Hey Andy, how do Jesus’ parables contain so much knowledge that they’ve been studied by scholars for almost 2000 years, yet the understanding in them is simple enough to be read as children’s stories?
Hi! You know, you’re not the first one to ask this. The Apostles actually asked Jesus this same thing when He was speaking to the people in parables. He said that to them, the secrets of the Kingdom have been revealed, but to the people Jesus was telling them to, they haven’t.
Why We Understand the Parables
Though the apostles didn’t yet have the Holy Spirit at that time, we (those of us who have accepted and follow the Lord Jesus Christ) do, and He actually explains to us what the Scriptures are saying. It’s just like you said, too. Scholars can be reading the Bible for centuries and not get it, then we can read it and it totally makes sense, even appears as simple as a child’s book. That’s because the Holy Spirit that’s inside us explains it to us as we’re reading it.
This doesn’t mean we don’t need to study the Word though, for there is often much lost in translation, such as:
- Culture of the original audience
- References to the Old Testament
- Language barriers – the English actually isn’t the greatest language that it can be translated into. If you should ever learn to read the Greek, you’ll see that there’s so much more depth and meaning in the original language that just doesn’t come out in English.
- Archaeological finds – Many other nations throughout the Middle East wrote down the events that happened, even back in Abraham’s time. So they help us understand the culture at the time, the laws, the governments, the names of cities, certain key people, etc., which actually not only prove such as they were mentioned in the Bible, but also help us to better understand God and His Word
Many Biblical scholars have already done the research that will still blow our minds, even when we get the basics of what it’s saying.
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