From Proverbs to Parables

Carole J. Lambert is Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University in California. In addition to four National Endowment for the Humanities grants, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Brussels, Belgium. Among other books and articles, she is the author of Is God Man’s Friend? Theodicy and Friendship in Elie Wiesel’s Novels, Ethics after Auschwitz? Primo Levi’s and Elie Wiesel’s Response, and Against Indifference: Four Christian Responses to Jewish Suffering during the Holocaust (C. S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, André and Magda Trocmé). She earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

• Acknowledgments – Introduction – The Importance of Wisdom – Parables and Proverbs – Jesus’ Hebrew Bible Sources for His Parables – Jesus Speaking Wisdom as Wisdom – Reflections on Jesus’ Parabolic Wisdom – What Shaped Jesus’ Artistry? – How Might Jesus Have Become an Author? – Why Did Jesus Draw from the Book of Proverbs? – How Did Jesus Respond to Conventional Proverbial Wisdom? – Conclusion – List of Parables – Index.

“We are storytellers for whom meaning is animated through personal and collective responsivity. Carole Lambert brilliantly shows how Jesus creatively leveraged the wisdom of Proverbs into parables, stories of elemental meaning which have, for millennia, galvanized faithful generativity the world over. For Lambert, Christ’s kingdom is a story already and not yet completed, given to the reconciliation and healing of humanity. New Testament, theology, and literature students will deeply appreciate this work of careful and accessible scholarship.”—The Rev. Dr. Kevin S. Reimer, author of Living L’Arche; co-author, The Reciprocating Self