mind. On the contrary, in their culture there was no such thing as a 'good Samaritan'. As the American cavalry used to say of the Apaches, the only good Samaritan was a dead Samaritan. And that's no exaggeration. Samaritans were publicly cursed in the synagogues. Petitions were daily offered begging God to deny them any participation in eternal life. Many rabbis even said that a Jewish beggar should refuse alms from a Samaritan because their very money was contaminated.
Jesus could not possibly have chosen a hero more offensive to the sensitivities of his audience. It is not going too far to suggest that he displayed considerable physical courage in doing so. It would be like siding with a black at an Afrikaner brotherhood meeting in Johannesburg. Or like praising a UDR soldier in a Catholic pub in Belfast. If Jesus had made it a Jew helping a Jew, it would have been acceptable. Even a Jew helping a Samaritan might have been tolerable. Some, I'm sure, would have applauded if he'd made his story a piece of anticlerical propaganda, with the Jewish layman showing up the hypocrisy of these two members of the priesthood. But to suggest that two pillars of the Jewish Establishment should be morally outclassed by this mongrel heretic—why, it would have stung every Jewish patriot into hostile indignation! Yet that was exactly Jesus' suggestion.
At every step in the narrative, he makes the Samaritan fulfil the duty of love so conspicuously neglected by the priest and the Levite. Their hearts had been cold and calculating, but his bums with an extravagant compassion. Their oil and wine remain undefiled in their saddlebags, ready, no doubt, for later use in temple ritual. But his becomes a soothing and antiseptic balm to treat the man's wounds. They stay securely seated on their beasts, ready to gallop off should the man's prone body prove to be a decoy. He bravely dismounts, risking possible ambush, and walks the rest of the way to Jericho with
