Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith

by Marcus J. Borg

The critique of the purity system is the theme of one of Jesus’ most familiar parables, the story of the Good Samaritan.31 Most often interpreted as a message about being a helpful neighbor, it in fact had a much more pointed meaning in the first-century Jewish social world. It was a critique of a way of life ordered around purity. The key to seeing this is to recognize the purity issues in the story: the priest and Levite were obligated to maintain a certain level of purity; contact with death was a source of major impurity; and the wounded man is described as “half-dead,” suggesting that one couldn’t tell whether he was dead without coming close enough to incur impurity if he was. Thus the priest and Levite passed by out of observance of the purity laws. The Samaritan (who, not incidentally, was radically impure according to the purity system), on the other hand, is described as the one who acted “compassionately.” Thus this beloved and often domesticated parable was originally a pointed attack on the purity system and an advocacy of another way: compassion.