Have you ever wondered what first century discipleship looked like? It certainly was a process. But exactly what was it that Jesus taught His twelve dedicated learners?

The Parable Discovery will begin to take you through the actual first century curriculum for a discipleship to Jesus Christ, as left behind by the Apostle Matthew. This simple book uses the ancient teaching method known as mashal/nimshal and the ancient literary patterns found in the Old Testament to bring Matthew's original discipleship lessons to the forefront. Rest assured, Matthew was no biography. But as you begin to understand The Parable Discovery, you also will learn how the First Gospel was originally meant to be used... simply as a discipleship manual.

Taken from The Parable Discovery:

Many currently take the book of Matthew at face value. And from there they, as Christians, extrapolate lessons from the text usually in singular fashion, one lesson from one paragraph. But because Matthew intended each particular passage be interpreted in light of a parable, we can move from simply trying to interpret the text as it stands on its own, to having Matthew lead us to his desired place of vision. Matthew himself, by choosing to organize his material with this literary pattern (parallelism), has wisely provided for us a hermeneutic - a safeguard to be used in the interpretation of his gospel. The literary pattern, when understood, is like a commentary written by the Apostle himself. This process - comparing the parable with its intended vignette - illuminates the intended lesson from each and every paragraph of the book. The literary pattern Matthew employed, which was parallel and not linear, can be used like a road map to reveal the intended lessons for the disciple. And this is light years beyond our current methods, for it gets us as close to Jesus’ own teachings as we can possibly be, without the Lord Himself, in the flesh as our instructor. In understanding why Matthew included a particular passage at a particular place we have the key to unlocking the text as never before.

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