Famous New Testament stories and parables
The events of Jesus's life and the parables he told that are most often referred to, and what they mean.
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What do the Gospels actually say about the wise men who visited the infant Jesus?
That magi from the east followed a star to find the newborn king of the Jews and brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew never says there were three; that is inferred from the three gifts. They were not kings but magi, probably astrologers from Persia or Babylon, and they arrived some time after the birth, finding the family in a house. Their visit led Herod to order the killing of the boys in Bethlehem. Myrrh, used in burial, hints at the death ahead.
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What is the Sermon on the Mount?
Jesus's longest block of teaching, in Matthew 5-7, which includes the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the golden rule.
It begins with "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and a list of other surprising blessings. It includes "turn the other cheek", "love your enemies", "do not worry about tomorrow", and the house built on rock. It is the most influential ethical teaching in Western history, shaping figures from Tolstoy to Gandhi. Luke has a shorter version, the Sermon on the Plain.
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What is the golden rule, and where does it come from?
"Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them." Jesus says it in the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus says this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Versions of the rule appear in other traditions, often in the negative form: do not do to others what you would not want done to you. The rabbi Hillel, a generation before Jesus, gave that negative version as the whole of the law. Jesus's version asks for active kindness, not just restraint.
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What happened when Jesus fed the five thousand?
With five barley loaves and two fish from a boy, Jesus fed a crowd of five thousand men, besides women and children, with twelve baskets of leftovers.
It is the only miracle, apart from the resurrection, recorded in all four Gospels. It echoes God feeding Israel with manna in the wilderness, and in John it leads to Jesus calling himself "the bread of life". The twelve baskets are usually read as a hint at the twelve tribes.
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What is the parable of the Good Samaritan?
A story Jesus told in answer to the question "who is my neighbour?", about a man beaten by robbers whom a priest and a Levite pass by, but a Samaritan stops to help at his own cost.
The shock was that the hero was a Samaritan, a member of a despised group, while the religious professionals failed. Jesus turned the question around: not "who counts as my neighbour?" but "who acted as a neighbour?". "Good Samaritan" now means anyone who helps a stranger, and many countries have "Good Samaritan laws" protecting those who give emergency aid.
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What is the parable of the Prodigal Son?
A story about a younger son who demands his inheritance, wastes it, and returns home in disgrace, only to be welcomed with a feast by his father, while his older brother resents it.
"Prodigal" means recklessly wasteful. Asking for an inheritance early was like wishing the father dead, and a respectable father running to meet his son would have been undignified. The story was told to Pharisees who objected to Jesus eating with sinners, so it ends with the older brother outside, refusing to come in, and the question of whether he will is left open.
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What is the parable of the sower?
A story of seed falling on four kinds of ground — the path, rocky soil, thorns, and good soil — which Jesus explained as four ways people respond to God's word.
Only the good soil produces a crop, but when it does, it yields thirty, sixty, or a hundred times what was sown. It is one of the few parables Jesus explains himself, and he treats it as the key to understanding the others.
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What happened when Jesus cleared the temple?
He drove out the merchants and money-changers from the temple courts and overturned their tables, saying they had made a house of prayer into a den of robbers.
Pilgrims needed to buy animals for sacrifice and change money into the temple currency, and the trade filled the court meant for Gentiles to pray in. It was a prophetic act, an acted-out warning against the temple itself. In Mark it is one of the immediate triggers for the leaders' plot to kill him.
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What was the Last Supper?
Jesus's final meal with his disciples, a Passover meal the night before he died, where he gave them bread and wine as his body and blood and predicted his betrayal.
It is the origin of Communion. In John's account Jesus also washed his disciples' feet, a servant's job, and gave them a "new commandment" to love one another. Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the moment Jesus announces "one of you will betray me" is one of the most famous in the world.
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What happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts?
Fifty days after Passover, the Holy Spirit came on the disciples with a sound like wind and tongues like fire, and they spoke in other languages to crowds gathered in Jerusalem from many nations.
Pentecost was already a Jewish harvest festival, which is why Jerusalem was full of pilgrims. Peter preached, and about three thousand people were baptised, so it is often called the birthday of the church. The confusion of languages at Babel is here reversed as each hears the message in their own tongue.
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What is a "road to Damascus" experience?
A sudden, dramatic conversion or change of mind, named after the apostle Paul's encounter with the risen Jesus on his way to arrest Christians in Damascus.
A light from heaven blinded Saul, and a voice asked, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He was led into the city blind, and three days later a believer named Ananias laid hands on him and "something like scales" fell from his eyes, the origin of the phrase "the scales fell from his eyes".