Here are various people's thoughts about the parable, including my own:
The skilled teacher of the law was testing this unofficial Gallilean lay teacherto see how well he could answer difficult theological questions. The lawyer's
questions may have been simple intellectual curiosity, but his motive more
likely was to see if he could expose Jesus' naivete in contrast to his own
sophistication. Maybe intellectual pride or jealousy of Jesus' immense
following prompted this testing. Jesus faced many of those kinds of challenges
during this phase of his teaching work.
Notice that Jesus didn't answer the question. Instead he turned the question
back to him. The legal expert's answer is exactly the same as Jesus'
own assessment of the Torah's essential message given at a previous time. (See Part 1.) This Great Law appears in the Torah in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19
:18.
Jesus complimented the lawyer on his answer, and that changed the balance of
this relationship between expert and novice. Jesus now assumed the role of
expert on the Law. So the lawyer who sought to test Jesus is now himself
being tested and evaluated.
When you think about it, Jesus' compliment to him is remarkable. Often Jesus
had to deal with Pharisees whose understanding of the Law was all out of
proportion as they emphasized minor details and neglected the big picture. He said that they "strain at gnats" but "swallow camels." (Matthew 23:23-24.)
This man seems to see the big picture. He appears to understand "justice,
mercy and faithfulness," that the Pharisees neglect. ibid.
In typical lawyerly fashion he tried to defend his position by closely defining
words. What is your definition of "neighbour," he asks Jesus. At this point
it has become an exchange between a pair of rabbis, teachers. One has stated the essence of the law, the other has acknowledged the truth of his answer. Now the first asks the second to clarify the answer. The rabbinical writings of the
Talmud are full of carefully reasoned legal distinctions about when a law is in
effect, and when it is not.
The Jews typically interpreted "neighbour," to mean" "one who is near," in termsof members of the same people and religious community, that is fellow Jews.
The Pharisees tended to exclude "ordinary people" from their definition. The Qumran community excluded "the sons of darkness" from their definition of neighbours. This lawyer agrees that the essence of the Torah is to love one's neighbour
as oneself, but then seeks to limit the application of this to fellow Jews only
. Love your own race and faith community, he believes, and you have fulfilled the law.
Luke, the writer who reported the parable tells us that his first motive was
to "test" jesus. His second is to "justify himself," that is to defend his
own limited interpretatio of the Torah. He is a scholar struggling with integrity between his beliefs and actions.
Jesus answered with a parable. Parables are stories told to make a point. They
are fiction that captures true-to-life details in a way that listeners can
identify with the elements of the story, and grasp the spiritual lesson in it.
Jesus was calling on his hearers' awareness of the dangers of traveling alone onthe Jericho-Jerusalem road, and from there presented a hypothetical situation
designed to make a point.
Jerusalem is located along the ridge of coastal mountains running north and
south in Palestine. Jericho, on the other hand is located in the plain of the
Jordan river, in a geological rift zone hundreds of feet below sea level. The
17 mile road that connects these two cities descends about 3,300 feet through desert and rocky country that could easily hide bandits. Josephus wrote that Pompey destroyed a group of brigands there, and Jerome spoke of Arab robbers in his
time.
The robbers on the Jericho Road were pretty desperate. Even if a man had littleof value they would attack him for the value of his clothing alone. They
didn't just threaten him and take his clothing, they stripped him of his clothing and then beat him, probably with wood staffs. They beat him to incapacitate him from following them, or maybe to intimidate him from trying to identify
them. They didn't try to kill him, because Jesus says that they left him literally "half-dead". Jesus was building interest about what would happen next, by painting a picture.
The priest would have been returning to Jericho from service in the temple at
Jerusalem. Jericho was known as a principal residence for priests. In Jesus' times Levites were an order of cultic officials, inferior to the priests but still a privileged group in society, responsible for the liturgy in the Temple and for policing the Temple. Both priests and Levites were from the tribe of Levi, (
descendants of Jacob's son Levi). The priests, however, were also descendents of Aaron, the first High Priest. (These forefathers' stories areall in the Bible.)
Both saw the wounded man and both chose not to help. Some thinkers believe theymight have had some justification for their inaction. As temple officials theywere especially concerned about ceremonial cleanness. They didn't know if the
man was dead or not. Maybe he wasn't moving. According to one scholar the
Pharisees held that a priest would not be defiled by touching a dead body when there was nobody else available to perform the burial, but the Sadducees (that may have included many of the priests) contended that he would be defiled.
*********
