Editing Parable of the Good Samaritan (section)

===Other interpretations===
[[File:William Bruce Almon monument by Samuel Nixon, St. Paul's Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia.jpg|thumb|upright=1.8|Parable of the Good Samaritan by [[Samuel Nixon (sculptor)|Samuel Nixon]], [[St. Paul's Church (Halifax)|St. Paul's Church]], [[Halifax, Nova Scotia|Halifax]], [[Nova Scotia]]]]

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.{{sfn|Smith|1884|p=136}}{{sfn|Clarke|1886|p=346}}

Others have suggested that Jesus was attempting to convey an anti-establishment message, not necessarily in the sense of rejecting authority figures in general, but in the sense of rejecting religious hypocrisy. By contrasting the noble acts of a despised religion to the crass and selfish acts of a priest and a Levite, two representatives of the Jewish religious establishment, some argue that the parable attempts to downplay the importance of status in the religious hierarchy (or importance of knowledge of scripture) in favor of the practice of religious principles.{{sfn|Andrews|2012|p=117}}{{sfn|Wilson|2014|p=88}}

====Modern Jewish view====
{{Further|Jewish views on love|Chesed}}
{{Undue weight|date=July 2022|reason=Why this is supposed to be the whole "modern Jewish view"? And why this is just reported as it was, without a minimum paraphrase?}}
{{hatnote|The following is based on the public domain article "Brotherly Love"<ref>[http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1509&letter=B&search=great%20commandment "Brotherly Love"]</ref> found in the 1906 ''[[Jewish Encyclopedia]]''.}}

The story of the good Samaritan, in the Pauline Gospel of Luke x. 25–37, related to illustrate the meaning of the word "neighbor", possesses a feature which puzzles the student of rabbinical lore. The kind Samaritan who comes to the rescue of the men that had fallen among the robbers, is contrasted with the unkind priest and Levite; whereas the third class of Jews—i.e., the ordinary Israelites who, as a rule, follow the Cohen and the Levite are omitted; and therefore suspicion is aroused regarding the original form of the story. If "Samaritan" has been substituted by the anti-Judean gospel-writer for the original "Israelite", no reflection was intended by Jesus upon Jewish teaching concerning the meaning of neighbor; and the lesson implied is that he who is in need must be the object of love.

The term "neighbor" has not at all times been thus understood by Jewish teachers.{{efn|name=Stade}} In Tanna debe Eliyahu R. xv. it is said: "Blessed be the Lord who is impartial toward all. He says: 'Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor. Thy neighbor is like thy brother, and thy brother is like thy neighbor.'" Likewise in xxviii.: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God"; that is, thou shalt make the name of God beloved to the creatures by a righteous conduct toward Gentiles as well as Jews (compare Sifre, Deut. 32). Aaron b. Abraham ibn Ḥayyim of the sixteenth century, in his commentary to Sifre, l.c.; Ḥayyim Vital, the cabalist, in his "Sha'are Ḳedushah", i. 5; and Moses Ḥagis of the eighteenth century, in his work on the 613 commandments, while commenting on Deut. xxiii. 7, teach alike that the law of love of the neighbor includes the non-Israelite as well as the Israelite. There is nowhere a dissenting opinion expressed by Jewish writers. For modern times, see among others the conservative opinion of Plessner's religious catechism, "Dat Mosheh we-Yehudit", p.&nbsp;258.

Accordingly, the synod at [[Leipzig]] in 1869, and the German-Israelitish Union of Congregations in 1885, stood on old historical ground when declaring (Lazarus, "Ethics of Judaism", i. 234, 302) that {{"'}}Love thy neighbor as thyself' is a command of all-embracing love, and is a fundamental principle of the Jewish religion"; and {{harvnb|Stade|1888|p=510a}}, when charging with imposture the rabbis who made this declaration, is entirely in error.