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 assassin Parable of the assassin The Parable of the Assassin (also known as the Parable of the Killer), 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 98 Jesus said: The scholars of the Jesus Seminar gave the parable of the assassin a "pink" rating, indicating that it is in their opinion probably, but not certainly, an authentic saying of Jesus. They were influenced by parallels with the parables of the tower builder and of the warring