Before one can fully appreciate the story of the stricken traveler in Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the background and context of the bandits who attacked him. Who were they? What were their motivations? Why were they so merciless?

The first thing we need in order to begin such a contextual consideration is a precise vocabulary. There are two distinct terms available to Luke; each has its own unique social reality. The first is kleptes, “thief,” from which we derive the modern English term kleptomaniac. Luke uses it at 12.33 when he cautions his readers against laying up earthly treasures that a thief can steal. He uses it again at 12.39 when he warns that Jesus will return stealthily and unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. Used seventeen times in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and sixteen in the New Testament, kleptes consistently describes a non-violent offender who perpetrates his crimes in secret. Though the Jewish historian Josephus (A.D. 37–93) never uses the noun, he does use the verb form (kleptein “to steal”). He, too, understands the terminology to reference a clandestine act.

In relaying the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke, however, chooses another term to describe the criminal deed perpetrated against an unsuspecting traveler. In this setting of a violent, highway robbery the term lestes is more appropriate. This term, used some forty-two times by Josephus, fifteen times by New Testament writers, and nine times in the Septuagint, describes armed bands of marauders who are intentionally brutal when they carry out their activities. The distinguishing marker is violence. While kleptes typically describes a stealthy person who deprives people of their property, lestes denotes a bandit who operates outdoors in the company of a gang. The bandit gangs attack caravans, individual travelers, or settlements with weapons, and violently relieve them of their goods.

A more detailed analysis of first-century Palestine yields the preliminary observation that these bandits were of two types: the highwaymen who robbed only for personal gain, and the guerrilla warriors who directed their aggression against Roman authorities and/or the Jewish authorities and persons who collaborated with them. The term, then, does not necessarily imply a lack of honesty or integrity, even if the negative sense remained the predominant one. Early in the works of Homer (eighth or ninth century B.C.) the word is used for the highwayman or pirate who mercilessly plundered the roadways. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo (20 B.C.–A.D. 50) used the term as a designation for undisciplined soldiers. In 2 Corinthians 11.26 Paul lists these highwaymen as one of the many dangers that lurked along his apostolic mission paths. Josephus, too, uses the term as a designation for organized bands of highwaymen whose violence terrified travelers. He even speaks of Jewish Essenes who carried weapons on their journeys precisely as a protection against these bandits. But the term was also used to describe those who were dedicated to the violent overthrow of Roman rule in Palestine. Perhaps precisely because they were considered by the Romans to be dangerously seditious, many of the violent bandits designated as lestes were not looked upon as enemies by the general Palestinian population.

Indeed, the social circumstances that provided fertile opportunity and cause for bandits of both types also invited the hostility of the broader peasant Palestinian people. E. J. Hobsbawm argues that banditry is a common characteristic of peasant societies that feel themselves oppressed by exterior forces. While banditry in this context rarely leads to actual peasant revolt, it becomes a primitive means of rebelling against external authorities and the internal forces in complicity with them. Hobsbawm notes that there are common social circumstances endemic to societies, normally agrarian, which experience extensive social banditry. Unjust conditions, particularly social and economic, marginalize peasant communities. Typically this occurs when a traditional society and economy are disrupted by the imposition of a new political or social system that imposes taxation, foreign rule, local client rulers, enclosure of land, and disruption of employment, and is susceptible to the unpredictability of events like war and famine. Such disruptions intensify already present social divisions among the populace, while foreign rule fosters administrative inefficiency. The very conditions that provoke a response like banditry, then, also tend to allow banditry to flourish. Whereas an aggressive, efficient governmental structure might be able to eliminate it, an unstable, tentative government would allow it the space it needed to survive and even to breed. Hobsbawm further notes that because the bandit groups generally target the same conditions and forces that oppress the general populace, they often enjoy the support of the peasantry. In fact, many bandit groups that were thought to be righting social, economic, and political wrongs were often protected by peasant villages in spite of the threat of government retaliation. Generally, then, these marauders who appear to be taking from the rich and threatening oppressive governmental structures tended to share the basic values and religion of the peasant society from which they arose.

Sociological analyses reveal that the conditions which Hobsbawm argues are generally conducive to and indicative of such banditry were particularly relevant for agrarian first-century Palestine. Since the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586/587 B.C., Palestine had been subject to either the influence or direct control of one imperial power after another. The influence of Alexander the Great was particularly significant. The attempt of Alexander and those who succeeded him to export the culture of the Hellenes throughout the lands he conquered not only brought outside imperial forces into Palestine, but it brought with them a new and invasive socio-cultural spirit. This Hellenistic influence and the subsequent attempt by high priestly families to “Hellenize” much of Palestine, particularly Jerusalem, touched off the Jewish Maccabean revolt (160 B.C.).

Although the revolt and the regime that followed it maintained a sense of nominal independence for almost a century, by 63 B.C., with the movement of the Roman general Pompey into the region, Palestine once again found itself in a colonial situation. It is this colonial situation and the history that preceded it that fostered stiff Jewish opposition to alien rule. Josephus first begins to talk of Jewish banditry early in the Roman period, in the wake of twenty years of turmoil initiated by Pompey’s pacification of the eastern Mediterranean lands. He describes large hordes of bandits who are active in northern Galilee and led by a bandit chief (archilestes) named Hezekiah (Ezekias).

Even before Roman rule, however, conditions were ripe for banditry. Although Jewish society of the Hellenistic-Roman era was ostensibly devoted to the egalitarian ideals of the Mosaic covenant, much of the peasantry was controlled by a land-owning aristocracy. The aristocracy taxed the people to support the temple and their lifestyle. Taxes also subsidized large numbers of ordinary priests in Jerusalem and the villages. The peasants, as Jesus’ parables demonstrate, were often victimized by the growth of large, landed estates that swallowed up their smaller parcels of land. The large estates were owned by members of the Jewish aristocracy who lived in urban areas or by non-Jews who lived outside of Palestine altogether. Many peasants who fell into debt had to forfeit their lands. Many of these became the marginalized day laborers highlighted in Jesus’ parables. These permanently uprooted laborers formed a substantial pool of people who might cause instability in the region. A dangerous and hostile social chasm opened between the wealthy upper classes and the peasantry who accounted for 90 percent of the population.

Roman rule aggravated this situation. The presence of foreign, alien rulers had always been egregious to popular Jewish religious sensibilities. The fact that this foreign rule and the peace it imposed were based on collaboration with the native aristocracy widened further the socio-economic split within Jewish society. Added to this troubled social reality was the tribute required by the Romans, a taxation that magnified the oppressive taxation the people already paid to their own leadership. The Romans instituted both a direct and an indirect levy. The direct assessments were levied against agricultural products, while the indirect were levied against each person living in a province or territory. These latter took the form of road tolls, customs dues, and market taxes. The naiveté and hostility of the Roman client authorities further aggravated the social climate. Herod’s rule from 37–4 B.C. was financed by heavy taxation that supported his lavish building program, his opulent lifestyle, and his Hellenistic philanthropy. In fact, the tax burden was so great that following Herod’s death a Jewish delegation to Rome sought to void Herod’s will which had delegated his kingdom to this three sons. One of the principal reasons was the charge that the Herodians had extorted extra payments over and above the yearly Roman tribute.

These social and economic conditions resulted in several outright rebellions. In 38–37 B.C. the populace resisted Herod’s rise to power and was only put down with the help of Roman forces. At his death in 4 B.C. the people revolted at the prospect of continued Herodian rule. Further revolts in A.D. 6 led to the demise of the regime of Herod’s son Archaleus in Judea and introduced direct Roman rule there. Direct Roman rule did not change the situation. Taxation remained high, as did resistance to Roman rule. The famine of 47–48 exacerbated the climate of social and particularly economic destabilization.

Different segments of the Jewish society in Palestine responded differently to this kind of colonial occupation, and the social, political, and economic circumstance it fostered. As we have noted, the aristocracy tended to collaborate, finding this the best avenue of maintaining status. Many of the villagers and peasants resisted. And up until the great revolt that became the war of 66–70, when Josephus first coins the term “Zealot” as a designation for a formal movement, one of the primary forms of resistance was banditry. The Roman occupation in this way caused what Richard Horsley has termed a “spiral of violence.” Attempts by Roman governors in Judea to suppress the violent activity brought the opposite results. Already Herod had found that the peasantry, who shared a similar lot with the bandits, also maintained sympathies with them. It was Herod who pursued and killed the bandit Hezekiah and many of his fellow bandits, only to find the people pleading in Jerusalem that Herod be judged and punished as a result.

By the 30s and 40s of the first century AD, Josephus tells us that the bandits were operating with violent abandon. During his administration as governor, Fadus (44–45) attempted to purge robber bands from Judea. He was able to capture and execute Tholomaeus, a powerful bandit leader. But Josephus reminds us that during the later administration of Cumanus (48–52), banditry multiplied dramatically. There were a variety of groups strong enough to mount bold operations. Josephus notes that one such bandit group attacked a certain Stephen, an imperial servant, on the public road up to Beth-Horan, and violently relieved him of his possessions. Cumanus sought out the guilty parties, but the local village that he interrogated evidently believed the actions of the bandits were heroic and preferred to suffer the harsh Roman consequences rather than divulge their location. The closer such bandits came to becoming symbolic champions of the oppressed, the more the Roman authorities viewed them as seditious and dealt with them as such. Another great bandit leader, Eleazar ben Dinai, enjoyed a 20-year career before being captured and crucified by Felix (52–60).

During the administration of Albinus (62–64), governor just before the outbreak of war in A.D. 66, banditry had taken such a heavy toll on the gentry that many wealthy Jews left their estates in search of safer surroundings among the Gentiles. Indeed, Josephus argues that on the eve of the revolt a sizable portion of the people (hoi polloi) practiced banditry to such a degree that whole towns were ruined. Banditry, whether in the form of highway piracy or guerrilla warfare, became a prevalent and ingrained social reality in first-century Palestine. The reality described in the parable of the Good Samaritan should, therefore, not be considered an isolated incident. It was instead a common occurrence to which Jesus’ hearers, particularly a lawyer, could easily though uncomfortably relate.

This picture of the lestes in two principal guises, as highwayman or as guerrilla bandit, does not, however, exhaust the use of the term. Josephus complicates the issue by also using the term in connection with the Zealots who maintained a more formal anti-Roman political program. Even though they may well have been perceived by the Romans as bandits and outlaws, they are bandits of a different, politically organized type. There are two politically organized groups who merit Josephus’ title of bandit. The sicarii or “dagger-men” (so called because of their weapon of choice) assassinated Jewish citizens who collaborated with Roman rule. The Zealots spearheaded the war with Rome in A.D. 66–70 from inside the besieged city walls of Jerusalem. In fact, Horsley and others note that Josephus does not use the term Zealot until after the hostilities of 66 have begun. Their existence is particularly tied to the revolt and subsequent war. However, by using the same bandit terminology to refer to both the guerrilla and the more formally organized groups, Josephus has clouded the issue. It therefore remains our final task to clarify why these politically minded operatives, who were responding to the same Roman colonial situation, were also ascribed the title lestes.

The traditional scholarly view had long been that the revolt was spearheaded by a single party founded by Judas of Galilee in A.D. 6. Other groups like the sicarii were factions of this Zealot movement. In fact, Josephus does credit this Judas with founding what he calls the “fourth philosophy,” which Josephus describes alongside the other Jewish parties, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. It is now becoming clear, however, that one cannot uncritically identify this “fourth philosophy” with the Zealots through Josephus. As we have said, there is no evidence in Josephus for the use of Zealot as a party designation in Judea prior to the outbreak of war with Rome. Even then it is only one among several factions struggling for control of the revolution. The presence of Simon the Zealot (Luke 6.15) among Jesus’ disciples does not guarantee the early existence of a Zealot party since zealotry to law and faith was an attitudinal designation that found roots back to the Maccabean period and therefore need not designate a particular party. The revised traditional understanding is that the Zealot party then begins with the revolt in 66.

Richard Horsley argues that Josephus describes the Zealots as bandits because the Zealots are in fact a coalition of bandit groups that have moved from Galilee into Jerusalem. In this view the bandit groups transform themselves into an organized, revolutionary party from their roots as guerrilla bandits in the countryside. T. L. Donaldson has clarified and revised Horsley’s reconstruction. He finds that banditry does indeed play a role in the rebel organization that comes to be called Zealots by Josephus. However, he disagrees that the party originated as a bandit coalition and consisted only of rural peasantry. He notes that Josephus also points to urban rebels. Eleazar ben Simon, who emerges as leader of the Zealot party, is not a peasant. He therefore concludes that Josephus uses the term in a way that implies an urban component, and he suggests that at its climax the Zealot resistance was a coalition of urban revolutionaries, rural bandits, and other peasant rebels.

There are, then, three possible realities that can legitimately come to mind when one hears that the victim in the Good Samaritan parable is attacked by lestai “bandits.” They could be highwaymen, guerrilla bandits, or, given the fact that Luke is writing the story well after the 66–70 war, politically-minded revolutionaries whose acts of piracy against those in the upper economic strata are motivated by insurrectionary goals.

Synoptic usage confirms this open potentiality for the bandit terminology. John (18.40) uses the term lestes to describe Barabbas, whom Mark also relates (15.7) was involved in a bloody insurrection against Rome. Jesus is crucified, the typical Roman punishment for sedition, between two men referred to by Matthew and Mark as lestai (Mark 15.27; Matt 27.38–44). At Luke 22.52 and parallel Synoptic passages Jesus asks his future jailers why they come out against him as against a lestes with clubs and swords to capture him. At the temple cleansing (Mark 11.15–19 and parallels) when Jesus calls the temple a den of robbers, lestes is the term he uses. The word for “den” is the same term Josephus uses when he describes the caves where the Zealots hid during the A.D. 66 revolt. The “den of thieves” may well then be translated “cave of bandits.” In each case the violent bandits, who also show up through the same terminology in the Good Samaritan parable, could be representative of any of the three bandit types we have discussed. It is a social world of violence that erupts as a reaction to the harsh social, economic and political circumstances of first-century Palestine. Whether a first-century observer saw the activity as wholly negative depended upon the type of banditry and the perspective from which it was viewed.

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