Abstract:
This article presents a social-scientific and realistic reading of the parable of the Unmerciful
Servant. The parables of Jesus are realistic stories about everyday events in 1st-century Palestine
that evoke specific social realia and practices known to its first hearers. As recent studies on
the parables have shown, papyri from early Roman Egypt provide detailed information on the
implied social realities and practices assumed in the parables. In reading the parable through
the lens of patronage and clientism and against the background of the relationship between
royal ideology and debt release attested in documented papyri, it is argued that the parable
suggests that in the basileia of God debt should be released in terms of general reciprocity,
emulating the way in which patrons release debt for the sake of honour.
