Jacob & the Prodigal

How Jesus Retold Israel's Story

Kenneth E. Bailey

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780830868858
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Israel, the community to which Jesus belonged, took its name from their patriarch Jacob. His story of exile and return was their story as well.In the well-known tale of the prodigal son, Jesus reshaped the story in his own way and for his own purposes. In this work, Kenneth E. Bailey compares the Old Testament saga and the New Testament parable. He unpacks similarities freighted with theological significance and differences that often reveal Jesus' particular purposes. Drawing on a lifetime of study in both Middle Eastern culture and the Gospels, Bailey offers here a fresh view of how Jesus interpreted Israel's past, his present and their future.

10

JACOB REVISITED

The Jacob Story in Early Jewish Tradition and in the Mind of Jesus

By Jesus’ day the text of the Hebrew Scriptures was firmly established, as evidenced from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yet during that period Jewish authors exercised the freedom to radically rewrite some of the key stories in those scriptures. Here my intent is to examine how four of those authors reshaped the story of Jacob.

Our interest in Jacob is limited to the story of his exile and return as recorded in Genesis 27:1—36:8. We take up his story (Gen 27:1) when his father Isaac, sensing his old age, decides that he should settle his affairs and unintentionally gives Jacob his primary blessing. Jacob flees to “a far country” (Lk 15:13) and eventually returns to the land but initially not to his father Isaac. Closure occurs when, after some time, Jacob arrives to see his father Isaac. The father dies, and Jacob’s older brother Esau goes “away from his brother Jacob” (Gen 36:6) and returns to “the hill country of Seir” (36:8).

These parameters are set for us by the flow of the story of the prodigal son. Thus we need to be concerned only with this formative part of Jacob’s life. Jesus revisits this story as he composes the new story of the parable of the prodigal son. But it must be asked: Is Jesus alone? Is he the only Jew in the centuries shortly before and after his time who in one way or another revisited the saga of Jacob? The answer is clear: Jesus is not alone. To understand what Jesus does with Jacob’s story, we need to examine the work of others on the same story.

Four other texts deal with the story of Jacob.1 Sometime around 140-161 B.C. the author of Jubilees devoted an extended section of his book to the saga of Jacob. As will be seen, within conservative Judaism he offered a fairly radical “rewrite.” Contemporary with Jesus, Philo of Alexandria also dealt with Jacob, but in his own particular philosophical allegorical manner. During the last half of the first century, Josephus, a Palestinian Jew comfortably pensioned in Rome by Caesar, penned his highly colored version of Jacob’s story. Finally, the exegetical reflections of a long series of rabbis on the saga of Jacob were committed to writing in the fourth century A.D. This work is entitled Genesis Rabbah. Each of these four sources takes liberties with the biblical account, but in different ways. To these texts we now turn.

Categorizing these four efforts is not easy. The rabbis reflected on the saga, and their interpretations were recorded. The result was a “commentary.” That is, the Genesis Rabbah gives the text of Genesis and then offers various views as to what that text means. Philo does not move systematically through the saga; rather he philosophizes on various parts of it in many places in his voluminous writings. With allegory as his methodology, the sky is the limit to what he finds in the story. Josephus gives a continuous account of the story of Jacob and presents his readers with what reads like a first draft of a Hollywood scriptwriter’s text for a movie on the story of Jacob contemporized to attract a first-century Greco-Roman audience. With little apparent concern for much of the theological content of the original, Josephus tells a good tale. He also takes many liberties. Two of these (Philo and Josephus) are writing in Greek from a position on the cultural borders between Judaism and paganism. Josephus is writing for Gentiles. Philo writes for Gentiles and Greek-speaking Jews. The other two (Jubilees and Genesis Rabbah) are composed in Hebrew for the Jewish community alone. Jubilees is pre-Christian, while Philo was contemporary to Jesus. Josephus followed a few years later, and Genesis Rabbah’s authors stretch from the first to the fourth centuries A.D. I will look briefly at each of these, starting with the two authors who worked “on the borders.”

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

Philo2 was born about 15-20 B.C. into a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, Egypt, and received a broad education in the Greek disciplines of that learned city. As an older man, in A.D. 39/40, he led a Jewish delegation to Ceasar in Rome. On the one hand, he was a philosopher and ethicist. On the other, he was a deeply committed Jew. Socially and intellectually he lived in both worlds. Peder Borgen writes of Philo, “He lived all his life in the double context of the Jewish community and the Alexandrian Greek community. Philosophy was Philo’s life interest.”3

His extensive writings received wide attention by early Christians and only centuries later by Jews. He developed the allegorical method for his particular form of biblical interpretation and was convinced that all ideas of value could be traced to Moses and that moral good had its source in Scripture, “and thus belonged to the Jewish nation and its heritage.”4 Holding this view, he naturally felt that it was important to attach all learning to the Hebrew Scriptures. His treatment of the Jacob saga illustrates his methodology. Philo’s reflections on that account of exile and return are scattered through many essays. In one of them he contemplates Rebekah’s advice to Jacob to flee and go to Haran. Philo writes:

I very much admire Rebecca, who is patience, because she, at that time, recommends the man who is perfect in his soul [Jacob], and who has destroyed the roughness of the passions and vices, to flee and return to Charran. . .. And it is with great beauty that she here calls going by the road, which leads to the outward senses, a fleeing away; for, in truth, the mind is then a fugitive, when, having left its own appropriate objects which are comprehensible to the understanding, it turns to the opposite rank of those which are perceptible by the outward senses.5

He continues to reflect on Jacob’s and Abraham’s journey to Haran and writes:

Do thou then, O my soul, travel through the land, and through man, bringing if you think fit, each individual man to a judgment of things which concern him; as, for instance, what the body is, and under what influences, whether active or passive, it co-operates with the mind; what the external sense is, and in what manner that assists the dominant mind; what speech is, and of what it becomes the interpreter so as to contribute to virtue; what are pleasure and desire; what are pain and fear.6

In like manner, page after page, using allegory and word association along with flights of imagination, Philo attaches his philosophical and ethical views to various parts of the Jacob saga and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is significant to note the remarkable freedom that is granted to him by his readership, to use the Scriptures in this way.7

JOSEPHUS

Josephus was born in A.D. 37 in the Holy Land to a Hasmonean family. With the benefits of a good education, he quickly became prominent in first-century Jewish affairs. He initially joined the revolt and fought Rome before deciding that the Zealots could not succeed. Switching sides, he then joined the Romans. After the war of A.D. 66-70, he was made a Roman citizen and granted a pension. Living in Rome for some thirty years, he gave himself to writing. Among other things, he retold the story of the history of the Jews from creation up to the year A.D. 66.8 It is generally agreed that his primary readership was Gentile. He wanted to commend Jewish history and culture to a society that thought badly of the Jews because of the Jewish revolt against Rome. He also wanted to justify his actions to his fellow Jews. Our interest is in what he had to say about Jacob.

Josephus’s biblical material appears in his work entitled The Antiquities of the Jews. In the preface of this volume he writes, “I shall accurately describe what is contained in our records,. . . and this without adding anything to what is therein contained, or taking away anything therefrom.”9 It is not clear what he means by this because of the freedom with which he retells the biblical stories. But in some sense it appears that he thinks he is offering an authentic account of his people’s history. Although he does not dwell on Jacob, he does give a fairly full account of the saga of exile and return. A few of his interesting omissions and emendations to the text of Genesis 27:1—36:8 are as follows.

We are told that Isaac calls Esau in because he, Isaac, is prevented by his great age from worshiping God; that is, he is unable to worship by sacrificing. He also wants to pray for Esau (1.18.5 [267]).10 When his mother suggests her game plan to Jacob for deceiving Isaac, Jacob is nervous about getting involved in this “evil practice” (1.18.6 [270]). (There is no attempt at damage control over the deception. It is openly admitted as an evil act. By admitting this, Jacob appears noble.) Isaac prays over Jacob (masquerading as Esau) and asks God to “make him terrible to his enemies, and honorable and beloved among his friends” (1.18.6 [273], an interesting crosscultural translation of Gen 27:29). Esau returns from the hunt, finds that he has been tricked and asks for a blessing. Isaac prays that he might excel “in arms” and “obtain glory forever on those accounts” (1.18.7 [275]). (This is an upgrade for Esau that improves on Gen 27:40. In the post-biblical tradition, Esau is usually downgraded as a villain.) Jacob leaves Canaan because he “hated the people of that country” (1.19.1 [278]).

During Jacob’s ladder vision God tells him that he, God, brought Abraham out of Mesopotamia “when he was driven away by his kinsmen” (1.19.2 [281]). (No covenant is mentioned, and Abraham’s great decision of faith disappears.) Jacob is promised that his posterity will “fill the entire earth and sea” (1.19.2 [282]). The romantic details about the love at first sight between Jacob and Rachel are expanded. On meeting Jacob, Laban presses Jacob about how he could leave his aged mother and father when they need ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface
• I. Introduction: What Does It Mean to Call Jesus a Theologian?
• II. The Parable of the Prodigal Son In Luke 15 Compared with the Saga of Jacob In Genesis 27—35: The Setting in Luke 15
• III. The Parable of the Prodigal Son In Luke 15 Compared with the Saga of Jacob In Genesis 27—35: The Saga and the Parable: Comparisons and Contrasts
• IV. Significance of this Study for an Understanding of Jesus’ Theology
• Conclusions
• Appendix: Index of the Various Types of Contrasts and Comparisons
• Bibliography
• Indexes
• Notes
• Praise for Jacob & the Prodigal
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright