mgpcpastor's blog

When I was undertaking studies in Bible, theology and preaching the work of scholars like Kenneth Bailey were nothing short of revolutionary.
Bailey observed the structures of texts, allusions to contemporary sources, and the cultural distinctives that readers in later generations would not ordinarily perceive.
Though now dead, his works live on.
Here’s a section from Poet And Peasant dealing with a familiar passage in Luke 15:

As soon as the prodigal reaches the edge of the village and is identified, a crowd will begin to gather. He will be subject to taunt songs and many other types of verbal and perhaps even physical abuse.
The father is fully aware of how his son will be treated, if and when he returns in humiliation to the village community he has rejected. What the father does in this homecoming scene can best be understood as a series of dramatic actions calculated to protect the boy from the hostility of the village and to restore him to fellowship within the community. These actions begin with the father running down the road.
An Oriental nobleman with flowing robes never runs anywhere. To do so is humiliating. Ben Sirach confirms this attitude. He says, “A man’s manner of walking tells you what he is.” Weatherhead writes, “It is so very undignified in eastern eyes for an elderly man to run. Aristotle says, ‘Great men never run in public’.” The text says, “He had compassion.” We would suggest that this “compassion” specifically includes awareness of the gauntlet the boy will have to face as he makes his way through the village. The father then runs this gauntlet for him, assuming a humiliating posture in the process! Bruce has noted that such an action would “soon draw a crowd to the spot.”
The father makes the reconciliation public at the edge of the village. Thus his son enters the village under the protective care of the father’s acceptance. The boy, having steeled his nerves for this gauntlet, now, to his utter amazement, sees his father run it for him. Rather than experiencing the ruthless hostility he deserves and anticipates, the son witnesses an unexpected, visible demonstration of love in humiliation. The father’s acts replace speech. There are no words of acceptance and welcome. The love expressed is too profound for words. Only acts will do.

Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Eastern Eyes (Combined Edition), Eerdmans, 1983, pp179-180.