The land is ours, not yours : land as life and end of life in the parables of the Galilean

Abstract

The parables told by Jesus the Galilean, when read from a realistic perspective, can be seen as a window to the exploitative socio-economic, political, and religious situation of the peasantry in first-century Roman Palestine. The Galilean’s parables picture this exploitative world, and also speak of ways to address the societal ills of his day. In an agrarian world, land meant life. For most of the peasantry, however, this was not the case anymore. In reaction to this situation, Jesus proclaimed the possibility of a world in which the land, especially its produce, belongs to everyone. This world he called the kingdom of God, a different kind of world, a world ruled by God’s generosity and goodness. In this world, everybody has enough.