Religious scholar Reza Aslan destroys ‘charlatan’ Joel Osteen: Jesus hated wealth

[Brettongarcia]

47. The Herods themselves were considered Jewish. Many Hellenized Jews followed them, as their ruler.

Furthermore it is interesting that the Bible chose to not only compare employers to God - but also in effect, God to an employer. Analogies to some extent, work both ways. Surely no one would use an employer, to serve as a figure or symbol for God, if employers were utterly despised.

So in effect, when employers are being likened to God, God is also being called Our Employer. Encouraging us to make lots of money in his name. Though the New Testament is generally less concerned with material prosperity than the Old, Jesus and Christianity still claims total loyalty to the Old Testament God. And so elements of the New, had to make an occasional allusion to that God, and to the prosperity gospel. To the God that promised us "riches." And these parables served that purpose.

Another related parable, one confirming this linkage between God and employers, would be the one about the ungrateful tenants, vs. the landowner. And - significantly - his mistreated "son." ("A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants... They cast him out of the vineyard and killed him" Luke 20.9 ff).