(ca. 60 B.C.E.–20 C.E.) and Shammai (ca. 50 B.C.E.–30 C.E.)—to which German scholar Joachim Jeremias agrees: “Jesus’ parables are something entirely new. In all the rabbinic literature, not one single parable has come down to us from the period before Jesus; only two similes from Rabbi Hillel who jokingly compared the body with a statue, and the soul with a guest” (Jeremias 1972, 12). Thus, while the Jewish world was familiar with parables as a means of teaching/exhorting, it seems that little before