Understanding the Good Samaritan Parable
Who were the Samaritans?
Gustave Dore, The Good Samaritan. Dr. Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University explains how getting an accurate answer to the question “Who were the Samaritans?” can shed light on how shocking the Good Samaritan parable would have been to Jesus’ audience.
The Good Samaritan parable is one of the most beloved gospel stories for young and old alike. The story is told in Luke 10:29–37: A man going from Jerusalem to Jericho is attacked by robbers who strip him and beat him. A priest and a Levite pass by without helping him. But a Samaritan stops and cares for him, taking him to an inn where the Samaritan pays for his care.
As Dr. Amy-Jill Levine discusses in a column in the January/February 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, the story has proven a popular one for sermons over the years, and it has been interpreted in many different ways—ranging from a tale about ritual purity to lessons about personal safety and even freedom fighters or universal healthcare. These sometimes-unusual interpretations are no doubt an attempt to find meaning in the parable for the times and concerns of a changing audience. And although that may be a worthy cause, Levine notes that in order to grasp the full import of the story, one must understand the times and concerns of first-century Judea, where Jesus and his followers lived. To do this, one must understand the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. This is sometimes hinted at in modern interpretations of the parable but rarely fully grasped.
So who were the Samaritans, really? Levine explains that they were not simply outcasts: They were the despised enemies of the Jews. Yet where listeners would have expected a Jew to be the hero of Jesus’ story, instead they would have been shocked to hear that it is a Samaritan. As Levine explains, only by understanding this reality does the powerful message of the parable come through:
The parable offers … a vision of life rather than death. It evokes 2 Chronicles 28, which recounts how the prophet Oded convinced the Samaritans to aid their Judean captives. It insists that enemies can prove to be neighbors, that compassion has no boundaries, and that judging people on the basis of their religion or ethnicity will leave us dying in a ditch.
Read more from Dr. Amy-Jill Levine about interpreting the Good Samaritan parable in Biblical Views, “The Many Faces of the Good Samaritan—Most Wrong,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2012.
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This article was originally published in Bible History Daily January 2012.
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Biblical Views: The Many Faces of the Good Samaritan—Most Wrong
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Good interpretation, what might have been the meaning of 2 pence paid?
The more one reads the New Testament, the more apparent it becomes that Jesus was a Jew preaching Judaism — albeit an austere brand of it, probably influenced by “The Sons of Light”, as the Masada community writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls referred to themselves” — to the Jews.
In this context, His singling out a Samaritan, an outgroup despised by his audience, as setting a good example in contrast to the ingroup is the equivalent of a Confederate preacher exhorting his audience “even a n… would ~etc”.
To me, William Barclay’s interpretation remains the most textually and theologically viable.
Sometimes Jews religious leadership understood to be rebellious and ritually “unclean” were labeled “Samaritan” in order to punish and marginalize them.
Obviously, Jesus and his disciples were so judged and intentionally relativized by authorities. However, much of what they were criticized for was demonstrably wrong since they were actually fulfilling the Law as intended.
In context, when Jesus told the parable, the primacy of the Great Commandment was in view. And, the story powerfully served to illustrate that it was he and his disciples, rather than their ceremonially focused critics, who actually embodied and lived it out.
Thus, if the Great Commandment was indeed understood to distill the whole of the Law, Jesus and his disciples were clearly far more faithful to the Law than their many ecclesiastical detractors. A point Jesus made again and again.
In the end, this point was also what the teacher speaking to Jesus was then forced to admit. And it was yet another example of Jesus’ superior authority in matters of the Law and why one should always listen rather than presumptuously debate him.
It also strips away the perpetual purity the Pharisees insisted everyone obey, a made-up commandment not found in the written Torah. The path was on the way DOWN to Jericho – AWAY from the Temple in Jerusalem. Anyone desiring to ascend the Temple Mount in Jerusalem would have to Mikvah again, anyway, so their not wanting to touch someone bloody is a completely moot point. Most (if not all) of The Messiah’s miracles and parables defied Pharisee doctrine of Oral Torah.