Both Matthew and Luke, at some point, present the parable of the great wedding feast or the great feast. While at simple view, the two different accounts of each evangelist look very similar or almost the same, we find that they have some subtle differences that end up being important to each account after all. First of all, we find that Jesus in Matthew, addresses this parable without addressing a specific audience, although it may be argued that it was addressed to the Pharisees, while in Luke Jesus was presented as a guest in a dinner setting and answering with a parable to a specific fellow guest that after hearing him talk about who to invite to a dinner and why said: “blessed is the one who will dine in the kingdom of God” (Luke 14:15). So, in general, Luke gives this parable a social context related to its content directly, while Matthew doesn’t.
Among other differences, we find that Matthew directly addresses a comparison between the Kingdom of heaven with a king that gave a wedding feast for his son, Luke just starts the parable of without any direct comparison and instead of having a king give a wedding feast for his son, he has a man, not a king) having a great dinner, but not a wedding for his son. Both, man and king, in each account, send their servants to summon his guests, but in both stories the guest react differently. While in Luke they just excuse themselves, in Matthew the guest ignore the invitation or even react violently and maltreat the King’s servants. Filled with rage, both king and man decide to invite other somewhat random people to their feast but while Matthew gives a general view of who he invited, Luke is more specific on what the man asked of the servants: “Go out and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind, and the lame” (Luke 14:21)
In terms of how these stories function as parable or allegory according to Ralph, we can see that by addressing and being related to a specific social context Luke’s account becomes a parable with a single comparison and challenging specifically the host and guests of the dinner while, Matthew’s account by lacking this specific social context can be considered as an allegory and based on many comparisons.
Ena Solorzano 
I agree pretty much with everything that you have said and you seem to have noticed many of the same differences between the two accounts that I did. I think you succeeded in clearly stating those differences, especially in regards to comparing the Kingdom of Heaven with a King and really relating it to Ralph’s text.
I agree with your use of social context as a means by which we can distinguish between parable and allegory. In Ralph’s text, she says that some parables can be treated as allegories while others cannot. Because these two stories seem to be so similar, I wonder if Luke’s account can also correctly be interpreted as an allegory.
Your blog post really helped me to see the differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels more clearly. I also liked how you summarized the difference between the parable and allegory very clearly in your last paragraph.
Exactly! The fact that you can draw multiple comparisons between groups in the story and groups in the audience (e.g. the king as God, Jesus as the king’s son, those originally invited but found unworthy as God’s chosen people, the Israelites) suggests that Matthew’s version of the parable may not be functioning as a true parable anymore–but rather as an allegory. In contrast, Luke’s version makes one central comparison: The audience of this parable is compared to those in the story who were invited to the feast first but declined to attend, and you know the social context from the surrounding narrative–Jesus tells this story right after urging his host at a dinner party to not just invite the people who can reciprocate, but those who have no chance of returning the favor. In other words, Luke’s version still works as a true parable.
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