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The Sower · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  A farmer throws seed onto a path, onto rock and among thorns, and most of it
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  comes to nothing. Scholars have spent a surprising amount of time arguing over
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  whether a real farmer would sow like that.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter four, verses one to twenty, in the
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  World English Bible, British Edition. Jesus is beside the Sea of Galilee.
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  Again he began to teach by the seaside. A great multitude was gathered to him, so
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  that he entered into a boat in the sea and sat down.
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  All the multitude were on the land by the sea. He taught them many things in
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  parables, and told them in his teaching, “Listen! Behold, the farmer went out to
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  sow. As he sowed, some seed fell by the road, and the birds came and devoured it.
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  Others fell on the rocky ground, where it had little soil, and immediately it sprang
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  up, because it had no depth of soil. When the sun had risen, it was scorched; and
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  because it had no root, it withered away. Others fell amongst the thorns, and the
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  thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
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  Others fell into the good ground and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing.
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  Some produced thirty times, some sixty times, and some one hundred times as
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  much.” He said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”
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  When he was alone, those who were around him with the twelve asked him about the
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  parables. He said to them, “To you is given the mystery of God’s Kingdom, but to
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  those who are outside, all things are done in parables, that ‘seeing they may see and
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  not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they
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  should turn again, and their sins should be forgiven them.’
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  ”
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  He said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable?
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  How will you understand all of the parables? The farmer sows the word.
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  The ones by the road are the ones where the word is sown; and when they have
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  heard, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them.
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  These in the same way are those who are sown on the rocky places, who, when they
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  have heard the word, immediately receive it with joy.
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  They have no root in themselves, but are short-lived.
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  When oppression or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they
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  stumble. Others are those who are sown amongst the thorns.
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  These are those who have heard the word, and the cares of this age, and the
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  deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in choke the word,
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  and it becomes unfruitful. Those which were sown on the good ground are those who
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  hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit, some thirty times, some sixty times, and
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  some one hundred times.”
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  It's one of the few parables where the Gospels give us not only the story but an
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  explanation of it, in Jesus' own words. That should make it simple.
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  In some ways it makes it harder. Let's start on the shore.
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  Mark says the crowd was so large that Jesus got into a boat, sat down in it on
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  the water, and taught the people standing on the land.
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  Matthew tells it the same way, with the crowd standing "on the beach."
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  There's a small inlet on the northern shore of the lake, about halfway between
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  Capernaum and Tabgha, that has come to be called the Cove of the Sower.
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  In 1976 the researcher B. Cobbey Crisler published an acoustic study of it
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  in the journal Biblical Archaeologist. He found that the slope works something
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  like a natural theatre, and estimated that five to seven thousand people could fit in
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  the area below the modern road and still hear a speaker.
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  Nobody can say that this was the place. But it shows that teaching a crowd from a
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  boat was a practical idea.
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  And Mark sets the scene in a particular moment. In the chapter before, the
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  Pharisees have begun plotting with the Herodians "how they might destroy him,"
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  and scribes who came down from Jerusalem have said that he "has Beelzebul," that
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  his power comes from the prince of demons. So the parable comes as opposition is
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  growing.
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  Now the farming. Listeners have often wondered why this farmer is so careless,
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  scattering seed on a path and on rock. The scholar Joachim Jeremias, following the
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  earlier work of Gustaf Dalman, argued that he wasn't careless at all.
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  In Palestine, Jeremias said, farmers sowed first and ploughed afterwards, turning the
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  seed into the ground. So a farmer would sow over the path that people had trodden
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  across the stubble, because it was going to be ploughed up anyway.
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  Many interpreters took up that view. But it didn't go unchallenged.
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  The scholar K. D. White argued that the ground was usually ploughed before sowing,
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  and others have pointed to passages in the prophets that seem to assume ploughing
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  came first. Another scholar, Philip Payne, suggested that both happened, depending on
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  the season. Scholars differ, and one South African scholar has called the whole
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  argument "a meaningless debate," because the parable doesn't depend on it.
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  The harvest is where the numbers come in. The good soil yields "thirty times, some
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  sixty times, and some one hundred times as much." How big is that?
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  One commentary in the IVP series gathers figures from the ancient world.
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  Italy and Sicily averaged a return of about five or six times the seed sown.
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  Irrigated fields in Egypt averaged about seven. The average harvest in Palestine
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  may have been seven and a half to ten times the seed.
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  By that measure, thirty, sixty and a hundredfold are extraordinary.
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  In the book of Genesis, Isaac "reaped in the same year one hundred times what he
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  planted," and the text treats that as a sign of God's blessing.
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  But here too, scholars differ. Some argue that Mark is counting the yield of a
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  single seed, not a whole field, and that a single grain producing thirty or sixty or
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  a hundred grains is good but not fantastic. Others read the numbers as
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  deliberate exaggeration, to make the good soil stand out against the three failures.
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  The answer changes the feel of the story. Either the harvest is a solid, ordinary
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  success, or it's a miracle.
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  The other three Gospel writers don't quite agree on the numbers either.
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  Matthew gives them in reverse: "some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and
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  some thirty." Luke gives only one figure, "one hundred times."
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  And there's a fourth version, outside the Bible, in the Gospel of Thomas, a
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  collection of sayings found in Egypt in 1945 near the town of Nag Hammadi.
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  In Thomas, the seed on the thorns is choked and "the worm ate them," and the
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  good soil yields "sixty per measure and a hundred and twenty per measure."
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  Thomas tells the story with no explanation at all.
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  Between the story and the explanation in Mark comes a passage that has troubled
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  readers for a long time. The disciples ask about the parables, and Jesus says, "To
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  you is given the mystery of God's Kingdom, but to those who are outside, all things
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  are done in parables." Then he quotes the prophet Isaiah, in a way that sounds as if
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  the parables were meant to keep people from understanding: "that seeing they may
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  see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they
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  should turn again, and their sins should be forgiven them."
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  In Isaiah, those words are part of the commission God gives the prophet in
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  chapter six: "Go, and tell this people, 'You hear indeed, but don't understand.'"
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  Isaiah is being warned that his message will not be heeded.
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  Notice too that Isaiah's version ends "and turn again, and be healed," where Mark has
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  "forgiven." And look how Matthew handles the same moment.
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  In Matthew, Jesus says, "I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don't
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  see." Mark's "so that" has become "because." Some commentators take
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  Matthew's wording as gentler than Mark's. Others think the hard meaning is there in
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  both. Mark himself adds, a few verses later, that Jesus spoke the word to the
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  crowds "as they were able to hear it."
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  Then comes the explanation. The farmer sows the word.
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  The seed by the road is taken at once by Satan. The rocky ground is people who
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  receive the word "with joy" but have no root, and stumble "when oppression or
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  persecution arises." The thorns are "the cares of this age, and the deceitfulness
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  of riches, and the lusts of other things." And the good ground is those who "hear the
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  word, accept it, and bear fruit." Luke's version of the explanation adds a phrase
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  of its own: they "produce fruit with perseverance."
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  Here's the difficulty. Some scholars think the explanation, with its focus on the
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  different kinds of hearers, comes from the early church rather than from Jesus.
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  Some have gone further and said the parable's first meaning has been lost.
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  Others think the story is plainly authentic, partly because its numbers are
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  so uneven, thirty, sixty, a hundred, with no neat pattern.
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  Even among those who accept it, there's no agreement on what it was about.
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  For some, the seed is Jesus' message and the sower is Jesus himself.
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  For others, Jeremias among them, the story is mainly about the harvest: whatever is
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  lost along the way, the yield at the end is enormous.
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  Mark follows it with two more seed stories, the seed that grows while the
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  farmer sleeps, and the mustard seed that becomes a great plant, which suggests that
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  for Mark, at least, the harvest matters.
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  The early church fathers read it closely, too. John Chrysostom said of the seed,
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  "three parts of it perish, and one is preserved." And one commentator, the
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  bishop Charles Ellicott, looked at the hundredfold and said that Isaac's harvest
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  showed it was "not unheard of," while another, Heinrich Meyer, warned that such
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  details "should not be pressed."
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  What the story does make plain is the farmer's way of working.
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  He doesn't test the ground before he throws. Seed goes on the path, the rock
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  and the thorns as well as the good soil, and the story doesn't scold him for it.
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  Whatever the parable is about, that farmer is generous with his seed.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  If you were the one telling this story, would you want your listeners to hear it
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  as a warning about the soil, or as a promise about the harvest?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.