Dr. Anthony Esolen is the author of 28 books on literature, culture, and the Christian life, whose most recent work is In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John. He and his wife Debra also produce a new web magazine, Word and Song, devoted to reintroducing people to the good, the true, and the beautiful.
We are not told why the younger brother in the parable went to the far country. If younger brothers in the days of Jesus were as they have been everywhere else, maybe he grew weary of tending sheep with his father and his elder brother. Maybe life seemed to him to have ended before it had begun. The old homestead was a prison, and traditions were its fetters.
