Luke 10:25–28 is often read primarily as the introduction to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Yet the exchange that precedes the parable is itself a significant scene of scriptural interpretation. The central hermeneutical observation occurs in Jesus’ response to the legal expert in v. 26:
ἐν τῷ νόμῳ τί γέγραπται; πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις;
“What is written in the Law? How do you read?”
The juxtaposition of these two questions provides a useful framework for understanding the entire exchange. The first question concerns the textual datum: τί γέγραπται, “what has been written?” The second concerns the reader’s engagement with that text: πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις, “how do you read?” The narrative thus places the written Torah and the reading of the Torah alongside one another. The distinction is important because the legal expert’s answer in v. 27 is not simply the recitation of a single passage. It is already an act of interpretation: he selects, combines, and applies distinct Torah texts to a question—eternal life—that neither passage explicitly addresses.
This point should not, however, be overstated lexically. Older commentators such as Alfred Plummer noted that πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις could function like a Jewish formula requesting scriptural evidence—roughly, “What do you read?”—while Reiling and Swellengrebel suggest that ἀναγινώσκεις may even carry the sense “how do you recite?” The expression therefore need not constitute an abstract theory of hermeneutics in itself. Nevertheless, Plummer also allows that πῶς may imply something like “to what effect do you read?” and, more importantly, the narrative that follows demonstrates that more than simple quotation is taking place. The legal expert must determine which texts answer the question and how those texts relate to the question of eternal life. Thus, even if πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις was partly formulaic, Luke’s literary presentation makes the act of reading hermeneutically significant.
The Interpreter of the Torah
Luke identifies the questioner as a νομικός (10:25), an expert in the Mosaic Law (cf. BDAG, 676). This identification is significant. Jesus does not merely ask whether the man knows the Torah; he asks a professional interpreter of Torah to provide his own reading of it. The legal expert has asked:
διδάσκαλε, τί ποιήσας ζωὴν αἰώνιον κληρονομήσω;
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus responds by returning the problem to the interpreter: the answer is to be sought in the Torah, but it must also be read from the Torah.
The expert responds by combining Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. From Deuteronomy he derives the command to love God with the entirety of one’s being; from Leviticus he derives the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The response is therefore synthetic rather than merely citational. No single Torah passage gives the answer in precisely this form.
Deuteronomy 6:5 is an unsurprising choice. It belongs to the Shema, one of the most foundational confessions and commands of Jewish piety, and its command to love God functions in Deuteronomy as a comprehensive description of covenant fidelity. The choice of Leviticus 19:18 is more striking. By placing the love of neighbor alongside the love of God, the expert identifies two geographically separated commandments as jointly expressing the fundamental demand of Torah. As Plummer observed, the addition of Leviticus 19:18 to the regularly recited Deuteronomic command is itself noteworthy.
Luke’s presentation is especially interesting when compared with the Synoptic parallels. In Matthew 22:34–40 and Mark 12:28–34, Jesus himself identifies Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as the principal commandments. In Luke, by contrast, the νομικός produces the combination in response to Jesus’ question, “How do you read?” Luke thereby makes the Torah expert himself the interpreter whose reading is subsequently evaluated by Jesus.
The More Difficult Question: Where Does “Eternal Life” Come From?
The most intriguing aspect of the exchange is that the legal expert is not initially asking for a summary of the Torah. He is asking what he must do in order to inherit eternal life—ζωὴν αἰώνιον κληρονομήσω.
Neither Deuteronomy 6:5 nor Leviticus 19:18 contains the expression ζωὴ αἰώνιος. Indeed, the expression points toward a different cluster of Jewish scriptural and eschatological traditions.
The strongest Greek-scriptural parallel is Daniel 12:2. Significantly, both major ancient Greek forms of Daniel—the Old Greek and Theodotionic versions—contain the expression:
εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον
“unto eternal life.”
The verbal surroundings differ between the two Greek versions. The Old Greek reads that those sleeping in the earth ἀναστήσονται … εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον, while Theodotion has ἐξεγερθήσονται … εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Yet both connect precisely this expression with the resurrection of the dead. The Hebrew phrase לְחַיֵּי עוֹלָם in Daniel 12:2 is likewise exceptional: this is the clearest occurrence in the Hebrew Bible of “everlasting life” as the destiny of those raised in the eschatological resurrection.
Daniel 12:2 is therefore a considerably stronger background for Luke 10:25 than the Pentateuchal passages quoted in v. 27. John A. Davies, in a recent study of Luke 10:25–37, emphasizes precisely this point: the exact phrase ζωὴν αἰώνιον occurs in the Greek Scriptures in Daniel 12:2 within a resurrection context. Davies further observes that Luke himself clarifies the expression elsewhere. In Luke 18:30 Jesus speaks of receiving “in the age to come eternal life” (ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῷ ἐρχομένῳ ζωὴν αἰώνιον), while Luke 20:35 associates participation in “that age” with resurrection from the dead. On this reading, “eternal life” in Luke 10:25 should not primarily be understood as an abstract possession of endless existence but as participation in the eschatological life of the coming age—the resurrection life anticipated in Daniel 12.
Daniel 12:2 and Its Second Temple Reception
Daniel is not an isolated witness. The same vocabulary develops in subsequent Jewish literature, which demonstrates that by the late Second Temple period “eternal life” had become established language for the eschatological destiny of the righteous.
Particularly important is Psalms of Solomon 3:12:
οἱ δὲ φοβούμενοι τὸν κύριον ἀναστήσονται εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον
“those who fear the Lord will rise to eternal life.”
The verbal relationship with Daniel 12:2 is striking: ἀναστήσονται εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Here resurrection and eternal life are again explicitly joined. The text provides a useful conceptual bridge between Daniel and the world of Luke: “eternal life” has become a conventional way of describing the resurrection destiny of the righteous.
Second Maccabees 7:9 provides another important witness. The martyr expects God to raise those who die faithfully to an αἰώνιος ἀναβίωσις ζωῆς, an “everlasting renewal of life.” The wording is not identical to Luke, but the conceptual complex is the same: fidelity to God, death, resurrection, and everlasting life. Scholars have consequently detected the influence of Daniel 12:2 upon this Maccabean resurrection hope.
The point, therefore, is not necessarily that the lawyer is consciously “quoting Daniel 12:2.” Luke does not indicate a quotation. Rather, the terminology of his question belongs to a Jewish eschatological discourse whose most obvious scriptural fountainhead is Daniel 12:2. By the first century, ζωὴ αἰώνιος could function as shorthand for the life granted to the righteous in the resurrection and the age to come.
A Third Torah Text: Leviticus 18:5
At this point another text becomes crucial. Jesus answers the lawyer:
ὀρθῶς ἀπεκρίθης· τοῦτο ποίει καὶ ζήσῃ.
“You have answered correctly; do this and you will live” (Luke 10:28).
This statement probably echoes Leviticus 18:5, where the person who “does” God’s ordinances “will live” by them. The verbal combination of doing and living makes the connection particularly plausible, even though Luke does not provide a formal quotation. Modern scholarship frequently identifies this as an allusion rather than a direct citation. Eric Ottenheijm, for example, argues that the combination of doing and living is strongly reminiscent of LXX Leviticus 18:5 even though the wording is not precise enough to constitute a formal quotation.
This possibility considerably sharpens the hermeneutical character of the dialogue. At least four scriptural texts or traditions may be operating simultaneously:
- Daniel 12:2 supplies the eschatological category of “eternal life.”
- Deuteronomy 6:5 supplies wholehearted love for God.
- Leviticus 19:18 supplies love for the neighbor.
- Leviticus 18:5 provides the Torah principle that the one who “does” God’s commandments “will live.”
The conversation is therefore not merely a matter of locating an isolated prooftext. It represents a network of scriptural interpretation.
Was Leviticus 18:5 Already Being Read Eschatologically?
This raises a further question. In its Pentateuchal context, Leviticus 18:5 does not explicitly say “eternal life.” How, then, could “the one who does these things will live” answer a question about resurrection or life in the coming age?
Here the evidence from early Judaism becomes particularly illuminating.
Simon Gathercole has argued that Leviticus 18:5 underwent significant eschatological interpretation in Second Temple Jewish literature. His study, “Torah, Life, and Salvation: Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and the New Testament,” draws attention to Jewish texts in which the “life” promised by Torah becomes associated with final or eschatological life. Preston Sprinkle’s later monograph, Law and Life: The Interpretation of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and in Paul, develops this reception history in detail, examining the Damascus Document, Psalms of Solomon, Philo, and other witnesses.
The Damascus Document is particularly significant because it demonstrates that such interpretation cannot simply be attributed to later rabbinic Judaism. In CD 3:15–16 language derived from Leviticus 18:5—God’s ordinances that a person should “do” and “live by”—appears in a context that culminates in the promise that those who hold fast will attain “eternal life.” Whatever one makes of the exact exegetical relationship, the document demonstrates that a Jewish community in the Second Temple period could read the Torah’s promise of “life” eschatologically.
Psalms of Solomon 14:2–3 provides comparable Greek evidence. It speaks of those who walk according to God’s commandments “in the law which he commanded us for our life” (εἰς ζωὴν ἡμῶν) and then says:
ὅσιοι κυρίου ζήσονται ἐν αὐτῷ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα
“The holy ones of the Lord will live by it forever.”
Preston Sprinkle and others regard this passage as an interpretation or echo of Leviticus 18:5 in which the life promised by Torah has acquired an explicitly enduring or eschatological dimension.
Later Jewish witnesses make the interpretation even more explicit. Targum Onqelos renders Leviticus 18:5 so that the person who performs the commandments lives by them “in eternal life,” while the Sifra interprets “he shall live by them” as referring to the world to come. Because the final forms of these sources are later than Luke, they should not be used as direct proof that Luke or Jesus depended upon them. They are, however, valuable witnesses to an interpretive trajectory whose antiquity is independently confirmed by the Damascus Document and Psalms of Solomon.
A Scholarly Debate over “Life” in Leviticus 18:5
Not all scholars construe this material in precisely the same way. James D. G. Dunn has emphasized that “life” in Leviticus 18:5 originally concerns life lived within the covenant rather than a reward of eschatological salvation yet to be attained. Gathercole, by contrast, argues that even if the original Pentateuchal context is not explicitly eschatological, significant strands of early Jewish interpretation did read the verse soteriologically and eschatologically. The evidence from the Damascus Document and Psalms of Solomon weighs heavily in this discussion.
This distinction is important for interpreting Luke. It is unnecessary to claim that the original historical meaning of Leviticus 18:5 was resurrection life. The more historically relevant question is how Torah was being read within Second Temple Judaism. Luke 10 itself is concerned precisely with such a question: “What is written?” is not identical to “How do you read?”
What Is Written? How Do You Read?
This returns us to Jesus’ two questions.
τί γέγραπται; asks about the scriptural text.
πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις; asks, at least within the logic of Luke’s narrative, how that text is construed in relation to the theological question under discussion.
The Torah expert’s response illustrates the distinction. What is “written” is Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. But his reading involves considerably more. He places the two commandments together; treats them as a synthetic summary of covenant obligation; and applies them to the eschatological question of ζωὴ αἰώνιος. Jesus then responds with language that appears to evoke still another Torah text, Leviticus 18:5: “Do this, and you will live.”
The remarkable feature of the exchange is therefore not simply that Jesus agrees with two Torah quotations. Jesus says, ὀρθῶς ἀπεκρίθης—“you have answered correctly.” He affirms an interpretive construction in which texts concerning love of God and neighbor answer a question concerning participation in eschatological life.
One may therefore describe the hermeneutic of Luke 10:25–28 as intertextual and synthetic. The interpreter does not derive every theological proposition from the explicit vocabulary of a single passage. Instead, texts are read within a larger scriptural and theological framework. Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 are read in relation to Torah’s promise that the one who does God’s commandments will live (Lev 18:5), while “life” itself is understood within the eschatological horizon represented most clearly by Daniel 12:2 and developed in subsequent Jewish tradition.
This may be precisely the theological significance of the distinction between “What is written?” and “How do you read?” The written words establish the textual parameters of the discussion, but interpretation involves recognizing relationships among those words, assigning theological significance to them, and applying them to questions that the individual passages do not formulate explicitly.
Questions for Further Study
The passage consequently raises several hermeneutical questions.
1. Why does the legal expert select Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18?
Is their combination already part of a wider Jewish tendency to summarize Torah, or does Luke portray the expert as making a particularly insightful interpretive synthesis?
2. What scriptural tradition stands behind ζωὴ αἰώνιος?
Given the exact Greek expression and its resurrection context, should Daniel 12:2 be regarded as the principal scriptural background for the lawyer’s terminology? What role might texts such as Psalms of Solomon 3:12 and 2 Maccabees 7 play in demonstrating the subsequent development of this language?
3. Does Luke 10:28 deliberately evoke Leviticus 18:5?
If “do this and you will live” invokes the Torah’s promise that the one who does God’s commandments will live by them, then Leviticus 18:5 may provide the missing exegetical bridge between the commandments cited in v. 27 and the eternal life requested in v. 25.
4. What kind of interpretation is taking place?
The expert’s method cannot be reduced to literal citation. It involves selection, juxtaposition, synthesis, and eschatological application. Luke may therefore be depicting a recognizably Jewish form of scriptural reasoning in which one Torah text is interpreted through other scriptural texts and through inherited theological convictions.
The exchange in Luke 10:25–28 is consequently more than a preface to the Good Samaritan. It is a compact scene of Jewish hermeneutics. Jesus begins not by giving the expert another text but by placing two questions before him: What is written? How do you read? The distinction between those questions governs what follows. The text of Torah remains authoritative, but its significance emerges through interpretation—and the lawyer’s answer, remarkably, is an interpretation Jesus initially declares to be correct.
Selected Scholarship
Davies, John A. “The Good Samaritan and the Hope for Kingdom Restoration (Luke 10:25–37).” Tyndale Bulletin(2025).
Gathercole, Simon J. “Torah, Life, and Salvation: Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and the New Testament.” In From Prophecy to Testament: The Function of the Old Testament in the New, edited by Craig A. Evans, 126–145. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.
Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.
Ottenheijm, Eric. “‘Which If a Man Do Them He Shall Live by Them’: Jewish and Christian Discourse on Lev 18:5.” In The Scriptures of Israel in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Essays in Honour of Maarten J. J. Menken, 303–316. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Plummer, Alfred. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to S. Luke. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Reiling, J., and J. L. Swellengrebel. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. UBS Handbook Series. New York: United Bible Societies, 1971.
Sprinkle, Preston M. Law and Life: The Interpretation of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and in Paul. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/241. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.
Don't be shy leave a reply!