker is the one who "gives" the
narrative in the narration-communication. But this back-
reference of the parable to the "donor" of the narrative
does not allow us to say more than this: here a unique
speaker is disclosing to us a unique mode of being by means
of a metaphorical narrative. Only the conjunction between
the "hero" of the Gospel as narrative and the "donor" of
the parable as a quotation within the Gospel allows us to
name the speaker of the parable and to call him "Jesus."
The phrase "parable of Jesus" proceeds from this process
of intersignification between the parable and the Gospel.
2.463 An important consequence of this intersignifica-

tion-process between parable and Gospel is that the whole
bulk of "sayings" plus "deeds" (ordinary, extraordinary,
miraculous) is connected, by the mediation of the Gospel
form, with the main topic of the Gospel, the narrative of
the Passion. This proximity, within the space of
intersignification, between all the "sayings" and all the

"deeds" (as they are mutually related according to the nar-
rative mode) and the story of the Passion has a tremendous
importance. This proximity is not only a proximity in
terms of juxtaposition, of contiguity, but in terms of mu-
tual interpretation, of symbolic interference. My personal
conviction is that the allegorical interpretation, which
most modern historians of the text are so eager to discon-
nect from the parable as such, is motivated unavoidably by
this symbolic interplay between the narrative of the Pas-
sion and the parables. From now on, the parables are not
only the "parables of Jesus," but of the "Crucified." The
"hero" of the Gospel narrative, who is also the "donor" of
the parables as "secondary" narratives, tends to become
the indirect referent of the parable as metaphor. Dominic
Crossan (xiv) is right when he says that the redaction of
the Gospel implied a shift of intentionality: "Jesus pro-
claimed God in parables, but the primitive church proclaim-
ed Jesus as the Parable of God." This "restatement of in-
tentionality," it seems to me, is grounded in the very act
of composition which led to the redaction of the first
Gospel. As soon as the preaching of Jesus as the "Cruci-
fied" is interwoven with the narratives of his "deeds" and
of his "sayings," a specific possibility of interpretation
is opened up by what I call here the establishment of a
"space" of intersignification: by a specific possibility,
I mean the suggestion to read the proclamation of Jesus as
"the Parable of God" into the proclamation by Jesus of God
"in parables." To entirely disregard this possibility
would require that we disconnect the parables from the
Gospel. But, then, we should have only an "artifact"
created by historical criticism, which would tend to be-
come meaningless as it becomes "pure." This paradox must
be considered seriously: the insertion of the parable into
the Gospel-form is both a part of its meaning for us who
have received the text from the church, and the beginning
of its misunderstanding. This is why we have to interpret
the parables both with the help of and against the
106 Semeia
distortions provided by this ultimate context. But we do

not get rid of the paradox by merely bracketing the context
provided by the Gospel-form. The tension between the
parable-form and the Gospel-form is unavoidably a part of
the meaning of the parable as narrative and as metaphor.
Ricoeur: The Specificity of Language 107
3. The Specificity of Religious Language
3.01 This final section is devoted to the specificity

of religious language. I will take as my point of depar-
ture the results of the preceding which was based princi-
pally on the functioning of discourse in the form of the
parable. That analysis might have left the impression that
religious language is a variety of poetic language and I
will assume that characterization up to a certain point,
on the condition that we do not identify "poetic" and "aes-
thetic" and that we respect the scope of the poetic func-
tion such as I have defined it, namely, as the power of
making the redescription of reality correspond with the
power of bringing the fictions of the imagination to speech.
Because the poetic function of discourse was conceived in
this way, the religious language of the parables is an in-
stance of poetic language. However it is precisely on the
basis of poetics that religious language reveals its speci-
fic character to the extent that the poetic function can
appear, in an inverse sense, as the medium or the Organum
of religious language.
3.02 In the first part of this section I propose to

show how religious language modifies poetic language by
various procedures such as intensification, transgression,
and going to the limit, which make it, according to Ian
Ramsey's expression, an "odd" language. I will place the
study of these diverse procedures under the general title
of "limit-expressions." And I intend to show that these
limit-expressions already contain what Ramsey terms "quali-
fiers" at the level of theological discourse at a high
conceptual level and which he sees applied to different
expressions through which religious language functions as
a "model" with regard to the whole of human experience.
3.03 This relation between model and qualifier will
lead me in the second part of this section to an examina-
tion of how the relation between fiction and redescription
functions at the level of properly religious language.
108 Semeia
I propose to show that the limit-expressions of religious

language are appropriated in the redescription of that which
we might correlatively call the limit-experiences of man,
and that these limit-experiences, redescribed by the limit-
expressions of religious language, constitute the appro-
priate referent of this language.
3.04 Finally I will consider what conceptual language

might be appropriate to this relation between limit-expres-
sions and limit-experiences. I will propose that only
limit-concepts can undertake this function of mediation.
3.1 Limit-Expressions in Religious Discourse

In the preceding chapter we considered only one
form of religious language, the parable. That reduction
to the parable might lead us to believe that religious lan-
guage is purely metaphorical. What I wish to illustrate
here is that it is not so much the metaphorical function
as such which constitutes religious language as it is a
certain intensification of the metaphorical function which
is also found in other types of nonmetaphorical discourse
such as proclamatory discourse, especially the statements
of an eschatological character in the Synoptic Gospels,
and the proverbial sayings. These forms as such do not
constitute religious language, but rather that which I will
provisionally call the "transgression" by which these forms
of discourse point beyond their immediate signification
toward the Wholly Other.
If we isolate the parables from the other forms
of discourse, we might pass over this phenomenon of trans-
gression. In the preceding section we restricted ourselves
to grasping the articulation of the relation between the
narrative form and its metaphorical function. And we said
nothing about the function of the parable as a limit-ex-
pression. Nevertheless, the fact that the parables are
about the "Kingdom of God" ought to alert us that there is
something more to consider. Above all this referring to
an ultimate referent ought to put us on guard against any
premature existential interpretation which would too quickly
make a moral application by the reader correspond to the

content of the parable. Such interpretations are well
known, especially in those forms of Protestant thought
marked by the influence of Karl Barth as well as that of
Bultmann. It is a question, they say, of making a deci-
sion in a time of "crisis" signified by the dramatic form
of the parable just as the characters in the parable have
(or have not) known how to decide about themselves in rela-
tion to the crisis situation described in the narrative.
But of what time of crisis is it a question? And what re-
lation does this crisis have to the expression "Kingdom of
God"? What does the formula "the Kingdom of Heaven may be
compared to..." mean? We have seen that the semantic and
lexical usage of the expression "compared to..." does not
apply to him who does something in the parable, but rather
to the very sequence of actions in which the principal ac-
tor is caught up. So the problem remains: how does the
"Kingdom of God" function as the referent of the parable?
We will not be able to determine this until we place the
parables in relation to other types of statements in which
the Kingdom of God also serves as the point of convergence.
I propose to say that the expression "Kingdom of God" is a
limit-expression by virtue of which the different forms of
discourse employed by religious language are "modified" and,
by that very fact converge upon an extreme point which be-
comes their point of encounter with the*infinite.
3.11 The Proclamatory Sayings
The most appropriate way of proceeding seems to

me to be to forget the parables for a moment and to begin
from the other two types of discourse which will better
allow us to perceive the bursting of the form of discourse
under the pressure of the limit-expressions. So let us
begin with the proclamatory sayings. It is here that the
singularity of religious language is most evident, if it
is true that the proclamation of Jesus was essentially an
eschatological proclamation. Let us consider the four for-
mulae which Norman Perrin has held to be authentic. "The
110 Semeia
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; re-

pent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). "But if it
is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the
kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). "The king-
dom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor
will they say, 'Lo, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold,
the kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Luke 17:20-21).
"From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom
of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take
it by force" (Matt 11:12).
What is important in these sayings is not so
much the apocalyptic form of discourse which is a tradi-
tional form of discourse, just as the maschal is with re-
spect to the parable. The important fact for us is that
this form is simultaneously employed, transgressed, and up-
set by its new usage. We can say that the apocalyptic form
here plays the same role as does the narrative form in the
parable. Here, too, the apocalyptic proclamation presents
a literal character which is transgressed in a way compar-
able to that in which the form of a story is transgressed
in the parable. There is, then, in effect, a literal man-
ner of understanding the apocalyptic symbolism. It is to
understand it temporally according to the chronological
order and to wonder when will it come? Is it at the end,
or now, or not yet? We must admit that the attempts at a
solution offered by such well known interpreters as Schweit-
zer (consequent eschatology), Dodd (realized eschatology),
and Jeremías (s i oh-re ali zi er ende eschatology) all remain
enmeshed in the literal temporal scheme. In this respect
these interpretations seem encouraged by the manner in
which the myth functions with regard to the fundamental
symbols set to work by this form of discourse. As I have
shown in The Symbolism of Evil, the primary symbols func-
tion only through the symbols of a secondary order which
put into play characters, events, a drama, etc. But myth
has an ambiguous function of, on the one hand, preserving
the symbolic function in order to render it operative in
some fashion at a preconceptual level, and, on the other
hand, of channeling and in some sense intercepting the move-

ment of the "root" symbol by giving it an historical ex-
pression in order to impede the manifestation of what Phil-
lip Wheelwright calls its "ancestral vitality."
This is why the form of the myth encourages and
seems to authorize interpretations in terms of "steno-
systems." It is indeed in this way that apocalyptic dis-
course functions. It puts into play the great symbols of
the Lord, the Kingdom, and the Power, which speak of what
Norman Perrin calls the "royal activity" of God. It also
affects the symbol of redemption, which Perrin says is
perhaps even richer than all the symbols of the kingdom.
But these symbols function in a mythic time which, while
not being the time of origin which Mircea Eliade speaks
about, is none the less symmetrical with regard to the end-
time, a mythic time in which the symbol unfolds all its
temporal potentialities while concealing them in represen-
tations which objectify the fundamental temporality signi-
fied by the myth.
Now what does Jesus do? He, too, in the first
text, interprets his own exorcisms on the basis of the
plagues in Egypt, but projects their meaning into a tem-
porality which escapes from properly chronological alterna-
tives (the kingdom of God is "close at hand"). The new
Exodus, toward which the reactivation of the symbol includ-
ed in the myth of the Exodus points, is a symbol which op-
erates at once in the myth, inasmuch as it is the vital
force for the people concerned, and against the myth, up-
setting its literal interpretation. The second text cited
above clearly implies the refusal to calculate the time,
that is, to interpret the symbol of "the coming kingdom"
in terms of literal temporality. That which is essentially
disputed in the text is, to cite Perrin, "the apocalyptic
practice of sign-seeking," which is to say, the treatment
of myth as allegory arid symbols as steno-symbols. In say-
ing "the kingdom of God is among you," Jesus sets his hear-
ers before the apocalyptic symbol as before a truly tensive
symbol, with its power to evoke a whole set of significations.
112 Semeia
at the same time that the myth of redemption becomes a true

myth, with its power to mediate the experience of existen-
tial reality.
In the same way in the fourth text, the language
is taken from the myths of the holy war and applied to the
profound existential significance of the suffering of the
Baptist, of Jesus, and of his disciples. This myth signi-
fies their destiny. And I have no difficulty in following
Norman Perrin when he proposes to discern the same existen-
tial concern in the petition of the Lord's prayer, "Thy
kingdom come."
3.12 Proverbial Formulae
The sort of internal subversion which affects

the apocalyptic sayings can perhaps be further clarified
if we bring them together with a comparable phenomenon
which we can see at work in the proverbial sayings. I mean
that trait which William A. Beardslee (1970a, 1970b) has
emphasized, and whose conclusions Norman Perrin has used
in his own work. Beardslee calls this trait "intensifica-
tion" and I want to place it in relation to the preceding
trait of surpassing the traditional eschatological frame-
work in the proclamatory sayings.
The common base which is presupposed and utiliz-
ed here is the Wisdom sayings, which, in distinction from
the proclamatory sayings, do not aim at singularizing the
Jewish tradition, but rather which function "to throw a
bridge between the perspective of faith and the experience
of the man outside of the circle of faith" (1970a:62).
The interpretation of existence which is employed here is
either that of speculative wisdom, in line with which are
some of the fundamental Christological categories such as
"Logos" and "Wisdom of God," or that of practical wisdom,
which the proverbial sayings of Jesus prolong. But—and
this is the decisive trait—the form of discourse is at
the same time taken up and transgressed and shattered. In
its usual form the proverb "is a statement concerning a
particular type of occurrence or situation, an ordinary
sequence of experiences which perhaps can be repeated" (65).

It is in this way that this form of discourse presents a
certain kinship with the parable. Without being a "narra-
tive," the proverb implies a "story, something which hap-
pens" (65). Here we find the beginnings of generalization,
but at a "pre-discursive" level (66). The art of utilizing
this form is that of discerning in each instance which
little story is applicable. It is this interplay between
"generalization" and "confrontation" which Jesus' proverb-
ial speech upsets through the process we have termed "in-
tensification." By this Beardslee means the use of paradox
and hyperbole which dislocates the practical purpose of the
proverb.
Paradox is more specifically the intensification
of the sort known as the "overturning of fates," as in the
antithetical formulae of those proverbs such as "Whoever
seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life will preserve it" (Luke 17:33; cf. Mark 8:35). Here,
says Beardslee, the overturning is so acute that "the imag-
ination is jolted out of its vision of a continuous connec-
tion between one situation and another" (67). The paradox
consists of two opposed affirmations. On the one hand, it
upsets the presupposition upon which the usage of Wisdom
sayings rests, namely "the project of making a continuous
whole out of one's own existence" (67). For who can form
a coherent project of "losing" one's life in order to "gain"
it? On the other hand, it affirms "that in spite of all,
life is conferred through this paradoxical route" (68). If
this were not the case, we would have a simple negation—
either skeptical or ironical, for example—of the project
of existence.
Hyperbole is another form of intensification:
"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" (Luke
6:27; cf. Matt 5:44). Like paradox, hyperbole is intended
"to jolt the hearer out of the project of making a continu-
ity of his life" (69). But, whereas humor or detachment
are able to remove us from reality entirely, hyperbole
leads us back to the heart of existence. The "challenge"
114 Semeia
to the conventional wisdom is at the same time a "way of

life" (69) . This intensification by paradox and hyperbole
will provide us below with an important key for the inter-
pretation of the parables as poems of faith.
The transmutation of worldly existence, which
Robert Funk (195) speaks of with respect to the parables,
is accomplished in the proverb by the strange strategy
which I will call re-orientation by disorientation. The
parable takes the round-about way of fiction; the proverb
takes that of an impossible possibility. But both presup-
pose a field of common experience, "a basis from which to
respond to the challenge" (71), hence, a "field of inten-
sification" which has already been oriented by traditional
wisdom.
Perhaps it is also necessary to say of the par-
able what we have said here of the proverb, that of itself
it furnishes neither the practical way in which it would
be possible to reinsert the impossible model within the
course of existence, nor a way of incorporating this abrupt
rupture within some unifying vision.
3.13 Extravagance in the Parables
I would like now to return to the parables with
the means of interpretation we have just applied to the
proclamatory and proverbial sayings. This is not meant to
substitute eis-egesis for ex-egesis , not to "read into,"
but rather to "read out" what I will call the limit-expres-
sion constituted by the extravagance of the parables.
It is not just the bipolarity between "teaching"
(proclamation) and "preaching" (proverbs and parables),
emphasized by Norman Perrin, that is important here, but
the similarity of "passing to the limit" which is at work
in both instances.
3.131 We are indebted to Dodd and Jeremías for having
replaced the parables on the ground of the eschatological
sayings and for having caught sight of the collusion be-
tween the eschatological vision of the apocalyptic sayings
and of the narrative sayings, but what Jeremías has not

shown is how that eschatological vision is expressed in
the very form of the parables. His interpretation passes
directly to a theological interpretation, indeed to a
theological interpretation presented in a language very
near to that of the traditional preaching of German Luther-
anism, as Perrin has discovered. We need only remember the
series of "rubrics" under which he sets forth his interpre-
tation of the parables to see this. And this short-circuit
between a historical critique and a theological interpre-
tation makes us miss an essential trait which would appear
for a literary analysis placed between the historical cri-
tique and the theological interpretation. This trait is a
parallel to the forms of intensification by paradox and
hyperbole in the proverbs. But now it functions at the
narrative level. It is what I call the extravagance within
the parables.
This trait has not been emphasized, even where
the "realism" of the parables has been insisted upon. The
parables tell stories that could have happened or without
a doubt have happened, but it is this realism of situations,
characters, and plots that precisely heightens the eccen-
tricity of the modes of behavior to which the Kingdom of
heaven is compared. The extraordinary in the ordinary ι
this is what strikes me in the dénouement of the parables.
Consider the extravagance of the landlord in the
"Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen," who after having sent
his servants, sends his son. What Palestinian property
owner living abroad would be foolish enough to act like
this landlord? Or what can we say about the host in the
"Parable of the Great Feast" who looks for substitute guests
in the streets? Would we not say that he was unusual? And
in the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," does not the father
overstep all bounds in greeting his son? Jeremías says,
"love without limit," but also "shocking" conduct!
What employer would pay the employees of the
eleventh hour the same wages as those hired first?
116 Semeia
The "Parables of Growth" are no less implausible.

Here it is the hyperbole of the proverb that is at work.
What "small seed" would yield a huge tree where birds can
nest? The contrast is hardly less in the "Parable of the
Leaven": surprise at the effect that exceeds its cause!
And the "Parable of the Sower" is constructed on the same
contrast. If it points to eschatological plenitude, it
is because the yield of grain in the story surpasses by
far all reality. The harvest in the "Parable of the Pa-
tient Husbandman" (Mark 4:26-29) also appeals to a dispro-
portionate growth, at least with regard to the efforts of
the man. ("Whether he sleeps or is awake," the parable
says.) Jeremías says, "imperceptible beginning, triumphant
ending. What a contrast!"
If in the "Parable of the Unjust Judge," the
central figure, as Jeremías says, is the judge and not the
widow, and if then we make the extrapolation from the judge
to God, not from the widow to the faithful as would be the
case in a parenetic interpretation, then it is the strange-
ness of the judge's behavior which is the point: the unjust
judge brings "sudden" justice (en tachei, Luke 18:8). And
the "Parable of the Friend Who Asked For Help At Night,"
which we can no longer interpret as an exhortation to per-
severance in prayer, sets in relief the behavior of the
deranged friend, behavior which however expected is no less
a cause for wonder.
The most paradoxical and most outlandish par-
ables as far as their realism is concerned are those which
Jeremías has grouped under the titles "The Imminence of
Catastrophe" and "It May Be Too Late." The schema of seiz-
ing the occasion, which only presents itself one time and
after which it is too late, includes a dramatization of
what in ordinary experience we call seizing the occasion,
but this dramatization is both paradoxical and hyperbolic;
paradoxical because it runs counter to actual experience
where there will always be another chance, and hyperbolic
because it exaggerates the experience of the unique charac-
ter of the momentous decisions of existence. Look at the
debtor of Matt 5:25 and the inexorable crescendo from the

judge to the officer in the prison which dramatizes the
decision. As to the behavior of the "Unjust Steward," it
is usually said that it is exemplary precisely because of
the spirit of decision which it displays before the needs
of the moment. And is it not just as scandalous that the
"invited guest without a wedding garment" is cast out?
(Matt 22:11-13).
We could attenuate the effect of the scandal by
translating "wedding garment" by repentance, or by the gar-
ment of life, but it is no less true that the story as
told provokes an extrapolation towards eschatology through
behavior which can only appear as disproportionate in rela-
tion to the logic of the plot.
At what village wedding has anyone slammed the
door on the frivolous maidens who do not consider the fu-
ture (and who are, after all, as carefree as the lilies of
the field)? It is said that "these are parables of crisis."
Of course, the hour of testing and the "selective sorting"
is signified by a crisis in the story which intensifies
the surprise, the scandal, and sometimes disapproval, as
when the dénouement is "unavoidably tragic" and not "comic,"
to use Via's language, as in the "Prodigal Son." He is
warned (phronimos) who has understood the eschatological
situation, writes Jeremías, but we are led to this under-
standing by examples of which the least we can say is that
they disconcert and disorient us, in the sense we spoke of
earlier with regard to the proverbs.
Do we find the parables which speak less of the
outlandish action of God than of the requirement of disciple-
ship less provocative? But the double parable of the
"Treasure in the Field" and "The Pearl" speaks to us on the
narrative level of a story both plausible and disconcerting
at the same time. For what merchant would exchange all his
belongings for a pearl? "Pious" commentary blunts our as-
tonishment (cf. Matt 13:44-46).
Even the behavior of the "Good Samaritan" bears
an excessive trait which is well designed to prevent its
118 Semeia
becoming an exemplary parable and which preserves its para-

bolic character, as Crossan has demonstrated. If it is not
the illustration of a recommended style of life, and if it
should be treated in the same fashion as the "Unjust Stew-
ard"—whose behavior is not at all recommended!—it is still
the character of compassion without limit which is repre-
sented, just as in the "Parable of the Father's Love." The
accent must still be placed on the "without limit," even if
the story is to be both a parable and to offer us a moral
example.
As for the parables of the wheat (Matt 13:24-30)
and the net (Matt 13:47-50) which Jeremías places under the
rubric of "The Via Dolorosa and Exaltation of the Son of
Man," they seem to lack any trace of extravagance, perhaps
because the image of "sorting" has an immediate symbolic
force. Nevertheless, one trait should bring us up short.
"The man," says the parable of the wheat, "would not let
the weeds be pulled up," and Jeremías notes that the ques-
tion of the servants, "Should we root out the weeds?", "is
by no means a foolish one. It is customary to weed out
darnel, even repeatedly." Now the meaning of the parable
is precisely "that one avoids all premature discrimination,"
which would seem on the contrary to suggest the normal
course of action.
I will conclude by making one suggestion. What
is it that is symbolic in the story-metaphor? Is it its
aspect of realism or, on the contrary, the extravagance
which interrupts the superbly peaceful course of action and
which constitutes what I have called the extraordinary with-
in the ordinary? If this hypothesis holds, we will have
discerned the trait which transforms the poetics of the
parables into a poetics of faith.
3.132 To justify this hypothesis, I will try to under-

stand what is common to the transgression of the chronologi-
cal framework in the apocalyptic sayings, the intensifica-
tion by paradox and hyperbole in the proverb, and the ex-
travagant dramatization of the parabolic story. I see at
Ricoeur : The Specificity of Language 119
work here a process which Ian Ramsey (55-102) has illumined

as "Models and Qualifiers." But whereas Ian Ramsey sees
this "model-qualifier structure" functioning in already
highly conceptualized discourse on the theological level,
in particular in the formulations of attributes and char
acteristics of God, I see this relation at work at the level
of the particular forms of religious discourse. I am tempt
ed to say that Ramsey's book should be written in reverse:
beginning with the language of the Bible, then considering
the model-qualifier relation, and finally examining the
nature of the situations which we term religious. At least
this is the path I will take.
What does Ramsey mean by a "qualifier"? He takes
his first group of examples from negative theology, as when
God is termed "immutable" or "impassable." These attributes
say one thing: "everything changes"; but then add: "but not
everything." The model "changes," suddenly says something
more under the influence of the negative operator. The ex
amples of his second group—unity, simplicity, and perfec
tion—set in motion the same process. We approach their
meaning from their opposites: plurality, complexity, ambi
guity of human experience, etc. When we attempt to extri
cate ourselves from that which these expressions signify,
by using a method of contrast, the attribute intervenes to
carry to its limits that which the contrast suggests in the
context of ordinary language. Thus it is that the word
"God" "presides over" the rest of language and "completes
it."
The third group considered by Ramsey consists of
such expressions as first cause, infinitely wise or good,
creation ex nihil ο, eternal plan, etc. The word "cause,"
for example, constitutes a model for explication, and the
word "first" modifies this model by prescribing a special
manner of developing the typical situations and by letting
the "something more" spring up corresponding to situations
where something is seen ... and then some. The word "God"
1
then completes causal stories, "is 'logically prior to
such stories, is the 'first' word of them" (71). The
120 Semeia
analysis of the "qualifier" infinite reveals the same logi-

cal structure: "It claims for 'God' a distinctive logical
placing, a presidential position over the whole language
route" (74). It invites us to develop the stories which
we have been able to form concerning wise or good men in
the direction of the "something more" which the qualifier
exacts from the model, up to that point where the logical
meaning gives way to a disclosure. The qualifier "ex
nihilo" forces us to rework in the same way all our exper-
ience of creation, mainly artistic and poetic, up to the
point where the expression points toward the experience of
a "cosmic discernment."
Taking up this analysis by Ramsey, I propose to
say that this logic is already at work in the three types
of religious discourse examined above, and that it is due
to its functioning at the level of religious discourse that
the philosopher receives the stimulus to examine its logi-
cal status.
What encourages me to look in this direction is
that we have already been able to apply the notion of a
model to the functioning of the parable. By the word model
we were able to characterize the function of redescription
which is attached to the fiction or, in the language of
Aristotle, the eminently poetic relation which joins mythos
and mimesis. And what we said above about the proverb and
the eschatological sayings invites us to expand the notion
of model beyond the simple narrative function. We have
seen, with Beardslee, that the traditional function of the
proverb was to guide decisions in the ordinary circumstances
of life and we have said that the paradoxical use of the
proverb by Jesus consists in re-orienting by disorienting.
In this sense the proverb, too, is a sort of model by re-
description. Even if it is more difficult to apply the
relation of mythos and mimesis to eschatological discourse,
we can still say without abusing the text, that in shatter-
ing the allegorical interpretation and its chronological
framework, the eschatological discourse of Jesus invites us
to redescribe the totality of our temporal relations in the
sense which Crossan has proposed.
If, then, the notion of a model is appropriate

to this level of discourse, what about the function of the
qualifier? It seems to me that its role in eschatological
proclamation, proverbs, and parables is to make us see a
modality which logic tends to pass over in silence, the
logical scandal. In effect, "oddness" says too little;
only "scandal" fits. Ramsey acknowledges this with regard
to creation ex nihilo, but he attenuates the scandal by
dissipating it in the power developed by the term creation
ex nihilo to evoke in us "the sense of our dependence as
creatures" (83) . But we have seen that the explicit use
of paradox in the proverb, and perhaps its implicit use in
the parables, leaves us with the enigma of making a whole
of our existence beyond the point of rupture created by the
paradox. Can we then continue to treat the qualifier as
the logical process by which the word "God" "presides over"
and "completes" "all the language of all created things?"
(83) . What is called into question here is the very logi-
cal structure of the qualifier itself.
This last remark should in no way discourage us
from employing the model-qualifier structure. It should
only warn us against a reduction of the role of the quali-
fier to that which completes the picture of reality and
experience, as was so often the case in the metaphysical
tradition of the West where the term "God" served to com-
plete and to close off discourse. The qualifier can also
have the function of re-orienting by disorienting. In this
sense, it must express and preserve, even in its logical
structure, something of the limit-function which we have
just seen at work in the transgression of the three forms
of discourse considered.
I will return to this point in the third part
of this section. Here it will suffice to make the follow-
ing affirmations:
(1) The various forms of religious discourse—
at least those which the Synoptics attribute to Jesus—
present a similarity of function, namely the type of abuse
122 Semeia
which shatters the very form of discourse employed. I have

tried to call attention to this by calling them limit-ex-
pressions .
(2) The symbol "Kingdom of God" can be termed
the common referent of these different types of discourse
and thus also of their functioning as limit-expressions.
We might risk calling the symbol Kingdom of God the limit-
referent of these limit-expressions. It is this limit-
referent which presides over what I shall call the limit-
experiences which religious language claims to redescribe
in the second part of this section.
(3) The functioning of limit-expressions and of
the symbol Kingdom of God prefigures the model-qualifier
structure which characterizes not only religious language,
but also properly theological language. We can hypothe-
size that this paradoxical constitution of theological lan-
guage has its source—that is, both its stimulus and its
pre-conceptual structure—in the functioning of limit-
expressions in religious discourse.
3.2 Limit-Experiences
What is the ultimate referent of religious lan-

guage? The poetic power of fiction, we said in the preced-
ing chapter, is that of redescribing reality. It is in
just this sense that it is a sort of model, but religious
discourse, we have just said, is not one fiction among
others. It is, we might say, a limit-metaphor. The ques-
tion, therefore, is to know what power of redescription is
attached to religious discourse inasmuch as it is the place
of limit-metaphors and all other limit-expressions to which
the parables of Jesus are related. Another way of posing
the same problem would be to ask, taking into consideration
the vocabulary introduced above, what is the use and the
function of fiction when it is carried to the extreme
through the addition of qualifiers.
3.21 This type of question can easily be related to

the type of inquiry which emerged in the analytical Anglo-
Saxon tradition concerning the "meaning" of religious
propositions. More precisely, the question rejoins that

of linguistic analysis when linguistic analysis no longer
limits itself, as it did in its first phase as represented
by Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic, to the application
of the principle of verification; nor, as in the second
phase, to the use of the principle of falsification, such
as we see in the work of Antony Flew, who searches for,
but does not find the facts which could falsify the propo-
sition, "God loves us." In the third phase, in effect, we
do not ask if these statements are verifiable or falsifiable,
but we investigate their usage and function—what job they
do, to use Basil Mitchell's expression. My own analysis is
situated in the line of thought opened by this question,
but it strives to go a little further than authors who have
so far worked in this area have done. The functioning of
religious language as a limit-expression, it seems to me,
orients our research toward a corresponding characteristic
of human experience that we can call a limit-experience.
To begin with a negative remark, this idea makes
it immediately apparent that an analysis such as that of
R. M. Hare or R. B. Braithwaite is inadequate. They limit
themselves to contrasting the ethical and the descriptive
uses of religious propositions. Such statements are not
assertions about the world, says Hare; rather they express
our "bliks," our different attitudes with respect to the
world. The logic of religious statements, says Braithwaite,
is limited to expressing the intention of him who holds
them to act in a certain way. But, as we have seen, the
logical force of Jesus' words was not so much to recommend
a sort of conduct as to use an already constituted language
in order to take it to its limits. The distinction between
description and action disappears, therefore, in the face
of a more important distinction between ordinary experience,
considered globally, and the discernment worked by this
language at the heart of this ordinary experience.
3.22 In this regard, Ramsey is absolutely correct

when he joins the two experiences of "odd discernment" and
124 Semeia
"total commitment." I interpret this conjunction in the

following manner. The question is not so much to know
whether performative language is more suitable than indica-
tive language, as it is to know why metaphorical language
is more suitable than literal language. In fact, the ques-
tion is not just to know why metaphorical language is more
suitable than literal language, since the proverbs and the
eschatological sayings are not precisely metaphorical, but
why limit-expressions are required. The discernment that
religious language brings about is "odd" because the commit-
ment is "total." It is total in the twofold sense that it
engages the whole of my life and because as religious lan-
guage it intends the whole of human life. It is in this
sense that I will use Ramsey's declaration that the empiri-
cal place of religious and theological statements combines
an "odd personal discernment" and a "total commitment" and
a "universal significance." I will use Ramsey's declara-
tion with this double corrective: first, that the logic of
this language invites us to go from distinctive traits that
are proper to it (parables, proverbs, proclamations, etc.)
toward corresponding traits of experience and not vice
versa; and, second, that it invites us to go from what is
most characteristic among all these distinctive traits—
namely, that it already brings into play the qualifiers
discerned by Ramsey at the level of specifically theologi-
cal statements—toward what I am now calling limit-experi-
ences.
Therefore we must concentrate all our attention
on the revelatory power of the qualifier. I think that
Ramsey did this implicitly in tying "odd discernment" to
"total commitment" and "universal significance." But it is
perhaps possible to go a bit further than he did if we
consider the function of the qualifier in the case of pre-
theological language as being less to "preside over" and
to "complete" our discourse and our action than it is to
disorient them, to upset them, in short, to introduce
paradox and scandal into them.
It is, in effect, on this point that religious

language most fully deserves to be treated in terms of
"disclosure models." We have already made the rapproche-
ment between "disclosure model" in Ramsey and "analogue
model" in Max Black in the preceding chapters from the
point of view of the structural relation between the story
and the reality that it intends metaphorically. I would
now like to come back to this parallel from the point of
view of the qualifier at work in the structure. As we said
in the preceding sections, "disclosure models" have more
affinity with "analogue models" than with the "scale models"
to which Black opposes them, because the metaphorical power
of the parable proceeds from the plot, which is to say from
a structural trait of the narrated action. It is the "plot"
that functions as a model. Now what trait in the plot has
the value of metaphor more than all the rest? It is the
extravagance, the paradox, the hyperbole. Can we not say,
with some plausibility, that the proverb taken in its ordi-
nary function of orienting life, the eschatological saying
interpreted literally, and the parable treated as an illus-
tration of general ethical truths within an exemplary and
moralizing use still function as "Picture models," and
that it is only when these forms of discourse are carried
to an extreme that they exercise the power of "disclosure"
that Ramsey recognizes in them? But, then, I would hesi-
tate to say, as Ramsey does, that the power of disclosure
consists in the aptitude of the model for incorporating in
a coherent way the widest possible range of phenomena, to
carry out a "mapping" of our experience, by joining to this
idea the idea of an economy and a simplicity of expression
with regard to a complex gamut of phenomena. On the con-
trary, it seems to me that if "disclosing" must be opposed
to "picturing," it is because the characteristic qualifier
of religious language dislocates our project of making a
whole of our lives—a project which St. Paul identifies
with the act of "self-glorification,*' or, in short, "sal-
vation by works." The heuristic device peculiar to "dis-
closure models" does not seem to me to imply anything less
126 Semeia
than the conjunction of the whole sequence orient-disorient-

reorient, without ever perhaps allowing us to remake a
"whole," a system of our experience thereby called into
question.
3.23 Two objections to this twice professed "extrem-

ism"—one on the side of language, one on the side of ex-
perience—will doubtlessly be raised. I will be accused
of reducing the Christian reading of existence to a single
aspect, that which Kierkegaard brought to its highest point
of virulence, namely, paradox, and thus of neglecting its
other aspects, its proclamation as well as its teaching,
thereby putting aside the principal function of religious
discourse which is to establish through the Gospel a life
lived for others and to anticipate, ethically and politi-
cally, a liberated humanity. But it would be completely
mistaken to interpret the preceding analysis as an apology
for paradox lived out in loneliness and impotence. There
is paradox, as we were saying above in light of Beardslee's
meditation on the proverbs, because the distance of irony
and skepticism is excluded, and because paradox disorients
only to reorient. What is more, the qualifier which ap-
peared to me to characterize every form of religious dis-
course also modifies every expression, be it speculative,
practical, ethical, or political. None are privileged,
all are affected. I too am therefore ready to speak of
the Gospel as a project of a liberated humanity and to de-
velop the political implications of this project. What I
am saying is that the properly religious moment of all dis-
course, including political discourse, is the "still more"
that it insinuates everywhere, intensifying every project
in the same manner, including the political project. Po-
litical discourse therefore is no less oriented, disorient-
ed, and reoriented than any other form of discourse; and
the specific way in which it is disoriented and reoriented
is that it becomes the place for the insertion of an im-
possible demand, a demand that we can validly interpret in
Utopian terms, meaning by this a quest that cannot be
exhausted by any program of action. Paradox then does not

strike praxis any less than it does theoria, political
praxis any less than the praxis of private morality. It
just prevents us from converting religious discourse en-
tirely into political discourse—for the same reasons that
it forbids its conversion into moral discourse, even if
this morality is elevated to the dignity of proverbial wis-
dom.
The second objection will provide the opportunity
to make this clearer. By insisting on rupture more than on
continuity and totality, are we not favoring the vertical
dimension at the expense of the horizontal one? And do we
not thereby reintroduce a new form of supernaturalism, more
or less in the manner of Karl Barth, the supernaturalism
of the Wholly Other?
I would respond that the eruption of the unheard
in our discourse and in our experience constitutes precisely
one dimension of our discourse and of our experience. To
speak of a limit-experience is to speak of our experience.
This expression in no way says that there is nothing in our
common human experience and in our common language which
corresponds to speech about the extreme. If this were not
so, the claim of the Scriptures that Christian self-under-
standing in fact is the understanding of authentic human
existence would fail entirely. It is precisely as extreme
that religious language is appropriated. And it is this
appropriateness of limit-expressions to limit-experiences
which is signified by our affirmation that religious lan-
guage, like all poetic language, in the strongest sense of
the word, redescribes human experience.
In this expression—"redescribes human exper-
ience"—we must emphasize both halves: what religious lan-
guage does is to redescribe", what it redescribes is human
experience. In this sense we must say that the ultimate
referent of the parables, proverbs, and eschatological say-
ings is not the Kingdom of God, but human reality in its
wholeness, as this is indicated by numerous expressions in
the works of Norman Perrin. This is where the unshakeable
128 Semeia
truth of the existential interpretation of the New Testa-

ment lies. Religious language discloses the religious di-
mension of common human experience.
I would like here to relate the concept of limit-
experience, as elaborated under the rubric of the referent
of limit-language, to a similar concept issuing from the
philosophy of Karl Jaspers, that of the limit-situation or
boundary-situation. The human condition as such includes
experiences which baffle discourse and praxis. Jaspers
names death, suffering, guilt, and hatred as examples.
But it is not just experiences of distress that have this
power of rupture; culminatory experiences—"peak exper-
iences"—especially experiences of creation and joy, such
as are described in the parable of the pearl and the lost
coin, are no less extreme than are the experiences of catas-
trophe. Nor are they less baffling. They even have a
greater capacity to reorient life, in a way that no plan or
rational project could equal or exhaust, than to break it.
Thus I would have no objection to Tillich's con-
cept of "ultimate concern," or Bernard Lonergan's theme of
the "formally unconditioned" which is presupposed by scien-
tific and ethical research. Even less would I object to
his recent analysis of explicitly religious experience which
he characterizes by the expression "being-in-love-without-
qualification." All these formulae seem to me to be pro-
foundly accurate. I would only say that it is mutually and
simultaneously that religious language projects its radical
vision of existence and ordinary experience makes explicit
its potentially religious dimension; in tension and conflict,
I might add, with all the traits that carry this experience
toward a shadowy humanism, or even an aggressive atheism.
But the Biblical text only finds its final referent when
ordinary experience has recognized itself as signified, in
its breadth, its height, and its depth, by the "said" (le
dit) of the text.
3.3 Limit-Concepts
To complete these chapters, I should like to add
my own contribution to the problem of the relation between
religious and theological language.
3.31 From Figurative to Conceptual Expression
A first implication which seems to me to be sug-
gested by the preceding studies is that religious language
itself requires the transposition from "images" or rather
"figurative modes" to "conceptual modes" of expression.
,3.311 At first sight this transposition may seem to be
merely an extrinsic change, I mean, one superimposed from
the outside. Figurative language seems compelled to take
the route of the concept for a reason which is peculiar to
Western culture. In this culture, religious language has
always been exposed to another language, that of philosophy,
which is the conceptual language par excellence. It is a
contingent situation transformed into fate that the Judeo-
Christian culture occurred on the borders of the Greek world
and to a certain extent within its zone of influence. This
explains why so many writings in both the Old and the New
Testament express a certain influence of Hellenism. And it
explains above all why the Christian Church was unable to
elaborate a theological discourse without the help of Greek
conceptuality. Christianity borrowed from Hellenism its
forms of argumentation, and even its fundamental semantics.
Such words as sin, grace, redemption, atonement, eternal
life, etc. received their meaning through the mediation of
philosophical concepts available at the time and above all
under the influence of some prominent problematics in the
cultural world of the day; the concern for eternity in Neo-
Platonic spirituality, for example.
If it is true that a religious vocabulary is
understood only within an interpreting community and ac-
cording to a tradition of interpretation, it is also true
that there exists no tradition of interpretation which is
not "mediated" by some philosophical conception. Thus the
130 Semeia
word "God," which in Biblical texts receives its meaning

from the convergence of several modes of discourse (narra-
tives and prophecies, legislative texts and wisdom litera-
ture, proverbs and hymns)—as both the intersection point
and the horizon which escapes each and every form—had to
be absorbed in the conceptual space, to be reinterpreted
in terms of the philosophical Absolute, as prime mover,
first cause. Actus Essendi, Perfect Being, etc. Hence our
concept of God belongs to an onto-theology, within which it
keeps organizing the entire constellation of the key-words
of theological semantics, but within a framework of mean-
ings prescribed by metaphysics.
But this external pressure exerted on religious
experience and discourse by philosophy is no less evident
when the onto-theology collapses under the blows of the
Kantian critique, Marxist metacritique, nihilism in the
Nietzschean sense, psychoanalysis, and the human sciences..
It is now with an anti-ontological conceptuality that theol-
ogy has to come to grips. But the fundamental situation is
not radically changed. It is still as a function of an ex-
ternal problematic that theology has to interpret its own
meanings. The theologies of secularization and the Death
of God present the same formal structure as do the onto-
theologies of the past. They, too, are culturally and
philosophically determined.
3.312 The force of a theological model such as the one
which might be described as neo-Liberal is to introduce
this external relation to philosophy within the theological
space itself and to assume it as an inner relation proceed-
ing from the initial polarity which defines the theological
task. It is the task of theology to coordinate the exper-
ience articulated by the Biblical text with human exper-
ience at large and as a whole. The most important argument
is not that the former cannot ignore the latter because it
merely exists out there, but that this polarity is required
by the very nature of religious experience and discourse,
inasmuch as it claims to describe—or redescribe!—the whole
experience of man and the experience of all men. As Ian

Ramsey says, religious discourse joins an "odd" language,
a "total" commitment, and a "universal" significance.
It is well known that Paul Tillich initiated
this model with his method of correlation. For my part I
readily assume this concept, if it only designates the for-
mal task of relating the two "sources" of theological dis-
course (the meanings displayed by religious texts as inter-
preted in one of the great Christian traditions and the
meanings displayed by ordinary human experience) to one
another. I am more reluctant to characterize by this
phrase, "method of correlation," the content itself of a
theology ruled by this polarity of "sources." The history
of Western culture shows abundantly that this polarization
very often became a dramatic confrontation between opposite
claims, exacerbated by the demonic passions of clericalism
and "free thinking." Therefore it may be the case that in
such and such an historical situation it is the spirit of
Aufklärung that expresses in the most faithful way the
liberating word of the Gospel. In other cultural situations
the correlation may have to assume the form of a denial and
a break with the temptations of complete secularization of
the Gospel message. Today, at the time of the hermeneutics
of suspicion, the tension is not only between two sources,
but within the self-understanding of Christian experience
and discourse in face of the radical contestation which a
significant part of "modern" culture addresses to any reli-
gious interpretation of human experience. The "conflict
of interpretations" seems to be the unavoidable existential
trait which a "method of correlation" assumes today. The
first "naivete" is lost and the second "naivete"—if it is
available—necessarily bears the stigmata of the post-
critical age.
Therefore when we say (as I did earlier) that a
mutual relation rules the exchange between the projection
of the Christian mode of being and explication of the po-
tential religious dimension of ordinary experience, we must
132 Semeia
assume that this mutual relation expresses in a formal way

a full range of existential situations, from harmony to
open warfare, by way of peaceful coexistence.
This implies that the conceptuality which would
express the concrete stage of confrontation characteristic
of our situation should take into account the tension and
paradoxes which rule this dramatic confrontation. We must
concede that this kind of conceptuality is still lacking,
because we have received from the tradition mainly the con-
ceptual expressions of the "hautes époques," i.e., from the
supreme moments when our culture dreamt bf its complete
integration and projected these dreams in systems where
harmony had overcome war, at least in discourse. Such were
tthe blessed times of the great Neo-Platonic onto-theologies,
the Aristotelean-Thomistic synthesis, the Leibnizian

theodicy, the Hegelian system. In fact, we "think" with
the debris and the offspring resulting from the wreckage of
these systems and—perhaps—of the dreams which these sys-
tems brought to language.
Now, whatever may be the epistemological status
of "concepts" appropriate to our present cultural and
philosophical situation, the problem is to look at reli-
gious language itself and to explicate its conceptual po-
tentialities, or, if you prefer, its capacity to be con-
ceptually articulated in the space of confrontation of our
present culture.
3.313 Our regressive method leads us from a mere ex-
trinsic encounter between religious language and philosophi-
cal concepts, through the notion of correlation, toward a
direct inquiry into religious language from the standpoint
of its conceptual potentialities.
We are prepared to assume this new approach by
what we said above about the specific literary "genres" of
religious discourse. Beardslee has emphasized this point.
Whereas eschatological discourse is addressed primarily to
the relatively closed audience of believers already ini-
tiated into this mode of discourse, wisdom literature—and
above all "proverbial" sayings—is intended to cast a

bridge between the Jews and the "nations," between "inner"
and "outer" culture. The same seems to be true of the
parabolic discourse. It is addressed by the preacher as
teacher (Perrin) to the whole people. In this sense the
concepts which could articulate the space of confrontation
between the two sources of theological discourse may be
said to prolong the sapiential modes of discourse.
We are led in this way to inquire into the traits
of these modes of discourse which are in need of conceptual
clarification.
We may formulate this trait as the dynamism
thanks to which all symbolic language calls for an inter-
pretation. This dynamism is the primary condition for any
move from figurative expression to conceptual expression.
The process of interpretation is not something superimposed
from the outside on a self-contained expression; it is mo-
tivated by the symbolic expression itself which gives rise
to thought. It belongs to the essence of a figurative ex-
pression to stand for something else, to call for a new
speech-act which would paraphrase the first one without
exhausting its meaningful resources.
The case of the parables is particularly strik-
ing. Their kinship with the enigma cannot be too strongly
emphasized, whether the enigmatic element proceeds from the
normalcy or from the extravagance or from the mixture of
the two. The symbolic narrative considered as an enigma
is an implicit question calling for an explicit answer.
Sometimes the question is explicitly stated: What do you
think of a man who...? What about a father who...? (cf.
Jeremías).
This interrogative structure explains that the
parable was, from the very beginning, in need of an inter-
pretation. The parable, as such, is for a great part a
reconstruction of the historico-critical method (with the
exception, it is true, of some parables which stand by
themselves, as in narrative proverbs or aphorisms such as
are common in the Gospel of Thomas). Even when the parable
134 Semeia
reaches us deprived of any explanation, it calls for some

sort of "application" (Gadamer? 290-95). To say with Jere-
mías that the parables were intended initially as a vindi-
cation of Jesus' behavior and a "defense of the Good News
is a way of limiting their "application" to the situation
of Jesus. The allegorical and parenetical interpretations,
which the Church added to the "retelling" of the stories,
are also "applications," but to new situations different
from the initial situation. The "explanation" of the Par-
able of the Sower is the paradigmatic case, first in Mark,
then in the other synoptics. To a certain extent, (I mean
to the extent that the explanation is not responsible for
some expansions within the parable itself which fit in with
the explanation) there is a real congruity between parable
and interpretation (Gerhardsson, Moule). And I am ready
to admit that the initial application and interpretation
(in the case of the parables: the "historical" interpreta-
tion in the sense of Jeremías) has a kind of priority and,
in that measure, is controlling with respect to reinterpre-
tation. But we must add, at the same time, that no inter-
pretation can exhaust their meaning, not even the "histori-
cal" interpretation. Our interpretations have only to be
related to our particular situation as the original one
was to the initial situation. It is in this analogical
way (A is to Β what C is to D) that the original import,
i.e., the historical interpretation, is controlling with
respect to reinterpretation (Funk: 150-51).
Such is the paradox: on the one hand, the parable
calls for an interpretation, whatever it may be, because,
as Dodd (16) says, it leaves the mind "in sufficient doubt
about its precise application to tease it into active
thought." On the other hand, each interpretation produces
what Funk (134-35) calls a "loss of hermeneutical potential,"
because the parable is open-ended.
We may, therefore, accuse the synoptic tradition
of having "closed off" the open-endedness of the parable.
But the historical interpretation, no less than the alle
gorical interpretation of the early church, "forecloses the
future" (Funk: 150) by delimiting its scope and its audience.

Finally the dismantling of allegorical interpretation has
no other function than to lay bare the horizon for reinter-
pret at ion appropriate to new times and new places.
The result of this discussion is that the dyna-
mics of meaning, which turns the figurative toward the con-
ceptual, must remain under the control of the hermeneutical
potential of the metaphor. We shall discuss below what
kind of concept may satisfy this requirement.
3.32 From Interpretation to Translation
A second intermediary step between "figurative"

and "conceptual" discourse may be found in a variety of
semi-conceptual modes of discourse, typical of the didac-
tic, apologetic, and dogmatic literature from which theol-
ogy emerged, in conjunction with the Greek philosophies.
The first Christologies belong to this group. Their lan-
guage has some affinity with the branch of Wisdom litera-
ture which Beardslee calls "speculative" (cf. G. von Rad),
in contradistinction from the other more "popular" kind to
which proverbial sayings belong. I call this language a
"translation" language, "where the meaningful content is
exploited as the basis of concepts and notions belonging
to a train of thought distinct from the symbolic basis."
I here reproduce a concept used by Professor Fred Streng
in a recent lecture at the American Association for the
Study of Religion at Vanderbilt University (Spring, 1973).
According to this scholar, it is a fundamental feature of
Christianity that it could convey its language by creating
a series of translation-languages, i.e., languages capable
of a double history, that of the language from which it
comes, and that of the language into which it is translat-
ed. (Thus the word "religion" refers both to Roman piety
and to Jewish and Christian faith.) At each stage of the
process of "translation," religious language picks up new
metaphors, new rhetorical devices, and also new conceptual
dimensions, which make the original language capable, or
at least not too inadequate, to deal with other religions,
foreign cultures, and with philosophy itself.
136 Semeia
Such an analysis meshes quite well with the spe-

cific example developed in the magistral work of Eberhard
Jüngel. This work deals with the correlation between Paul's
concept of the "Justice of God" and Jesus' symbol of the
"Kingdom of God." Both convey the same fundamental mes-
sage. They are similar Sprachereignisse, but at two dif-
ferent levels as regards conceptuality. (English readers
will find a similar comparison in Funk [124-33 and 224-50]
between the "parable" and the "letter" as modes of dis-
course. )
In the parables, Jüngel (135-39) says the mean-
ing Basileia occurs as parable. No distinction can be
made, therefore, between figure and subject matter, and no
tertium comparationis is required. Rathe~, "the Basileia
comes to speech in the parable as parable. The parables
of Jesus bring to speech the kingdom of God as parable"
(135). Furthermore, the parable "gathers" (sammelt) the
intuitive elements and the narrative traits into a "point"
(ein Punkt), which makes the "point" (die Pointe) of the
parable. In the same manner, it "gathers" the one to whom
it is addressed, in such a way that the "point" of the par-
able becomes the "point" of his existence. Thus, by gather-
ing its individual traits in the "point," the parable tends
to unconceal (entbergen) things; but, because it needs the
individual traits of the comparison, it tends to conceal
(verbergen) , but not to blind. Finally—and this trait is
decisive for the forthcoming comparison—, "if the parables
of Jesus bring to speech the kingdom as parable, the coming
to speech of the kingdom is a specific mode of its coming.
And if the kingdom of God comes as speech in Jesus, then,
we have to direct our attention to the relation of this
word to its speaker, therefore to Jesus himself" (139) ,
which means to his behavior in relation to sinners, and to
his own fate.
Now what kind of Sprachereignis "puts in motion"
(bewegt) the "representation" (Vorstellung) which rules
Paul's doctrine of justification? In a sense, it is the
doctrine that Jesus is Christ. Jüngel does not deny that.
"In Paul's doctrine of justification Jesus comes to speech

as Christ" (3). But the danger of this formula is that
Jesus becomes an "other" in Paul's Christology. And the
danger increases if the category of "Jesus' behavior" is
taken as a psychological concept. This misunderstanding
is removed if we treat "Jesus' behavior" as a part of the
meaning of his proclamation, as we did above, and if we say
that "Jesus becomes himself, when he comes to speech as
Christ" (4). But how can we show the congruence between
Jesus as the speaker of the parables and Christ as the ob-
ject of the doctrine? Jüngel, it seems to me, opens new
possibilities by displacing the emphasis from the antinomy
"Christ vs. Jesus" to the similarity between the two Sprach-
ereignisse, as they can be grasped in the concept "justice
of God" and the parabolic symbol "Kingdom of God."
Unfortunately Jüngel does not inquire into the
respective epistemic status of "concept" and "parable,"
perhaps because of the massive and obscure phrase Sprach-
ereignis . He does not even attempt to pursue the parallel-
ism in the form of a content analysis. His analysis of
the concept "Justice of God" remains exterior to his exe-
gesis of the symbol "Kingdom of God." Because he begins
with the concept before going to the symbol, he treats the
interplay of Pauline oppositions ("justice through faith
vs. justice of the law"; "through the law" vs. "without
the law") as a self-contained doctrine. So the main con-
tention that the "two successive speech-events have to be
understood as events within one history of speech (Sprach-
geschichte)" (263) completely lacks justification. Never-
theless, Jüngel paves the way for an inquiry into the com-
mon "eschatological character" of both discourses (263-68)
which would rely on the relation of "translation" between
the concept and the symbol.
Let me make some suggestions in this direction.
Is there not a congruence of meaning between the Advent of
the "justice of God" without the law, in the doctrine of
Paul, and the "Advent" proclaimed "in-parables" (Crossan),
for example in the parable of the Pearl, or, in a more
138 Semeia
striking fashion, in the parable of the Great Supper? (cf.

the lengthy commentary of Funk [163-98]). And by contrast,
has not the deadly attempt to get justice through the law
its counterpart in the "tragic" parables? In the same way,
is not the "freedom which justice gives" described in the
parables of "reversal" and of "decision"?
Above all, I am inclined to lay the principal
stress on the fundamental identity between the "logic" of
justification by faith and the "logic" of the parables.
Let me simply evoke the "odd" logic of superabundance ex-
pressed in the "how much more" of Rom 5:15-17, and sum-
marized in the paradox of Rom 5:20-21.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For

if many died through one man's trespass, much more
have the grace of God and the free gift in the
grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for
many. And the free gift is not like the effect
of that one man's sin. For the judgment following
one trespass brought condemnation, but the free
gift following many trespasses brings justifica-
tion. If, because of one man's trespass, death
reigned through that one man, much more will
those who receive the abundance of grace and the
free gift of righteousness reign in life through
the one man Jesus Christ....Law came in, to in-
crease the trespass; but where sin increased,
grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin
reigned in death, grace also might reign through
righteousness to eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
Is not that logic of superabundance the conceptual counter-

part of the element of surprise and of extravagance in the
parable that we stressed earlier? In both places, an ordi-
nary "logic" collapses and the "logic" of God—which is not
the logic of identity, but the logic of the "something
more"—blows up. Or, as Funk (141) says, in both places,
"rupturing the tradition permits a glimpse of another
world through the cracks."
3.33 Limit: Expressions, Experiences, and Concepts

The third step of an inquiry into the relation
between "figurative" and "conceptual" discourse leads us to
discuss the role of limit-concepts in our conceptual frame-
work.
This expression, limit-concept or boundary-line-

concept, is suggested by our previous discussion of two par-
allel expressions: limit-expressions and limit-experiences.
Under both headings I wanted to emphasize the correspondence
between the role of "qualifiers" (in the sense of Ian Ramsey)
at work in the "odd" language of parabolic, proverbial, and
proclamatory sayings and the boundary-line experiences of
life (in the sense of Karl Jaspers). The problem, then, is
whether there is not a certain use of thought which pre-
serves the tension between "figure" and "meaning" because
it prolongs the role of qualifiers at the conceptual level.
As I said in the OUTLINE, this suggestion leads
in the direction of Kant rather than that of Hegel. O r —
if I dare say so!—it calls for a post-Hegelian return to
Kant. Let me explain this rather cryptic declaration.
3.331 For a first reading—which is not a mistaken

one—Kant does not seem to give to religious "representa-
tions" (Vorstellungen) an epistemic status distinct from
that of ethical statements. (a)- The dialectics of theo-
retical pure reason denies to speculative theology any
claim to cognitive application. The doctrine of the "tran-
scendental illusion" implies the dismissal of the "proofs"
and the death of God in a supernaturalistic sense. (b) As
to the "postulates" (God, immortality, liberty) in the
Second Critique, they are existential propositions (propo-
sitions about existants), but their truth value depends
on the validity of the set of practical propositions which
concern the a priori synthesis of freedom and duty. (c) And
as to the "representations" properly said of religion, they
merely "depict" the victory of the Good Principle over the
Principle of Evil. In this sense, they belong to what may
be called the transcendental imagination of hope, to the
extent that they give a content to the third question that
can be raised by philosophy: What can we know? What must
we do? What may we hope? But this hope is entirely prac-
tical, in the sense that it concerns the historical condi-
tions of the actualization of freedom. For this purpose
140 Semeia
these representations share the fate of the "postulates"

of Practical Reason.
This narrowness of Kant and the "practical fal-
lacy" which he seems to induce as regards all symbolic
religious language is the main motive which inclines me to
proceed "from Kant to Hegel" (to paraphrase a famous book
by Kröner). In no other philosophy than Hegel's philosophy
of religion has the speculative claim of religion been more
emphatically recognized. Religion and philosophy are one
and the same discourse of the "absolute spirit," beyond
that of "subjective spirit" (individual consciousness) and
that of "objective spirit" (cultural, ethical, and politi-
cal achievements of the Volksgeist). Religion and philos-
ophy say the same thing, because both express the return
of the Spirit to itself as self-consciousness. Whereas
Kant reads in the Gospel an illustration of a moral teach-
ing, Hegel reads in Christian theology the speculative dis-
play of the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christology.
Religion, then, is recognized in its potentially specula-
tive intention. The Kenosis of Phil 2:6-11 ("but he emptied
himself"—ekenosen) has the same speculative meaning as the
speculative syllogism in which nature mediates between Logic
and Spirit. The Absolute must negate itself in order to
become itself as Spirit.
The positive and permanent value of Hegel's
phenomenology of religion is to have attempted to trace
the stages through which religious "representations" point
toward their speculative achievement. The general idea of
Hegel is that the world of representation has an autonomy
of its own and a dialectics of its own which yield the con-
ceptual dimension. The world of religion is the everlast-
ing process of giving forms and abolishing forms. The
whole Hegelian hermeneutics turns around the nucleus prob-
lem of the self-overcoming of the representation in the
concept. First, the Spirit must become its "other": a
thing, a stone, an idol. Thanks to this "substantiation"
of the Absolute we know that the Spirit is not far from
us. It has the energy to let itself be known. It has
indeed let itself be known. But, at the same time, it is

the task of philosophy to show that this "alienation" (in
the positive sense of becoming an other) is the starting
point of a process of self-overcoming. In this sense the
death of idols paves the way from representation to con-
cept: death of the "natural" symbols in the "aesthetic"
religion of Greece and in the "ethical" hermeneutics of
this aesthetic religion in Greek tragedy and philosophy;
death of the Hellenic figures of the absolute in the irony
of comedy and in the rationalization of politics. A power-
ful feeling of distress and emptiness prepares the Advent
of Christianity (we must not forget that it is on this oc-
casion that Hegel pronounces the famous dictum Gott ist
tot I which comes from a Lutheran hymn for Good Friday...).
It is against this background that Christianity is the
"Manifested Religion." With it, der Geist ist da. The
Geist is "there" not as a thing, a stone, an animal, a
statue, or a hero, but as a Self. This implies that its
historical manifestation too must die and that the community
has to become the true "body of Christ." In this way, the
two dimensions of "representation" in Christianity—his-
toricity and community—have also to be substantiated and
overcome. Religion, then, is the place where the manifes-
tation of the Spirit and the death of its representation
may be seen.
If the speculative dimension of religious sym-
bolism is recognized to a much greater extent in Hegel than
in Kant, the total absorption of the "figurative" in the
"conceptual" seems to be the price that has to be paid for
its full recognition. Hence the Judgment of Karl Barth on
Hegel: the greatest attempt (Versuch) and the greatest
temptation (Versuchung) . I must say that I myself feel
deeply the fascination and the reluctance which Karl Barth
alludes to in this paradoxical statement.
But could we not say that the collapse of the
Hegelian system itself—by this I mean the absolute in-
credibility of the notion of absolute knowledge in a time
of a hermeneutics of suspicion—allows us to look at Kant
142 Semeia
and Hegel from an equal distance? Only now these two

thinkers begin to dialogue within us, so to say, beyond
their deaths and beyond the death of their philosophies.
It is in this way that I may claim—in an ironical manner—
to be a post-Hegelian Kantian. By this I mean that I at-
tempt a second reading of Kant, less historically faithful
than the first, but (perhaps) more fruitful and more appro-
priate to the kind of thought required by the connection
between limit-expressions and limit-experiences.
Let me return to the three main themes which I
emphasized in Kant's philosophy of religion and religious
speculation.
3.332 Speculative theology is dead, we said. And this

is the negative conclusion of the First Critique, in con-
nection with the notion of "transcendental illusion." But
this destruction of speculative theology as a science of
"objects" does not imply that objective knowledge itself
is absolute. On the contrary, objective knowledge is the
labor of "understanding" (Verstand) and "understanding"
does not exhaust the power of "reason" (Vernunft) which
remains the function of the Unconditioned. This distance,
this tension, between "Reason" as the function of the Un-
conditioned and "Understanding" as the function of condi-
tioned knowledge finds an expression in the notion of
"limit" (Grenze) which Kant does not identify with "bound-
ary" (Schranke). The concept "limit" implies not only and
even not primarily that our knowledge is limited, has
boundaries, but that the quest for the unconditioned puts
limits on the claim of objective knowledge to become abso-
lute. "Limit" is not a fact, but an act.
Now, is it possible to give to the limit-concepts
of Kant a less negative function than the prohibitions ad-
dressed by Reason to the claim of objective knowledge to
absolutize itself? Could we not say that the "empty" re-
quirement of an Unconditioned finds a certain fulfillment
in the indirect presentations of metaphorical language,
which, as we said, does not say what things are, but what
they are like? It is because Kant had no idea of a lan-

guage which would not be empirical, that he had to replace
metaphysics by empty concepts. But if we give to poetic
language the function of redescription through fictions,
then we can say that the logical space opened by Kant be-
tween Denken and Erkennen, between "Thought" and "Knowl-
edge," is the place of indirect discourse, of symbol,
parables, and myths, as the indirect presentation of the
Unconditioned.
Somebody will say: why do you not get rid of a
Kantian language and assume directly with Heidegger a new
language, the language of a new ontology, the language of
a new "historicity," more appropriate to articulate con-
ceptually the temporal experience displayed by the par-
ables, as Crossan does by applying the Heideggerian notions
of Advent, Reversal, and Decision to them?
I should like to respond that the creation of a
new language and the emergence of a new ontology are exactly
the kind of thing that a positive interpretation of the
Kantian notion of "limit" requires. There is one qualifi-
cation, however. We are free to create such terms as Ad-
vent, Retrieve, Resolution, etc., but we must preserve the
philosophical awareness that this kind of language is in-
direct, figurative, that it draws its strength from its
hermeneutical potential, therefore that it is not objective.
The "limit" works here as a warning against a new scholas-
ticism. It reminds us that the "is like" implies an "is
not." This is why I do not give up the Kantian vocabulary
of the "limit" imposed by Reason on the claims to objective
knowledge. In the same way as the "tension" between a
literal and a metaphorical interpretation is essential to
the meaning of a metaphor, a tension between the objective
claim of knowledge and the poetic presentation of the Un-
conditioned must be preserved in the new language of Ad-
vent, Retrieve, and Resolution. This language is at the
same time that of limit-concepts and figurative presenta-
tion of the Unconditioned.
144 Semeia
3.333 According to the Second Critique the only "ex-

tension" (Ausweitung) of our knowledge is practical, that
is, it concerns the connection between freedom and law.
This contrast between theoretical limitation and practical
extension may be made more fruitful, if we give a scope to
ethics which escapes the narrowness of morality. Spinoza
called his philosophy an Ethics, without linking the fate
of ethics to the ideas of duty and obligation. If ethics
covers the whole field of our travel from bondage to free-
dom, or, as the French philosopher Jean Nabert says in his
Introduction to Ethics, if ethics is the theory of the
mediations through which we fulfill our desire to be, our
effort to exist, then an ethical interpretation of poetic
and religious discourse has no reductive effects. It opens,
on the contrary, a fruitful dialogue between ethics and
hermeneutics. The concept, once more, is on the side of a
philosophical ethics, whether we conceive ethics in terms
of norms, values, institutions, or in terms of creativity,
free expression, permanent revolution, etc. Now these con-
cepts are empty without their indirect presentation in sym-
bols, parables, and myths. It is the task of hermeneutics
to disentangle from the "world" of the texts, their implicit
"project" for existence, their indirect "proposition" of
new modes of being. These intuitions are blind, to the
extent that ethical concepts are empty. Hermeneutics has
finished its job when it has opened the eyes and the ears,
i.e., when it has displayed before our imagination the
figures of our authentic existence. It is the task of
ethics to articulate its coherent discourse by listening
to what the poets say.
3.334 In Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone,
Kant has set the rules for a philosophical hermeneutics
which can be put under the title of a transcendental inquiry
into the Imagination of Hope. The task assigned by Kant to
this transcendental inquiry could appear less narrow, not
only if we give to ethics a larger scope than the one as-
signed to it by Kant, but if we give to the third question—
What may we hope?—a real autonomy in respect to the second

question—What must we do?
Kant himself gives two important hints in this
direction:
(1) In the Second Critique itself, there is an
important discrepancy between the main question of the Dia-
lectics and the main question of Analytic. The latter con-
cerns the "principle of practical reason," i.e., the
formal link between freedom and law. The former concerns
what Kant calls the possibility of the "full or complete"
object of the Will. To this quite different question is
linked the reconciliation of Freedom and Nature, i.e., the
achievement of Man as a Whole. The concrete problem of the
actualization of freedom belongs to this new sphere of in-
quiry. With it the third question begins to get some kind
of autonomy.
(2) The second hint of what could be a transcen-
dental inquiry into the imagination of hope has to be found
in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, to the ex-
tent that it is not contained in the Second Critique, not
even in the Dialectics. The Religion Within the Limits of
Reason Alone gets its autonomy from the consideration of
Radical Evil. Because of evil, the existential conditions
for the "Regeneration" of the Will cannot be deduced from
the formal condition of Freedom. For the same reason, the
narratives and symbols which "represent" the victory of
the Good Principle over the Evil Principle are not expend-
able. In fact they are neither "beyond" nor "within" the
limits of Reason alone. They would be beyond if they
claimed to add anything to our objective knowledge. They
would be within if they could be reduced to moral allegor-
ies. Their status is rather that of a "Schematism" of
Hope. They are niether "within" nor "without" a rational
philosophy. They are on the boundary-line. Only the aware-
ness of this paradoxical status may preserve symbols from
becoming idols.
146 Semeia
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^ s
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OUTLINE

As I am neither an exegete nor a theologian, I

On the other hand, a formal analysis makes the

0.2 The Poetic Approach

Here I shall try to identify the intermediary

the parables are narratives within a narrative (the Gospel)

I call this second approach a poetic approach

0.3 Parables and Religious Discourse

If parables are kinds of "poetic" texts, what

traditional usages of the corresponding forms of discourse

0.4 The Ultimate Referent of the Parable

Let us return to our previous statement concern-

of the mimetic resources of some realistic and extravagant

distinct from the symbolic basis. Translations from one

0.53 I should like next to resume the problem of the

1. The Narrative Form

of the protagonist (the real, ordinary life-world) and the

1.15 This implies a similar homogeneity in the imagery

1.16 A decisive function belongs to the scenes of

1.17 The temporal structure is ruled by the "plot,"

1.18 A last formal consideration may be extracted

1.2 The Formal Analysis of the Story: Propp

V. Propp is the ancestor of the structural analy

to follow from description and we cannot classify things

1.21 "The constant and permanent events of the folk-

1.22 "The number of functions which comprise the fan-

it from the actors, and only consider it from the point of

1.24 The functions neither exclude nor contradict one

1.252 The action is tied to a function that Propp calls

1.254 In spite of the unique character of the concate-

1.26 The decisive step is marked by the passage from

1.27 If we eliminate the variables and save only the

in effect to postulate a unique source. Thus it is the

1.29 The decisive phenomenon is the introduction of

(e) to enumerate the finite set of these functions, and

Greimas, Roland Barthes, and Claude Bremond. Greimas' aim

adverbs such as "readily" vs. "nevertheless") and more gen<-

1.32 Greimas concedes that this is a tentative frame-

1.33 In the case of the parables it is easy to see

We have not yet made use of the first—and prin-

that the system of relations between "functions" is "achron-

1.36 Could we not say, then, that the function of

1.37 Do not these last quotations come as a strange

Before returning to this difficult problem, let

1.4 French Structural Analysis of Narratives

A new step was taken when some French structur-

1.41 For them, the autonomy of the text is not only a

1.42 This second step is encouraged by the whole work

this working hypothesis, the large units which are at least

we have parental relationships by turns overesteemed or

1.43 Let me now give an example of this ultra-struc-

from a historico-critical standpoint, it is highly signifi-

decision not to disconnect the parable from the whole se-

the réseau or the place where the codes "s'implicitent"

1.431 The opposition, Jesus came out...Jesus came back,

sequence is closed by the request for information (13:10),

1.433 The third fragment (13:10-17) is a metalinguis-

As concerns the inner structure of this frag-

the homogeneity between typos and topos and reasserts the

If we consider that it is Jesus who speaks the

1.44 Let me now make my own remarks about this subtle

1.441 At first sight it leaves no room for an inter-

1.442 For a second consideration, this analysis not

This statement, I think, is the key to the claim

statement is making a "kinship" appear where ordinary vi