The Parable of the Talents

[3uGH7D4MLj]

When I was very young I came across the parable of the talents, preached by Jesus, Matthew 25 and Luke 19. I heard it from the pulpit or in a Bible reading. I can remember being pretty disheartened because I knew at a very young age that I had no taste for speculation with money, wheeling and dealing, etc.

I thought that the slaves who hid the money safely away did pretty well. I thought they did just fine. No loss anyway. And I thought that the master was pretty harsh punishing the slave who didn't make a profit, casting him into the outer darkness, and here's the rebuke:

"You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest."

So here the master was saying to the slave, you know I deal unscrupulously, why did not you also deal unscrupulously? Learning about this did not inspire me to study the workings of Wall St. It did make me ask why is Jesus using this creep master as an example in a parable?

I still feel the same way, I tend not to try to cheat people, or buy low and sell high, or engage in forms of business that focus on getting other people's money into my own pocket. I can't help it. I deal with people as I would have them deal with me.

Thoughts?

[Logicus]

From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

If you have a bit of spiritual knowledge, you are expected to use it to increase your knowledge. If you do not use it, and instead satisfy yourself with the knowledge you have, you will lose even that. Attaching yourself to the one little bit you have sets it up as a kind of idol. It becomes the most important thing, blinding you to greater possibilities. Only by using your knowledge to further your knowledge can you be said to be using it as God intended.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

If you have a bit of spiritual knowledge, you are expected to use it to increase your knowledge. If you do not use it, and instead satisfy yourself with the knowledge you have, you will lose even that. Attaching yourself to the one little bit you have sets it up as a kind of idol. It becomes the most important thing, blinding you to greater possibilities. Only by using your knowledge to further your knowledge can you be said to be using it as God intended.

Thanks Logicus, you give two interpretations.

The first one I don't think applies, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected." Since the slaves would have all been ok if they had doubled their money in investments no matter how much they were given.

Your second take, that it applies to spiritual knowledge sounds ok except that it's a kind of overkill to say that if you don't increase your knowledge that you will be cast into the outer darkness with those weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth.

This is a parable, supposed to make ideas clear to ordinary people by using familiar terms. I guess over many years interest would accrue, but It still seem funny to me that gain from speculation would be used as an example here. Why would Jesus hold up an unscrupulous businessman as an example of something good?

[Logicus]

Jesus's story is about the good slave, not the businessman. Everything that Jesus says is aimed at the spiritual life. None of his parables have any other meaning than the spiritual. The businessman is in the roll of God (relative to the slaves who represent ordinary people), and Jesus is saying "This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like". If you have a gift and you do not use it, you will lose it. If you have a gift and you use it, more will come your way. That is the point of the parable.

If you receive a great gift, then greater things are expected of you. It is still the same idea, and there are not "two takes" in my statements.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

Jesus's story is about the good slave, not the businessman. Everything that Jesus says is aimed at the spiritual life. None of his parables have any other meaning than the spiritual. The businessman is in the roll of God (relative to the slaves who represent ordinary people), and Jesus is saying "This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like". If you have a gift and you do not use it, you will lose it. If you have a gift and you use it, more will come your way. That is the point of the parable.

If you receive a great gift, then greater things are expected of you. It is still the same idea, and there are not "two takes" in my statements.

I appreciate your comment.

Looking at the story as objectively as I can I see three slaves, one is given five talents, one is given two talents, and the last one is given one talent. The first two turn a profit, they both double their money, and they find favor with their master. The last slave who doesn't have the courage to risk investing hides his allotment of money and returns it to his master with no profit. He is fired, thrown into the outer darkness, etc.

The first two slaves perform equally well with what they are given, and receive a similar reward except that the one talent that the wicked slave returned is given to the favorite slave, the one who received five talents.

It seems to me that the strongest message is that you have to show a profit to gain favor with the master, or that if you don't show a profit you will be severely punished. More is not expected of the first slave, and more is not received. The first and second slave yield the same profit. But the dramatic turn of the story is the failure of the wicked slave and his punishment.

I can't help being curious about Jesus' representing God as an unscrupulous businessman and the culture of speculation that pervades the story. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm also wondering why the slow and sheepish slave met with such harsh punishment.

[Logicus]

It seems to me that the strongest message is that you have to show a profit to gain favor with the master, or that if you don't show a profit you will be severely punished.

It is a symbolic story. The "profit" is spiritual knowledge. If you do not use the spiritual knowledge that has been given you to know, then you will lose the wisdom you once had. That is the "punishment". It isn't about business, it is about living spiritually. Jesus uses the upside down logic of the story to demonstrate how the Kingdom of Heaven differs from ordinary life.

There are many of these comparisons in Jesus's teachings. They are not meant to be taken literally. This is why he takes the time to explain the parables to the apostles. They listened to the words, but missed the meaning.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

Here's something I found, a different, less mind boggling version of the parable. Maybe the carousing part was redacted by the canonizers:

Eusebius of Caesarea includes a paraphrased summary of a parable of talents taken from a "Gospel written in Hebrew script" (generally considered in modern times to be the Gospel of the Nazarenes); this gospel was presumably destroyed in the destruction of the Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima in the 7th century and has yet to be found. In that gospel, Eusebius writes that while the man who had hid the talent was rebuked for his burial, only the man who had received two talents had invested and gained a return on his investment. The recipient of the five talents instead "wasted his master’s possessions with harlots and flute-girls;" it was he, in the Hebrew gospel, that was sent into the darkness (Eusebius expressly identifies the darkness as being imprisonment).[10]

[Belinda]

The parable of the talents is less about making money, although increasing a monetary investment may be life-enhancing, as about living to the best of one's ability before one dies.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

It is a symbolic story. The "profit" is spiritual knowledge. If you do not use the spiritual knowledge that has been given you to know, then you will lose the wisdom you once had. That is the "punishment". It isn't about business, it is about living spiritually. Jesus uses the upside down logic of the story to demonstrate how the Kingdom of Heaven differs from ordinary life.

There are many of these comparisons in Jesus's teachings. They are not meant to be taken literally. This is why he takes the time to explain the parables to the apostles. They listened to the words, but missed the meaning.

Yes I know that it's a symbolic story. It can be applied in a few different ways, metaphorically. But I'm curous about the face value structure of the story, the attitudes present which would make the story have meaning, why Jesus would use such a story to put his point across.

Talk more about the 'upside down logic'?

-- Updated April 20th, 2013, 3:48 pm to add the following --

The parable of the talents is less about making money, although increasing a monetary investment may be life-enhancing, as about living to the best of one's ability before one dies.

Yes, that may be, but the example used to illustrate the point is pretty unusual, no? The unscrupulous businessman, the earnest but wrong-acting 'wicked' slave's harsh treatment, the rich getting richer, contempt for the weak one, presenting easy money by speculation as a desirable thing, you don't typically get this from Jesus. Makes me wonder about the etymology of the story.

[Belinda]

3uDH7D4ML's reply to me, above, means that he is looking at the provenance of the parable while I was looking at the parable as a viable heuristic for now. I am aware that I am prejudiced in favour of the teachings of Jesus.

I am not able to have any fully informed opinion as to whether Jesus invented the parable or actually told the story. The Jesus Seminar have pronounced upon those matters and as far as I know are more qualified to do so than anyone else, certainly more so than I.

I have been taught that there are insertions in the Gospels , called pericopes, which were put there to suit agendas that may have been different from those of Jesus. For instance the Birth stories are probably pericopes adapted from popular culture regarding gods and the manner of their births.

The' unscrupulous businessman ' as a description of God is okay because nature is as it is, unscrupulous, and it is a fact of nature that if we fail to take risks and invest what talents(!) we have we will fail as fully living human beings.

The fearful slave who buried the talent is governed by fear of risk and lack of trust in God's mercy for failure, not love. Whereas in banking there should be restrictions on the risks the banker takes with other people's money, the slaves were given free reign with the talents. In compassion and trust in God's mercy we should not restrict ourselves except by what is reasonable; the investing slaves were not idiots. Really, I cannot see that there is anything in the parable that is not typical of Jesus. The parable is about the nature of love.

[The Quirkster]

Perhaps over two millennia, with the number of translations undertaken to allow us to understand, there may have been an unintended mistake made, where the moral of the parable was intended to highlight the dodgy businessman and his dealings in context to the slave who had chosen a morally and ethically higher path, which brings into contrast the idea that the slave chose to act on what he thought was right, a noble and moral decision that belied his status as compared to his master who was ignoble and immoral?

Just a thought that flew in and may not actually make sense. Sorry, I do that sometimes.

Cheers

[3uGH7D4MLj]

Perhaps over two millennia, with the number of translations undertaken to allow us to understand, there may have been an unintended mistake made, where the moral of the parable was intended to highlight the dodgy businessman and his dealings in context to the slave who had chosen a morally and ethically higher path, which brings into contrast the idea that the slave chose to act on what he thought was right, a noble and moral decision that belied his status as compared to his master who was ignoble and immoral?

I found some Liberation Theology interpretation along those lines, that the disobedient slave was a whistleblower, punished by the capitalist.

I mentioned this to a friend and he had this idea: <<< It sure looks like a parable not only to make believers out of Wall Street but to please the prosperity gospel breed of preachers as well. But, as you point out, there's a problem. That interpretation just isn't consistent either with Jesus's ministry or the biblical condemnation of usury.

So some have taken refuge in metaphor. By talents, they say, Jesus means that you should devote your artistic ability to spreading the gospel, saving souls, and doing all sorts of good work before the rapture and/or Apocalypse. But the Bible consistently uses talents to mean money, not human qualities or tendencies. And (like the literal interpretation) the metaphorical interpretation doesn't get rid of the punitive god-figure.

So—here's my take on it. The meaning is political. The master is the ruling imperial power of Rome, and the guy who buries his talent has a touch of heroism as he speaks truth to power. >>>

[The Quirkster]

(Nested quote removed.)

I found some Liberation Theology interpretation along those lines, that the disobedient slave was a whistleblower, punished by the capitalist.

I mentioned this to a friend and he had this idea: <<< It sure looks like a parable not only to make believers out of Wall Street but to please the prosperity gospel breed of preachers as well. But, as you point out, there's a problem. That interpretation just isn't consistent either with Jesus's ministry or the biblical condemnation of usury.

So some have taken refuge in metaphor. By talents, they say, Jesus means that you should devote your artistic ability to spreading the gospel, saving souls, and doing all sorts of good work before the rapture and/or Apocalypse. But the Bible consistently uses talents to mean money, not human qualities or tendencies. And (like the literal interpretation) the metaphorical interpretation doesn't get rid of the punitive god-figure.

So—here's my take on it. The meaning is political. The master is the ruling imperial power of Rome, and the guy who buries his talent has a touch of heroism as he speaks truth to power. >>>

Wow, thank you for giving my post credence! I know the parable well, and even though I still can't make hide nor hair of it, my post was a completely spontaneous, random attempt at explaining it. I'm not aware of Liberation Theology, my response just popped into my head. I do know that "talents" were currency at Jesus' time, the most valuable at the time, but "talents" were also a unit of measuring weight in the Old Testament, if I remember correctly, though I may be wrong, so please let me know if this is completely erroneous.

I do like the political interpretation you gave. It's much better than any ideas I have!

Cheers, Dan

[3uGH7D4MLj]

I do know that "talents" were currency at Jesus' time, the most valuable at the time, but "talents" were also a unit of measuring weight in the Old Testament, if I remember correctly, though I may be wrong, so please let me know if this is completely erroneous.

I do like the political interpretation you gave. It's much better than any ideas I have!

Reading about this stuff I came across the idea that the modern usage of the word "talent" was coined to reinforce the metaphor pertaining to this parable — that talent means personal abilities, gifts, etc. Is that possible? The word talent in the modern sense dates from a 14th century interpretation of this parable? The parable was so puzzling that they re-defined a word to try to explain it?

Before that you find the money and weight definitions.

-- Updated April 21st, 2013, 6:30 am to add the following --

The' unscrupulous businessman ' as a description of God is okay because nature is as it is, unscrupulous, and it is a fact of nature that if we fail to take risks and invest what talents(!) we have we will fail as fully living human beings.

The fearful slave who buried the talent is governed by fear of risk and lack of trust in God's mercy for failure, not love. Whereas in banking there should be restrictions on the risks the banker takes with other people's money, the slaves were given free reign with the talents. In compassion and trust in God's mercy we should not restrict ourselves except by what is reasonable; the investing slaves were not idiots. Really, I cannot see that there is anything in the parable that is not typical of Jesus. The parable is about the nature of love.

Your pantheistic overlay is intriguing. Yah, god/nature, completely without scruple. Intriguing, but heretical, no? Won't this line of reasoning get you burned at the stake?

[Gee]

On the first day of my accounting class, the professor asked the class a question. He asked, if you had the equivalent of one dollar, a thousand years ago, and you banked that dollar so that it would earn interest, how much do you think you would have now? Well, there were lots of guesses, and most of us thought that we would be rich, but we were wrong.

The professor explained that we would have roughly the equivalent of one dollar. On the other hand, if we did not bank our money, we would have nothing. The reason for this is inflation. One dollar will not even buy a good loaf of bread right now, but 50 years ago, it could have bought two loaves. What would it have bought 1,000 years ago? But if you reverse that thinking; what buys a loaf of bread 1,000 years ago, would be how much now? Nothing or almost nothing. He then explained that putting your money under the mattress, is the same as giving it away or gradually losing it.

So was this knowledge known in the time of Christ? Well, if there was commerce, then there was inflation, so I expect that it was known. So I don't think that this parable is about money grabbing, corruption, or Wall Street; I think it is about waste and wisdom.

Gee