is. Another important factor of the parable as a literary form is its value as a teaching tool. As we read in the Anchor Bible Series on Matthew,
So far as we know at present, Jesus was the first person to use this method of teaching extensively. The form had already been established; what Jesus did was to take it and make such wide and varied us of it that he gave the parable as a method of teaching renewed vitality (Anchor cxxxii).
A truly literary form also produces works which are open to various interpretations, and Jesus' parables are certainly thus open. They require the active effort and participation of the listener if their deeper meaning or meanings are to be discerned in order to change the listener in a spiritual sense. For, as Hunter and others point out, the parables mean nothing if their connection to the Kingdom of God is not understood.
The Parable of the Sower belongs to the group of Jesus' parables which focus on t
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