This research will examine the parable of the sower and the seed in the New Testament gospel of Mark, 4:1-20. The research will set forth the scriptural and historical context for the parable and then discuss why the dominant symbol of the parable, the seed, is best and most clearly interpreted as a proxy for the Word of God and for the textual-doctrinal authority of the emerging institutional church.
Two well-known characteristics of the book of Mark are that it appears to have been the first gospel written and that it served as the textual authority for Matthew and Luke, the other two synoptic gospels (Biblical, 1999). The fact that Mark functions as textual provenance for other gospels is relevant to understanding the parable of the sower and the seed because the internal evidence of the text--together with the fact that it was written in the apostolic era, possibly before the Roman destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in A.D. 70 but after the martyrdom of Peter at Rome in A.D. 64--is that the text itself was meant to function as a defining doctrinal source authority as the Christian cult (or more exactly the various cults of Christianity that scattered from Jerusalem through various parts of the Roman Empire) moved toward institutional status.
It is, indeed, difficult to overstate the context for the parable of the sower and the seed. In the modern period, as Anderson notes, interpretation of context was marked by a move away from the view that the parables stood for "all the mysteries of Christ and the Church and the Christian faith" (1976, p. 126) and toward the view that "many different viewpoints . . . regarding the actual life-setting of the parables in the ministry of Jesus" (p. 126)--seems such a troublesome issue. Anderson cites several core theses of the meaning of the parables in general to make his point, some that emphasize social milieu, others that emphasize the literary content of a given story. Williamson's ...