the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

Tasemis, and to his wife, Tsennesis, during his lifetime, in order to safely keep their portions
from his sons whom he might not have favoured.
In contrast, Bailey and Hultgren stand by the claim that the practice was unusual. Bailey
argues that the younger son’s request was especially unusual, thereby provoking his father’s
anger as if he was wishing the father dead. For him the Sirach text simply reflects the
prevailing community attitude, not the widespread community practice, indicating the fact
that the focus of the issue is on the father distributing his property, not on the son’s request,
unlike in the parable. 88 Hultgren also claims that the younger son’s demand not only
constitutes an insult to the father’s honour, but also is tantamount to wishing the father
dead. 89
In the light of all this, I find it difficult to conclude that the practice was widespread
and common. It seems more desirable to say that it was unusual.
Nevertheless, the father grants his son’s demand. Even though there is no explanantion as
to why he did so, and the story simply continues to go forward, such a decision would not
have impressed the audiences with an incompetent father not being able to control his son.
However, it indeed is not right here to seek for the father’s fault, namely, partiality in
excessive tolerance that he grants his younger son even usufruct as well as inheritance, as will
90
be discussed later in some detail. That the father distributes his property to his sons is
equivalent to dividing the father’s living as his means of subsistence, although the two words,
(living) and (property) are used as synonyms in v. 12 and v. 13. 91 There is the
issue as to whether the elder son’s portion was given to him when the younger son received
his portion. D. Daube maintains that the elder son did not receive his portion, whereas Derrett
argues that he did. 92
It is reasonable to believe that although the elder son received his
portion, the whole usufruct of his part would still have remained in his father’s control.
After converting the property into cash, the younger son departs from home for a distant
country, thereby not only going back on his obligation that the son has to honour and sustain
their parents in their old age, as spelled out in Exod 20:12 and Deut 5:16, but also exposing
his mind that he frees himself from any obligation to his father or his family as a whole: His
away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country.” Gen 25:6.
88. Bailey, Finding the Lost, 119-20.
89. Hultgren, Parables, 73.
90. Metzger, Consumption and Wealth in Luke’s Travel Narrative, 107.
91. Bailey and Scott show how the word, is important in the Middle East and what the term, means in
the wordplay. Bailey, Finding the Lost, 119-20; Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 111.
92. David Daube, “Inheritance in Two Lukan Pericopes,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichgte
72 (1995), 326-34, here 329-33; Derrett, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” in Law in the New Testament
(London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976), 100-25, here 108.
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