Parable of the Good Samaritan In his essay "Lost in Non-Translation", biochemist and author Isaac Asimov asserts (despite portrayals of many good Samaritans in Luke 17:11-19; Acts 8:5-7; 15:3, as well as John 4:4-42, etc.) that at the time when the parable was included in the gospel, there were no good Samaritans; in his view, this was half the point of the parable. As Asimov put it, we need to think of the story occurring in Alabama in 1950, with a mayor and a preacher ignoring a man who has been beaten and robbed, with the role of the Samaritan being played by a poor
Parable of the Ten Virgins and that, instead, it is a parable created by the very early church. A large majority of fellows on the Jesus Seminar, for example, designated the parable as merely similar to something Jesus might have said or simply inauthentic ("gray" or "black"). Other scholars believe that this parable has only been lightly edited, and is an excellent example of Jesus' skill in telling parables. The parable occurs in all ancient New Testament manuscripts, with only slight variations in some words. In the Catholic Church, the parable is the Gospel reading for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time in Cycle A;