Parable of The Good Samaritan - Authenticity

Authenticity

The unexpected appearance of the Samaritan led Joseph Halévy to suggest that the parable originally involved "a priest, a Levite, and an Israelite," in line with contemporary Jewish stories, and that Luke changed the parable to be more familiar to a gentile audience." Halévy further suggests that, in real life, it was unlikely that a Samaritan would actually have been found on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, although others claim that there was "nothing strange about a Samaritan travelling in Jewish territory." William C. Placher points out that such debate misinterprets the biblical genre of a parable, which illustrates a moral rather than a historical point: on reading the story, "we are not inclined to check the story against the police blotter for the Jerusalem-Jericho highway patrol. We recognize that Jesus is telling a story to illustrate a moral point, and that such stories often don't claim to correspond to actual events." The moral of the story would still hold if the parable originally followed the priest-Levite-Israelite sequence of contemporary Jewish stories, as Halévy suggested.

The Jesus Seminar voted this parable to be authentic, with 60% of fellows rating it "red" (authentic) and a further 29% rating it "pink" (probably authentic). The paradox of a disliked outsider such as a Samaritan helping a Jew is typical of Jesus' provocative parables, and is a deliberate feature of this parable. In the Greek text, the shock value of the Samaritan's appearance is enhanced by the emphatic Σαμαρίτης (Samaritēs) at the beginning of the sentence in verse 33.

Bernard Brandon Scott, a member of the Jesus Seminar, questions the authenticity of the parable's context, suggesting that "the parable originally circulated separately from the question about neighborliness" and that the "existence of the lawyer's question in Mark and Matthew, in addition to the evidence of heavy Lukan editing" indicates the parable and its context were "very probably joined editorially by Luke." A number of other commentators share this opinion, with the consensus of the Jesus Seminar being that verses 36–37 were added by Luke to "connect with the lawyer's question." On the other hand, the "keen rabbinic interest in the question of the greatest commandment" may make this argument invalid, in that Luke may be describing a different occurrence of the question being asked. Differences between the gospels suggest that Luke is referring to a different episode from Mark and Matthew, and Klyne Snodgrass writes that "While one cannot exclude that Luke has joined two originally separate narratives, evidence for this is not convincing." The Oxford Bible Commentary notes:

That Jesus was only tested once in this way is not a necessary assumption. The twist between the lawyer's question and Jesus' answer is entirely in keeping with Jesus' radical stance: he was making the lawyer rethink his presuppositions