Seeing the Genius of Jesus in the Parable of Two Sons

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Collin Hansen
Jesus was and is a genius. If you ever thought of him that way, we know him as a friend, Lord, healer, teacher, of course, Son of God, true God from true God. But genius. Einstein was a genius. Hawking was a genius, men of science, men of modernity, men who created our world, Jesus. He’s a religious figure, and we don’t associate religion with genius, even when we confess with Hebrews one three, that Jesus upholds the universe by the Word of His power. Well, Peter Williams wants you to consider the surprising genius of Jesus. In his new book from crossway. He shows readers what the Gospels reveal about the greatest teacher, he wants you to see the cleverness and wisdom of Jesus. Williams is the principal of Tyndale house, Cambridge and chair of the International Greek New Testament project. He’s also the author of an excellent little book, can we trust the Gospels, which is, in many ways, similar to the surprising genius of Jesus. Now, I read this latest book from Peter, just before my family embarked on a month long stay at Tyndale house, Cambridge last summer. And we just had the time of our lives, the library was helpful, no doubt, but the community was truly special. So I wanted to talk with Peter about the surprising genius of Jesus, as well as the mission of Tyndale house, Cambridge. So Peter, thanks for joining me on gospel bound. Great to be with you. It’s a little sad to be seeing you here on video as opposed to next door over the summer, but it’ll have to do across the pond. Now, Peter, in this book, The Story of the two sons, of course, we better know it many of us is the parable of the prodigal son. And it deals with all kinds of themes anger, freedom, love, resentment, shame. What’s the key to discovering the genius of Jesus in this particular story?

Peter Williams
Well, I’d say it’s an incredibly powerful story. And it’s Jesus’s longest story, which means that there’s just the most in based on time, it’s only three minutes long, though, if you read out loud in English, that’s a typical sort of reading length. So it really is very packed in. And I think, you know, you can admire different storytellers over the ages. Sometimes they will tell a very long story, like Tolkien does. But the amazing thing with Jesus is to get so much into such a short time. It’s very emotionally intelligent, as well as intellectually intelligent, captures every sort of person, in terms of the family dynamics in terms of the tendency to run away from authority, with the younger son, in the tendency of the older brother to submit to authority, but resent it. And so it speaks in that way. And it works, whether you know, anything, or if you’re a top scribe of Jesus’s day where it also has special messages for those sorts of people. So it’s very, very well crafted, not a single word wasted.

Collin Hansen
Was there ever a moment where it just clicked with you that genius of Jesus was there? Is there a before and after there or a realization that dawned on you over time?

Peter Williams
No, it’s definitely a thing over time. As you study more and more, you realize already, just at the beginning, this is an amazing story. But as I’ve taught it, over the years, I’ve seen more and more come to appreciate that there isn’t a single wasted word there. And that’s significant that there are emotionally powerful words, and even permissions. So the fact that the younger brother three times, calls the Father, Father, and the when the older brother addresses the Father, He says, Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you without the word father. So it’s the cleverness not just the word choice but of the words that are omitted, because that obviously shows you that whereas one brother is physically far away. He’s actually emotionally closer than the one who’s physically close. And it’s that sort of thing that’s going on in the story through route,

Collin Hansen
I learned the book of Acts and the Pauline Epistles in my graduate school from Don Carson go to Cambridge alone, of course. And that was the emphasis and all of the verbal exams that we took. There are no wasted words in scripture. But so many of them fly over our heads because we don’t have the background, we don’t have the understanding. We don’t we don’t have the perception that certainly those audiences would have in the first century but, but even the many things that would have flown over there, as well, in some ways, but you talk a lot in the parable of the two sons about the Old Testament delusions from Jesus, for example, you write that the first record of anger in the Bible comes from an older brother, envious of the acceptance of his younger brother, you point that out, and I can be reading the Bible for several decades and think that seems so obvious. How did I miss that? Give us a taste for some of these other Old Testament allusions that are everywhere from Jesus in this story?

Peter Williams
Yes, I think sometimes when you’re dealing with a story, it’s a bit like, you know, the story of the Titanic, everyone knows that it’s gone down, and therefore almost expensive is gone. And, and if you’ve heard the story, once, you know that the father runs, embraces and kisses the younger son, and that that’s not a surprise anymore. So you think, Okay, what’s going on? But there’s lots in the story. And yeah, one of the things is the way I would say Jesus echoes Genesis throughout the story. So in Luke, it says, it’s addressed to tax collectors and sinners, you wouldn’t expect people who have got a reputation for sending to know the Bible pretty well. But then it’s also addressed to us Pharisees, who studied scripture and scribes whose very job it is to copy out the Scriptures. And so Jesus tells a story, which will work whether you know, the Old Testament at all or not, but if you know it, it’s got particular points. So there you’ve got the story of Cain and Abel. Let’s say the story begins, a man had two sons, what does that trigger in you? If you’re someone who knows the scriptures, we think, Well, the first person who had two sons was Adam, of course, he had some more later, but that that could be triggered Adams, two sons, then you see, the oldest son is envious about the younger brother, he’s resentful, he murders him. And you have this scene where God is talking to Cain in a merciful way. And that’s very much really like the way the Father speaks to the older brother in this story. But of course, a man had two sons also triggers other stories. The most famous father to have two and only two sons is Isaac. And there you have the story of Jacob and Esau, Esau, the older brother, who’s cheated out of his inheritance by the younger brother. And as a result, the younger brother goes off into a farmland feeds animals. And then he, because his older brother’s angry, he’s trying to get away from him, and then he comes back eventually, and you’re expecting him to get absolutely splattered by his older brother. He’s heard that he’s got 400 armed men, and it’s coming towards him. And in the most surprising turn of events in the Old Testament narrative, actually, Esau runs in braces and kisses, is younger son. And that’s the only time in the Bible you get someone running, embracing and kissing other than Jesus story. Oh, Jesus story is saying the father’s welcoming of the youngest son is really like that surprising welcome by Esau, which is a bit of a hint, if you’re an Esau type figure, an older brother, who’s been working hard or whatever. They’re actually, if bad old, Esau could welcome his cheating brother, shouldn’t you be prepared to accept tax collectors and prostitutes? Now you think about it, if you’re a Pharisee, you work hard, you pay your taxes, you pay your taxes to the Romans via the tax collectors, that’s a bit of a painful thing to do. giving money to your overlords. And it’s those awful tax collectors that are facilitating that and enriching themselves out of that. And the thought that they can just get access to God, as Jesus seems to be suggesting is a bit of a problem for you. So all of that message is there.

Collin Hansen
And this is one reason why Peter, I just I love the work that you do, because this is what it’s really it’s opening up this sense of, of genius of all of the detail of all of the illusions that you see the intentionality, the unity, of the story of redemption, the similarities, but also the differences but even the differences are very strategic. They’re very deliberate. Yep, in there and the unfolding plan of redemption. Now, one of the you’ve already alluded to this, this is a clear biblical pattern you make mention Jacob and Esau but we could have talked about other examples as well, that those who are first in line to inherit, are not always the ones who inherit. Now, let’s think about this when you’re talking to non Christians or anyone else who is really less familiar with the Bible, including Christians. How do you explain the significance of this pattern? What does it mean?

Peter Williams
Well, I mean, firstly, I’d want to encourage people to take time to study Jesus’s words and see more in them over time. So there’s just an ongoing depth. But you do see this thing throughout scripture that God lifts up the week and he brings down the crowd. And that’s throughout Scripture, I suppose you could say it. The very first older brother in the Bible doesn’t seem doesn’t follow after God. I’m a younger brother. Of course, I love the fact that younger brothers do a bit better. But but but you know, it’s not a simple thing. Of course, Jesus is an eldest brother as well. So, but there is this thing about the people you’d think of far off God brings near those you’d think would be spiritually close, actually aren’t anything like as close and so that’s a pattern that’s a great encouragement, to any who feel what they’ve done is too bad. God can’t accept them. No, he’ll accept you as you are. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do things to earn your way to God. Of course, when that younger son comes back, he has to give himself over to his father. But it’s not a question of earning his way back into the family. And that’s a very encouraging thing.

Collin Hansen
Another thing you right, Peter is that quote, Jesus spoke for those with ears to hear, and taught in a way that the simple to grasp, and the intelligent could miss. How does this fit into his his genius? Is there? Is there something here that’s peculiar or particular to Jesus? Or is there something here that should be applied to the rest of our, our own teaching?

Peter Williams
Well, I think it’s important for us to understand that God speaks to reveal himself and also in a way to hide himself. Now, we’ve got to understand that God desires people to be saved. That’s where his heart is, I think it’s it’s taught throughout Scripture. God is a God who loves life, loves giving life loves sharing life, and never enjoys, takes pleasure in the death of the wicked, okay, so that you’ve got to understand that there’s an asymmetry in God’s intentions and heart, which is towards salvation, it’s not about enjoying anyone not being saved. But at the same time, when he speaks, it’s done in such a way that people should seek after him. And if they do not seek, they will stumble. And the clearest case of this you’ve got is at the cross, where you could stand on the cross and think, Wow, this is very good evidence that Jesus is a loser, that the Romans are in charge, he cannot be the Messiah, or you get it with the incarnation? Well, he can’t be God, he’s just a little baby. So that’s the hiddenness of God. At the same time, a dying thief can look at the same evidence as the other dying thief and say, remember me when you’re coming into your kingdom, I can see you may be being crucified by the Romans, but I can see you’re about to become king. You’re coming into a kingdom? You know, it is. I mean, of course, he’s king before but you’re coming into His kingdom. This is remarkable. So it is that revealed this and that hiddenness. Now sometimes, in apologetics what that’s the sort of talking about defending the faith, people miss that idea, because they think that it’s all just about God, overwhelming people with evidence and God’s evidence doesn’t coerce. God gives evidence in such a way that if people want to turn away they can and that’s a, a disturbing thing, a challenging thing, that God makes it so that if you want to walk away, you can and you won’t be able to find intellectual justification for doing so. And particularly if you’re a clever person, you’ve got a lot of intellectual resources for constructing the reasons why you shouldn’t come. And the interesting thing then is, of course, Jesus is convicted by the top academic body of his day, the Sanhedrin that’s who they are. So you know, someone involved in the academy recognizing that there’s a A tendency for those of us who are involved in brain industry things often to, to miss things, much more than others.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, so even though you have this book about Jesus as a genius, there, in fact, are many reasons why those who are endowed with those without genius might be more likely to miss him. In some ways today,

Peter Williams
well, I think there is a problem not with knowledge in itself, but knowledge combined with human pride. So knowledge puffs up. And so God has all knowledge. But there’s something about us as humans that we often find that knowledge distorts the way we think, because we, we begin to think that we know a lot. And so then we’re becoming quite foolish,

Collin Hansen
and no better example of the Pharisees and no better example than of the story of that exact dynamic at play. Peter explained now the details of this this story in particular, but you could talk about other examples in your book, defend the claim of Jesus as the authentic source of this teaching.

Peter Williams
So there are various aspects to this. One is the way that stories begin and end. So we can see at the end of this story about the two sons, the father saying it was necessary to celebrate Well, we can see other stories attributed to Jesus talking about what’s necessary. There is a build up as you have three stories going from 100 sheet with one loss to 10 coins with one loss to two sons. And we know that Jesus told the story of the lost sheep. That’s not just so that’s in Matthew, as well as in Luke. It’s something that’s traced there. So we can see some of the same features of the storytelling that you have in. In Luke, you can find over in Matthew, and you can find in Mark, so the idea that these things all come as a product of Luke’s creativity, or the writer of Luke’s gospels, creativity won’t explain the patterns you have within the story. We can also say that whoever wrote the story or told the story has to be someone who knows rabbinic thinking as well. The story of the lost sheep. Parallel was a rabbinic story of Moses going after lost sheep. The parable of the lost coin parallels a rabbinic story, where losing a coin is like losing the law. And that’s the build up to this story, at the end of Luke 15. Then you go on to Luke 16. And there are parallels between the story of the lost sheep of the Prodigal Son, and the story you have of the unjust manager. So what and the unjust manager story has got clearly Palestinian measures in Palestinian phrases like about the unrighteous mammon, and that, that they’re not coming from a Gentile author? But what you can also see is, whereas in one, the younger son says, How many of my heart servants in the other one, the unjust stewardess, how much do you owe? It’s the same phrase. And you will find actually lots of linking phrases between that. And even the following story, which is the story of the temporarily rich man and Lazarus. Again, you have lots of common phrases and ideas, I write about those in the book. So you really have to have the home lot coming from one source. And it can’t be Luke, because of the parallels we have going on in Matthew’s gospel. So just to give you one last example of this, in the story of the lost son, the prodigal son, it says he longed to be filled with the food that the pigs get. And then in the story of the formula rich man and Lazarus, it says that Lazarus sorry, the rich, the one who was rich when he was in Hades, long, sorry, no, Lazarus long to be filled with the food that fell from the rich man’s table. But along came the dogs. So what you’ve got is the phrase long to be filled, followed by, in one case, pigs and other case dogs. That’s in Luke’s gospel, only Luke’s Gospel, go back over to Matthew’s Gospel. And you can see Jesus making a parallel of pigs and dogs when he says, Don’t cast your pearls before swine don’t give what’s precious to the dogs. And so it’s the same mindset that you can find. And I trace lots of Lots of these cases, even though it’s a short book, where you can actually see, it’s really hard to make a case that the gospel writer makes this up and it doesn’t go back to Jesus, then you have the fact that it’s a story which has coherence, and brilliance, and you don’t get that got by committee. So you’re really forced into the position that the whole lot like a poem goes back to one author. It’s not composite. It’s got the same technique of composition throughout it. Therefore, this most obviously goes back to the most famous Palestinian Jewish teacher, namely, Jesus.

Collin Hansen
Absolutely. Now, that’s such a good overview, Peter, and take that in, let’s address Bible study teachers, small group leaders who are listening or watching this preachers? How should they work to be able to draw out or uncover the genius of Jesus? They can do that in part by what you’re talking about. They’re drawing the connections Old Testament, New Testament, in our canonically, across the Gospels, but what does that look like? How do we draw that out in application?

Peter Williams
Well, I think part of it is to expect there to be depth in what Jesus says. So I think often, we’re familiar with what Jesus says, but we haven’t really expected it to be depth. So people are often underwhelmed by Jesus’s shortest story which says, The kingdom of heaven is like a woman taking level and putting it in three C as a fine flat until it’s, it’s all written. And you think, well, there’s nothing there at all is that except that there’s only one other place in the Bible that you get three C’s of flour, and that is, when Abraham goes to Sarah and says, Quick, get three C’s of flour, and bake food for the three guests who are coming to visit Abraham. And of course, they’re coming with a message that this barren, old couple are going to have a child. And in fact, that’s part of a package where their children are going to be innumerable like the stars and like the sand. So what’s Jesus saying in that story, incredibly short parable is the kingdom of heaven is that growing thing, and it just starts with this small, unassuming meal that Sara makes. And as Abraham and Sarah show hospitality to people, they don’t even know how special they are initially. They don’t know this is God and to angels, they just think that visitors and as they start with that underwhelming thing, it just grows and grows and grows. And there’s such a lot you could draw into that you could do a whole sermon on that. But I think people are often not expecting there to be depth in Jesus stories. And so I think you need to expect there to be depth and study the Old Testament, and look at how it’s drawn on time and time again, in Jesus stories.

Collin Hansen
I love it for the last few questions. Peter, I’d like to talk about Tyndale house, Cambridge, so mentioned there that we got to spend a month there over the summer with you guys, and just give the folks who are watching and listening here a feel for the, for the environment at Tyndale house.

Peter Williams
Yeah, and I’d love you also to share some of your own thoughts on the opposite. What what I’d say is we’re aiming to be a place which raises up servant hearted Bible scholars who really want to give their guests for the global church. So people from around the world do come. And people can be in our library for a month, or they could be there for three years, people come for different lengths of time. Some people are doing degrees while they’re doing a PhD, they might be writing a book. But what it means is that it’s an incredible place for networking, because we have 50 or so people, and quite a lot of them living there because we have accommodation to and so you build a global community. So when you come let’s say for a month, you’re likely to meet people from lots of other continents, and develop some connections and friendships which actually last. And the longer you are there, the more of those you’re going to have. And so I think it’s the biggest Crossroads we have within the evangelical church for Yeah, evangelical biblical scholars, spending time together, and also looking to do so in a context where we’re not puffed up by what we know because you know that the other people you’re having coffee with at 11 o’clock in the morning, are just as bright as we are. They will. Everyone’s got achievements. I mean people at different levels different So ages and stages, but we shouldn’t be bragging about what we can do. And if we do, hopefully someone will bring us down a peg or two pretty quickly. Because yes, there are lots of other people in the room who’ve written books or are going to write books and, and have significant ministries. And so that’s where hopefully, we then can get down to thinking how we can serve God together. And of course, in addition to serving people who come to the librarian, community, we’re actually trying to be quite proactive, bringing people in, we had 38 people from Brazil visit recently, we’re trying to serve people round round round the world. And that’s we’ve also got research projects that we put on Fewster, our own Greek New Testament here. And that’s that we’re working on trying to give the church the best possible text of the New Testament, but also looking at doing research on the history of the Old Testament, and things like that.

Collin Hansen
I’ll give people I’ll give people a story. So you’re exactly I mean, I, anytime I was anywhere around, I had to be there at 11am, to be able to talk with people and to learn from people and just find out who else was there and get to know them. So I’m in the library, I hear the gong, you know, so go out there to share. And the project that I was working on, hopefully this will see the light of day sometime in the next year or so was really about the about the Old Testament, while they’re just a Jewish practice of talking back to God. So the problem is that God seems silent. But there’s an entire world of the Old Testament into the New Testament of talking of just questioning God of where are you demanding answers from him demanding, you know, calling him to account. And, of course, one of the best examples of this is Joe, but you start off with the very beginning. And the first question that God asks us is, where are you? And it seems like ever since then, we’ve been asking him, where are you? And there comes this moment. And of course, I was going to come with talk with a job and, and I met I’m talking to I can’t remember if it was Caleb or Tony, or who it was I was talking to and they said, Have you if you talk to such and such, you know, she’s memorized the entire Book of Job in Hebrew. Like, I bet she’ll have some insights. And sure enough, she has some great insights that I thought, Wow, thanks, Ellie. It was really, it was really insightful. But you know, you’re exactly right. It’s the kind of place that you’ll really thrive. If you’re, I mean, if you’re impressed with yourself, it’s not a great place to be, because you will be knocked down pretty quickly. Because you’re not that impressive. But, you know, if you’re used to always teaching other people and always being the expert, but if you’re the kind of person who loves to learn from others who are even more gifted by God, but are using it in really beautiful ways to build up the church. It’s really special. So that was that’s, that’s one of my lasting, lasting memories there. What does it You mentioned a bit about the the Hebrew become what you’re working on with the Hebrew Bible? And what are some other upcoming projects that excite you about Tyndale house Cambridge? Well,

Peter Williams
I mean, we get speakers on the road, we produce a magazine, the Ink Magazine, which we can send people electronically. And we also have a journal coming out. So those are all sort of ongoing things. And I think, in future stages, we’re looking to generate a lot more knowledge about exactly how scribal scribes make mistakes. I think that will give even more precision and confidence about the text of the of the Bible. So we’re looking to do that. And we’re also looking at the way names change over time, which will be great fun, we don’t looking at that at the Bible in relation to surrounding cultures. And so we expect to have some exciting things to say in about three to four years time. So you know, research is long, you have people often wanting give us you know, the stuff now. And we’re saying actually, we’re trying to take a long term view of this not shoot from the hip, but do genuine research where you don’t know everything you’re going to find out at the end. It’s a bit like prospecting for oil. You could know that there’s oil in this general area, but you don’t know which ones are going to yield it and I think that’s where, when we’re looking in ideas, you don’t know which ones are going to prove the most fruitful

Collin Hansen
you mean that you don’t know when you’re looking at it anxious. manuscript and it turns out it’s the first map of the stars.

Peter Williams
Well, there was that. Yeah, I mean, tell us that story, a very fun story last year 2020 To get getting research featured in the journal Nature. Because yes, I was during lockdown, I was looking at a manuscript, which two layers of writing and saw underneath that I actually had the first coordinates of stars in the sky. And this turned out to be the long lost catalog of the greatest astronomer of the ancient world, namely, had parkas, and lots of people have been looking for this for centuries. And yes, it turned up on my screen. So that was, that was very nice. And it’s actually owned by the Museum of the Bible. So they bought it not knowing what was underneath, and it’s very nice to turn up. So that’s all. A nice story. Yes, research, you never know what you’re gonna find.

Collin Hansen
Such a lovely, understated British way of explaining that story, Peter, I appreciate that. How? How can it work? By the way, how long did you guys work on the Greek New Testament?

Peter Williams
So first time round, 10 years, to get the first edition, I’m thinking in terms of work, we’re projecting maybe 30 years of work, before we’ve sold everything. So I think there are new points right now with the massive data, we have more and more manuscripts, which are digitized, and so on, where we can start actually quantifying the relative proportions of mistakes that describe might make, which will make a difference in terms of being able more to say it’s more probable that this came from that. I think up to now, it’s been a bit of armchair work. And and I think that there’s a lot that can be done over the next 10 or 15 years using really bright people, maybe some AI. And, you know, just trying to do the best job we can with the amazing mass of data that’s flowing in right now.

Collin Hansen
Peter, how can someone support Tyndale house Cambridge, can they just show up at the famous red door and say, Hello, can they study? live there? Use the library? How does this work?

Peter Williams
Yeah, yeah, we’d love people to come and visit. And there are ways that people can get involved if they have got a scholarly bent. And for others, I mean, there are there are really four ways we look for support, we’re looking for financial support and beaten, because support through our 501 C three, the American friends of Tinder house, we’re looking for pressable, we really want people to pray, that we would prosper and serve God. And then sometimes there are opportunities to volunteer that they’re, you know, rare opportunities. But there are some, we got a board in the US a board in the UK, and there are things to be involved in. And then there’s advocacy, which is, I think, a really key thing that is we’re not well known. And so for people who are on social media just to amplify things that we put out and spread the word about it in the house is something we’d really like. So any of those ways are ways that people can be involved.

Collin Hansen
Maybe it’s too much British understatement, Peter, maybe it just really no, that’s that’s what I was hoping to do in part with this. With this podcast. I I’ve got another another memory, of course of our first night in Cambridge, you’ll, you’ll recall this, I’m sure but my kids have, you know, they’ve come transatlantic, they’ve driven up from London. And I’ve said we’re not going to just go to sleep, you know, we’re going to stay up the whole time. And so we we stumbled out we run into you. And we’re immediately walking at Peter Williams Cambridge pace with my with my five year old daughter who insists that she must be carried by me because she can’t keep up and all that sort of stuff. So not only am I getting a wonderful tour of Cambridge, but I have wonderful memories with my kids. My son was able to keep up with my daughter’s you guys were kind to incessant difficulties, but in fairness, she kept saying, I have little legs. It’s true. She’s got little legs. Well, it’s very true. Oh, goodness. Well, Peter, it’s been it’s been a delight to be able to talk with you about the surprising genius of of Jesus. Peter Williams, my guest on gospel bound this week. He’s the principal of Tyndale house, Cambridge. Thanks, Peter.