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 apocrypha. The word "parable" comes from the Greek παραβολή ("parabolē"), meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy." It was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a brief fictional narrative. Parables are often used to explore ethical concepts in spiritual texts. The Bible contains numerous parables in the Gospels section of the New Testament (Jesus's parables). These are believed by some scholars (such as John P. Meier) to have been inspired by mashalim, a form of Hebrew comparison. Examples of Jesus' parables include the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Mashalim from the Old Testament include the