Parable of the Good Samaritan
The parable of the Good Samaritan is told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.[1] It is about a traveler (implicitly understood to be Jewish) who is stripped of clothing, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road. First, a Jewish priest and then a Levite come by, but both avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan happens upon the traveler. Although Samaritans and Jews were generally antagonistic towards each other, the Samaritan helps the injured man. Jesus is described as telling the parable in response to a provocative question from a lawyer, "And who is my neighbor?", in the context of the Great Commandment. The conclusion is that the neighbor figure in the parable is the one who shows mercy to their fellow man and/or woman.
"Good Samaritan" redirects here. For other uses, see The Good Samaritan (disambiguation).
Some Christians, such as Augustine, have interpreted the parable allegorically, with the Samaritan representing Jesus Christ, who saves the sinful soul.[2] Others discount this allegory as unrelated to the parable's original meaning[2] and see the parable as exemplifying the ethics of Jesus.[3]
The parable has inspired painting, sculpture, satire, poetry, photography, film, and many others. The phrase "Good Samaritan", meaning someone who helps a stranger, derives from this parable, and many hospitals and charitable organizations are named after the Good Samaritan. The word "Samaritan" has also gained, besides the ethnoreligious meaning, the sense of a charitable person.
![The Good Samaritan by Rembrandt (1630) shows the Good Samaritan making arrangements with the innkeeper. A later (1633) print by Rembrandt has a reversed and somewhat expanded version of the scene.[71]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_033.jpg/160px-Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_033.jpg)
The parable of the Good Samaritan was one of the most popular in medieval art.[63] The allegorical interpretation was often illustrated, with Christ as the Good Samaritan. Accompanying angels were sometimes also shown.[64] In some Eastern Orthodox icons of the parable, the identification of the Good Samaritan as Christ is made explicit with a halo bearing a cross.[65]
The numerous later artistic depictions of the parable include those of Rembrandt, Jan Wijnants, Vincent van Gogh, Aimé Morot, Domenico Fetti, Johann Carl Loth, George Frederic Watts, and Giacomo Conti. Vincent van Gogh's painting captures the reverse hierarchy that is underscored in Luke's parable. Although the priest and Levite are near the top of the status hierarchy in Israel and the Samaritans near the bottom, van Gogh reverses this hierarchy in the painting.
In his essay Lost in Non-Translation, biochemist and author Isaac Asimov argues that to the Jews of the time there were no good Samaritans; in his view, this was half the point of the parable. As Asimov put it, we need to think of the story occurring in Alabama in 1950, with a mayor and a preacher ignoring a man who has been beaten and robbed, with the role of the Samaritan being played by a poor black sharecropper.
The story's theme is portrayed throughout Marvel's Daredevil.[66]
The parable of the Good Samaritan is the theme for the Austrian Christian Charity commemorative coin, minted 12 March 2003. This coin shows the Good Samaritan with the wounded man, on his horse, as he takes him to an inn for medical attention. An older coin with this theme is the American "Good Samaritan Shilling" of 1652.[67]
Australian poet Henry Lawson wrote a poem on the parable ("The Good Samaritan"), of which the third stanza reads:
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard also wrote a poem on the theme.[68]
Dramatic film adaptations of the Parable of the Good Samaritan include the short film Samaritan (2006), set in a modern context, per the literary device of the Modern Parables DVD Bible study series.[69]
The English composer, Benjamin Britten, was commissioned to write a piece to mark the centenary of the Red Cross. His resulting work for solo voices, choir, and orchestra, Cantata Misericordium, sets a Latin text by Patrick Wilkinson that tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was first performed in Geneva in 1963.
In a real-life psychology experiment sometime before 1973, a number of seminary students – in a rush to teach on this parable – failed to stop to help a shabbily dressed person on the side of the road.[70]
Legal presence[edit]
In the English law of negligence, when establishing a duty of care in Donoghue v Stevenson Lord Atkin applied the neighbour principle—drawing inspiration from the Biblical Golden Rule[72] as in the parable of the Good Samaritan.