The Prodigal's Elder Brothe r: The H istory and Ethics of Reading Luke 15:25-32* Mikeal C. Parsons Baylor University Waco, TX 76798 There is a wonderful scene in David Lodge's academic satire, Small World. It is the social hour of an English literary conference, and the hero of the book, Persse McGarrigle, is introduced to a book publisher, Felix Skinner. Aft er t he perfunc tory introductions, Skinner asks Persse, "What's your own field, Mr. McGarrigle?" "Well, I did my research on Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot," said Persse. "I could have helped you with that," Dempsey (a colleague) butted in. ... It woul d len d its elf nice ly to comput erizati on," .... "All you' d have to do would be to put the texts on to tape and you could get the computer to list every work, phrase and syntactical construction that the two write rs h ad in common. You could precisely quantify the influence of Shakespeare on T. S. Eliot." "But my thesis isn' t about that," said Persse. "I t' s about the influence of T.S. Eliot on Shakespeare." "That sounds rather Irish, if I may say so," said Dempsey, with a loud gu ffaw . .. ."Well, what I t ry to show," said Persse, "is that we ca n't avoid reading Shakespeare through the lens of T.S. Eliot 's poetry. I mean, who can read Hamlettoday without thinking of 'Prufr ock'? Who An earlier version of this essay was presented on the topic "The Bible As or In Literature" in the Conrad-Shelby Lecture Series at Brewton-Parker College on 4 April, 1995. I am delighted to contribute to this Fe stschri ft in honor of D an O. Via, Jr. We share the same denominational heritage; and for an entire generation of baptist New Testament scholars, Dan Via has provided a stellar example of one who combines rigorous and imaginative scholarship with a deep co mmitment to the Ch ristian tradition. On a personal note, I wish publicly to express my appreciation for the gracious hospitality extended to me by Dan and Margaret during my summer sabbatical at Duke Divinity School in 1988.
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There is a wonderful scene in David Lodge's academic satire, Small World.
It is the social hour of an English literary conference, and the hero of the
book, Persse McGarrigle, is introduced to a book publisher, Felix Skinner.
After the perfunctory introductions, Skinner asks Persse,
"What's your own field, Mr. McGarrigle?"
"Well, I did my research on Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot," said
Persse.
"I could have helped you with that," Dempsey (a colleague) butted
in. . . . It would lend itself nicely to computerization," . . . . "All you'dhave to do would be to put the texts on to tape and you could get the
computer to list every work, phrase and syntactical construction that the
two writers had in common. You could precisely quantify the influence
of Shakespeare on T. S. Eliot."
"But my thesis isn' t about that," said Persse. "It's about the
influence of T.S. Eliot on Shakespeare."
"That sounds rather Irish, if I may say so," said Dempsey, with a
loud guffaw. . . ."Well, what I try to show," said Persse, "is that we can't
avoid reading Shakespeare through the lens of T.S. Eliot's poetry. I
mean, who can read Hamlet today without thinking of 'Prufrock'? Who
An earlier version of this essay was presented on the topic "The Bible As or In
Literature" in the Conrad-Shelby Lecture Series at Brewton-Parker College on 4 April, 1995.
I am delighted to contribute to this Festschrift in honor of Dan O. Via, Jr. We share the same
denominational heritage; and for an entire generation of baptist New Testament scholars, Dan
Via has provided a stellar example of one who combines rigorous and imaginative
scholarship with a deep commitment to the Christian tradition. On a personal note, I wishpublicly to express my appreciation for the gracious hospitality extended to me by Dan and
Margaret during my summer sabbatical at Duke Divinity School in 1988
can hear the speeches of Ferdinand in The Tempest without being
reminded of The Fire Sermon' section of The Waste Lana*?" 1
Persse's point is one well-taken. Our reading of texts, especiallyour reading of Scripture, is always influenced by the traditions that have
preceded us and shape our own conventions of reading. This is true even of
religious groups who disavow the influence of tradition. Most Protestant
communities claim to read the Bible as sola scriptum, scripture unleashed
from the dogmatic, ecclesiastical stranglehold of the Roman Catholic
church. This attitude is especially true of baptists,2
whose historic posture
of dissent, doctrine of the priesthood of believers, and belief in soul
competency have been interpreted to mean that the individual believer reads
the Bible and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, comes to interpretations thatare untouched by tradition, isolated from community, and liberated from the
hegemony of ecclesiastical hierarchy. And somehow we extol the
uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of this kind of interpretation as a virtue. But
the truth is that even the baptist attitude of being anti-tradition is itself a
tradition of sorts. And baptists, no less than catholics, interpret the
Scripture in ways that have been influenced by a variety of sources and
precedents. We do, indeed, read Shakespeare through the eyes of Eliot!
We most certainly read Scripture through the layers of ecclesiastical,
literary, visual and cultural traditions that lie between us and these texts of antiquity.
This essay attempts to trace how the treatment across time of one
particular biblical character, the Elder Brother in the Parable of the Prodigal
Son (Luke 15), has come to shape our contemporary reading ofthat story
and the role the Elder Brother plays in it. The bulk of the paper treats the
story of the Elder Brother in Literature. In the last part of the article, I
should like to examine how a re-reading of the story itself, that is the story
of the Elder Brother as Literature, might cause us to re-evaluate the Elder
Brother's role. I am especially interested here in the interplay between the
history of reading and the ethics of reading.
1 David Lodge, Small World: An Academic Romance (New York: Macmillan,
1984)51-52.
2I am employing "baptist" (with a lower case "b") in the way James Wm.
McClendon, Jr. develops that notion in his Systematic Theology: Ethics (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1986).
3
This approach is taken in David Lyle Jeffry, ed., A Dictionary of BiblicalTradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992). See especially the entry
(pp. 640-44) on "Prodigal Son," by Manfred Siebald and Leland Ryken.
Three preliminary comments are in order. First, the literature on
Luke 15 in each of the periods is massive, and my choice of material has
been constrained in each case by the probability that this material hassurvived in some form or another to influence our reading today. To be
sure, I am not arguing that everyone has read Augustine's Confessions, seen
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, viewed Rembrandt's Return of the
Prodigal, or even heard Garrison Keillor's rendition of the Parable. But I
am suggesting that each of these interpretations has in some way or another
survived to influence our contemporary understanding of the Prodigal's
Elder Brother.
Second, while most of the material I deal with is in the form of
verbal texts, I am expanding the usual understanding of "literature" toinclude visual representations because the parable has been the subject of so
much representational art, and those visual images have shaped our modern
impressions as much as verbal texts. For that same reason, the visual
representation I choose for the modern period will come from cinematic
expression rather than pictorial ait per se.
Finally, let me anticipate my conclusions at the outset. The Elder
Brother in this parable typically receives one of three kinds of treatment in
subsequent verbal and visual representations. First, the Elder Brother is
more often than not either not mentioned or not depicted. Second, in muchverbal and visual art, the Elder Brother is identified with Jews who are
indignant at the emergence of the younger, upstart religion, Christianity.
The Elder Brother is viewed as the Other, an Outsider, obdurate and
incapable himself of repentance, sometimes even identified with the
"Devil"! The third tendency is to identify the Elder Brother with the self-
righteous Christian and the prodigal with "the penitent sinner." Here, at
4See for example the nearly 150 references cited in Robert W. Baldwin, "A
Bibliography of the Prodigal Son Theme in Art and Literature," Bulletin of Bibliography, 44
(1987) 167-71. Note, though, that with only a few exceptions (cited later), the focus is
mostly on the Prodigal not his brother.
5For another example of a literary theorist who has attempted to overcome the
"word-image opposition," see especially the work by Mieke Bal, Reading (( Rembrandt": Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
6The fact that this parable is best known as "The Parable of the Prodigal Son,"
illustrates the eclipsing of the elder by the younger. Even modern attempts to rehabilitate the
meaning of the story result in titles like "The Parable of the Waiting Father," still excluding
the elder brother. However, the change in title from "The Parable of the Lost Son," in the
Revised Standard Version to "The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother," in the NewRevised Standard may be a hopeful sign of recovering the significance of the second half of
the story as more than just a foil for the first half.
3. AugustineThough Augustine does not utilize the Elder Brother in his
Confessions, he does make reference to him in Quaestiones Evangeliorum,Questions on the Gospels, a fragmentary collection of replies sent to a pious
reader. Here he ignores the "penitential" interpretation mentioned by
Jerome and followed by Ambrose and establishes the interpretation which
dominates medieval exegesis of the parable for the next millennium. His
text reads: "While meanwhile his elder son, the people of Israel followingthe flesh (my emphasis), has not in fact departed into a distant region, but
nevertheless is not in the house, however he is in the field, namely, he istoiling with reference to earthly things . . . ,"
1Augustine interprets the
father's going out to the Elder Brother as an appeal for Jews to enter the
Church "so that all Israel—to whom to an extent blindness has occurred,17
just as to the one absent in the field may become saved." But it is clear
from Augustine's view of the Jews here and elsewhere that he thinks such
conversion either impossible or highly improbable—the Elder Brother/Jews
will not join the great feast!
Jill Robbins has claimed: "Augustine, in excluding the elderbrother, inaugurates a critical tradition that does not read the elder brother
1 o
or reads him as outside." Confirming this statement is the evidence of the
Gloss (an eleventh-century compilation of passages from sources as early
as Tertullian and as late as authorities contemporary with the compilers)
which was standard for Bible study throughout Latin Christendom and
which follows the Augustinian interpretation of the parable. There were,
however, some interesting and diverse interpretations to emerge in the
medieval period.1 The most disturbing reading of the Elder Brother at this
15Ibid.
16Augustine, Quaestiones, lines 106-13.
17Ibid., lines 131-32.
18Jill Robbins, Prodigal Son/Elder Brother (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1991)42.
19See, e.g. Gottfried of Admont who suggests that the father is God and the two
sons stand for the human being in its two constituent parts; the younger son is the spirit, andthe elder the body (Homiliae dominicales, PL 174, no. 31, cols. 202-10; cited by Wailes,
time is allegorical interpretation of the parable in the medieval English
version of the Gesta Romanorum . About the Elder Brother it says:
the other son [i.e. the elder brother in the parable], whiche betokeneth the
deuyll, was euer vnkynde, & grutcheth dayly agaynst oure reconsylynge,
sayenge, that by synne we oughte not to come vnto the herytage of heuen.
Unto the whiche brynge vs our lorde Ihesus! Amen.
In identifying the Elder Brother with the Devil, the final (perversely) logical
step in objectifying the Elder Brother as the personification of Evil and the
Other is complete.
4. Illuminated ManuscriptsI know of no depiction of our Parable in any pre-Constantinian
art.21 In fact, the earliest extant visual depiction of Luke 15:11 -32 of which
I am aware occurs in a ninth-century illuminated manuscript now located
in Paris. Another early depiction of the Prodigal's story is in an eleventh-
century Illuminated Gospel Book (also in Paris). In it, the story of the
Prodigal is briefly told. The prodigal takes leave of his father, comes to
himself while herding swine, returns home to receive a robe, sandals and a
ring from an overjoyous father and his servants. Missing evidently is any
sign of the Elder Brother. In another illuminated manuscript perhaps acentury later (located now in Florence), there is another depiction of the
Prodigal. The last scene may depict a reconciliation not only between
Father and Prodigal but also involving the Elder Brother. The figure in the
middle (the father?) is holding the hand of one (the prodigal?) and
entreating or exhorting the other (the Elder Brother?). I have not seen any
discussions of this particular manuscript, and judgment must be suspended
until further research can be done. Most of these early depictions, at least
those in illuminated manuscripts, focus on the Prodigal with few if any
depictions of the Elder Brother.
2OThe Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. Sidney J. Heritage
(London: Trübner, 1879) 444; cited by Young, The English Prodigal Son Plays, 11-12.
2 1See Graydon Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life
Before Constantine (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985).
22For a list of extant pictorial and sculptoral representations of the Parable of the
Prodigal Son before 1700, see Alan Young, "Appendix B," in The English Prodigal Son Plays:A theatrical fashion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Salzburg, Austria:
Institut Für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1979) 290-317.
23My examination to date is limited to these illuminated manuscripts I am aware
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the story of the
Prodigal Son enjoyed unprecedented popularity in the homiletic, dramatic,
and iconographie traditions. During the period of the Reformation, though,
the penitential reading of the Elder Brother re-emerged, at least in
ecclesiastical circles. This view was forcefully presented by John Calvin.
Still, the historical allegory continued to be very popular in drama and art,
as well as the tendency to ignore the Elder Brother altogether. What is new
in this period are the interpretations of the parable preserved in the very
popular Prodigal Son Plays in England and Europe.
1. John CalvinJohn Calvin acknowledged those "who think that, under the figure
of the first-born son, the Jewish nation is described, have indeed some
argument on their side," but he maintained, "I do not think that they attend
sufficiently to the whole of the passage." Rather, he argued that the
section of the parable dealing with the Elder Brother, "charges those persons
with cruelty, who would wickedly choose to set limits to the grace of God,
as if they envied the salvation of wretched sinners if we are desirousto be reckoned the children of God, we must forgive in a brotherly manner
of brethren . ..."
When, in the parable, the Father goes out to address the Elder
Brother, Calvin comments:
By these words he reproaches hypocrites with intolerable pride,
which makes it necessary that the Father should entreat them not to envy
the compassion manifested to their brethren. . . . the design of Christ is
twelfth- and thirteenth-century cathedrals, especially the 12 scenes of the Prodigal depicted in
the stained glass of the Sens Cathedral, the 22 scenes in tije Chartres Cathedral, the 17 scenes
in Bourges Cathedral, and the 17 scenes in the St. Jean Chapel of the Clermont-Ferrand
Cathedral.
2 4John Calvin, Commentary on a harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 2 vols., trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845)
2:349-50.
25Ibid., 350. Calvin (ibid.) did note that in the Lukan context, the discourse was
to show that it would be unjust in any man to murmur on account of his
brother having been received into favor
For Calvin, the Elder Brother reminds the pious believer that it costs nothing
to rejoice when God receives "into favor those who had been at variance
with him." Calvin, then, is picking up on the interpretation earlier
advocated by Ambrose and revived by Bonaventure and Albert the Great in
the thirteenth century.
2. Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Prodigal Son PlaysProdigal Son plays, both as academic dramas and also as popular
morality plays, were extraordinarily popular in Germany, the Netherlands,
and England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Alan R. Young
has counted no less than 35 extant Prodigal Son plays composed in England
before 1642.27
Many of these plays were Christian adaptations of the classical
dramatists such as Terence and Plautus.8
These adaptations of the
Prodigal Son story produced some interesting diversions from the plot
structure of the original parable.
When the Elder Brother was not ignored in these morality plays
(which was often), his characterization was radically transformed from its
biblical portrayal. Only in The Glasse Government (1575) does he retainthe attitude of unforgiving self-righteousness so dominant in much of the
homiletic and iconographie traditions up to this point.2 In several other
plays of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Elder Brother
undergoes a radical transformation. One of the first Prodigal Son plays
written in English, Nice Wanton (first extant edition 1560), was heavily
influenced by Calvinistic predestination. There are three children,
Barnabas, Ismael and Dalilah. Barnabas, the older child, is virtuous and
obedient, while the other two throw away their school books and take to
excessive living, stealing, and playing dice. There is no note of forgivenessand reconciliation in this story, however. At the end, Dalilah is "Dead of
the pox" and Ismael's body is draped in chains after he is hanged.
Barnabas, the Elder Brother, is able to avoid this fate only because of a
"special grace." He tells his mother: "In that God preserved me, small
26Ibid.
27Young, The English Prodigal Son Plays, 318-20.
28Ibid., 56.
2 9 0n the point see Young The English Prodigal Son Plays 51
3 1 Young, The English Prodigal Plays, 100-01. The conflict between the theology
espoused in the play and the purpose of such prodigal son plays for moral instruction for
parents and children is clearly evident.
32 For an assessment of why, see Young, "The Collapse of a Tradition," in The English Prodigal Son Plays, 230-78.
33 For an examination of Shakespeare's contribution to the Prodigal Son plays
through his Henry IV plays see Young, The English Prodigal Son Plays, 194-225 and also J.
Dover Wilson, The Fortunes of Falstaff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943;
rept. 1979), 17-35.
34 See in addition to Young and Wilson cited above; Susan Snyder, "King Lear and
the Prodigal Son," SQ 17.4 (1966): 361-69; Peter Mislard, "Shakespeare and the Prodigal
Son," The Bible Today, 51 (1970): 172-79; Darryl Tippens, "Shakespeare and the Prodigal
Son Tradition," Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 14 (1988): 57-77. Tippens is uniquein paying close attention to the way the Parable was mediated to Shakespeare in the great
literary and iconographie traditions beyond the bare biblical text.
36Tippens, "Shakespeare and the Prodigal Son Tradition," 74.
37Critics dispute the exact number of references to the parable with the numbers
ranging from nine (Noble) to twenty (Tippens).
38Tippens, "Shakespeare and the Prodigal Son Tradition," 61.
39Though Jessica is never depicted literally as "lean, rent, and beggar'd" there arehints that not all has been or will be well in the allusion to ill-fated lovers in the "in such a
night" exchange between Jessica and Lorenzo in the closing scene (5 1 1 24)
Jessica's father, Shy lock, the rich Jew of Venice, is depicted more as a
resentful Elder Brother than as a forgiving father.40
As we have seen already with Jerome, it was conventional to
identify the Elder Brother with the arrogant Pharisee of Luke 15 and 18.
Shakespeare also identifies Shylock with the indignant Pharisee by means of
Shylock's aside before meeting Antonio for the first time: "How like a
fawning publican he looks!" (1.3.33; see Luke 15:1-2; 18:9-14). Shylock
initially refuses to accept Bassanio's invitation to dine (1.3.27-30) echoing
the Elder Brother's refusal to join in the Prodigal's feast; and when finally
he agrees to join the feast, it is not to celebrate, but rather he says, "I go in
hate, to feed upon/the prodigal Christian" (II.5.14-15). Shylock intends
literally to fulfill this grisly purpose with his quest for a "pound of flesh"
from Antonio (see scene 4; cf. 1.3.158ff). This Elder Brother typology is
strengthened by Shylock's later reference to Antonio as a "prodigal"
(3.1.35).
Like the traditional understanding of the Elder Brother, Shylock is
stereotypically depicted as the obstinate Jew who is resentful of the
Christians' good fortunes at his expense, and, in fact, at least twice in the
play (1.3.90; 2.2.17-20), Shylock is identified with the "devil" in much the
same way as was the Elder Brother in the earlier Gesta Romanorum.Throughout the play, then, Shylock is scapegoated in the conventional
formula "Jewishness plus usury equals villainy." l Shylock's punishmentfor threatening to kill a Christian was to name Lorenzo and Jessica as his
heirs and to convert to Christianity. Shylock, then, is no Loving Father, but
rather the Elder Brother whose resentment of the prodigals, Antonio and
Jessica, leads ultimately to his demise (in the case of Shylock his loss of
property, occupation and forced conversion). That "the Merchant of Venice
shares with Hamlet the distinction of having been more often performed
than any other of Shakespeare's plays" insures its influence at least
indirectly on English speakers' understanding of the prodigal plot.
40 In fact, in the last dialogue between Lorenzo and Jessica, Shylock is not only
notably absent, but he is never referred to as Jessica's father, but rather distanced and
depersonalized as "the wealthy Jew" (5.1.15) from whom Jessica stole and as "the rich Jew"
(5.1.291-92) who was forced to make Lorenzo and Jessica his heirs.
41This despite the fact that, at least in theory, practicing Jews had been excluded
from England for three centuries prior to Elizabethan London and the fact that Shakespeare
himself was unlikely ever to have known an orthodox Jew. See M. M. Mahood, ed., The Merchant of Venice. New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), "Introduction," 22; "Appendix: Shakespeare's use of the Bible," 185.
4. Rembrandt "No artist has ever depicted the most moving episode from the
parable of the Prodigal Son as often or as effectively as Rembrandt."
Beginning with an etching dating from 1636 until the completion of the
famous Return of the Prodigal in the last years of Rembrandt's life (1668-
69), Rembrandt lovingly worked and reworked various depictions of the
Homecoming episode (See Illustration 1). I have chosen this last and most
profound representation of the Parable by Rembrandt as our example of the
parable in visual representational art. This choice seems appropriate since
Rembrandt's painting is one of the most famous depictions of this scene. It
might also be significant, given the baptist heritage of this Festschrift'shonorée, to point out that not only was Rembrandt one of the few great
Protestant artists during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but that by
the time of the Return of the Prodigal, he had come profoundly under the
influence of the same anabaptist traditions which had earlier influenced
baptist forebearers, Smyth and Helwys.
Though there is much to ponder about the painting, especially the
powerful pathos of the elderly, presumably nearly blind father embracing
the beggardly prodigal, I will focus my few comments on the two male
characters to the immediate right of the father. Though the identity of thesetwo figures has been the object of much debate among Rembrandt scholars,
a recent dissertation by Barbara Joan Haeger has settled the issue, at least
for me. Haeger demonstrates that in the biblical commentaries and
paintings contemporary with Rembrandt, the parable of the Pharisee and the
tax collector (Luke 18) and the parable of the prodigal were closely linked
(as was true a century earlier with Shakespeare). Rembrandt follows that
tradition in depicting the seated man beating his breast. Here is the
publican or tax collector of the parable beating his breast in repentance,
"God, be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13). The Elder Brother, on the
other hand, stands like the Pharisee in the same parable with hands folded
in judgment, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves,
rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector" (Luke 18:11).
43Hidde Hoekstra, Rembrandt and the Bible (Utrecht: Magna Books, 1990) 335.
4 4 0n the anabaptist influence on Rembrandt, see Jacob Rosenberg, Rembrandt, Life & Work (London: Greenwich, 1964), 180ff.; Julius Held, "Rembrandt and the Book of
Tobit," in Rembrandt Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
4 50n this scene, see especially the comments by Henri J. M. Nouwen in The
Return of the Prodigal Son (New York: Doubleday 1992)
Rembrandt continues the iconographie and homiletic traditions of
identifying the Elder Brother with judgmental Pharisees. Rembrandt differs
from the biblical scene by placing the Elder Brother as the most prominent
witness to the homecoming scene. So Rembrandt holds in tension a portrait
of the Elder Brother standing in judgment with the possibility that he may in
the end join in the feast. Haeger comments; "Rembrandt does not reveal
whether he [the Elder Brother] sees the light. As he does not clearly
condemn the Elder Brother, Rembrandt holds out the hope that he too will
perceive he is a sinner . . . the interpretation of the elder brother's reaction
is left up to the viewer."46
I will later argue that this open-endedness
toward the Elder Brother's response, so rare in the history of interpretation,
is a faithful rendering of the parable itself.
J. Neglect of the Elder Brother Despite the relative prominence which Calvin, Rembrandt, and
Shakespeare gave the Elder Brother, many clerics, artists, and dramatists
continued to neglect him altogether in this period.
(a) Homiletic Traditions. Other Protestants, following Augustine
and Calvin, interpreted the prodigal's son story as a perfect distillation of
Reformed theology—the triumph of grace over works, but unlike Calvin,
they paid little or no attention to the Elder Brother. The Prodigal's storyinspired book-length interpretations like Samuel Gardiner's 1599 devotional
study, The Portraitur of the Prodigali Sonne, in which Gardiner referred to
the story as "the Epitome of the Gospell, the abstract and compendium of
the whole worke of our redemption." The gloss on the Prodigal Son story
in the Geneva Bible makes a similar point: "And Luke makes this a pattern
for us to imitate." Likewise John Donne remarks on the parable as
emblematic of everyday life: "As we gave away ourselves, so [God]
restores us to our selves again. It is well expressed in the parable of the
prodigali; and his case is ours."48 Despite this attention paid to the Prodigal
Son in the homiletic tradition, the other brother is simply ignored by thesesources.
46Cited by ibid., 77-78.
4 7Samuel Gardiner, The Portraitur of the Prodigali Sonne (London: Nicholas Ling,
1599).
48
77Σ Sermons of John Donne, eds. George R. Potter and Evelyn Simpson(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953-62) 1:62. All the texts cited above are
quoted also by Darryl Tippens "Shakespeare and the Prodigal Son Tradition " 59
By the nineteenth century, this neglect had even touched
"evangelical communities." In his autobiography, the English divine, John
Ruskin, relates a visit he made with a friend around 1860 to a "fashionable
séance of evangelical doctrine conducted by a Mr. Molyneux." Mr.
Molyneux "discoursed in tones of consummate assurance and satisfaction . . .
on the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son." Finally, Ruskin narrates:
I ventured, from a back seat, to enquire of Mr. Molyneux
what we were to learn from the example of the other son,
not prodigal, who was, his father said of him, 'ever with me,
and all that I have thine?' A sudden horror, and unanimous
feeling of the serpent having, somehow, got over the wall
into their Garden of Eden, fell on the whole company; andsome of them, I thought, looked at the candles as if they
expected them to burn blue. After a pause of a minute,
gathering himself into an expression of pity and indulgence,
withholding latent thunder, Mr. Molyneux explained to me
that the home-staying son was merely a picturesque figure
introduced to fill the background of the parable agreeably,
and contained no instruction or example for the well-49
disposed scriptural student....(b) Iconographie Traditions. The parable of the Prodigal Son was
visually represented nearly everywhere, "on the walls of houses, taverns
and churches, in stained glass windows, among collections of woodcuts and
engravings, on cushions, bed-hangings and coverlets, and on stoneware
jugs, goblet lids and painted cabinets."5
It has been called "one of the
most prominent subjects for Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art."
The popularity of the prodigal son in all types of artistic media serves in
sharp contrast to the neglect of the Elder Brother by artists during the
periods of the Reformation through the Enlightenment or in art-historicalterms, the Renaissance through Baroque and Rococo. The work of Albrecht
Dürer {The Contemplation of the Prodigal Son, 1496) represents those who
4 9 John Ruskin, "'Praeter ita'': Outline of Scenes and Thoughts, Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life (Boston: Dana Estes & Company, 1885) 396-97.
50
Young, The English Prodigal Son Plays, 281.
Tippens, "Shakespeare and the Prodigal Son Tradition," 58.
depict scenes from the life of the Prodigal prior to his homecoming. Even
when the scene depicted is that of the prodigal's homecoming, the Elder
Brother is often missing from the scene (perhaps reflecting a literal
rendering of the biblical passage).53
When he is depicted, it is most often
standing on the very margins of the homecoming scene, as in the scene by
Beham (1540), where the Elder Brother continues to plow, oblivious of his
brother's return.
The same is true of visual representations of the parable in
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England and America. Scenes
from the life of the Prodigal Son were extremely popular prints in both
England and colonial America, often adorning the homes of middle class
citizens everywhere. In what is believed to be the earliest depiction made incolonial America, the prodigal (attired in garb appropriate to late eighteenth
century America!) returns home and kneels before an affectionate father and
servants who are bearing shoes and coat. There is no sign of the Elder
Brother. Likewise in an even earlier British print set of six scenes which
depict the prodigal's story in stereotypical fashion: 1) receiving the
patrimony; 2) the departure; 3) the riotous living (almost always depicted as
here in a tavern); 4) the prodigal "coming to himself amidst the swine; 5)
the homecoming; and 6) the celebration. In the sixth scene, the Elder
Brother can be seen standing outside the party with a look of disbelief on hisface and a hoe thrown across his shoulder.
(c) Dramatic Traditions. Finally, as noted earlier, the neglect of the
Elder Brother is even more obvious in the dramatic versions of the Prodigal.
As with the homiletic tradition, the Elder Brother played little or no role in
most of these extremely popular plays. One drama, Acolastus ("wastrel," or
"prodigal") is particularly noteworthy in this regard. A bilingual version of
it, translated by John Palsgrave, chaplain and pedagogue of Henry VIII, was
used as "an essential text in the new humanist educational system of
52See inter alia Bosch (The Prodigal Son, 1516), Holbein (Scheibenriss, 1520) and
the earlier etchings and paintings by Rembrandt (The Departure of the Prodigal Son, 1632-
33; The Prodigal Son as a Swineherd, 1647-48; The Prodigal Son Squanders his Inheritance,1636).
53See, e.g., van Leyden (The Homecoming of the Prodigal Son, 1510); Massari
(The Return of the Lost Son, 1620); and van Dyck (The Lost Son with the Penitents beforethe Madonna, 1620)
54
See the discussion of these prints by Edwin Wolf in "The Prodigal Son inEngland and America: A Century of Change," in Eighteenth Century Prints in Colonial America: To Educate and Decorate, Joan D. Dolmetsch, ed. (Williamsburg, VA: The
personality of the older brother instead of the result of his behavior. Here,
sin is a matter of temperament and personality, of having the wrong attitude,
of not feeling the appropriate emotions in one's heart and acting on thefeelings. . . ."
67The Elder Brother is understood by these Presbyterian
pastors in tones reminiscent of a practiced psychological discourse.
2. Literary/Dramatic TraditionThe Prodigal Son parable has been traced in various contemporary
American writers and playwrights, such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain,
Stephen Crane, Eugene O'Neill, and Henry Miller. A brief description of
these references is found in the excellent resource edited by David Jeffrey
entitled, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Thisliterature tends to focus on the theme of prodigality and there is little or no
attention given to the character of the Elder Brother.
Since our search is for those traditions which may most directly
influence contemporary understanding of the parable, I turn my attention to
one possible filter which represents the kind of contemporary traditions
likely to influence the modern mind. In a radio broadcast from several years
ago, Garrison Keillor gave his own version of the Prodigal Son. Keillor's
narrator tells us the performance is sponsored by "the American Council of
Remorse—a nonprofit organization working for greater contrition on the70
part of people who do terrible things." The story is set in Judea, or at least
Keillor's imaginary construal of Judea, where a father and his two sons,
Wally, the prodigal, and Dwight, the older, run a feed-lot operation. Foolish
virgins, a publican, and a Samaritan expand Keillor's cast for the play
(which also includes a little ditty, "Hey Judea" sung to the tune of "Hey,
Jude").
Following the plot of the parable, the prodigal, Wally, returns home
and is warmly received by his father who orders clothes and a ring and
shoes ("not those running shoes! The dress shoes!"). Dwight returns andcomplains that his father has never given a party complete with fatted calf
for him and his friends. The play closes with this dialogue:
DWIGHT: I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying, Dad. You never
ran up to me and hugged me—I'd just like to point that out.
67Ibid., 87.
68Cited above in footnote 3.
^The play was subsequently published in the journal, Antaeus 66 (1991), 242-47.
Have some calf, you guys. That fat won'tkeep, you know. Sure is good fatted calf, Dad. Sure beats husks. (Off.)Care for another piece, you virgins?
DWIGHT: Ever stop to think who fatted that calf, Wally? That was our
best calf, Dad. The best one. (The others slowly leave, talking among
themselves.) Try to think how I feel. I'm hoeing corn all day, come in
bone-tired, there's my brother smelling of pig manure, and they got the
beer on ice and my calf on the barbecue! And MY RING on his hand! My
ring\ You promised it to me, but oh no—can't give it to the son who's
worked his tail off for thirty years, oh no, gotta give it to the weasel who
comes dragging his butt in the door—Oh great—wonderful, Dad. Terrific.
Maybe I'll go sleep with the pigs, seeing as you go for that. See
ya later, Wally. Help yourself to the rest of my stuff—clothes, jewels,
shekels, just take what you want. Take my room. Don't worry about me.
I'll be in the pigpen.
(He leaves. Offstage sounds: A stove being kicked, muttered curses, potsand pans being thrown, dishes broken.)
Although Keillor depicts the Elder Brother as a sympathetic character, the
"play" ends with Dwight leaving the scene with no hint that he will return.
Like the self-righteous believer in other interpretations, the Elder Brother isexcluded (or excludes himself) from joining in the banquet. His departure
seems absolute—he actually departs the stage in a fit of rage, according to
the narrator—a much more final exit than in the Parable itself, a point to be
pursued a bit later.
3. Contemporary Visual TraditionsDepictions of the Prodigal Son in modern American art have had
little influence in shaping contemporary popular culture.7 Instead, I wish
to argue that the homiletic, literary, and visual traditions have coalescedwith a powerful American myth or world view which profoundly shapes our
typical understanding of the parable. The myth is the savior-hero myth in
7 1 Ibid., 246-47.
72For a catalogue of some modern American depictions, see Jerry Evenrud, "Visual
Exegesis: The Prodigal Son,'" ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies 4/3
(1992): 4-9.
731 am dependent in what follows on Bernard Brandon Scott, Hollywood Dreams &
I would finally like to offer a re-reading of the story of the Elder
Brother, that is rooted in both aesthetics and ethics, which might give some
guidance to a contemporary understanding of the Parable. By focusing on
the Elder Brother in this parable, I wish to retrieve him from those
traditions, whether literary, visual, or homiletic, which simply ignore him. I
am making no attempt, however, to displace the Prodigal Son in the story.
His is a moving story which does narrate with strength and beauty the
Gospel's power to transform the life of an individual or the structures of a
society. But the Prodigal's redemption need not take place at the expense
of the Elder Brother.
1. The Rejected Elder Son Theme in Biblical and Post-Biblical TraditionsA common strategy in most of the verbal and visual interpretations,
whether influenced by the historical allegory or the penitential reading of
the Elder Brother, is that they either state or imply that the Elder Brother is
permanently and absolutely an outsider to the story. Ignoring the Elder
Brother likewise achieves the same goal of exclusion. I am arguing that a
close reading of the story reveals that the parable is open-ended and that the
fate of the Elder Brother is by no means decided by either the parable itself or its literary framework in Luke.
It is not simply the American myth of the hero that has caused so
many readers to view the Prodigal Son as blessed with redemption and the
Elder Brother as condemned for his jealousy. Noted literary critic,
Northrop Frye, among others, once pointed out that "there is one theme that
recurs frequently in the early books of the Bible: the passing over of the
firstborn son, who normally has the legal right of primogeniture, in favor of
a younger son."76 For Frye, "the theme of the passed-over firstborn seems
to have something to do with the insufficiency of the human desire forcontinuity which underlies the custom of passing the inheritance on to the
eldest son. . . . Hence the deliberate choice of a younger son represents a
divine intervention in human affairs, a vertical descent into the continuity
that breaks its pattern, but gives human life a new dimension by doing
76Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982) 180; for examples see 180-81. See also Roger Syrén,The Forsaken First-Born: A Study of a Recurrent Motif in the Patriarchal Narratives,
Both sons have sinned; yet both sons are rewarded: "The younger
son violates the moral code and gets a feast; the elder rejects the father but
gets all. The father is interested neither in morality nor in inheritance. He
is concerned with the unity of his sons."81 The Father is not the God of
Israel who redeems the just and punishes the unjust nor the American hero
who rewards and avenges. Rather, the Father abandons his honorable role
as patriarch and shamelessly embraces both sons: "You want my property
before I die? Take it. You want to come back? Here, come back, let's
have a party. You don't want to come in to the party? I'll come out. You
feel abandoned and unwanted? You're always with me."82
In the parable,
Jesus rejects any apocalyptic notion of some group's being rejected at the
expense of another.
2. The Open-Ended Story in LukeSome might object that though a subversion of the rejected elder
son theme might be the meaning of the parable when interpreted apart from
its narrative context, its Lukan framework forces the reader to identify the
Elder Brother with the grumbling Pharisees, who are in fact judged and
banished. In Luke's framing of the story, readers are invited, perhaps even
compelled, to identify the Elder Brother with the Pharisees of 15:1-2.
Brandon Scott argues: "Since the . . . narrative identifies the elder son with
the rejected Pharisees of the primary narrative, there is an implied rejectionof the elder son."
83
I do not disagree with Scott's contention that at the primary
narrative level the Elder Brother is identified with the Pharisees; certainly
our brief history of interpretation would confirm that a large number of
readers have responded to the clues of the text in just that way. The
question is whether there are religious leaders who are not absolutelyrejected on the primary level of Luke's Gospel. Is the Elder Brother, like
the Pharisees he represents, banished from the party forever? Or does the
Elder Brother stand, like the Pharisees, at the crossroads where he, likethey, must make a decision about whether to join the feast or not? I
certainly do not have the space to enter into a dialogue with those who
81 Scott, 125.
82Scott, "Heroes From on High," Anglican Theological Review, 69 (1987): 143.
83Scott, Hear then the Parable, 103.
84
Scott's analysis {Hear then the Parable, 101-04) of the primary, intermediate,and third-level stories and his distinction between fictional and implied audiences are
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