There were many things I wanted to tell in class today and simply didn’t get to. Here are my notes on the story of the lost son. Acknowledgment: for many of the ideas below I’m greatly indebted to Kenneth Bailey’s analysis in Poet and peasant; a literary cultural approach to the parables in Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 146–202.
The parable of the lost son, or prodigal son, gives an inkling of how the storyteller (perhaps after Jesus but one doesn’t know this: the parable is only in Luke) sees Jesus in relation to these basic metaphors, the kingdom of God and God as father. This parable, which has been seen by tradition as being at the heart of the gospel, one of 31 parables actually, looks like a version of the story of two brothers, elder and younger: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Jacob’s ten older sons and Joseph, even Moses in relation to Aaron, the seven sons of Jesse and little David… In this kind of story, the second son is often a shepherd. In this story also, he becomes a sort of shepherd, but his herd will consist of pigs, animals whose consumption was forbidden to Jews. The two sons are not the only characters: there are two more actors in this story, the father and the village around, including his own household of house-servants and the workers in the field (sharecroppers?). The village and its sense of values, which include definite views of authority, are key to understanding the parable.
The father, who seems to be a wealthy landowner, is a figure of patriarchal authority, over land, wife (wives), sons and daughters, servants, sharecroppers. One would expect him to be part of the village or town council of elders, that is to say, deciding in all matters threatening the peace in the village. There is no apparent reason why he should formally divide his estate at this point, since he has sons. Custom would dictate that division be done as follows: two shares to the elder son, one to the younger one. In any case, the father would retain usufruct.
The request by the younger son for his share of the inheritance is a shocking demand to which the answer normally expected in this patriarchal society is extreme anger, followed by some form of judgment and ostracism or exile, even death in some extreme cases. For instance, Herod the Great accused his own son Antipater of parricide and eventually had him killed right before his own death, because he was too quick to claim the throne (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.52–53; 61–77; 93–99).
Contrary to normal expectations, the father “divides his substance among them” (τὸν βίον, i.e. material possessions undistinguishable from life). There is already compassion, or we the listeners at least can read it into it because we know the end, but do the sons and the village (with its other fathers, mothers, daughters and sons) and the original audience see it as compassion, rather than weakness, feeble spirit, even irrational, dotty, mad behavior?
What is the role of the elder brother at the beginning? Has he remained indifferent? Has he directly encouraged the younger son to ask for the inheritance, or indirectly, by making cohabitation difficult?
The village, perhaps on a hillside or an outcropping over a valley, knows everything or is at least interested in everything, and one may imagine servants and hired workers talking and not necessarily reporting the exact truth. They would be astounded by the father’s lack of severity, and wonder about his authority and the threat to their own.
What happens to the younger son is an inexorable fall, socially speaking. “Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had…” Did the division of property involve renewed arguments? In any case, it took a while to insist again, do the actual sharing and figure out “all he had,” under the disapproving eyes of everyone. His capital now consisted of sheep, goats, money, equivalent to his share of land. Perhaps he lost in the division, but doesn’t care. After that, he couldn’t stay in the village or anywhere near, because what he had done struck at the heart of the patriarchal control of land and the inhabitants of the village might become very hostile to him. He had lost any claim to friendship, as well as any possibility of marriage (?) in the whole area, since news travelled fast.
“He went into a far country.” Did the listeners imagine the Transjordanian plateau or the coast, Phoenician / Aramaic / and Greek speaking, but dominated by Greek cities (unless Luke’s gospel refers to the Syrian coast). There, he is a foreigner, in self-exile, without a protector or safety net, unable to establish a home, and at risk of falling prey to wrong friends. He has to spend his capital (animals, clothing, money, jewels), without any reciprocity, and at the unfavorable rate proposed to foreigners whose relatives can’t retaliate or reciprocate. So, the ἀσώτως of the text is to be understood as “spending carelessly”, but doesn’t necessarily carries the meaning of moral dissolution.
When famine comes, all his capital vanishes, he has no one from whom to borrow, nothing left to pledge as surety, and he can’t rely on bonds of kinship. The point of patriarchal strategies in land transfer, marriage, and the harsh exploitation of sharecroppers and workers was precisely to accumulate reserves in case of drought and famines (as well as to accumulate power).
He becomes a servant, “glued”, says the Greek, to a citizen of the locality. In order to survive, he has lost his freedom, he is at the call and beckoning of this person. Perhaps there is a hint of forced sexual misconduct also? His master may even have taken some vicious pleasure in sending his Jewish servant to keep a herd of pigs.
His dereliction is not yet complete, however: he is not fed by his master and so attempts to eat what the pigs eat (carob pods?), a temporary solution, not for long, and not filling (as in Lazarus’ story, where the same Greek word is used). No one is ready to give him anything, because charity was normally directed to one’s group, usually narrowly defined. He is alone, and facing possible death.
“He came to himself”: He remembers his father’s willingness, which he doesn’t see yet as compassion. His prepared speech still sounds like a prudently phrased calculation. He plans to ask to be treated as one of his father’s hired servants, meaning that he sees himself as living outside of the village, working in the fields, away from possible hostility. He is preparing his repentance, and perhaps ready to take some abuse from other servants?
“He arose and came to his father.” But the father sees him before anyone else: has he been waiting anxiously, always with an eye in the direction in which he left (months ago?). This interpretation is guided by the author’s telling of the first two stories in chapter 15: the lost sheep and coin, in which the man and woman intently seek what is missing. In our story, the father has compassion, meaning the sort of love a mother has for her baby (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, 15.20). He runs, like Abraham, the paradigm of hospitality in the Genesis story of the three mysterious visitors, but unlike any dignified adult, especially father and commanding patriarch, of traditional society. And he is repeatedly holding him and kissing him (imperfect tenses are used).
In response to this outpouring, the son does not repeat the last part of his little speech (“treat me as one of your hired servants”), but lets his father take over. Is it because he doesn’t dare say it, or does he now suddenly understand something he hadn’t seen or even thought about before, namely the depth of the father’s compassion and the risk that he is taking? The rapidity with which the father acts is critical: Quick, says he, give him back the signs of freedom and authority. There is no resistance on the part of house-slaves, naturally, but the village inhabitants or other relatives, that is another matter. You cannot boss them around. The quickness of the patriarch’s decision means that the villagers have no time to react and question the action, because everyone is swept away into a general reconciliation. As the stories of chapter 14 of Luke negatively indicate, they cannot refuse the invitation. The feast, around the fattened calf as center-piece, i.e. something kept in reserve for a wedding perhaps, and which must be consumed immediately, would involve many people, all the relatives and neighbors, preparing, talking, dancing and playing music while waiting for the food to be ready and for everyone to come.
The elder son is busy in the field, doing what sons of landowners are supposed to do in like stories, i.e. watching the hired hands or sharecroppers. When he comes back and asks the young servant (παίς) what is happening, the servant misinterprets or at least souns underwhelmed (“your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.”). Perhaps there is an underlying idea again that the father is weak, and doing very puzzling things?
The older son is angry and does a terrible insult, not unlike that in v. 12 above, refusing to go in, and doing so publicly, since the whole scene after the return of the younger son is a public affair. The father responds as before, that is, he surprisingly comes out and entreats him repeatedly. The elder son starts hurling terribly insulting accusations: he has been like a slave in his father’s house, and his obedience has never been rewarded. He was never given a young goat to have a festive meal with his friends: another insulting comment, since meals should be inclusive and not the occasion of separation. The rage continues: “This son of yours:” does the phrase imply that the father is like the younger son, a wasteful individual, or is it questioning whether the son is even his?? He adds that the son lost all his capital with harlots (which commentators wrongly read back into verse 13: “loose or dissolute living”). Is that what the elder son wished to do with his friends? With the fatted calf instead of a young goat? The rage might lead to another question: Why don’t you die and let me truly be master?
The father, astonishingly again, shows no anger, which is perhaps misunderstood once more, as in v. 12? In answer to all the constraints of custom and the reference to “obeying commands,” the father says that he didn’t do an irrational thing, but that it was necessary, indeed the only solution.
At the end of the reading, what might the ancient listener or reader think? Would they think that the younger son is likely to respond to his father’s compassion with total love and devotion? Likely also to behave towards the “workers in the field,” i.e. the people working and waiting for relief, food, justice, with the same compassion and urgency, risk-taking, and forbearance as those shown by his own father? Would he feed the multitudes, heal, and forgive? How will he behave towards his elder brother who is in a rage at the door? Here is the most terrible risk he can take, because his older brother (an Esau figure to the younger son’s Jacob the trickster) may look at his younger brother as an impostor and hate him rather than trust him.
Allegory 1: This tiny beginning in the business of forgiveness, the author of Luke sees as potentially expanding to universal dimensions, as a mustard plant growing like a weed to tree-like proportions from a tiny seed, or as leaven acting within a lump of dough.
Allegory 2: If this kind of stories was told by the historical Jesus, one may be less surprised by the reactions to him of Herod Antipas, his officers, friends and relatives, and the reaction of the temple authorities, who are the elders, closely tied to God’s temple / house, and minding the store. How could they accept the invitation to imitate a non-calculating divinity and let go of their hold?
Allegory 3: the story is about divine forgiveness. But what is forgiveness? the definition of it, or deepening of the notion of divine mercy, entails a redefinition (or rather an infinite broadening) of that of sin. Forgiveness is an old notion belonging to the broader one of gift and grace (superabundant grace and gift of life), framed in the Hebrew bible as the main characteristic of the divinity.
The notion of debt and forgiveness (formulated as a release of debt: no more the older language of lifting, wiping, removing, transferring, wiping, cleaning) became fundamental in the Hellenistic period and even more under the Roman empire, when it became more clear than ever that all economic actors, no matter their religious pretense or sollicitation for cover (paramount example, that of Herod), were in debt and in need of forgiveness or release.
Finally, a further reflection on possession and patriarchal structures of this ancient society. The story is throwing light on a most difficult subject, namely the nature of possession or control over land and labor and the seeming aporia that it is given (in fact pure gift, which is formulated as forgiveness). What was at stake? There is a contradiction at the heart of possession. Its hidden nature is of being a gift, but it appears as outright possession (that of the older son, in his view). To say it in other words: security in possession, or access to *real* estate (also framed as patriarchal authority in that society) cannot be achieved without recognizing it as gift, and its giver (the “donor”). This can be done only, according to the story, through loss (cf. Aqedah in Genesis 22), and what appears as a more perfect, second giving in which the dimension of the giving appears irrational (climactically so), yet the outcome more rational (“It is fitting”) than the status ante quem, which presented itself as calculation of positions and interests but in fact was hiding bitterness, jealousy, rebellion, and hate. (note: I owe much of this insight to Jean-Luc Marion’s *Certitudes négatives*, 2009).
Then, what was sin, what constituted sin? Was it the absence of recognition of the nature of the gift and giver? which, given the abundance of the gift (life), meant sin was also of a flexible, potentially infinite nature? The relationship with a unique, personal divinity was the main ground. Power was the way to describe its universality, especially the power of creation, which the story in Genesis or in Job eventually defined as near absolute. There is a line of development there, from the 6th to the 2d century. The logic of economic, religious, and political structures had become more clear and more extensive in Hellenistic times, its contradictions (especially the religious ones) unavoidable—see already Qumran movement—in the Roman empire. So, the notion of possession and control over resources and labor, including the structure of future control (inheritance), became more clear also. The gospel of Luke is engaging a serious discussion of the politics and economics of its time.