Other writers usually treat Luke 16:19–31 as a parable and end up denying that it teaches anything about death or the afterlife. They usually give interpretations which are quite wild and farfetched.28 The basic problem is both sides assume that if Christ’s story is a parable, it is meaningless, and if it is not, it must be a literal account. They both fail to recognize that Christ’s teaching was rabbinic in methodology and that rabbinic parables often revolved around real historical characters.