Parable of the Good Samaritan

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"The Good Samaritan".
From a collection of public domain Christian clip art.

The Good Samaritan is a famous New Testament parable appearing only in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37). The parable is told by Jesus to illustrate that compassion should be for all people, and that fulfilling the spirit of the Law is more important than fulfilling the letter of the Law.

In Luke, a scholar of the Law tests Jesus by asking him what is necessary to inherit eternal life. To begin his answer, Jesus asks the lawyer what the Mosaic Law says about it. When the lawyer quotes the Pharisaic law of loving God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and all your mind, and the parallel law of loving one's neighbour as oneself, Jesus says that he has answered correctly— "Do this and you will live," he tells him.

When the lawyer then asks Jesus to tell him who his neighbour is, Jesus responds with a parable about a man who was attacked and robbed and left to die by the side of a road. Later, a priest saw the stricken figure and avoided him, presumably in order to maintain ritual purity. Similarly, a Levite saw the man and ignored him as well. Then a Samaritan passed by, and, despite the mutual antipathy between his and the Jewish populations, immediately rendered assistance by giving him first aid and taking him to an inn to recover while promising to cover the expenses.

At the conclusion of the story, Jesus asks the lawyer, of the three passers-by, who was the stricken man's neighbour? When the lawyer responds that it was the man who helped him, Jesus responds with "Go and do the same."

This parable is one of the most famous from the New Testament and its influence is such that to be called a Samaritan in Western culture today is to be described as a generous person who is ready to provide aid to people in distress without hesitation. In many English-speaking countries, a Good Samaritan law exists to protect from liability those who choose to aid people who are seriously ill or injured.

It is important to note that Samaritans were despised as apostates by the story's target audience. Thus the parable, as told originally, had a significant theme of non-discrimination and interracial harmony. But as the Samaritan population dwindled to near-extinction, this aspect of the parable became less and less discernible: fewer and fewer people ever met or interacted with Samaritans, or even heard of them in any context other than this one. To address this problem with the unfamiliar analogy, the story is often recast in a more recognizable modern setting where the people are ones in equivalent social groups known to not interact comfortably. For instance, in a telling to a conservative audience, the assaulted man could be a middle class businessman, the unhelpful passers-by could be presumably respectable people like a pastor and the substitute for the Samaritan could be a minority viewed with stigma by the audience such as a homosexual, atheist, or biker gang member. Similarity, a liberal audience could be faced with a homosexual or advocacy group spokesperson as the assaulted man, and a conservative Christian, a member of the military or a businessman in the role of the Samaritan.

Thus cast appropriately, the parable regains its socially explosive message to modern listeners: namely, that an individual of a social group they disapprove of can have a superior moral behaviour to individuals of the groups they approve; it also means that not sharing the same faith is no excuse to behave poorly, as there is a universal moral law. So thus, it is an example of Christianity against racial prejudice.

Parable of the Good Samaritan

See also