Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Parable of the Good Samaritan

This research examines the parable of the Good Samaritan as set forth in the Bible at Luke 10:25-37, as it was analyzed during the patristic period of the early Christian Church by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Augustine. After positioning the parable exegesis in historical and cultural context, the research will discuss the allegorical method of understanding the importance of parables, with a view toward identifying the relevance of that method to contemporary religious discourse.

As the apostolic period gave way to the patristic period in the formative years of ecclesiastical Christianity, the fact is that the bureaucratic structure of what would become the Roman Catholic Church was far from a finished product. The second century of Christianity--the patristic period--was when diverse beliefs were programmatically excluded in the service of "the canon of Scripture, the [apostle's] creed, and the institutional structure" (Pagels xxiii). Clement of Alexandria, whose life straddled the late second and early third centuries, was a major opponent of Gnosticism, which rivaled orthodoxy in its mystical approach to faith (Campbell 363), and Origen, his student, extended that tradition. Augustine, who argued orthodoxy against multiple rival doctrines, is their intellectual heir.

These three Christian apologists shared a method of explaining Biblical meanings in terms of symbol and metaphor. Although allegory has a long tradition in biblical exegesis, it is controversial. One view is that because parables are deliberately symbolic, they "signif[y] in general a comparison, or a parallel, by which one thing is used to illustrate another" (Barry). Allegorical interpretation, whereby one element of a narrative is said to stand for another, is consistent with the narrative structure of parables in particular, which are presented as symbolic narratives (Barry). Barry cautions that "we must not pass over as unmeaning any detail withou...

Page 1 of 7 Next >

More on Parable of the Good Samaritan...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Parable of the Good Samaritan. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:15, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682447.html