‘Unshrunk Cloth and New Wineskins: Origins in the Experience of Jesus’

Abstract

The brief parables about the new and old cloth and new and old wine figure among the first parables found in Mark’s Gospel (2:21–22). Here Jesus did not adopt language and imagery that others had used before him. He drew on his own experience of life in ancient Galilee—specifically methods for mending torn clothes and storing new wine—to encourage an appropriate reaction to something radically new, the coming of the divine kingdom in and through his own person and activity.