Good Samaritan



The Good Samaritan was the subject of a parable told by Jesus of Nazareth, whose message was one of many of Jesus' variations on the theme "don't be a dick." He was a member of the Samaritans, an ethno-religious group in Israel and Palestine.

Modern version
Some of the subtleties of the story may be lost on the modern reader. In modern western terms, it might be framed thus:

In other words, the Samaritan part was as important to the story as the good part.

The original story
Here is the original story as told in Luke, in the King James Version of the Bible:



The point of the story
The story is in itself an interesting tale about helping those who are in trouble. The part of the parable that should stand out to the reader is, and hence the "retranslation", that important people from their society walked past the man who was injured, but it was a detested outsider that stopped to help him. In the Jewish tradition, the priests and the Levites were the two highest castes, and held a position in society above that of the injured man. It was, however, someone from outside Jewish society — the man from Samaria — that stopped to help him. This was done to show how far reaching the concept of neighbor was in Jesus' parable.

The whole conversation of Luke 10:25-37 deals with Jesus discussing with a lawyer what one should do to achieve eternal life. His response to this was to love everyone as you would yourself. The lawyer, being your typical nitpicking lawyer, argued over the definition of "everyone", and Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate how far the term "everyone" stretches and how one should go about loving them.

This doctrine, of how good deeds bring eternal life, runs contrary to the American (and not just there) Protestant view that eternal life is achieved only through accepting Jesus as your savior, preached by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Jack Chick, and that good deeds are inconsequential. The bit about not being a dick also tends to escape them.