There is hardly a better-known or better-loved story in the New Testament than that of the Good Samaritan. A Jewish scholar says that it "is one of the simplest and noblest among the noble gallery of parables in the Synoptic Gospels. Love, it tells us, must know no limits of race .... Who needs me is my neighbor. Whom at the given time and place I can help with my active love, he is my neighbor and I am his."1 So it is that Jesus illustrates in an unforgettable way what it means to be neighborly.

However, the story of the Good Samaritan has been variously interpreted through the centuries. Saint Augustine, for example, in the fifth century, attached varieties of allegorical meanings to it. The fallen man was Adam. Jerusalem represented heaven, the thieves were the devil and his angels, an…