I wish Jesus had told the Parable of the Mindless Consumer to show how stupid it was to quietly accept advertising’s blatant failure to deliver. Consumerism fails even at a most basic level. Yet lamely, blindly, deafly and stupidly, people roll over and beg for more.

There are a number of fashionable theories that reduce Jesus’ parables to little more than advertising jingles of his day. The theories argue that parables can’t have one meaning, but are self-standing ‘adverts’ with many, equally valid meanings.

They may not intend this as an insult. Advertising texts are among the most highly crafted messages the world has ever known. Yet they are not without their opponents, such as the French academic Roland Barthes who dissected them with surgical skill and left them to wither in the harsh light of semiology (the study of ‘signs’ in any text). He argued that the role of an author in a work is minimal, that it is readers who give a text its meaning. Perhaps ironically, he was killed crossing a road: some suggest he failed to read the signs.

Fortunately for the rest of us, much of this scholarship becomes so jargon-tied and abstract that it becomes meaningless, leading readers back to less fashionable but more understandable works.

Such as this excellent collection edited by Richard Longenecker, in which 13 New Testament scholars provide the background to help us understand the original context and meaning of Jesus’ parables and how we might live by them.

The parables are central for understanding Jesus and his ministry. Yet they are more than simple stories and can present obstacles to today’s readers hoping to fully grasp their meaning.

Contributors – including Stephen Barton, Craig Evans, Richard France and Richard Longenecker – present well-written, authoritative essays that show how the parables should be interpreted, warn us of any dangers and point us to safe paths to travel.

As we can see from the parables’ Old Testament equivalent of mashal (which could be maxims or proverbs, bywords or taunts, riddles or allegories), they are a form rich with meaning. They were a way of speaking right at home in 1st century Jewish Palestine. Yet they can be applied powerfully in 21st century Australia too, and should be. They can still cut through the most advertising-sodden minds, no matter how deaf or blind Satan has made them.