Parable of the Talents

The Parable of the Talents (sometimes just the Parable of Talents) is a parable of Jesus in . It was told to illustrate an aspect of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christians have taken it to mean that diligence in carrying out one's responsibilities is essential for more important tasks in the future.

The parable

The parable tells of a master who was leaving his home to travel, and before going gave his three servants different amounts of money. On returning from his travels, the master asked his servants for an account of the money given to them. The first servant reported that he was given five talents, and he had made five talents more. The master praised the servant as being good and faithful, gave him more responsibility because of his faithfulness, and invited the servant to be joyful together with him.

The second servant said that he had received two talents, and he had made two talents more. The master praised this servant in the same way as being good and faithful, giving him more responsibility and inviting the servant to be joyful together with him.

The last servant who had received one talent reported that knowing his master was a hard man, he buried his talent in the ground for safekeeping, and therefore returned the original amount to his master. The master called him a wicked and lazy servant, saying that he should have placed the money in the bank to generate interest. The master commanded that the one talent be taken away from that servant, and given to the servant with ten talents, because everyone that has much will be given more, and whoever that has a little, even the little that he has will be taken away. And the master ordered the servant to be thrown outside into the darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

A similar parable, called "The Parable of the Minas" or "The Parable of the Pounds" is found in , the main difference being that the master entrusted his servants with equal amounts, and that a mina was of much less value than a talent.

Jesus described the Kingdom of Heaven using the perspective of Jewish society at that time. He begins with the Parable of The Ten Virgins to illustrate, and continues with the Parable of Talents. Talents were used as a unit of currency. It is impossible to be exact about their value, and different kinds of talent were in use. However, even the lowest value for a talent puts it as worth several thousand denarii, and a denarius was the usual payment for a day's labour. So a talent was the value of many years of work by an ordinary person. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, lists precise values of the talent: "The Babylonian silver talent was equal to 3,000 shekels; the Greek talent contained 60 minae or 6000 silver drachmae, and the value of the late Attic talent of silver, with pure silver at 4s 9d, an oz. troy, has been estimated at £200."

Parable text from the Gospel of Matthew

Commentary

Joachim Jeremias (1900-1979), in his book "The Parables of Jesus", concluded that the original meaning of the parable was not an ethical one about every man. Instead, he saw it as aimed at the scribes who had withheld "from their fellow men a due share in God's gift...Much had been entrusted to them: the Word of God; but like the servants in the parable, they would shortly have to render account of how they had used that which had been committed to them." Jeremias also believed that in the life of the early church the parable took on new meaning. "The journey of the merchant...is an allegory of Christ, his journey has become the ascension, his subsequent return...has become the Parousia, which ushers his own into the Messianic banquet."

The parable as social critique

William Herzog offers an alternative interpretation of the parables of Jesus. According to his interpretive scheme, Jesus employed parables in his verbal engagement with his contemporaries for the purpose of getting them to think about God's justice and their social responsibility. His stories expose the social inequities in Palestinian society that violate the teachings of the Torah and motivate the hearers to live and work for peace and justice.

Herzog's analysis of the parable of the talents focusses on the fact that the "man" of the story is not described as an exemplary person. [William R. Herzog II, "Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed", pp. 150-168.] Much rather, this wealthy man does not deny the claim of the third servant: "thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown". The parable suggests that he is an aristocrat, a rapacious absentee-landlord, whose sole interest is maximizing his financial gain. Only the third servant refuses to participate in the game of increasing his lord's financial wealth "at the costs of the poor."

When he upbraids the third servant, the aristocrat's remark shows that he himself is in violation of the Old Testament laws that Jesus seeks to defend: the third servant has wilfully refused to invest the money, which would have resulted in the aristocrat regaining his capital "with interest" (Matt. 25:27). This kind of financial transaction is forbidden in the Torah; see the biblical teaching on usury.

The servant's frank remark shows him to be a "whistle-blower". He calls the aristocrat harsh and merciless (which are not God-like qualities). He exposes the sham of what has occurred: the other servants have allowed themselves to be used for exploitative purposes, for which they will also be rewarded by the wicked aristocrat.

According to Herzog's reading, the point of the parable is to show how much it can cost for an underling to expose the truth about injustice in society. Jesus' hearers, for the most part poor villagers, would have asked themselves the difficult question about how they would behave toward an aristocrat's former helper who had become a whistle-blower and had been thrown out of rich man's household ("wailing and gnashing of teeth"). They would also learn from the parable the necessity of not isolating themselves, so as not to play into the hands of the ruling elite.

The term 'talent'

The parable is apparently the origin of the use of the word 'talent' to use a skill or ability, from the common interpretation of the story to teach that we are under a moral obligation to use our abilities rather than bury them; compare the phrase in Milton's sonnet on his blindness,:"And that one talent which is death to hide":"Lodged with me useless..."

References

See also

* Five Talents (Christian microfinance charity)
* Stewardship
* Servant leadership
* Usury

External links

* [http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=2278 http://www.bible.org]
* [http://www.gardenofpraise.com/bibl52s.htm http://www.gardenofpraise.com]
* [http://dianagrayministries.net/bible/bs_parable_pounds.html http://dianagrayministries.net]
* [http://www.fivetalents.org http://www.fivetalents.org] - Living the Parable
* [http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_gospels/parable_of_the_harsh_master/lk19_11.html Parable of the Harsh Master] - The Brick Testament