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In the narrative setting of Luke, the parable may be construed
as continuing the theme enunciated in 10.21: what the wise and the
learned failed to see, the ‗children‘ saw, i.e., the significance of
Jesus‘ ministry as that which truly reveals the Father. The parable
of the Good Samaritan fits hand in glove with this thrust in that
those who saw and practised the real meaning of the creed of Israel
might not be the wise and learned (cf. the priest and the Levite) but
children (cf. the Samaritan). Thus the theme of the ‗unexpected
members of the covenant‘ runs through both of them. Indeed, the
pericope which follows, i.e., the story of Martha and Mary,
continues such a thrust. Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus and
by so doing has chosen the better thing. This runs counter to Jewish
customs which dictate that the better place for a woman to be in is
the kitchen. 157
Conclusions
The parable does not offer us an allegory of the fall of man
nor does it give us a moral story on how we are to be good
neighbours, as important as this may be for Christian ethics. Nor
was it told to establish a halakhic point. Instead, there is actually
more that is at stake in the telling of the parable for the questions
which prompted it have to do with the identity of the true people of
Yahweh or those who would inherit the life of the age to come.
To summarise the main points of our proposal: the parable
gives the identity of the people who would inherit the life of the
age to come. These are the people who confess the Shema‗ and
show it by practising its primary praxis: that of love for Yahweh
and love for the neighbour. What this means has now been
redefined by Jesus. In this redefinition, the neighbour is not
in the Jesus traditions, the recent work of S. Bryan, Jesus and Israel‘s Traditions
of Judgment and Restoration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
157 Many commentators find it hard to string these pericopes together and this is
not surprising as Luke does not offer us clear hints.