Steve_Bamlett_blog

Forgive the ponderousness of what follows. I am in that mood again! In that aspect of my character I sometimes talk like a preacher of holy text, though I am neither a Christian nor what one might call ‘religious’. However, it is to Biblical text I turn when faced with defining what is a GOOD kind of thing as compared the thing when it is not good or relatively as good. I attribute this to being brought up and shaped entirely in a country where the hegemony of the Judaeo-Christian belief structure no doubt predominated (even when it merely flowed in the ether of general ideology for my family were not actively religious). I could not even read the prompt question without the memory of hearing the Christian parable of The Good Samaritan:

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”

He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

He said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?”

He said, “He who showed mercy on him.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10:25–37, World English Bible as cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

I have no idea of how this story stands as a moral philosophy but it feels right to answer the question ‘who is my neighbour’ with a story of what it would mean to be neighbourly – which is to show ‘mercy’ to one who suffers. Our question brings a new feature which is to distinguish between a ‘good’ neighbour and one who is not a good neighbour. One could say that the point of Jesus’ parable is that Jesus actually asks his audience: ‘Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a good, rather than a poor, neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?’

I think that is how the parable is usually read anyway. It was in my primary school. But that is not the point of the story, some commentaries tell us, who return to the original Greek text. And the context of the parable has to be insisted on.

Christ is talking to a ‘lawyer’, a person expert in the Torah (Jewish religious law based on the Hebrew text of what Christians call the Old Testament). And one commentary insists that the whole point of this parable lies in the different ways the Hebrew concept of he neighbour, for it is Hebrew which would have been spoken by the lawyer, and by Jesus Christ of course in the original dialogue, is being contrasted with the Christian concept in a NEW Testament now conceptualised in Greek terms in the Greek language. Here is the commentary I was thinking of:

Jesus and a scholar of the law are discussing the most important of God’s commandments, which in the Gospel According to Luke 10:27 (NABRE) the scholar cites as: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This combines passages from two books in the Torah—the book of Deuteronomy 6:4 (NABRE) and the book of Leviticus 19:18 (NABRE). When Jesus confirms the scholar’s answer, the scholar asks a fascinating follow-up question to clarify: “And who is my neighbor?”

The Hebrew word from the book of Leviticus 19:18 (NABRE) translated as “neighbor,” rea, means “friend,” “companion,” or “associate” from the same root as a verb that means “to associate with.” This meaning of “someone we know” is what we typically think of when we see this passage.

In the Septuagint and in the Gospel According to Luke, however, the word has a different shade of meaning. The Greek word πλησίος (plesios) means “near” or “close to.” The Greek concept of neighbor has a spacial meaning that is absent in the Hebrew.

What we see in the setup to this parable of the Good Samaritan is an underlying linguistic tension. The scholar of the law sees one’s neighbor as an associate. Jesus’ use of the parable drives home the fact that the linguistic shift in meaning also marks a theological shift, so that one’s neighbor can be anyone nearby.

https://turningtogodsword.com/neighbor/

The point may seem rather over-refined, since the terms in the list of meanings of Real in Hebrew seem to imply nearness or closeness: they are ‘“friend,” “companion,” or “associate” from the same root as a verb that means “to associate with’. That may be so. I am not a scholar of languages, but let’s assume that this assumption is not the case.

After all, what the Torah scholar is trying to do is to catch Jesus out whilst he is diverging from what he ‘knows’ to be God’s ordained laws, and to show that he is not therefore one of us – a friend, companion or associate of the Jews and what matters to Jews. Jesus will not fall for that trap. Although he would not have been using Greek, the Greek retelling of his words bends Jesus’ point to redefine the concept of my neighbour as being one who stays near and close to you, especially in your states of suffering. This definition is nearer to the heart of the definition of neighbour who actively uses their close presence to assist you than are associations based merely on geographical, national, sectarian and ‘racial’ associations that make a Pharisee, a Jewish priest, and a Levite, associated to a Jewish tribe a neighbour. The parable points out that an alien, a foreigner (one from the especially hated Samaria who were hated because they were Jews of a different sort, a way not embraced then by orthodox Jews).

The point seems to be that your neighbour is NOT someone who is ‘like’ you in religious or other terms, but one who is willing to act as close and near to you by being and staying physically and emotionally near and close to you when others shun you. The others may shun you because you are unclean with spilled blood or just for a moment identified with something they had rather not become involved with or near to. The Good Samaritan’s way is like that of the late Princess Diana who approached people who were the first to be dieing of the then incurable HIV opportunistic illneses called AIDS. She hugged them – went close to them. She showed her closeness within a Royal family noted for working through variations of cold distance in public – so that the slightest approach seems ‘gracious’.

And if that is true, the point to be made is that a ‘good neighbour’ is merely a neighbour by that definition. It is a person whose proximity to you is not measurable in inches or centimetres, miles or kilometres but by their capacity to care in ways that are not abstract but literally MOVE them to come close up to you, touch you, lend you their transport, though you bloody their leather seats, and get you to hospital. We judge the good in anything by its willingness to be physically and emotionally close to you (with both as cognates of the other) and not to rush to judgement or react with prejudice based on selfish fear for themselves.

This makes nonsense of sectarianism and racism both but also sexism, heterosexism, disablism, and so on. No doubt it is honoured by aspiration more than fulfillment this goodness but it is something to honour it at all -indeed Iris Murdoch in The Sovereignty of Good made aspiration to something that remains numinous – the Good – the core of her moral philosophy, distinguishing it in the process from religious observance such as prayer and the virtues as such, even those embodied in engagement the ‘right action’ praised in existentialism:

I think it is more than a verbal point to say that what should be aimed at is goodness, and not freedom or right action, although right action, ad freedom in the sense of humility, are the natural products of attention to the Good.

Iris Murdoch (1970: 70) The Sovereignty of Good London, Routledge & Kegan Paul

I am sure the answer to this question is not what I provide here. It is likely that, given the increased human fear of closeness and nearness in modern societies, good neighbours may be seen as people who do not abuse the convenience of the nearness by becoming your aunties and uncles as happens in more community defined cultures – in India or Africa for example. There are noted examples of the disadvantages of these nearby, but not blood-related, people – they can become a means of moral surveillance. However, what closeness or nearness means needs subjecting to the fire of whether it is a ‘good’ closeness or nearness or something else, like power-seeking. That is how I take the question about the good neighbour.

With love

Steve