The Parable of the Good Samaritan
This blog article follows directly on from last week’s: ‘Sayings of Jesus: ‘What Must I Do To Inherit Eternal Life?’ If you’ve not read it, try to do so first, because they’re a pair. To avoid using up my limited word count, I won’t reproduce the parable; rather, I will offer some Bible-reading notes as a commentary. The parable is found uniquely in Luke 10:25-37 (link here: https://tinyurl.com/374arbph).
The key phrase is in v.29, where the man—whom we have already seen described as ‘an expert in Torah’ (an expert in the meaning and intent of the commandments)—asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” Luke has already tipped us off that the man’s motive for asking the first question (how to inherit eternal life) was to try to ‘test’ Jesus (v.25). Now Luke adds that the man asks the second question in order ‘to justify himself’.
The sense here seems to be ‘to save face’. But why would he feel the need for that? Scholars don’t have a single view, but perhaps he felt a bit silly in front of everyone listening (which probably included his similarly sceptical friends). Having tried to be clever by tricking Jesus into saying something controversial, this ‘expert’ has not only failed to achieve that, but he’s enabled Jesus to endorse his answer: “‘Well said!’ replied Jesus”! (NTE). The man must have thought, “How on earth did that happen?”—while his friends just smirked!
Maybe the second question was a further attempt by this ‘expert’ to catch Jesus out; thinking on his feet, trying to recover the lost ground. But here I’m reminded of what a barrister once told me is the ‘first rule’ of cross-examination: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.
No doubt the man already thought he did. He was treating it as a technical question: what ‘neighbour’ meant, in the context of the commandment. He wasn’t genuinely interested in Jesus’ answer as a personal learning opportunity. Some level of controversy must have attached to the question. Perhaps it was already a source of debate amongst rabbis (maybe exacerbated by people asking whether the occupying Roman soldiers were ‘neighbours’, or even whether Samaritans were included—is that hinted at, perhaps, in Jesus’ choice of a Samaritan in the parable?).
It's equally possible, of course, that the first question was always heading for the second question (in other words, that the first was just to tee up the second).
Either way, it seems likely that the question was intended to ‘justify’ the man’s own (narrow?) definition of ‘neighbour’.
Two related thoughts may be relevant here.
The first is that the Greek for ‘neighbour’ is an adverb; in other words, it modifies the meaning of a verb (English readers would tend to assume it’s a noun, standing alone). The verb it’s modifying is ‘love’. The commandment as written is not to love ‘everyone’.
The second thought is that ‘neighbour’ derives from the Greek word for ‘near’. The implication is ‘love those who are close to you’. Perhaps this was the controversy attracting rabbinic debate: whether the obligation in Leviticus 19:18 meant friends and family (or, maximally, fellow-Jews). How far beyond that did the commandment intend to go?
Adding further credibility to this suggested reading—beyond the meaning of ‘neighbour’ as such—may be what Jesus has already said in Luke 6:32, in the passage we know as the ‘Sermon on the Plain’ (Luke’s ‘version’ of Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’): “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” And also, Matthew 5:44 (in the Sermon on the Mount): “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” No doubt ‘enemies’ who ‘persecute’ would have in mind especially the occupying Romans, if not also Samaritans.
We don’t need to go into too much detail about the first two characters in the parable, who pass by the injured man on the other side of the road. What’s crucial is that both the priest and the Levite were archetypes of respected establishment religious leaders; in this case, responsible for overseeing the temple and its worship. (Cf. Mark 12:33, where Jesus says “to love your neighbour as yourself . . . is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices”).
It's extremely hard for us, reading the story from our standpoint today, to grasp how controversial a story like this, featuring characters such as these, would have come across to its hearers at the time. You may have heard preachers offering present-day equivalents of the characters to try to make it meaningful. But those I’ve heard have invariably taken care to ensure that, whichever stereotypes they choose when it comes to the religious leaders, it’s always ‘someone who’s not like us’ (conservative evangelicals would perhaps choose, say, a Catholic priest, and an academic theologian). People of whom those listening would be thinking, “Typical! Exactly! No surprise there.” Whereas, at the time, the very opposite would have been the case.
Equally, when it comes to choosing a present-day substitute for the Samaritan. The core feature of the Samaritans was that they were heretics (according to good Jewish thinking). They were despised for their ’wrong’ and ‘sinful’ beliefs. Jewish leaders treated them as ‘cancelled’ in terms of their membership in Israel. Conservative evangelicals might choose, say, a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness, as the Samaritan substitute. But in both cases, this is choosing people who are ‘not like us’. People who everyone knows are already ‘outside the fold’. If we are to be similarly shocking to conservative evangelical ears today, we need to find substitute characters that are closer to home (the story needs to shock our internal audience, to wield its explanatory power in the way that Jesus intended).
Perhaps our ‘priest character’ needs to be the final night guest speaker on the main stage of a big Christian conference. Or a self-styled modern-day international Apostle. Perhaps our ‘Levite character’ needs to be an acclaimed worship leader. And maybe our ‘Samaritan character’ needs to be a church pastor who is affirming and inclusive of gay people.
The key thing is that the characters we choose must be subverting the audience’s assumptions, to a point of offending those listening. Keep in mind that invariably Jesus’ parables and ‘shock jock’ teachings were targeting a religious establishment that believed it had all its beliefs (doctrines) neatly sewn up, and didn’t want some prophet disrupting that comfortable status quo. Because that’s what prophets do! They make the status quo uncomfortable for those in power who don’t like things disrupted. It’s why religious establishments want to silence prophets, to stop their voices being heard. To think that prophecy is all about predicting future events is to miss the point.
Jesus’ main critique of the religious establishment of the day was that how they were applying some of the commandments was failing to reflect the heart of God underlying the commandments. Our equivalent today would be doctrinal beliefs. The difference between the religious leaders’ response to the suffering man versus the Samaritan’s response is in v.33: he was “moved with compassion” for him. People whom God loves took precedence over doctrines that God loves. When the expert in the law answers Jesus’ question (as to who in the parable is the one who is neighbour-loving, in God’s eyes), it seems that he can’t bring himself to say ‘the Samaritan’—so he says, “The one who had mercy . . .”
Why did the priest and the Levite pass by on the other side? The text doesn’t tell us. Maybe they were just heartless individuals. Maybe they feared being attacked themselves. But the likelihood is that they placed other biblical texts ahead of Leviticus 19:18 in order of importance. Or put differently, that they read Leviticus 19:18 through the lens of other texts. In this case, the obvious one would be Leviticus 21:1-3—that priests should not defile themselves by touching a corpse (unless it’s a close relative). Fear of breaking that commandment took priority over checking whether the man was, indeed, dead or just badly injured. It’s doubly ironic that the Samaritan man was unconcerned about defiling himself, when (as a Samaritan) he was already deemed ‘unclean’ by the religious establishment. That risk of defilement by association is why it was considered scandalous for Jesus to engage with Samaritans (let alone, stay with them—John 4:40).
I don’t wish to 'over-work’ the 'gay’ analogy, but readers will probably be aware that conservative evangelicals typically consider those in same-sex relationships to be 'unclean’ (at least privately)—that it’s a righteousness and holiness issue. Hence, Leviticus 19:18 needs to be subordinated to Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, notwithstanding Jesus’ affirmation of its timelessness.
One final thought is that if Jesus’ main intention was to critique the temple hierarchy, he could have simply placed an ordinary Jewish person (a shepherd, or a fisherman, perhaps?) in the Samaritan role in the parable. More controversially, he could have chosen a Roman centurion or a tax collector. But even they would not have had quite the impact of a Samaritan. Why? Because the Samaritans’ ‘flawed’, ‘heretical’ beliefs were challenging the Jewish religious elite of the day from within Jewish tradition. Internal threats are more pernicious. When the religious leaders are looking to discredit Jesus, the two worst insults they can come up with are “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” (John 8:48).
Perhaps the equivalent within conservative evangelicalism today would be, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a liberal and going to hell?” I don’t mean to offend for offence’s sake, but if it does, then perhaps this is getting close to how it would have been heard at the time.
PS I couldn’t help but laugh last week, when I saw a social media post where somebody was complaining about a Bible publishing company that had “printed the liberal verses in red letters” …