Parables Mean

About the Book

The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongueÉ Isaiah 50:4

Be warned! Though it is fiction, Parables Mean deals with matters of faith. Your religious beliefs will be affected. Jesus and his band were no goody two-sandals.

What does this book, Parables Mean, offer you?

1. It presents solutions to all the parables, showing the true mission of Jesus, and scrapes away the cover stories inserted by the writers and by the redacting of later churchmen.

2. It provides stories, motivations, logic, and allusions that Jesus would have noted to build his theology and mission.

3. It explains how Jesus tested and recruited people for his covert mission work, developed a curriculum for training them, and set the stage for discovery of his true goal.

4. It shows the planning and scheming done by Jesus to reverse a centuries-old view of God as a fearsome and demanding tyrant.

5. It identifies the middle-Bible period writers who were covertly trying to undo what the Pentateuch had envisioned as GodÕs words and acts.

6. It plots out the twists and turns that propelled the Jesus Academy into its final crisis, making Parables Mean a Whodunit and Why?

Parts of the Old and New Testaments lead to different conclusions about Jesus and Moses than what the churches provide to members. The secret undercurrent in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tells a coherent story about the strategies and goals of the mission of Jesus. That undercurrent revises the understanding of the temptation, the beatitudes, prayer, and parables. It changes beliefs regarding sin, repentance, salvation, apocalypse, prophecy, Moses, Mary, John the Baptist and much else. You may mourn the loss of treasured assurances, of magical stories and miracles. You may feel giddy in your new freedom. You may start working toward social change. You will have empathy for those who do not know what you know.

About the Author

Dr. Fredrick is an educator trained in test construction, curriculum, data analysis, and human learning. He grew up on a farm, excelled in his 20 years of schooling, and went to the city. Valuing his upbringing as a Lutheran, he tried to clear up nagging questions about what he learned. He read about God for years. They didnÕt clear up. This, his first book of a planned series, envisions what was happening in Galilee and Jerusalem.