Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Luke 17:11-19, Ten lepers and the Samaritan who came back
On the border between Samaria and Galilee ten men with leprosy call to Jesus from a distance. He sends them to the priests, they are cleansed on the way, and only one, a Samaritan, comes back to thank him.
Luke 17:11-19, in every translation this tool compares.
Travelling along the border of Samaria and Galilee, Jesus is met by ten men with a skin disease who keep their distance and beg for help. He sends them to show themselves to the priests, and they are healed on the way. Only one turns back, loudly praising God and thanking Jesus at his feet, and Luke points out that this man is a Samaritan; Jesus asks about the other nine and tells the foreigner that his faith has saved him.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/samaritans\/","n":"The Samaritans","s":"The people of the hill country between Judea and Galilee worshiped Israel's God on Mount Gerizim, not in Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans each claimed to be the true heirs of Israel, and centuries of hostility lay between them.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/unclean-by-touch\/","n":"Unclean by touch","s":"Under the law, skin disease, bleeding, corpses, tombs and certain animals made a person ritually unclean, and touch could pass it on.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sacrifice-and-blood\/","n":"Sacrifice and the daily offering","s":"Animals were offered at the temple for sin, for thanks and for cleansing, and blood sealed covenants. Every day a lamb was offered at dawn and again in the afternoon, and Jews everywhere prayed at those hours.","r":""}
The law put lepers in quarantine (Leviticus 13:45-46), so they were outcasts whom most people preferred to ignore, and many Jewish teachers went further than the Bible in blaming the disease on the leper's sin (Keener). The law also prescribed sacrifices when a leper was healed (Leviticus 14:1-32), so sending them to the priests keeps the law and gives the priests no offense (Keener). On their own terms Samaritans were devout, but Jews thought them irreligious and avoided close dealings; in this border region shared leprosy erased the usual divide (Keener and his notes). The route itself had a history. Josephus writes, "It was the custom of the Galileans, when they came to the holy city at the festivals, to take their journeys through the country of the Samaritans," and tells how men of Ginea, a village on that road, killed a great many of them, and how the governor Cumanus, bribed by the Samaritans, did nothing. Biblical leprosy was not Hansen's disease but a range of skin conditions (Strauss, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary). Naaman, the earlier foreigner cured of leprosy (2 Kings 5), is the one Jesus named at Nazareth (4:27; Strauss).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Luke 17:11-12, 17:14 and 17:15-19
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Luke 17:16
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.6.1, trans. William Whiston
- Mark L. Strauss, Luke, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Luke 17:12 and 17:16
