Charel Daniël du Toit. "‘Unhiding’ Female Characters in the Parables of Luke: A Case for an Unhiding Reading" (PhD Diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2025).

Jesus’ parables in the Gospel of Luke are some of the most frequently cited, retold, and interpreted passages from the New Testament. Yet many of these stories—especially those featuring theological or moral exemplars—center male protagonists, narrate male journeys, and are preserved in androcentric forms. This has led generations of interpreters to assume that the parables were told only to men, about men, and for men. Women, though certainly present, have usually been treated as incidental rather than essential to the world of the stories. However, “‘Unhiding’ Female Characters in the Parables of Luke: A Case for an Unhiding Reading,” a dissertation completed at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, proposes a different approach.

In this study a sustained, interdisciplinary argument is offered for the presence of women in parables where they are not named or explicitly described. Drawing on historical, sociological, and literary-critical tools, the dissertation develops an “unhiding reading”—a hermeneutical strategy designed to recover the likely presence, roles, and significance of female characters in parables such as the Prodigal Son, the Friend at Midnight, and the Good Samaritan.

An “unhiding reading” asserts that in the ancient Mediterranean context, where gender roles were widely understood and culturally encoded, audiences would have imagined and assumed the presence of women in domestic, economic, and ritual scenes—even when such figures are omitted from the narrative.

Methodological Framework and Intervention

At the heart of the study lies the concept of unhiding, which functions as a methodological intervention and a corrective lens to textual androcentrism. This reading strategy insists on employing social imagination to reconstruct the lived worlds behind the texts, especially in settings where women's roles were structurally embedded yet textually silenced. Rather than allegorizing, moralizing, or spiritualizing the parables—as is common in traditional readings—the unhiding reading foregrounds embodied, communal, and material dimensions of life in the first century. Through the application of an “unhiding reading” an alternative reading scenario is produced, one where the modern reader is invited into a space of “double imagination”: to imagine what the ancient audience might have imagined.

The study draws on feminist historiography (notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton[1], Gerda Lerner[2], Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza[3], and Luise Schottroff[4]), social-scientific criticism, intersectional theory, and ancient Mediterranean cultural anthropology. It also engages with Jewish, Greek, and Roman creation narratives to recover dominant models of womanhood in antiquity, using these to frame how first-century listeners might have imagined female presence in parabolic stories.

The following three parable case studies provides the foundation of an unhiding reading. Primary and secondary sources are consulted to determine a “baseline” for the ancient Mediterranean gendered social scripts that might have been evoked by ancient words and narratives. The tables below act as guides to challenge and invite the modern reader’s imagining, incorporating Malina’s “considerate reader” and Bruegemann’s “faithful imagination.”[5] As a result, the considerate reader uses faithful imagination in an act of double imagining to unhide female characters within the parables.

The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32)

Traditional interpretations of the Prodigal Son emphasize themes of forgiveness, repentance, and divine grace. Yet these interpretations often overlook the extensive domestic and economic infrastructure that would have made the narrative legible to first-century audiences.[6] The framework below identifies five key moments in which the presence of women would have been assumed:

The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5–8)

Often read as a commentary on prayer or divine responsiveness, the parable of the Friend at Midnight also rests heavily on the ancient household economy of bread-making, communal sleeping arrangements, and honor-based hospitality. Female characters are central to these dynamics.[7]

The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–35)

Frequently cited for its ethical universalism, the Good Samaritan parable likewise assumes a complex infrastructure of healing, travel, and economic care—most of which rested on the labor of women. From roadside dangers to innkeeping, the text invites an imaginative engagement with the women who sustained these systems.[8]

This reading strategy allows us to imaginatively reconstruct these biblical episodes fulsomely. For example, in a recent (2025) interview with the Dutch newspaper, Nederlands Dagblad, the journalist was so struck by the power of unhiding that he likened it to how children’s bibles often visualize and interpret the Parables. It prompted him to create two AI images of a children’s Bible, one rendering a surface-level reading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and another of an “unhiding” reading:

Broader Implications and Future Research

The “unhiding” approach outlined in this dissertation makes several significant contributions to the field of biblical studies. First, it offers a reproducible model for integrating social-historical data into literary analysis without resorting to speculative eisegesis. Second, it challenges default androcentric readings of parables by foregrounding the social imagination of the text’s original audiences. Finally, it opens paths for feminist and intersectional hermeneutics that are both rigorous and accessible—usable in academic, ecclesial, and activist contexts.

However, an unhiding reading offers more than a fresh lens on Luke’s parables—it provides a powerful hermeneutical tool to confront and counteract gender-based violence (GBV) within faith communities. By restoring the often-invisible women of antiquity to their rightful place in the narrative, unhiding destabilizes the patriarchal silences that undergird both ancient texts and modern social structures. When congregations learn to recognize mothers, daughters, innkeepers, and healers as active agents—mediating conflict, sustaining life, and administering care—they cultivate an ethics of attentiveness that values women’s experiences and wisdom. This shift not only affirms marginalized voices but also undermines cultural norms that excuse or minimize violence as a means of preserving male authority.

Moreover, unhiding reconfigures traditional notions of power and leadership. Rather than endorsing unilateral, dominating models, it highlights service-oriented agency: the mother and wife who negotiates inheritance, the female baker who safeguards communal honor, or the woman healer who tends wounds. In doing so, it invites communities to embrace a vision of mutual responsibility and solidarity that stands in stark opposition to the coercive dynamics at the root of GBV. Finally, integrating unhiding exercises—such as collaborative table-filling or dramatizations—into sermons, Bible studies, and educational programs equips participants with concrete practices for allyship and advocacy. By making the invisible visible, unhiding not only deepens scholarly engagement with Scripture but also enacts a transformative pedagogy and liturgy that can reach multiple audiences beyond the academy. It could empower those on the periphery of power structures, foster healing, and equip communities to acknowledge the vulnerable sitting in their pews, classrooms, and families.

Conclusion: Three Pillars of an Unhiding Reading

An unhiding reading’s greatest contribution lies first in its narrative-imaginative focus. By treating parables as stories embedded within the lived realities of a first century, high context Mediterranean audience, it draws on historical and social scientific criticism alongside women’s history and the creative exercise of imagination. This ensures that our interpretive gaze remains grounded in the ancient world’s own assumptions and emic knowledge—inviting modern readers to envision the mothers, bakers, innkeepers, and healers who were always part of these tales.

Second, unhiding serves as a heuristic corrective to surface level, patriarchal readings. It does not claim women are absent because of misogynistic design, but rather that they have been hidden by the text’s silence. As a guiding device, it reminds interpreters that they do not share the first hearers’ cultural scripts; instead, it actively directs attention toward what is unspoken—female characters whose roles, though unmentioned, were never truly erased from the imagination of the parable’s original audience.

Finally, unhiding asserts that without imaginative reconstruction of these women, any reading of Luke’s parables remains partial and skewed. In an oral culture where most people received these stories by ear, the mental “pictures” conjured by words like οἶκος (house) would have included wives, daughters, and female servants as integral participants. Failing to invoke these images divorces modern exegesis from the hermeneutical horizons of its first listeners.

By re-centering their emic perspectives, an unhiding reading offers a more faithful, culturally coherent interpretation—one in which women emerge not as afterthoughts but as vital agents shaping every turn of the parable.

The full dissertation is available here, and additional research can be found on ResearchGate. Questions and correspondence are welcome via drchareldutoit@gmail.com.

Charel Daniël du Toit recently completed a joint PhD in New Testament at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Pretoria. He is a research fellow of the University of Pretoria where he leads a research group on Jesus and the Parables. Du Toit’s research interests include early Christianity, gender in antiquity, and contextual hermeneutics, with particular attention to how ancient texts are received in contemporary communities. He lives in beautiful Chattanooga, TN with his amazing wife, Maxene, who is a State Park Ranger, their three cats, two tortoises, rabbit, red-tailed hawk, and barred owl.

[1] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible (European Publishing Company, 1895).

[2] Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, Women and History / Gerda Lerner 1 (Oxford University Press, 1987).

[3] Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Crossroad, 1983).

[4] Louise Schottroff, Befreiungserfahrungen: Studien Zur Sozialgeschichte Des Neuen Testaments (Kaiser Verlag, 1990).

[5] Bruce J. Malina, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels (Routledge, 1996), 42; Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination (Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 16–17; Anneke Viljoen, “Theological Imagination as Hermeneutical Device: Exploring the Hermeneutical Contribution of an Imaginal Engagement with the Text,” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 72, no. 4 (2016): 3, 4.

[6] Charel D. Du Toit, “A Realistic Reading as a Feminist Tool: The Prodigal Son as a Case Study,” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 78, no. 4 (2022): 4.

[7] Charel D. Du Toit, “The Friend at Midnight: A ‘realistic’ Reading as a Feminist Tool,” Verbum et Ecclesia 43, no. 1 (2022): 1.

[8] Du Toit, Charel D. “Unhiding the Voices of Women in the Parable of the Good Samaritan: A Call for Academic Inclusion.” Verbum et Ecclesia 45, no. 1 (2024): 1.