Did Jesus Really Say That?

I spent an absorbing hour or two yesterday trying not to push Jesus through the grid of my presuppositions. Rudolf Bultmann's "Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?" is one of his seminal articles, and the question is a tad awkward. Can any of us come to a text without much of our mind already in the process of being made up by our experiences, prejudices, extent of previous learning, existential commitments, a bias in favour of what we already think? And when the text is the Gospel account of Jesus, what he said and did, how can we possibly read it without what we already think of Jesus shaping our preferences for the exegtical options?

Here's the problem. Luke 16.1-8a is a scandalous parable. Scandal, deriving from 'skandalon', "an impediment placed in the way causing one to stumble". Could Jesus really be saying that embezzling and squandering an employer's property, and then quick witted cleverness in using the proceeds to buy yourself out of trouble is something to be commended? If Jesus did say that what does that do to our view of Jesus? If he couldn't possibly have meant what it seems he said, what did he mean? And why did he say it in the first place? And here's the hard bit - how far is our difficulty in interpreting this parable due to our refusal to believe Jesus might have said something so offensive?

That raises further questions. Was Jesus being ironic? Are we so unable to think ourselves into the codes and norms of a very different culture, that we become postmodernists with a dangerous residue of literal woodenness? Does reverence for Jesus get in the way of that deeper devotion that tries to hear the authentic voice of Jesus, however disconcerting? In the parable itself, was it the master who commended the dishonest manager, or the voice of Jesus, or the voice of Luke the narrator? And what was commended? Was it the dishonesty, embezzlement and bribery, or the recognition of crisis and the urgent action taken to survive. In which case the methodoloy (cunning dishonesty) isn't the point, indeed is beside the point; and instead the alertness to see and the motivation to survive the coming crisis, that is the point. Or is it? Or is that exegetical option driven by my presuppositions about what Jesus could or couldn't say?

I am happy to hear from others who have puzzled over this parable in pleasurable perplexity and exercised exegetical energy extensively - and if you have reached any conclusions that might have survived the process of presuppositional prejudices - that is, if such a thing is possible? (Smiles broadly!) 

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

I am sure there is more than a little irony. The phrases that jump out at me are the 'children of light' and faithfulness in little as an argument for receiving what is your very own. I think of the children of light as a reference to purity groups like the sect at Qumran. Though they recognize the need for purity, they are not able to achieve it since there is so little shrewdness in them. The use of money by the child of this world to have influence is a move indicating shrewdness, a commendable virtue. So how naive are we who imagine we are children of light? How impossible to see or receive what is our very own?

[helen]

I'm not a trained theologian, but as far as I understand it the story is essentially as follows: the manager is sacked for financial irregularities (incompetence? fraud?) and needs to hand in the full accounts for audit. So he decides he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and cooks the books so as to make himself some extra 'friends'.
To me, that suggests the original problem was fraud - his reputation has gone anyway, so he might as well get some people to owe him a favour. Which is entirely logical and a smart thing to do in that situation.
Whereas, if the manager had been a 'person of the light' then the original problem would be more likely to be incompetence, so it wouldn't occur to them to fiddle the books deliberately.
I think verse 9 has to be sarcastic, given what follows: Jesus saying if we cheat on small things (which might look like the smart thing to do) then we can't be trusted full stop; if we can't be trusted with earthly stuff, then how can we expect to be trusted with heavenly stuff?
So the choice comes down to honesty (which may apparently leave you worse off) or using your cunning to protect yourself (which gives better short-term results in this world but bad long-term ones with God).