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The parables were Jesus' favoured instrument for communicating his message to his disciples, and for his attempt to break through the resistance of the scribes and Pharisees who opposed him. In the commentaries on individual parables it will become clear that many of them grew out of polemical encounters where Jesus had to defend his claims and explain his association with outcasts and sinners.

But Jesus never stopped at defence, and he never intended retaliation for the attacks against him. His motivation went much deeper. He intended to plant a seed of God's truth in story form, hoping that as it ruminated through the memory of his sympathetic hearers they would come to a deeper understanding and, perhaps, acceptance of what he was teaching.

This is precisely what centuries of discussion about the parables have done and what the present work hopes to continue by giving the parables another hearing.