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 Good Samaritan extended the call for neighbourly assistance to society at large: In addition to these classical interpretations many scholars have drawn additional themes from the story. Some have suggested that religious tolerance was an important message of the parable. By selecting for the moral protagonist of the story someone whose religion (Samaritanism) was despised by the Jewish audience to which Jesus was speaking, some argue that the parable attempts to downplay religious differences in favor of focusing on moral character and good works. Others have suggested that Jesus was attempting to convey an anti-establishment message, not necessarily in the sense of