Jacob \u0026 the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story by Kenneth E. Bailey

Jacob \u0026 the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story Reviews

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  Josh Skaggs

  I really appreciated this book of theology. Bailey's unpacking of Jesus' story of the prodigal sons is attentive and illuminating, and it helped me recognize dimensions I hadn't seen before. Sometimes he belabors a point, but I didn't mind. Well worth the read.
• 
  Andrew Marr

  Kenneth Baily’s book Jacob & the Prodigal overlaps with important sections of my own book Moving and Resting in God’s Desire: A Spirituality of Peace. In using the thought of René Girard and his colleagues to explore ways of renewing Christian spirituality, I comment at length on the stories of fratricidal strife in Genesis and Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke. (The Parable is better titled something like “The Prodigal Father and His Two Sons.”
  
  Wee both see Jesus’ Parable as seeking to resolve the strife between brothers although, like the story in Genesis, the Parable is left open, leaving the possibility of resolution open but not fulfilled in the text. Having grown up in the Near East, Bailey has much knowledge of Semitic culture that many of us in the West do not have. As a result, Bailey offers many important insights into the Parable and the earlier narrative that pass many of us by. For example, Bailey emphasizes the foolishness of the Father in the Parable in running to meet his son at the edge of the village. For a grown man to run for any reason was considered shameful and to run for such a purpose especially so. This is just one example among many of the new insights Bailey has to offer us. Bailey treats the Parable as the climax of a trilogy of parables in Luke 15 which begins with the Parable of the Lost Sheep and continues with the Parable of the Lost Coin before concluding with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. By studying the parables together, Bailey explores the Christology of the Parables where the shepherd, the woman searching for her coin and the father all become images of Jesus Himself as he reveals how overwhelming and unimaginable the Love of God is.
  
  The final portion of the book is a comparison of the Parable with the Saga of Jacob and Esau. Many of the parallels are contrasts which are at least as illumining as the likenesses. In both cases we have two brothers in strife. Isaac, however, in his in ineptness in being tricked is a huge contrast to the father in the Parable. Another contrast is that Jacob does well in the foreign country while the Prodigal Son does not. Another likeness is that neither Jacob nor the Prodigal Son repent of wrongdoing. (Bailey explains at length that the Prodigal Son is only scheming to get set up in a craft to get enough money to live on; he is not repenting of asking his father for half the estate, brutal as that was to his father.) Bailey argues that Esau doesn’t really forgive Jacob as I argue in my take on the story. The number of armed men Esau brings could suggest an aggressive meeting but it could be a defense measure, not knowing how many armed men Jacob might have. Bailey argues that the vowels of the Hebrew word for “kiss: are the same as the vowels for “bite,” leaving open the possibility that Esau bit Jacob. I can’t argue the linguistic case but it seems to me that so aggressive an act would have led to a more violent reaction than we have. In any case, I see Jacob not believing in Esau’s forgiveness and rather than a reconciliation, the story ends in a permanent separation.
  
  In the Parable, the two brothers are separate at the end, thus keeping up the conflict that I see between them dating back to before the younger brother leaves. In the Parable, however, the central separation is between each of the brothers and their father. The younger son does seem to have accepted his father’s welcome, although we don’t know if he persevered in his gratitude. The older son is at odds with his father as well as with his brother. The challenge is whether or not the older son will accept his father’s love for his younger son. In like manner, Bailey demonstrates that this challenge is thrown out to the scribes and Pharisees who criticized Jesus for eating with “sinners.”
  Bailey’s book is a valuable source of new insights that deeply refresh our understanding of a Parable that we think we understand so well that we have let it go stale. Most important, Bailey’s study makes the Love of God revealed in Jesus “full of sap, still green.”
• 
  Радостин Марчев

  Много добра както почти всичко от Бейли.
  Забележително е как след няколко книги работещи с Лука 15 все още успява да намери нови, интересни и важни неща.
• 
  Marcia King

  I really wanted to love this book. Like Bailey's other books quite a bit and have several of them. But this book could have been less than One-half its length. Very redundant. Also, I do not think he proved his main thesis. Yes, there are some similarities between Jacob/Esau and the parable but not enough to write a book about it. The 3 stars are for Part One where he exegetes the Prodigal Son brilliantly. Unfortunately he has done this in other books as well.
• 
  Ian

  The history, analysis of the passages and the comparative analysis of the three parables from Luke are fine but Bailey never convincingly proves that Jesus is extrapolating upon the Jacob and Esau narrative with His parable of the prodigal son. The lack of Godlike figure in the Jacob story and the incomplete reconciliation reduce the comparison to a series of interesting parallels only.
• 
  Johannes W.

  A remarkable book on so many levels. Bailey explores the similarities between the story of Jacob and Esau and the Parable of the Lost sons. he believes Jesus was using the parable to retell the story of Israel. A must read for any serious Bible student.
• 
  Graham

  The author brings his formidable knowledge of life in the Middle East at the time of Christ to bear on the story of the prodigal son. It turns out that those listening to the story from Jesus would have understood it very differently to the way it seems to us and Mr Bailey explains why. Reading this book made me realise how many false assumptions I made when reading the story.
  I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you think you know the story of the prodigal son, read this and it will help you to think again!
• 
  Jon

  Bailey's take on the story of the Prodigal son is intriguing, and well worth the study. I thought the arrangement of the book was a little drawn out though. Once I finished the book, I thought he could have made his point much sooner, therefore leaving the book a bit shorter. After the first 50 pages, the book starts to get interesting. After 100 pages, it gets really interesting. And the book is only a couple hundred pages long.
• 
  Bill Taylor

  Tremendous exegesis linking the parables of Luke 15 to the Old Testament -- especially the Isaac-- Jacob -- Esau saga. Bailey spent a number of years in the near east; is fluent in ancient and modern languages; thoroughly knows the cultural traditions of the region. He provides the valuable perspective of how the teachings of Jesus would have been interpreted by the initial audiences of Palestine.
  
  
• 
  James Kim

  I appreciate Dr Bailey's scholarship. The reason why i didn't rate it higher is because parts of conclusion that the three parables found in Luke 15 are reinterpretations of the Jacob saga in Genesis seemed forced and stretched.
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  Jim Lyster

  Great interweaving of the story of Jacob with the parables of Luke 15 as "Jesus ... borrows from the old story (Jacob) as he creates a new saga that has meaning both for the children of Jacob and for the children of Adam"
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  Pastor Ben

  A very interesting way to look deeper into the Bible and not be satisfied with the easiest interpretations.
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  John Yao

  Not sure that I agree with Dr, Bailey's final conclusion, but everything else is superb and will show that Luke 15 almost reads as the summation of Jesus' teachings.