The Identity of "the Son" and "the Others": Mark's Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen Reconsidered

Abstract

Post-Holocaust scholars have continued to allow supersessionist instincts to guide their interpretation of the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. Using the hermeneutics of suspicion, this article concludes that Mark's readers would have perceived some allegorical elements within the parable but would not have identified "the son" as Jesus or "the others" as the Christian church. On the contrary, when read with Jewish sensitivities as a variation upon the older vineyard parable of Isaiah 5, Mark's parable serves to reaffirm both Israel's fruitfulness and God's inexhaustible predeliction for Israel. The critical nub of Mark's parable is that, when the Lord returns, Israel will not be destroyed but only the unresponsive temple establishment which treats the prophets of God with contempt.