Chester and Jacob

Off to Chester on Thursday for the Changing Attitude Chester's (yes the blog looks a mess, needs tidy up!) meeting with Trevor Dennis (Chester Cathedral's vice dean) talking on 'The God Who Cannot Reject. Trevor was typically deeply thought out, sparky and provocative.
Started with Cain/Abel, Isaac/Ishmael, Esau/Jacob which rather showed the converse but then moved to the New Testament and the Prodigal Son (quoted Kenneth Bailey's Jacob the Prodigal) his thesis being that the parable leans heavily on this story and ends up by subverting it as far as the Jewish audience would have been concerned.
Suggested that Jesus ended it at 'every I have is yours' so in this case the elder son was accepted and not rejected in preference to the youngest (as with the Genesis stories)

The New Testament contains even more violent language about God than the Old

... should have taken notes...