The word parable derives in turn from the Jewish mashal and is a kind of simile suggested by facts of the life, to which are compared the reality that is wanted to illustrate. 

   Also not being Jesus of it the inventor, the abundance of the use of parables from him done and the way of serving they constitute something unique in the history of the universal literature"

   Why Jesus uses many parables in his preaching? 

   There are a lot of answers from the researchers. Some researchers say Jesus wants to prepare his listeners to his doctrine gradually, without so to hurt, with a light too much long live, intelligence not yet sufficiently prepared. That is Jesus could directly have conceived the parables "with the intention to illuminate the character of extreme novelty, sometimes also paradoxical, of his message".

    Therefore to the light of these stories inspired to the same environment in which Jesus is found to preach: the lake, the country, the fishing, the cultivated field, the mountain, etc., he wants to teach, to his disciples and listeners, that to believe in Him involves radical and total choices (cfr Luca 16); that his announcement of salvation is not alone turned to the Hebrews, but it has by now a course and an universal dimension (Cfr Luke 14,23); that he has finally come to reveal the true face, only, merciful, definitive of God, different from the severe God conceived by so many Hebrews.

   In conclusion, with his presence, the proposal of salvation from God assumes a particular tone of dramatic message, underlined by the parables of the unfaithful servant (Cfr. Luke 12) and of the the tree of shrunken fig tree(Cfr. Luke 13). 

   Finally, his listeners are kept to take a stand in front of this teaching. This means to take on the responsibility of the acceptance or the refusal of same Jesus, as it shines through from the parables of the eschatological judgment(Cfr. Luke 18 and 19).

   Now we must answer to another question: Are the parables native of Jesus? And which portrait of the Teacher does it emerge through of them? 

   To the first question we can answer with certainty that the present parables in the evangelical stories they substantially originate from the same voice and from the preaching of Jesus. Why substantially? Because being, in origin, proclaimed in Aramaic language,  Then they had been translated in Greek, the language of the Gospel and "inevitably, every translation is also interpretation and therefore they can behave some skids of meaning. 

   This shows that the parables have a substratum original Aramaic and therefore they go up again to Jesus. The audience that serves as background to the parables is not that Palestinese anymore, but of the Hellenistic world. 

   To testify these changes of form, but not of substance, we now listen to a famous parable, that of the sower, attested by everybody and three the Gospel sinottici (Mt 13,3-9; Mc 4,3-9; Lc 8,5-8). We bring here the version of Mark that is the most ancient: " 

   «Listen to this! Behold, the sower went out to sow; as he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. "Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil.  "And after the sun had risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.  "Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. "Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold." 9And He was saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear»(Mk 4,3-9). 

   Here is the figure of the sower: but only a part of this seed finds the proper ground to germinate: where 30, where 60, where 100 for one. The rest has burnt from the sun, suffocated by the thorns, or it falls on the naked road, where birdes eat it. 

   In the native intention of Jesus, that is preaching to various types of people, among which are also there those people who don't welcome his message, there is the persuasion, and this he wants to show it  to his adversaries and to the same disciples, that his announcement of salvation, being accompanied now also by failures, incomprehensions, calumnies, is destined to ferment and to mature in an abundant harvest. "The parable of the sower also expresses the wish of the Teacher to reassure the disciples in front of the lack of success of his word and his teaching" (Pius-Ramon Tragan, La Preistoria dei Vangeli, Ed. Servitium. 

   In the written elaboration, happened later a few decades to the oral preaching, it is clear that the audience to whom the evangelists are turned, is not that palestinian people of the times anymore Jesus. Theyt have passed  many years by the primitive preaching and the Gospel is announced by now to all the known world. And then the parable points out another reality that replaces the before and that nevertheless it mirrors the sense of it. The sower is not Jesus but a christian teacher that sows the word of God anymore, therefore a preacher of the Gospel , while the various types of ground don't represent the difficulties and the failures that are interposed to the action of Jesus anymore, but "a certain type of Christians: the inconstant ones, those that frighten him for the persecutions, those that they allows to absorb from the things of this world".

   To the second question that we are set there, related to the person of the Jesus that shines through from the parables, we believe that it is not only the Jesus of the miracles and the Signs, of the authority-exousía and of the extraordinary charm that emanates from him, as we have seen elsewhere, but it is also the Jesus that, in the words and in the gestures, he is surrounded by obstacles and failures of various type by controversies and by incomprehensions. He's the weak Jesus, in which is nevertheless it foresees the God that saves. He's the Jesus that frequents the sinners to bring everybody the salvation, without any preclusion and he doesn't put diaphragms between himself and the man of every idea and culture. You almost finds it hard to glimpse, in this itinerant preacher of Palestine, the God that saves. Yet, looking in filigree through some symptomatic parables, the Mystery of God is glimpse it foresees in this man of Galilee. In the parable of the wine-dressers homicides, surely pronounced toward the end of his terrestrial life, when in front of his eyes the dark shade of the Calvary looks out upon him, Jesus appears and he manifests himself as "Son of the man and Son of his Father, refused by the men:

    "And He began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it,  and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. "At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers. "They took him, and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. "Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. "And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others. "He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' "But those vine-growers said to one another, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!' "They took him, and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others.  "Have you not even read this Scripture: 'The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?" And they were seeking to seize Him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that He spoke the parable against them And so they left Him and went away" (Mc 12,1-12; cfr. Mt 21,33-39; Lc 20,9-5).