The Parable of a scribe is one of the

Parables of Jesus The parables of Jesus are found in the Synoptic Gospels and some of the non-canonical gospels. They form approximately one third of his recorded teachings. Christians place great emphasis on these parables, which they generally regard as the wo ...

. It appears in the

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and form ...

, chapter 13, verses 51–53. This parable is as follows: "Then He said to them, “Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old." New King James Version.

Interpretation

This parable is the final one in the chapter of Matthew 13. It tells of a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

or a Hebrew Scribe who is converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

. This parable, like the rest of the parables in Matthew 13, describes the Kingdom of Heaven as the Church or the body of Christ. Here an Old Testament scribe who is converted to Christianity is compared to a house owner who brings out old and new things from his household. As we can understand from the passage, the scribe is the house owner. The difficulty is around the phrase "new and old". This can be interpreted as the new and old testaments in the

bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

. As a scribe who rewrites the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...

knows it better than anyone, so when he became a disciple of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...

or the teachings of

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...

, he will be able teach from both the old and new testaments. This parable also gives a hint that studying the old testament only would not make a person to go to heaven. If one longs to be a true Christian he needs to study the new testament also.

References

{{Parables of Jesus, state=expanded Gospel of Matthew Scribe