The parables of Jesus in the New Testament use paradox and metaphor intensively, like The Mote and the Beam [today's Gospel lesson], and verbal exaggeration, deliberate invocation of absurdity. Jesus comes in a tradition of wit and verbal playfulness, which went on being part of the Jewish rabbinical world for a long time. The parables are also dramas. You have to ask yourself: where are you in the story? You’re put in a different position here, and here you’re addressed in different ways, and you can’t capture that in one picture. How would you depict the Good Samaritan, for example? In one way it’s perfectly easy – there’s a chap lying on the side of the road and there’s a chap looking after him. But that completely abstracts from the way the parable is part of a question-and-answer session, a drama, a dialogue, where Jesus says: “Who are you in this story? Where are you going to put yourself in this?”