Letter and spirit of the law by God. Not all Pharisees, nor all Jews of that time, were legalistic. Though modern language has used the word Pharisee in the pejorative to describe someone who is legalistic and rigid, it is not an accurate description of all Pharisees. The argument over the "Spirit of the Law" vs. the "Letter of the Law" was part of early Jewish dialogue as well The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is one of the New Testament texts to address this theme. The passage concerns a dialogue between Jesus and an "expert in the law" or "lawyer". As described in
The Good Samaritan Window, Chartres Cathedral served as a popular subject for cathedral glazing programs in the thirteenth century. Three French cathedral windows fabricated between 1200 and 1215 function in this way: Sens ("c".1200), Chartres (1205/1215), and Bourges ("c".1215) . The Good Samaritan-Genesis typology is found as well in a window at Canterbury Cathedral. Images of the Good Samaritan windows at Bourges, Chartres, and Sens are provided by The Corpus of Medieval Narrative Art, an archive of high-resolution photographs of medieval "narrative art", concentrating on French 13th-century stained glass. They are copyrighted by Dr Stuart Whiting and available for legitimate academic purpose. The Good Samaritan window