Parable of the talents or minas Parable of the talents or minas The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus, which appears in two of the synoptic, canonical gospels of the New Testament: Although the basic story in each of these parables is essentially the same, the differences between the parables as they appear in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke are sufficient to indicate that the parables are not derived from the same source. In Matthew, the opening words link the parable to the preceding Parable of the Ten Virgins, which
Parable of the Ten Virgins and that, instead, it is a parable created by the very early church. A large majority of fellows on the Jesus Seminar, for example, designated the parable as merely similar to something Jesus might have said or simply inauthentic ("gray" or "black"). Other scholars believe that this parable has only been lightly edited, and is an excellent example of Jesus' skill in telling parables. The parable occurs in all ancient New Testament manuscripts, with only slight variations in some words. In the Catholic Church, the parable is the Gospel reading for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time in Cycle A;