e Mary is avoiding her prescribed duties. However, it is Mary's behavior that is affirmed, rather than the behavior of the conventionally appropriate Martha.
There are also parallel stories or passages in the synoptic gospels. In the New Oxford Annotated Bible (1991), the authors indicated that there were at least two other places in which righteous members of the community asked questions to test Jesus (see Matthew 22:23 40 and Mark 12:28 31) and he responded by asserting the primacy of the Great Commandment to love God completely and one's neighbor as oneself. This is a consistent assertion that the very basic obligation of the human being, established in the law, is love.
There is also another occasion in which Jesus answered the question about what must be done to inherit eternal life. On that occasion (Mark 10:17 22), Jesus informed the individual that he had to follow the commandments, which he knew, but also sell all that he owned and give the money to the poor. He also told the man to follow him.
In looking directly at the parable itself in different versions of the Bible, there is very little disagreement. Strong's Concordance (1986) compared six different versions of the parable in King James, Revised Standard Version, and others, with very little difference between them. Probably the greatest differences were on verse 25 and verse 29. In verse 25, the words "tempted" and "master" in the King James version were translated variously as "to put him to the test," "to disconcert him," and "to test Jesus," and, alternately, as "teacher."
In the New Oxford version, the simpler form has been used, with the verse reading, "Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus."
In verse 29, the differences were about the verb form to be used in describing the lawyer's feeling tone in regard to justifying himself. That was variously translated as being "willing," "desiring," "wanted," "was anxious," "wishing," and "want...