Ack! Parables. I hate parables.
The Old Testament is full of poetry, prophecies, chronicles, documentations, storytelling, fairytales.
The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.
Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.
I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.
Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith.
Stories are a different kind of true.
Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.
What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
