Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool: Luke 12:13-34 among Ancient Conversations on Death and Possessions

Rindge reads Luke’s parable of the Rich Fool (12:16-21) as a sapiential narrative and situates this parable within a Second Temple intertextual conversation on the interplay of death and possessions. A rich analysis of Jewish (Qoheleth, Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, Testament of Abraham) and Greco-Roman (Lucian, Seneca) texts reveals a web of disparate perspectives regarding how possessions can be used meaningfully, given life’s fragility and death’s inevitability and uncertain timing. Departing from standard interpretations of Luke’s parable as a simple critique of avarice, Rindge explicates the multiple ways in which the parable and its immediate literary context (12:13-34) appropriate, reconfigure, and illustrate this contested conversation, and shows how these themes are chosen and adapted for Luke’s own existential, ethical, and theological concerns.