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

distance from them is not merely geographical, but psychological. 93 On the other hand,
Jeremias argues that it is very normal for the younger son to leave for a distant country, on the
grounds that in the first century CE, many Jews emigrated abroad, since there were frequent
famines in Palestine and they preferred to live abroad rather than in their own country. 94 In
connection with the younger son’s disposal, Jeremias says that it would have been realistic
for the younger son to dispose of his portion, given the fact that t.B.B. 2:5 implies the right to
possession and usufruct of the inheritor, although m. B.B. 8:7 states that neither the father nor
the son could dispose of the land prior to the father’s death. 95 Derrett argues that even though
the father in no way was obliged to divide his property, still less give his younger son the
right of disposal, his tolerant policy of treating the nearly grown-up son makes it possible to
divide and dispose the property. 96
In spite of the prohibition of disposing inheritance during
the father’s lifetime in m.B.B. 8:7, the younger son, at any rate, cashes it in anyway and
departs for a distant country.
It is not easy to determine whether, while being there, the younger son’s life is immoral,
through the term , which can be generally translated as “loose living” (RSV, NASB),
“riotous living” (KJV, ASV), “wild living” (NIV) and “dissipated” or “wild and disorderly”
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(TDNT). Although the elder son’s charge against his brother in v. 30 may imply the
younger son’s immorality, the charge could reveal the elder son’s conjecture or imagination
rather than the reality, when we put more confidence in what the narrator says in v. 13, than in
the statement of the elder son as a character within the play in v. 30.
The younger son who lost all his property is confronted with the bigger problem, a severe
famine, which he could not have anticipated. As he recognizes his desperate need, he begins
to seek employment among the citizens of that country, and gets a job from a Gentile, feeding
pigs. Such a phenomenon, expressed as “attachment behaviour” in psychology terminology,
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represents a desire to attach oneself to ‘something greater’. Neither working for a Gentile
93. Hultgren, Parables, 75.
94, Jeremias, Parables, 129; Donahue, The Gospel in Parable, 153; Forbes, The God of Old: The Role of the
Lukan Parables in the Purpose of Luke’s Gospel, 134.
95. Jeremias, Parables, 128-29.
96. Derrett, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” 106-107.
97. See Werner Foerster, “, ,” TDNT, I, 506-507.
98. Jeremy Duff and Joanna Collicutt McGrath comment that “attachment behavior” as a psychological reaction
to trauma and life adversity, is helpful to greater openness to spirituality, that is often seen in the aftermath of
terrible events. Jeremy Duff and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, Meeting Jesus: Human responses to a yearning god
(London: SPCK, 2006), 63; for the more details, see Janoff Bulman R, Shattered Assumptions: Towards a new
Psychology of trauma (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
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