The scrupulous priest and the Good Samaritan: Jesus' parabolic interpretation of the law of Moses

Abstract

The parable of the Good Samaritan presents Jesus' distinctive interpretation of the Torah in parabolic form. When it confronts a priest with a dead or dying man, it sets up an unusual, halakhically debatable situation, since the commandment that a priest avoid contracting corpse-impurity conflicts with the commandment to love the neighbour. One commandment must take precedence. Jesus' Jewish contemporaries would have disagreed as to how the priest should behave, but the general halakhic principle which the parable suggests - that the love commandment should always override others in cases of conflict - seems to be unparalleled. Copyright © 1998 Cambridge University Press.