• NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

    I thought the point of Samaritans were that they were supposedly all awful people apart from the good one in the story.

    • yannic@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Nah, they’re mostly just an ethnic group of fellow Abrahamic Israelites who worship on a different mountain. The author often injects their own biases in scripture, and when they don’t, at the very least it’s a reflection of cultural norms for the author and/or audience.

      Here’s a picture of a Jew and a Samaritan side by side. The differences are immediately apparent.

    • survivalmachine@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      This person was not a Samaritan, a proper noun meaning a person from Samaria. This person was a samaritan, “one who is compassionate or helpful to a person in distress”, a common English noun derived from the story of the good Samaritan that you are referencing. When we use the word samaritan, we are specifically trying to evoke the idea of that one good Samaritan. So yes, your point is technically correct, but not relevant.