Requesting an Inheritance While the Father is Still Alive

In his book Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, professor and missionary Kenneth Bailey unlocked some very interesting features of the parable of the prodigal son, here focused on what it meant to ask for your inheritance before the father had passed away. This is what he discovered:

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always…