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The Scrupulous Priest and the Good Samaritan: Jesus' Parabolic Interpretation of the Law Of Moses1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Richard Bauckham
Richard Bauckham
Affiliation:
St Mary's College, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JU, Scotland
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 475 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

References

2 As has often been pointed out, the Good Samaritan is an example story, rather than a parable in the usual sense, but Luke appears to classify example stories as parables (Luke 12.16; 18.9). Comparison with the way rabbinic example stories (maasim) are sometimes used to crystallize legal problems could be fruitful, though it cannot be attempted here.

5 E.g. Nolland, J., Luke 9:21 – 18:34 (WBC 35B; Dallas: Word Books, 1993) 593.Google Scholar

6 The principle that corpse-impurity can be contracted by ‘overhanging’ or ‘overshadowing’ is well attested in the Mishna. The translation of in English translations of the Mishna as ‘to overshadow’ has misled some scholars into supposing that impurity is communicated when the shadow of a person or object falls on the corpse (or when the shadow of the corpse falls on a person or object) (e.g. McCane, B. R., ‘Is a Corpse Contagious? Early Jewish and Christian Attitudes toward the Dead’, SBSLP 1992, 383Google Scholar; van der Horst, P. W., ‘Der Schatten in hellenistischen Volksglauben’, in Studies in Hellenistic Religion [ed. Vermasseren, M. J.; Leiden: Brill, 1979] 34–5)Google Scholar. While this view coheres with ancient ideas about the shadow (see van der Horst, op. cit.; idem, ‘Shadow’, ABD 5,1148–50; and cf. Acts 5.15), it appears to be mistaken. has nothing to do with shadows, but is used in the Mishna as the verb related to ‘tent’. The principle has been deduced from Num 19.14, according to which a corpse in a tent infects everyone in the tent. Just as the roof of the tent intercepts and conveys the airborne corpse-impurity as it travels upwards, so does a person or object located above a corpse (see Harrington, H. K., The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis [SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993] 160)Google Scholar. That this principle was already recognized in the late Second-Temple period can be inferred from the fact that it was thought possible to contract corpse-impurity by walking over graves (Josephus Ant. 18.38; Matt 23.27; Luke 11.44).

7 E.g. Fitzmyer, J. A., The Gospel according to Luke X-XXIV (AB 28A; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 884Google Scholar: ‘The regulations on defilement from contact with a dead body were also to be found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, but they did not hinder the Samaritan of the story from being motivated by his own pity and kindness, which enabled him to transcend such restrictions.’ Fitzmyer's remarkably careless treatment of legal issues is also illustrated by his reference, on the same page, to ‘the heartless, perhaps Law-inspired insouciance of two representatives of the official Jewish cult, who otherwise would have been expected by their roles and heritage to deal with the ‘purification’ of physically afflicted persons (see the role of the ‘priest’ in Leviticus 12,13,15).’ I do not understand what relevance the last point is supposed to have to the story. A wounded or dying man is not impure and does not need purifying, while a corpse, which is impure, cannot be purified.

8 E.g. Hedrick, C. W., Parables as Poetic Fictions (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994) 105–6.Google Scholar

9 They may be for the Levite in the parable, but we do not know whether Levites in this period were considered bound by the same purity laws as the priests.

10 E.g. Linnemann, E., Parables of Jesus (tr. Sturdy, J.; London: SPCK, 1966) 53.Google Scholar

11 The evidence for such anti-clericalism is confined to attacks on the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy who ran the Temple and were widely regarded as corrupt (Bauckham, R., ‘Jesus' Demonstration in the Temple’, in Law and Religion: Essays on the Place of the Law in Israeland Early Christianity [ed. Lindars, B.; Cambridge: James Clarke, 1988] 79–81)Google Scholar. There is no reason to suppose that the priest in the parable belongs to this small élite of aristocratic priestly families, and the Levite certainly does not belong to it. That there was a clear distinction in social and economic status between the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy and the ordinary priests, who lived alongside and probably at much the same economic level as their peasant neighbours, is clear from Josephus (Ant. 20.181, 207), but is frequently ignored by writers who treat the priesthood generally as a privileged caste (e.g. Maier, J., ‘Self-Definition, Prestige, and Status of Priests Towards the End of the Second Temple Period’, BTB 23 [1993] 139–51)Google Scholar. Scott, Hence B. B., Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 197Google Scholar, is quite misleading when he speaks of ‘the upperclass status of the priest and the Levite’ in our parable, and of the anticlericalism of the audience’.

12 Later rabbinic tradition treats the as an exception for which the texts of Lev 21.1–3,11; Num 6.7 themselves allow (e.g. b. Naz. 47b–49a; b. Meg. 3b; b. Zeb. 100a). In this case, it is not a question of the law being overridden in this instance. However, this exegesis of the texts is very probably a later development, intended to justify already accepted halakhah. In the Mishna (Naz. 6.5) the Nazirite's obligation to bury the is parallel to his obligation to cut his hair if he contracts skin-disease. The latter is explicitly a case of one law (Lev 14.9) overriding another (Num 6.5) (m. Naz. 8.2).

13 Mann, J., ‘Jesus and the Sadducean Priests: Luke 10.25–37’, JQR 6 (1915–1916) 415–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, followed by Scott, , Hear Then the Parable, 196–7Google Scholar. Mann assumes both that the later rabbinic exegesis of Lev 21.1–3, 11; Num 6.7, according to which the text itself implies an exception for the , was already current in the Second-Temple period as the basis for understanding the obligation of the to apply to priests and Nazirites, and also that the ‘Sadducees would adhere to the clear wording of the Biblical law’ (419) and allow no such exception. Both assumptions are dubious.

14 Even if there is doubt whether a person's life is in danger, the duty to save life still overrides the Sabbath.

15 On this passage, see Schiffman, L. H., The Halakhah at Qumran (SJLA 16; Leiden: Brill, 1975) 125–8Google Scholar. Although some have emended the text in order to read it as permission to rescue someone who falls into water, I see no good reason not to accept the most obvious reading. Every other Sabbath rule in this long passage 10.14–12.1 is a prohibition.

16 For the differences on purity laws, see Harrington, Impurity Systems.

17 On this and parallel passages (Gen. R 24.7; y. Ned. 9.3 [41c]), see Neudecker, R., ‘“And You Shall Love Your Neighbour as Yourself – I Am the Lord” (Lev 19,18) in Jewish Interpretation’, Bib 73 (1992) 512–14.Google Scholar

18 By contrast, the parallel Matthean pericope (Matt 22.34–40) seems closer to Sifra Lev 19.18 and similar rabbinic discussions of the most comprehensive principle of the Torah (e.g. b. Shabb. 31a; b. Ber. 63a; b. Mak. 23b–24a).

19 Of course, with some textual differences.

20 Cf. Schwartz, J., ‘On Priests and Jericho in the Second Temple Period’, JQR 79 (1988) 23–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar