All Christians are familiar with the “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” a story which Christ tells to a certain expert in the Law about a man, having been attacked by robbers, who lays dying by the side of the highway. Several of his countrymen, including a Levite and a priest, pass by the dying man while making excuses which rationalize their decisions not to help him but then, fortunately, a Samaritan comes along who takes pity on the poor fellow. This Samaritan dresses the man’s wounds, then transports him to a nearby inn where he pays ahead for several day’s room and board before departing without asking for any repayment or thanks from the dying man. This story is in response to the lawyer’s question, “who is my neighbor?” in reference to the injunction found in Deuteronomy to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

Now, the usual takeaways from the story are along the lines of recognizing that we should be nice to everyone like the good Samaritan because, I mean c’mon, if even a Samaritan (Samaritans are not well- liked) can love his neighbor, then you sure-as-hell better be able to, as well! While I concur that Jesus was indeed indicating that kindness is a very important virtue, I believe that the main point that he was trying to make has gone largely unnoticed, mostly due to a combination of failing to place the story into its proper textual and historical context, a general ignorance in European civilization of the beliefs and practices of first-century Judea, and good, old-fashioned confirmation bias on the part of Christian theologians.

Now, in order to understand the fairly straight-forward point that Jesus was trying to make, we must first understand who Jesus was talking to and who the Samaritans are. When Luke 10:25 identifies the questioner as an “expert in the Law” or a “lawyer” he is describing someone quite different than what you would think of as a lawyer today. An expert in the “Law” was someone who had extensively studied the Torah, or God’s Law, and, depending on his sectarian allegiance, possibly a great deal of traditions and oral teachings passed down by religious teachers for centuries. Jesus is basically talking to a theologian, someone who has spent their life studying doctrine.

Now, the Samaritans were a religious group that had split away from the mainstream Judaism that existed in Judea where the story of the Gospel takes place. The Samaritans actually rejected the Torah that our good friend, the theologian, had spent his life studying! They followed an alternate version of the Torah which differed from the Jewish Torah in many ways, including the location of the Temple itself. The Samaritans had built their own Temple on Mt. Moriah where they offered sacrifices and they considered anyone who made pilgrimage to offer sacrifice in Jerusalem to be a sinner. In addition to these considerable differences, the Samaritans rejected the authority of all writings that took place after the five books of Moses. So, there goes nearly half of the Old Testament.

At this time, I would also like to point out the fact that Jesus himself was, by all accounts, a practicing Jew who observed the ritual feast-days and was familiar enough with the scriptures (including the ones that the Samaritans threw out) to be able to quote them extensively in his conversations and sermons. In light of Jesus’ Jewish religion and now that we’ve understood who the “expert in the Law” was and who the Samaritans were, the story begins to take on some very different meanings. Now we can see that, in response to this theologian’s question about who his “neighbor” is, Jesus tells a very provocative story in response. First, Jesus describes a Levite and a priest leaving a man to die, showing that, despite all of their knowledge of the Bible and their presumed observance of its Law, these two characters aren’t the theologian’s neighbor. In fact, not only does Jesus portray them as poor neighbors but he seems to attribute their poor behavior to their religiosity! Both of them cross to the other side of the road for religious reasons, being that they believe that the dying man may be “unclean.” Provocative, indeed.

But our good messiah goes even further! Not only do a priest and a Levite fail morally by leaving a man to die on the side of the road but afterwards a Samaritan — a filthy, cult-ish, blaspheming, scripture-denying Samaritan — comes along to demonstrate authentic love-of-one’s-neighbor by tending to the man’s wounds, taking him to the next town, and even paying his bill! At the end of the story, the theologian who set out to test this teacher from Nazareth is left with the unpleasant task of begrudgingly admitting that, in this case, the Samaritan is indeed superior in religion than the priest or the Levite.

Now, beyond Jesus’ obvious intention to ruffle this guy’s feathers, I want to take a closer look at the argument that he was making. The conversation starts in Luke 10:25 where it says “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”” So here we have the theologian attempting to “put him to the test,” or in other words, to see if he could catch Jesus in some kind of inconsistency which would prove that he wasn’t the wise rabbi that so many thought he was.

Jesus, sensing the theologian’s motive, avoids answering directly but draws the answer out of the questioner by responding with a question, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Our theologian responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, saying “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus then tells him to do that but the theologian hasn’t got what he wanted and so he asks: who is my neighbor? It is to this question that Jesus responds with the parable of the good Samaritan.

We have to ask ourselves what the reason is behind the theologian’s question. We know from earlier verses that the theologian is trying to “put (Jesus) to the test,” and we also know that Jesus didn’t answer the last question but led the questioner to answer it himself. The first question about eternal life was actually pretty hotly-debated in first century Palestine where there were many competing Jewish sects. The Pharisees believed in a final judgment along with an afterlife while the Sadducees rejected final judgment and the afterlife, favoring the idea of sheol, which is a neutral place similar to the Greek hades. There were also various ascetic sects, some of which believed that the scriptures had been corrupted (much like the Samaritans), who were collectively referred to as Essenes, many of whom came from Nazareth.

So we can see that the theologian chose a very particular and sensitive topic which, if Jesus had answered, would have essentially forced him to choose a side. If he had taken the side of a sect that the theologian disagreed with, this would have opened him up to being refuted at a sectarian level and discredited. But Jesus’ teaching is more radical than that and he answers cleverly, “What do the scriptures say?” The theologian plays along by quoting the relevant scriptures, and Jesus tells him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” In this way, Jesus avoided the theologian’s trap. But the theologian again attempts to force Jesus into a sectarian position by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” At this point, it has become apparent that he’s not going to let this go — he wants Jesus to give him an answer. What are you? A Pharisee? Sadducee? Essene? Or a lunatic?

And this is when Jesus tells the parable. A parable that exposes the hypocrisy of the priests who follow the letter of the law but are incapable of compassion; a parable that demonstrates the spiritual bankruptcy of those who seek eternal life by following rules while neglecting the spirit; that shows “even a Samaritan,” someone who follows a different scripture, a scripture that we believe to be a blasphemous forgery — is superior to the pious hypocrite, when that Samaritan shows with his actions that he has love for his neighbor. The point that Jesus was trying to make to this theologian who was trying to catch him saying something unorthodox was that it doesn’t matter what sect you belong to or what your beliefs are about this and that – what matters is that you have love by drawing close to God in your heart and sharing that love, unconditionally, with others.

This shows that Jesus probably would not have approved of the sectarian practice of canonizing this book but not that and labeling this other book as heretical – it even shows that Jesus considered those who practice a different religion with love to be more worthy of salvation than those that practiced his own religion without love. Jesus would say that any insistence on following the doctrines of the bible instead of, say the Gospel of Thomas or the Qur’an, is besides the point. Substitute “Muslim” or “Hindu” for Samaritan — all follow a different scripture and all are equally the followers of Jesus insofar as they love God with all their heart, all their soul, all their strength, all their mind; and that they love their neighbor as themselves.