What’s in the Box? is an adaptation of Matthew 13: 51-52
So Jesus asked his students, “Have you understood all these parables?”
And they said, “Yup.”
Jesus replied back to them, “So, listen, everyone who’s been trained to teach, trained for God’s nation is like someone who’s got a jewellery box in their house. They can bring out the old jewellery, the new jewellery – or both!”
Commentary
Yes, I know. I usually put the commentary on a different blog page. But this parable is really only one sentence long and it also doesn’t fit thematically with the parables it comes after. Matthew seems to be suggesting Jesus used this parable to round off a teaching session (about parables) with another mini-parable on how to use what he’d just taught.
Retelling
In Jesus’ time, a householder would keep their money and valuables at home. If the scribe in the original parable was very wealthy, they’d have a strongroom. Not so wealthy, they’d have a lockbox. Either way, it would contain a jumble of valuable stuff – things they’d inherited and things they’d earned themselves.
For retelling, the reteller would have to consider what sort of places people now live in. If everyone in the area lives in houses, then the parable could easily be retold with the storeroom/strongbox as a junk/spare room, or even the garage. In my area, people often don’t have a big enough flat to reserve a room (especially for junk) or keep one spare. They also often don’t have a garage.
The important point is that Jesus uses something where valuable things (new and old) are stored. The question for retelling is – what sort of storage are people most likely to have, that can make them think this parable applies to them? So, in my case, I selected a jewellery box.
Scribes
The Gospels often groups the ‘Scribes’ with the ‘Pharisees’ – as if they were both terms for political/religious groups. Here, Jesus seems to use the term in the sense of ‘highly educated/religiously trained’. I say ‘seems’ – both Scribes and Pharisees could be found amongst Jesus’ followers. He might have meant people who were both official Scribes and who followed him.
We don’t know how many people in the ancient world could read or write. Probably about 10% of people in the Roman Empire were ‘highly educated’ – but how many more could puzzle out inscriptions, or read a letter (even if they couldn’t write one)? We don’t really know. We especially don’t know in Ancient Judea and Galilee, where the ability to read out the scrolls in the synagogue was prized. It’s possible most Jewish parents had an aspiration for their boys, at least, to have some basic literacy. It’s equally possible that hardly anyone in rural Galilee could read. I’ve seen literacy estimates that go as low as 3% and as high as 30% of males.
What we do know is that Jesus could read well enough to be asked to read the prophets aloud in his home synagogue; that Paul would hand over his letter writing to a trained scribe but could sign his own name and that scribes were expected to explain (as well as read) the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings.
The Treasure
So is the person in this mini-parable getting rid of the stuff in their strongroom? Or are they bringing out the old and the new to use? The word used in the original Greek could mean either – bringing out to chuck away, or just bringing out. However, since Jesus is talking about someone who’s finished their training, he probably means that both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ are still going to be brought out.
And used.
Previous Parable: The Donations (Matthew 13:47-50)
Next Parable: The Shrewd Lettings Agent (Luke 16:1-9)
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