What if the Prodigal Son story is not really about the son? Wes Huff is joined by his friend and New Testament scholar Luuk van de Weghe, to explore Luke 15, its two lost sons, overlooked cultural and textual context, and the Father at the center of Jesus’s most famous parable.

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Reference Notes:

(01:09) See Justin Brierley’s comments in the Foreword to Luuk van de Weghe’s For People Like Us: God’s Search for the Lost of Luke 15 (Wipf & Stock, 2023).

(03:01) Simon Gathercole discusses these in The Preexistent Son (Eerdmans, 2006) and credits Joel Green; the four stages have been slightly reworded for clarity.

(03:46) On the link to Isa 42:1, see Darrell Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50 (Baker Books, 1994), 874.

(05:26) Jacob Neusner, The Pharisees: Rabbinic Perspectives (KTAV, 1985), 313, quoted by Kent Yinger in his broader, helpful discussion on Pharisees and table-fellowship in The Pharisees: Their History, Character, and New Testament Portrait (Cascade Books, 2022), 160–68.

(05:41) John Kilgallen, “Was Jesus Right to Eat with Sinners and Tax Collectors?” Biblica 93.4 (2012).

(05:46) There is some dispute over this etymology, but this remains the dominant understanding. Debate also continues about the legitimacy of using this etymology to interpret who they were.

(06:07) Exod 29:37; 30:29; Lev 6:27; cf. Ezek 44:19. In his two-part JSHJ article, “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah” (4.2 [2006]; 5.1 [2007]), Crispin Fletcher-Louis argues that Jesus’ contagious holiness forms part of his identity as the high-priestly Messiah.

(07:53) See John Kloppenborg & Callie Callon, “The Parable of the Shepherd and the Transformation of Pastoral Discourse,” Early Christianity 1.2 (2010).

(08:05) Kenneth Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants (InterVarsity, 2005).

(09:10) Erin Vearncombe, “Searching for a Lost Coin: Papyrological Backgrounds for Q 15, 8–10,” in Metaphor, Narrative, and Parables in Q (Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

(09:50) E.g., Ernest van Eck and Amy-Jill Levine do not give these parables theological readings; Klyne Snodgrass interprets them as “how much more…” analogies but says of the first parable, for example: “the analogy of the shepherd refers to both the character of God and the activity of Jesus” (Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus [Eerdmans, 2018], 107).

(11:45) Philip Sellew, “Interior Monologue as a Narrative Device in the Parables of Luke,” JBL 111 (1992).

(12:35) Maarten Menken, “The Position of Σπλαγχνίζεσθαι and Σπλάγχνα in the Gospel of Luke,” NovTest 30.2 (1988).

(14:20) Bailey discusses this in Finding the Lost Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (Concordia, 1992). He reconstructs the father as a prosperous village landholder who runs publicly through the village; some of his conjectures are unsubstantiated, but this general point reflects the plausible setting of village-based rural life in first-century Galilee and Judaea.