Bible experts call the parable of the Good Samaritan an example story. By this they mean that Luke has taken one of Jesus’ parables (Luke 10.30–35) and made out of it a story with a straightforward message about correct behavior.

Luke did two things to transform the parable into an example story. First, he took a dialogue between Jesus and an expert in the Law of Moses and placed it as a frame around Jesus’ parable. Then Luke added typical example story touches in the form of questions and commands about doing and living (Luke 10.25, Luke 10.28, Luke 10.37).

Other Example Stories in the New Testament

The Good Samaritan is part of a larger collection of example stories in the Gospel of Luke, including the stories of a Rich Fool (Luke 12.13–21), Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16.19–31), a Widow and a Judge (Luke 18.1–8), and a Pharisee and a Tax Collector (Luke 18.9–14).

Example stories in Luke and elsewhere in the New Testament are important for many reasons. They show that New Testament writers wanted to maximize the audience appeal of Jesus’ parables as well as to place traditional stories of Jesus on the larger intellectual and cultural map of the first-century A.D. Mediterranean world. Example stories could help achieve these goals because they were a practical application of one of the most important theoretical principles in ancient education and vocational training: mimesis, the art and science of “imitation and representation.”

Mimesis in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Mimesis was a pillar of ancient paideia, "education and training." As a method of teaching, it stood for both personal imitation and artistic representation of those exemplary behaviors, skills, and values considered normative and useful by a society.

Specifically, this meant that in a home or workshop the personal example of a parent, care giver, or master crafter provided mirror images of the artistic skills, social values, and personal behaviors to be transmitted to the next generation. In a grammar school, imitation and representation took place as young learners copied, memorized, and recited large tracts of poetry, history, and biography that contained models of correct behavior and values.

At a more advanced level, in the professional schools of Hellenistic rhetoric and Jewish Torah study, mimesis occurred as students memorized and recited repertoires of topoi or traditional subjects along with established deliveries of such subjects. About the use of example stories in this process, one first-century B.C. rhetorical handbook says, “Exemplification is the citing of something done or said in the past, along with the definite renaming of the doer or author. It is used with the same motives as a Comparison. It renders a thought more brilliant…clearer…more plausible, more vivid…” (Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.1.1; 4.7.10).

In the arts, mimesis was the representation of cultural values in, for example, architecture, statuary, and painting, and the doing so in such a pleasing and public way as to inculcate these traditional values in vast numbers of onlookers.

Example Stories in Greco-Roman Culture

The importance of mimesis to ancient education and training explains the popularity of example stories and collections of these stories in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The earliest examples (called paradeigmata or hypodeigmata in Greek) occur in Homer (ninth century B.C.), and by the Hellenistic age (fourth to first centuries B.C.) they are regular features of philosophical and biographical works. Cicero (106–43 B.C.), Sallust (86–35 B.C.), and Virgil (70–19 B.C.) regularly turn to example stories in their writings, and the first anthology of such stories (now lost) is attributed to Cornelius Nepos (99–24 B.C.).

Apart from Luke, other writers of New Testament books and early Christian literature knew about the power of exemplification, particularly in connection with imitation John 13.15, Jas 5.10, 2 Pet 2.6, 1 Clem 5.1.

One of the most successful collections of example stories is the anthology that became a standard schoolbook of Roman manners and customs until the Renaissance. The author of this collection, a Roman named Valerius Maximus, published his schoolbook in Rome in A.D. 31, during the reign of the emperor Tiberius (A.D. 14–37). Valerius dedicated his anthology to Tiberius and entitled it Nine Books of Noteworthy Deeds and Sayings. The nine books collect over one thousand example stories, two-thirds of which come from Roman sources and the rest mostly from Greek authors. Apart from his value for the study of example stories in the New Testament, Valerius ranks as an historical source of the first order because he is among the five Roman historians writing between Tiberius and Hadrian (A.D. 117–138) whose works have survived.

Valerius wrote his schoolbook by first drafting an outline of established Roman values and then placing a series of traditional tales into the outline as example stories illustrating each of those values. To illustrate dying for one’s beliefs and the scrupulous keeping of a vow, for instance, Valerius adapted a traditional tale from a national epic about M. Atilius Regulus. During the First Punic War (264–241 B.C.)

…he was led away from a most spectacular victory to the bitter fate of a prisoner of war, thanks to the treacheries of Hasdrubal and the Spartan chieftain Xantippus. Then later he went as a legate to the senate and the Roman people in order that several Carthaginian youth be exchanged for the life of a single old man. But, having advised against the exchange, he requested to return to Carthage. And indeed he sailed back, though he was by no means ignorant that their god would be merciless and savage because of his deed. But he had sworn to them that if their prisoners were not exchanged, he would himself come back.

Luke, Example Stories, Imitation

Luke understood that example stories were narratives to be imitated, and this may be seen in his version of the story of the Last Supper (Luke 22.15–20, Matt 26.26–29, Mark 14.22–25, 1 Cor 11.23–25). Alone among the synoptic evangelists, Luke tells the traditional story and then presents it as a narrative that the followers of Jesus are to imitate and re-present: “Eat this as a way of remembering me.”

Luke realized, of course, that example stories were easier to understand than parables; he also knew that parables suitably transformed into example stories could give the teaching of Jesus a Mediterranean-wide cachet. After all, example stories enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most effective means of applying the principle of imitation and representation of traditional values.

Apart from this, the example stories in Luke and elsewhere in the New Testament reflect a growing awareness of history among followers of Jesus in the late first century A.D. These followers understood that the sapiential and apocalyptic teachings of Jesus had become a tradition that needed to be repackaged, handed on, and imitated for the benefit of a religious movement expanding across, and establishing itself in, the Mediterranean world.

Finally, Luke’s example stories make him one of the first popularizers and mass marketers of the Jesus tradition. By creating a first-century A.D. equivalent of a simple “sound-bite” out of a highly complex parable, Luke offered the power of the Jesus tradition and the possibility of its imitation and representation to the whole Mediterranean world and beyond.