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
Parable of the Good Samaritan it "pink" (probably authentic). The paradox of a disliked outsider such as a Samaritan helping a Jew is typical of Jesus' provocative parables, and is a deliberate feature of this parable. In the Greek text, the shock value of the Samaritan's appearance is enhanced by the emphatic Σαμαρίτης ("Samaritēs") at the beginning of the sentence in verse 33. Bernard Brandon Scott, a member of the Jesus Seminar, questions the authenticity of the parable's context, suggesting that "the parable originally circulated separately from the question about neighborliness" and that the "existence of the lawyer's question in and , in addition to