The Good Samaritan

To really understand Jesus’ parables, we must understand the background of Jesus’ time. A good example is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here is the passage for you to read (Luke 10:25-37):

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The fact that it was a Samaritan who helped was intended to shock and surprise the audience. It does not shock us today – of course the “Samaritan” helped. We know a “good Samaritan” is defined as someone who helps a stranger. But that definition comes from the fame of this parable. In Jesus’ time, mentioning a Samaritan to Jews would mean something quite different. Let’s learn, then, what a Samaritan really was, and then we can truly grasp what Jesus wants us to learn from his story.

In Biblical times, just forty miles north of Jerusalem, there was a pair of mountains, Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim, the high holy places of the Samaritans. This small region was where a people who were once basically the same people as the Jews, came to be seen as hated foreigners and heretics. After the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites began to settle in Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. Their first worship Sanctuary, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, was at Shiloh, at the foot of Mt. Gerizim and Ebal. The Israelites who felt strongly that the Ark should have stayed at Shiloh, were the people who later became Samaritans. But the Ark couldn’t stay there once Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines. The Ark was moved by King David to his newly conquered capitol, Jerusalem. But the people living near Mt. Gerizim never gave up their belief that the one true Sanctuary should be there instead. This belief was a large part of what separated the Jews from the Samaritans.

King Solomon built a Temple in Jerusalem to house the Ark. But after Solomon’s reign ended, there was a dispute over who should be King. The ten northern tribes of the Israelites broke away from the house of David and created the Northern Kingdom of Israel. From then on, there were two Kingdoms, Israel to the north and Judah to the south. The people who would become the Samaritans lived in Israel.

Israel’s King Omri established his capitol, the newly built hilltop city of Samaria, just a few miles northwest of Mt. Gerizim. Bustling Samaria was a very different place than tiny Jerusalem. Samaria was much more prosperous and cosmopolitan, a commercial center where unfortunately there were extremes of wealth and poverty. Social injustice flourished. The prophets Amos, Hosea, and Elijah were called by God to condemn much of what was going on in Samaria and Israel. People in the Northern Kingdom abandoned the traditions of Moses and allowed worship with golden calves and fertility cult groves. They worshipped Canaanite gods such as Baal. The Prophets foretold that Israel would fall to the powerful nation of Assyria. In 722 BCE, Assyria invaded and conquered Israel. To the Jews of Judah, this would have seemed like just punishment for their sins.

The Assyrians took the upper classes and skilled workers of Israel away into captivity, leaving only the unwanted peasants behind in Samaria. Then the Assyrians replaced the deported people with non-Semitic, Mesopotamian people from places like Babylon. The settlers worshipped the native God of Israel and all of their pagan gods as well. Over time, the remaining Israelites of Samaria intermarried with the foreign settlers, creating a new mixed-race people called the Samaritans, named after the fallen capitol. To the Jews of Judah, this made the Samaritans impure foreigners.

Things did not go well for Judah either. After the Southern Kingdom fell into idolatry, God punished them, and they were conquered by the nation of Babylon in 586 BCE. Again, the upper class was taken into captivity. Jerusalem was not resettled – it lay barren and in ruins. The Babylonian exile ended when the Persians conquered Babylon and allowed the people of Judah to return home, in 536 BCE. The returning Jews, under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, wanted to rebuild the Temple and the protective walls of Jerusalem. The Samaritans had become prosperous again; they saw the poverty-stricken returning Jews and offered to help rebuild the Temple, but the Jews rejected the offer. The Jews saw the Samaritans as mixed-blood foreigners who were unfit for such holy work, still the same polytheistic, idolatrous Northern Kingdom people who had been punished by God through the Assyrians. The Jews had learned the religious lesson that forsaking the Covenant resulted in their own exile. To mix with Samaritans would be to risk repeating the past. Angry at the rejection of the offer of help, the Samaritan leader Sanballat tried to block and destroy the Jerusalem wall-rebuilding project. He even tried to have Nehemiah assassinated. He failed at both plots. To the Jews, this made the Samaritans enemies of God’s plans.

Nehemiah instituted many reforms in order to restore the Jews culturally and religiously. For example, it was forbidden for Jews to intermarry with non-Jews. The reforms served to further separate Jews and Samaritans. The grandson of the Jewish High Priest married the daughter of the Samaritan leader Sanballat. The Jews exiled the grandson, and he took refuge in Samaria where he became the first Samaritan High Priest. It was a complete and final rift between the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Samaritans built their own rival Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Here is how the Samaritans and the Jews were opposed in their beliefs from then on:
---The Jews placed God’s true Temple in Jerusalem, but the Samaritans placed it on Mt. Gerizim.
---The Jews sacred books included the five books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings, but the Samaritans included only the five books of Moses.
---The Jews observed Jewish Laws, but the Samaritans rejected them.
---The Jews 10th commandment was about coveting, but the Samaritans’ was about Mt. Gerizim.
---Each group considered their priests to be the true line.

Alexander the Great replaced Persian rule with his own Greek Empire. Alexander’s death resulted in the division of his empire among his Generals. Two of them created their own smaller empires, the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Kingdoms. One was in Egypt, the other in Mesopotamia, with the Jews and Samaritans stuck in between. These two powers struggled with each other for a long time, and battered Palestine changed hands several times between them. When the Seleucid Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes became ruler over the region, he tried to destroy the Jewish religion. Antiochus outlawed the Torah, forbid circumcision, ordered the sacrifice of pigs on Jewish altars, and commanded the worship of Greek gods in the Temple. Rather than submit to religious destruction, the Jews, under the leadership of Judah Maccabee, revolted and fought a war with the Greeks for their very survival.

Antiochus ordered the Samaritans to do the same things as the Jews. Where the Jews fought back against overwhelming odds, the Samaritans decided to submit to Antiochus. The Samaritans were historically a cosmopolitan group that tolerated the worship of other gods anyway, and they feared destruction by the Greek armies. They swore that they had no connection to the Jews at all, to avoid being destroyed along with them, and they allowed their Samaritan Temple to be dedicated to Zeus. In comparison to the desperate struggle of the Jews against the Greeks, the Samaritan surrender and complete repudiation of Jewish ties was the ultimate, detestable act.

After several years of fighting, the Jews won a semi-independent state of their own. Judah Maccabee’s family, the Hasmoneans, ruled Judea as a dynasty. One of those Jewish rulers, John Hyrcanus, attacked and annexed Samaria. He destroyed the city of Samaria and the Temple on Mt. Gerizim and brought the Samaritans under Jewish rule. For the Samaritans, this deeply upsetting situation lasted until Rome took over the whole region.

Under the Romans, Judea and Samaria were two separate and independent provinces. The Samaritans had by that time returned to the worship of God. In the first century, Jewish and Samaritan religions were similar. With all of the past conflict between them, Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’ time hated one another. Calling someone a Samaritan was an insult (John 8:48). Samaritans refused hospitality to Jews who were going to worship at Jerusalem (Luke 9:52-56). With all of that history in mind, re-read the parable of the Good Samaritan. See, it truly was shocking that two Jewish religious leaders declined to help a wounded Jew, but a Samaritan saved him and provided for his care. Jesus saw though all the differences and divisions that kept Jews and Samaritans apart, to what really mattered. Jesus’ parable has a clear message. In the Kingdom of God, people must help and love one another, even if they have historically been enemies. To truly be a neighbor, you must help those who are in need, no matter who they are.

Jesus himself spoke to the Samaritans, revealed to them that he was the Messiah, and offered them salvation (John 4:1-43). After Jesus’ resurrection, the evangelists Peter, John, and Philip worked to spread the Gospel message in Samaria. The Samaritans were among the first to accept the Gospel (Acts 8:4-25). Perhaps they saw that Christian Jews did not insist that Jerusalem was the only place to worship (John 4:21), removing a historical stumbling block. The Samaritans accepted the new faith because of the miracles of Philip and Peter, and their own expectations of a Messiah (John 4:25). Thus the Gospel broke barriers of prejudice and spread where mainstream Judaism could not, a first step towards a universal Church.