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 empty jar Parable of the empty jar The Parable of the Empty Jar (also known as the Parable of the Woman With a Jar), is a parable attributed to Jesus. However, it appears in none of the Canonical gospels of the New Testament but only in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas 97 Jesus said: The scholars of the Jesus Seminar gave the Parable of the Empty Jar a "pink" rating, indicating that it is in their opinion probably, but not certainly, an authentic saying of Jesus. The scholars of the Seminar noted parallels with the parable