40 Fun Facts About The Good Samaritan

Martin Luther King Jr. retold the Good Samaritan in his final speech, given in which US city?

Memphis was where King, backing striking sanitation workers, said the Samaritan turned the passers-by's worry around and asked what would happen to the wounded man if nobody stopped.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the traveler was going down from Jerusalem to which city?

Jericho lay at the end of a road notorious in Jesus's day for its danger and difficulty, so an ambush on a lone traveler there was entirely believable to the first hearers.

Which sitcom's 1998 finale put its four leads on trial under a so-called Good Samaritan law?

Seinfeld sent Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer to court for cracking jokes and filming while a man was carjacked, under a small-town law that required onlookers to step in.

What did the Good Samaritan pour on the beaten traveler's wounds while bandaging them?

Oil and wine went on as the Samaritan bandaged the wounds with his own hands, and he then stayed with the man overnight rather than leaving at once.

In the Good Samaritan story, who was the first traveler to see the beaten man and keep walking?

A priest happened to be going down the same road purely by chance, the story says, and he saw the man lying there before carrying on with his journey.

Which of the four Gospels tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in its tenth chapter?

Luke sets the story inside a conversation: it is the reply Jesus gives when he is asked who actually counts as a neighbor.

Good Samaritan laws, named after the parable, give legal protection to whom?

People who help in emergencies are shielded so that fear of being sued over an accidental injury does not stop a passer-by from stepping in.

Which painter copied Delacroix's Good Samaritan in 1890 while living in an asylum in Provence?

Vincent van Gogh painted it at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, one of more than 30 copies he made there after artists he admired.

Which coins, two of them, did the Good Samaritan leave to pay for the wounded man's care?

Denarii were silver coins each worth about a day's wage for a laborer, so the gift came to roughly two days' pay handed over for a complete stranger.

Which instruction did Jesus give at the very end of the Good Samaritan conversation?

Go and do likewise turns the lesson into a task: the conversation began with whom a person has to love, and it ends with an order to act as a neighbor.

After the first passer-by in the Good Samaritan story, who was the second man to pass the victim?

A Levite, from the tribe whose men sang, played music and stood guard in the Temple, came right up to the spot and looked before he walked on too.

Who asked Jesus the questions that led to the parable of the Good Samaritan, hoping to test him?

A lawyer is the wording of older translations for an expert in the Jewish religious law, and this one stood up in public to put Jesus to the test.

Before telling the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus was first asked how a person could inherit what?

Eternal life was the opening topic, and Jesus replied with a question of his own, asking the man what was written in the Law and how he read it.

How did the Good Samaritan carry the wounded traveler from the roadside to a place of shelter?

On his own animal went the injured man, and once they arrived the Samaritan did not simply drop him off: he personally looked after him there.

To whom did the Good Samaritan hand money the next day so the wounded man's care would continue?

The innkeeper received the money with a simple instruction to take care of the man, so the rescue carried on after the Samaritan had left.

Which emotion does the Gospel say moved the Good Samaritan when he first saw the beaten traveler?

Compassion is the turning point of the story: the two earlier travelers also saw the man, but only this time did seeing lead to stopping.

Asked who had been a neighbor, how did Jesus's questioner describe the Good Samaritan?

The one who showed mercy was his reply, a description that gets the answer right without ever using the word Samaritan.

Which of these parables appears in the same Gospel as the Good Samaritan?

The Prodigal Son comes five chapters later, as the last of three stories about lost things, following a lost sheep and a lost coin.

In the fourth Gospel, where does Jesus sit down and ask a Samaritan woman for a drink?

Jacob's well, near a town called Sychar, is where the woman is astonished to be spoken to at all, because Jews and Samaritans did not associate.

Samaritan's Purse, the relief charity founded in 1970, sends children gifts packed in what?

Shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies and personal items are collected by schools and community groups each November for its Operation Christmas Child project.

The command to love God with all your heart, quoted before the Good Samaritan, is from which book?

Deuteronomy gives it straight after the call for Israel to hear that the Lord is one, and then tells parents to teach these words diligently to their children.

The command to love one's neighbor, cited before the Good Samaritan, is from which biblical book?

Leviticus sets the command in a chapter of everyday rules, in the same verse that bans seeking revenge or bearing a grudge.

According to the law quoted before the Good Samaritan parable, how should a person love a neighbor?

As yourself is the measure, and Jesus told the man who quoted it that he had answered correctly: do this, he said, and you will live.

Which two sisters host Jesus in the story that directly follows the Good Samaritan parable?

Mary and Martha come next: one sits listening at Jesus's feet while her sister, distracted by all the preparations, asks him to tell her to lend a hand.

Samaritans, the charity founded in 1953 by London vicar Chad Varah, is best known for running what?

A crisis telephone helpline for anyone in distress or at risk of suicide is its core service, and despite the biblical name the organization itself is not religious.

A grateful Samaritan is the only one of ten men to thank Jesus for curing them of which disease?

Leprosy kept the ten standing at a distance as they called out, and when a single man came back Jesus pointedly asked where the remaining nine were.

The author of the Gospel containing the Good Samaritan is traditionally said to have had which job?

A physician is how the letter to the Colossians describes him, which is why tradition treats him as both a healer and a disciple of the apostle Paul.

Which pope made the Good Samaritan the heart of Fratelli tutti, his letter on human fraternity?

Francis treated the story as the core of the whole document, urging readers to be Good Samaritans who carry the pain of others' troubles instead of stoking resentment.

Samaria, home of the Samaritans, lay between Judea to the south and which region to the north?

Galilee could be reached from Judea by going straight through Samaria, the route the fourth Gospel says Jesus took on the day he met a Samaritan woman.

What did the Good Samaritan promise to do on his return journey past the wounded man's lodging?

Repay any extra costs was the pledge, an open-ended promise that left the final bill for a stranger's recovery to be set by somebody else.

Samaritans hold that God chose not Jerusalem's temple hill for his sanctuary but which mountain?

Mount Gerizim, near the city of Nablus, once held a Samaritan temple that was destroyed in the 2nd century BCE, and the community still climbs it on pilgrimage three times a year.

Which spring festival do Samaritans still mark by sacrificing sheep on their holy mountain?

Passover is kept there much as the book of Exodus lays it down, with the sheep slaughtered at the summit and the meat roasted for a shared meal.

Samaritans accept only which part of the Hebrew Bible, in their own ancient version, as scripture?

The Torah, copied in a distinct Samaritan script, makes up their entire Bible, and it differs from the standard Jewish text in some 6,000 places.

Which area of law grew from 1932's 'snail in the bottle' case and its Good Samaritan neighbor test?

Negligence law rests on Lord Atkin's ruling in that case that everyone must take reasonable care not to injure those their actions could foreseeably affect.

In a 1973 Good Samaritan study of theology students, what best predicted who stopped for a stranger?

How hurried they felt mattered most: religious views made no difference, and some students walked straight past on their way to give a talk about this very parable.

In the Good Samaritan allegory Origen described, the wounded man's lodging stands for what?

The Church fitted because it accepts all who wish to enter, and the Samaritan's promise to come back was read as a picture of the Second Coming.

In the Good Samaritan allegory Origen described, the beaten traveler stands for which Bible figure?

Adam was the traveler in this reading, with Jerusalem as paradise, the place he was heading for as the world and the robbers as hostile powers.

The dangerous road in the Good Samaritan parable was once nicknamed the Way of what?

Blood gave the road its nickname because so much of it was shed there by robbers, a reputation the first listeners to the story would have known.

Which British prime minister said the Good Samaritan needed money and not only good intentions?

Margaret Thatcher made the point in a 1980 television interview, arguing that nobody would remember the man at all if he had lacked the means to pay.

Before the Good Samaritan parable, why did the questioner ask Jesus who counted as his neighbor?

To justify himself is the motive the text gives, since Jesus had just told him he already had the right answer and only needed to act on it.