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Violence on the Road to Jericho: Telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan
in a Palestinian West Bank Village: Luke 10:25-37
Sakari Häkkinen, Diocese of Kuopio, Finland
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
The Gospel parables are perhaps the most familiar parts of the Bible for most
Christians. In the West, we are accustomed to reading them either directly from the
Bible or by having them read to us in a church setting where we listen without
comment. Originally, however, storytelling was a social happening which probably
meant that a lively discussion took place both during and after the telling. Therefore,
in this literary investigation, I argue that in our western context we easily dismiss
and misunderstand the focus of the parable due to our distance from the original
context of the given text.
The parable of the Good Samaritan has been given its title by Christians who
thought that the real focus of the parable was the good Samaritan who helped the
victim of the robbers. In its literary context, as part of the dialogue that takes place
before the parable begins, this makes perfect sense. Here, Jesus is talking to a
lawyer who wants to know whom he should consider his neighbor to be. In this
context it is easy to see why the Samaritan was shown to be the one who was the
real neighbor to the victim.
But what if the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer was not originally told with
the story of the Good Samaritan? What if the author we call Luke added in the
discussion later? This seems to be the case, since the dialogue itself is quite clearly
taken from the Gospel of Mark (12:28-34) and only later modified by Luke.
In the Five Gospels (p. 323) the Jesus Seminar scholars argue that “this comparison
of Luke with his source, Mark, is a particularly instructive example of the freedom
the gospel authors exercised in shaping gospel tradition to fit their own versions of
the gospel story….That Luke is responsible for using the dialogue as the framework
for the parable is demonstrated (1) by the fact that both Mark (12:28-34) and
Matthew (22:34-40) place the question of the greatest commandment in other
contexts; and (2) by the fact that the meaning of “neighbor” is different from its
meaning in the parable (where it is defined as the person who shows compassion
for another). These factors strongly suggest that the dialogue and the parable had
circulated separately before Luke brought them together” (p. 324).
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Interestingly the Jesus Seminar scholars, who, as a rule, take a rigorous approach to
ascertaining the historical veracity of the gospel texts, regard the pericope as most
probably an authentic parable told by Jesus. In my paper, the focus is not on
whether the parable comes from Jesus of Nazareth himself, but rather, it centers on
the commonly accepted view that the “who is my neighbor” dialogue did not
become attached to the parable until Luke used it and gave it its written form.
This is important because, when doing field research among the poor, I am using the
parable as a stand-alone story, independent of the lead-in dialogue. The primary
questions thus become: How do they react to the parable presented thusly? And,
since they have not heard the story before, what is the focus for them? Does telling
the story, instead of reading it from the Bible, impact the way the audience
understands - or better yet, reacts to - the story? This is especially interesting when
the storytelling takes place close to the original geographical setting of the story,
where the route from Jerusalem to Jericho is well-known to the hearers.
Poverty as Context for the Gospels
The New Testament was written during a time when poverty was a reality for almost
everyone. Even now, after 2,000 years, poverty still looms as one of the world's
biggest problems. However, biblical scholarship today is done, more often than not,
by those privileged with varying degrees of wealth, who do not themselves belong
to any of the poorest classes of people. This fact leads to several questions: Do we
understand the life of the poor enough to comprehend, for example, how they
would hear the words of Jesus when he asked them not to worry about tomorrow?
How did the audience, who heard this proclamation, whether in Galilee or later,
elsewhere in Roman Empire, react to these words? How does a village community
consisting of poor people react to these words?
The Gospels as we have them today are not in their original form. Originally they
were distributed in both oral and written forms with several different forms of each,
depending on the context. The Gospels also differ from other contemporary
literature because they include several traditions of the poor, though they were
most assuredly authored by the literate elite. This seems to be especially true in the
Sayings Gospel Q and the Gospel of Mark, and on some occasions, the Gospel of
Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas. Even the theologically constructed Gospel of
John contains some traditions that might have been born in rural peasant circles. It
has also been shown that the Gospel of Luke based his admittedly elite gospel on
earlier traditions found in Q and Mark. Thus, as Horsley (2008:31) writes, the
gospels "are some of those rare historical cases of literature that represents the
view from below."
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Most of the people in the nascent "Christian" communities were ordinary people
struggling with questions of living under harsh conditions in a country that was
occupied by an enemy force. Their history needs to be written. Horsley makes an
interesting distinction between "standard history" and "people's history" and
applies this distinction to New Testament studies (2008:21–24). To use his terms,
my study would be a "people's history."
There is no consensus on the social status of Jesus of Nazareth. It is not possible to
go into this discussion very deeply in this paper. Still, I tend to think that those who
argue that Jesus was one of the poorest of the poor are right for two main reasons:
Firstly, the majority of first century Galileans were poverty-stricken probably
malnourished. Secondly, the parables of Jesus reflect the harshness of peasant life in
Galilee: problems with agriculture, violence, robbery, indebtedness, trials, slavery.
Regardless of whether Jesus belonged to the poor Galilean peasantry or some other
social class, his context was something totally different from that of ours. It was a
context where extreme poverty was present and influenced all, no matter what
their social class might have been. Therefore it is necessary to learn about to the
poor and poverty's influence on their thought patterns and behavior. In my opinion,
traditional biblical exegesis has not paid enough attention to poverty as a relevant
context, especially with regard to those texts that deal in some way with poverty or
property.
As I am doing research on the poverty texts of the Gospels, I first had to explore
poverty. Of course it could have been done by reading literature and learning
theories and statistics on poverty, but I wanted to see the living conditions of the
poor for myself and discuss the gospel poverty texts with them as well as listen to
their own stories. This methodology led me to Tanzania and the Palestinian
territories in the West Bank in 2010. I call this method “biblical field research.”
My own Context
In biblical scholarship it has been acknowledged that the contexts and the views of
the scholar always have some impact on the subject and the results of the
examination. It becomes readily apparent merely by noting the subject and
questions that a scholar chooses, not to mention her or his methodology and focus
of interest. Therefore it is important to do some self-analysis in order to determine
why one is interested in the subject matter. It is also necessary to be straightforward
about one’s own context with the readers.
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I am a Finnish white male belonging to the clergy of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran
church, where I work in the Bishop’s office as the Dean of the diocese. That means
that I have other duties besides biblical scholarship during the week. However, I
received my training in biblical scholarship and it is a passion for me. I wrote my
Master’s thesis on the Hebrew Bible at the University of Helsinki in 1987. My
dissertation, published in Finnish in 1999, was on the Ebionites, i.e. “the Poor.” Since
then I have written several articles concerning poverty in the New Testament. And,
as a professional member of Westar Institute since 2001, I have been extensively
involved in historical Jesus studies, especially due to my participation in Westar's
Jesus Seminar.
Upon completion of my dissertation I had been planning a monograph on poverty in
the New Testament and have recently started on this project. This has led me to do
biblical field research for the reasons mentioned above. This study has led me to
conclude that poverty, as the context of the parables and other of Jesus’ speeches,
gives new insights and takes us closer to the original meaning of the gospels, for
they were delivered in a world where the vast majority of the people were living in –
or at least close to – poverty.
Jayyous
Jayyous is an Arab town located some 12 kms northeast of the town of Qalqilya and
the city of Tulkarem. In the first century this region was known as Samaria, and is
mentioned as such in the New Testament. Local people still know it by that name,
although it is more commonly called the West Bank of Israel. Jayyous has a
population of 3,700, which is made up of 670 families, all Arabs. Approximately the
same number of people has emigrated from the town since the 1967 Arab-Israeli
war (Six-Day War), when Israel first occupied the area. Jayyous has four schools and
one kindergarten, a health center with one doctor and two nurses, a medical store
and a laboratory. The town is 14.5 km2 large, with most of it being farmland. In fact,
most of the town’s people are farmers.
In 2002, when Israel built the settlement of Tsufeem in the area, life became
significantly more difficult for the Arab farmers there. The 2 km2 settlement was
built in order to offer apartments and gardens to Jewish immigrants arriving from all
over the world. For security reasons Israeli officials built a fence around Jayyous and
heavily restricted travel to the outlying farmland, making it almost impossible for
Jayyous farmers to maintain their livelihood. Now Jayyous’ six important wells,
50,000 citrus trees and 120 greenhouses, which together had produced some 9
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million kilos of fruits and vegetables per year, are on the other side of the fence.
Production has virtually come to standstill, due to the difficulties brought on by the
fence and the soldiers that guard the two gates along the six km fence. Arabs may
pass the checkpoint only with a passport, which they can only buy for a limited time.
And the application process usually takes months.
The Israeli settlers also use Arab land close to the town as their dumping grounds. In
addition, they have destroyed the Jayyous water tanks and damaged the orchards
and greenhouses. Worst of all, they use violence against the Jayyous people –
including children and the elderly – beating them and threatening them with guns. It
is clear that the settlers have been taught to hate Arabs, because the Arabs are
Muslims and, therefore, potential terrorists, they say.
Having to live in an atmosphere of hatred and violence has taken its toll on the
residents of Jayyous. At the time of my visit (Spring 2010), 29 inhabitants of the little
town were in jail, arrested for throwing stones and other acts. I even met one man
whose son was recently arrested for making a fire too close to the security zone, i.e.
fence. Most of them were young people, between 14 and 20 years old, who cannot
stand the situation and feel that they must defend their families. Tear gas and
shootings are common in the town because Israeli soldiers conduct operations in
order to search for the young “terrorists.” People living in Jayyous feel they have
been treated unjustly. Injustice causes poverty but, like an Arab man said to me,
“Poverty is not our main problem, even though many of us are poor. Our problem is
injustice.”
If one statement could capture the people of Jayyous’s feelings it might be this: ”The
occupation and the separation wall has changed our lives into a hell that no human
can tolerate or stand because many diseases and chronic illnesses spread out among
the people…. However, we are still standing firm and steadfast despite all these
disasters, suffering and damage that afflicted on us inside our homeland resisting
peacefully in order to achieve peace and restore our land, our freedom, dignity and
decent life” (Jayyous Municipality Information booklet, 2010).
The Social Context of the Parable of The Good Samaritan
As mentioned above, the author of the Gospel of Luke seems to be responsible for
combining the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer with the parable. He
borrowed the dialogue from the Gospel of Mark, which is obviously an important
source for Luke. We do not know the source for the story of the Good Samaritan,
but it could well have its origins from Jesus himself. At least geographically, the story
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is set in Palestine, between Jerusalem and Jericho. What kind of a society existed in
the first century Palestine?
At the time that the story was narrated Palestine was occupied, controlled and
governed by the Roman Empire. The Romans, especially the soldiers, were treated
as an enemy force by most of the local inhabitants. The threat of violence was everpresent. Heavy taxation, indebtedness, illnesses and disease were the biggest
problems for the peasantry; they all caused poverty. Malnutrition was a common
problem. There were continuous quarrels about land and water and there was
always the threat of imprisonment and slavery. During the reign of Herod Antipas
poverty among the peasantry was dramatically increased and this, of course, is
reflected in the New Testament.
Impoverishment also meant loss of honor, which was the worst consequence for
people living in an honor and shame culture. It increased criminality. It is no wonder
that in the first century there were many rebellions and underground movements
opposing both Roman occupation and reign as well as the pro-Roman Jewish elite.
At the time of the New Testament the land just north of Judaea was inhabited by
Samaritans, a people despised by the Jews because of their mixed ethnicity; the
Samaritans were considered to be half Israelite and half Gentile descending from
the immigrated people after the Assyrian invasion in 722 BCE. The designation of
some people as "Samaritan" meant labeling them as different, inferior and even
hostile (Jesus was also designated as a Samaritan in John 8:48). Religiously the
Samaritans were regarded as impure and were likened to other gentile “religions”
(naturally the term “religion” was not yet used at the time). But the Samaritans
considered themselves to be the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They
built a temple on Mount Gerizim at a time when there was not yet a temple in
Jerusalem.
The Jewish people did not accept their claim of descent. In one of the few times of
Jewish autonomy, ruler John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE) destroyed the temple of the
Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim, which greatly increased the hostility between the Jews
and Samaritans.
In New Testament times violent combat between the two groups continued. For
example, Josephus reports on the mass-murder of 50 Galilean pilgrims in Samaria.
The Jews exacted vengeance by killing Samaritans and burning down their villages.
The Romans, who were hated by both groups, tried to keep order.
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In the Gospel of Luke the Samaritans are mentioned three times. The first episode is
in 9:51-56, where the Samaritans did not welcome Jesus when he was on his way to
Jerusalem. Apostles James and John asked Jesus whether they should call down a
fire from heaven to annihilate them. However, Jesus reprimanded them. He did not
accept revenge.
The second episode is the parable of the Good Samaritan, narrated quite soon after
the first mention. Here Jesus tells the parable for a lawyer who wanted to challenge
him. Jesus responds by telling a story where the despised Samaritan becomes the
hero. Is he thus challenging the lawyer? In any case, Luke’s Jesus seems to be less
hostile to the Samaritans than most of the Jews. One could even say that Jesus
crosses the borders between the two ethnic and/or religious groups by raising the
despised Samaritan as a praised hero of the parable.
This is confirmed again in the third episode where a Samaritan is mentioned in Luke
17:11-19. At the border between Galilee and Samaria Jesus heals ten lepers, but
only one of them, a Samaritan, returns to thank God for the miraculous healing.
Thus we can see that placing a Samaritan as a hero in the story that takes place on
the way from Jerusalem to Jericho is well in line with Luke’s attitude with regard to
the Samaritans. One wonders then, whether the Samaritans in Luke’s mind were
real Samaritans or did they perhaps represents some other people, if not all nonJews. Either way, it looks like Luke wanted to present a Jesus who moves across
borders and is ready to accept, not only his own ethnic and religious group, but
others as well.
Telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan to the Palestinians
In Jayyous I was given the opportunity to have a discussion with some Palestinian
young men about life in their town. As we were in a strict Muslim area, it was not
possible to talk with any women. I told the young men that I was doing research in
the West Bank and that I wanted to hear their thoughts and comments concerning
an old story that is included in the Christian Bible. The meeting took place in the
home of one Palestinian man. This man and three young, perhaps 16-20 years old
boys, were present. All were Arab and Muslim and nobody had heard the story
before. I was not allowed to take photos, but using a tape recorder was permitted.
I had barely begun the story saying only that a man was beaten while on the way
from Jerusalem to Jericho, when I was interrupted by a lively debate between my
audiences. The boys wanted to know who the beaten man was. I tried to continue,
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asking them to let me finish, but their excitement prevailed and so I listened to
them.
“He must have been a Palestinian, and those who beat him were Jewish soldiers,"
said one. Then, turning to me he explained, "That happens all the time. They beat us
even without reason because they hate us."
"Yes," said another. "And especially when nobody can see, they might also use their
rifles in beating us and that hurts a lot." All the men nodded in agreement. Then
another voice added, "And typical for them is also to leave the beaten one lying
there without anybody helping him.”
I started to think that perhaps this was also the way when this story was originally
narrated orally in Galilee: the narrator was interrupted all the time and the
discussion started before the story comes to its end.
I continued the story, telling them about the Jewish priest passing the victim by.
Again the youngsters reacted strongly. One of them said, “We knew that they
wouldn’t help a Palestinian. Many of them want all of us to die, and even if someone
would feel like he should help the victim of the violence, he could not do that
because he has to be afraid of other Jews, who would despise the helper.”
They were seemingly enthusiastic to know what happened next in the story. When I
told them that the next person to pass by was a Levite, they asked me what a Levite
was. I told them that he was also a Jew. Some of the boys nodded as though they
should have known that the Levite was a Jew because he did not stop to help the
victim. One of the boys said that the passers-by were quite similar to those who had
beaten the poor traveler because they left him to die without helping. “They must
have felt hatred for the beaten man,” said one young man. Another said that they
obviously had a different god and wondered whether the God of the Jews allowed
people to pass by without helping a man in need.
I continued the story by telling them that a third man, who was a Samaritan, was
travelling the same way and, coming to the place where the beaten man was lying,
took the time to help him. My audience was alert: “From Samaria? Does it mean
from here? This area?” I was waiting to hear them say that the good fellow in the
story was a Palestinian, but I was wrong. One of the boys told me that the
Samaritan was sympathetic to Palestinians and he wanted the victim to stay alive.
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“He was not necessarily a Muslim, but obviously he believed in God who orders us
to help people in trouble,” said one of the boys.
“Maybe he and the victim had the same God,” said another. “In this country there
are people who still believe in peace between Palestinians and Jews. This man from
Samaria was such a person.”
Having told the story I asked the boys what they thought. They told me that it was a
good story and very realistic because this kind of incident happens every day in their
country. One of the boys said that surely he would help anyone in trouble, no
matter whether the person was a Palestinian or a Jew. In such a situation, like the
one described in the story, one should help even one’s enemy.
In light of the story one of the boys wanted to tell me about one of their own
experiences. “Once a Jewish man came to Qalqilya without knowing that it is an
Arab town. When he noticed that he was all alone in the middle of Arabs he was
scared. He thought he might even lose his life. When we went close to him he was
so scared that he ran away. We would, however, just have wanted to help him. In
the Koran God orders us to help also one’s enemy.”
The boys also asked me what I thought about the story. I told them that the story is
in the Christian Bible and it is part of a longer story where Jesus discussed the love
commandment with a lawyer. The boys wanted to listen to the whole story and said
that there are wise and good stories in the Bible. As our meeting continued, we read
some passages of the Koran together where, according to the boys, the fence built
by the Israelites was predicted. It is also predicted that the fence, as well as the wall
in East Jerusalem, will be torn down. “This will happen in our lifetime,” said one of
the boys.
Conclusion
Identification
The Palestinian young men living in the area who experience violence every day
identified themselves in the story of the Samaritan quite clearly as the victim. In my
own context, I am used to hearing the story identifying myself as one of the bypassing travelers, naturally the priest because I belong to the clergy. I believe most
western scholars find the point of the story to be an accusation against those who
do not help their neighbor in trouble. This reading might be confirmed when reading
the parable as part of the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer, who seemed to
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be ashamed after hearing the story. But consider the story in itself, without the
dialogue. Is it meant to be an accusation against people who pass by the victims of
violence? Or could it have been heard just like the Palestinian young boys heard it,
focusing on the harsh violence that the victim in the story suffered? The first
audience of the story in first century Galilee probably heard the story just this way:
they identified themselves with the victim and disliked those who did not stop to
help them. If that is the case, the story for them was neither a moralistic sermon nor
an exemplary story about how one should help everyone in need. It was good news
for oppressed people that they will be helped, even though not necessarily by the
fellow Jews, but possibly by a gentile.
Ethnicity
In Jayyous my audience consisted solely of Arab Muslim men. Listening to the story
of the Samaritan they paid close attention to the ethnic origins of the people in the
story. It was important to them to know each one’s ethnic origin and religion. The
nationality of the victim and the religion of the people who did not help him were
especially important. The Samaritan’s ethnic origin and religion was surprisingly not
as important as the other people’s background. Perhaps this has to do with their
own context, in which they identified themselves and their oppressed nation with
the victim. This led to them identifying the robbers and those passing by without
helping with the Jews. However, in the present day, they had noticed that foreign
aid coming from the European Union, or western churches and organizations, was
somehow not labeled as coming from one nation or was not seen as religious. So it
might be easier for them to think, as they said to me, that it did not matter, whether
the helper was a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. "He did what God wants us to do."
Storytelling
My third conclusion arises from my surprise at the spontaneous interactive
performance of the story of the Samaritan. Imagine Jesus or any of his followers
telling the story to a group of people who had not heard it before. Did the audience
listen to it quietly – or did they constantly interrupt the storyteller with their
questions and comments, as happened to me? I would suggest the latter.
In the western Christian world most people in the audience have already heard the
story before and it is meant to be listened to passively. Not so in the West Bank or in
any culture where storytelling is still alive and people take an active part in the
process. What actually happened to me in Jayyous was that I did not interpret the
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story or give it any meaning. The meaning of the story was formed in the minds of
the audience through their comments and questions, giving them the opportunity to
personalize it within their own context and giving me the opportunity to listen and
understand it from their perspective.
It is my view that the context of poverty and oppression, as experienced by the
Palestinian youth that I spoke with, may be quite close to the original first century
context that Jesus and his followers lived in and sought to address.
It is the inspiring task of a biblical scholar to uncover this original context as closely
as possible and, in so doing, gain an understanding of how the stories were
understood by a first century audience. Who did the audience identify with? What
did they pay special attention to and what was the effect of the story on the
community as a whole? In short, how would they have heard the words of Jesus,
given their own first century context? In seeking to step out of our western context
and explore these possibilities more deeply, we have the opportunity to sharpen our
focus and gain new perspectives into the minds and hearts of Jesus’ first century
listeners.