Parable of the Good Samaritan Snodgrass writes that "While one cannot exclude that Luke has joined two originally separate narratives, evidence for this is not convincing." The "Oxford Bible Commentary" notes: The unexpected appearance of the Samaritan led Joseph Halévy to suggest that the parable originally involved "a priest, a Levite, and an Israelite", in line with contemporary Jewish stories, and that Luke changed the parable to be more familiar to a gentile audience." Halévy further suggests that, in real life, it was unlikely that a Samaritan would actually have been found on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, although others claim that there was
Parable of the Tares Instead, Williams believed it was God's duty to judge in the end, not man's. This parable lent further support to Williams' Biblical philosophy of a wall of separation between church and state as described in his 1644 book, "The Bloody Tenent of Persecution". John Milton, in Areopagitica (1644), calling for freedom of speech and condemning Parliament's attempt to license printing, referred to this parable and the Parable of Drawing in the Net both only found in Matthew 13: (I)t is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must