The Good Samaritan
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40 free The Good Samaritan trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The parable of the Good Samaritan takes only a few verses to tell, yet it may be the best-known story Jesus ever told. A traveler is attacked and left by the road, two respected men see him and keep going, and the one who finally stops is the last person the first listeners would have expected. Its closing question still lands today: which of them acted as a neighbor? This quiz starts with the story itself: where the traveler was heading, who walked past, what the rescuer did and what it cost him. It then widens to the conversation that prompted the parable, the commandments quoted in it, the Samaritans as a real community with their own holy places, and the way the story has shaped hospitals, charities, courtrooms, paintings and even a sitcom finale. Every answer comes with a short explanation that points back to the text. It works for Sunday school classes, youth groups, Bible study leaders and families reading the passage together. The opening questions are simple enough for children who have just heard the story, and the later ones will stretch adults who think they know it by heart.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Martin Luther King Jr. retold the Good Samaritan in his final speech, given in which US city?
Memphis
Memphis was where King, backing striking sanitation workers, said the Samaritan turned the passers-by's worry around and asked what would happen to the wounded man if nobody stopped.
Q 02In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the traveler was going down from Jerusalem to which city?
Jericho
Jericho lay at the end of a road notorious in Jesus's day for its danger and difficulty, so an ambush on a lone traveler there was entirely believable to the first hearers.
Q 03Which sitcom's 1998 finale put its four leads on trial under a so-called Good Samaritan law?
Seinfeld
Seinfeld sent Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer to court for cracking jokes and filming while a man was carjacked, under a small-town law that required onlookers to step in.
Q 04What did the Good Samaritan pour on the beaten traveler's wounds while bandaging them?
Oil and wine
Oil and wine went on as the Samaritan bandaged the wounds with his own hands, and he then stayed with the man overnight rather than leaving at once.
Q 05In the Good Samaritan story, who was the first traveler to see the beaten man and keep walking?
A priest
A priest happened to be going down the same road purely by chance, the story says, and he saw the man lying there before carrying on with his journey.
Q 06Which of the four Gospels tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in its tenth chapter?
Luke
Luke sets the story inside a conversation: it is the reply Jesus gives when he is asked who actually counts as a neighbor.
Q 07Good Samaritan laws, named after the parable, give legal protection to whom?
People who help in emergencies
People who help in emergencies are shielded so that fear of being sued over an accidental injury does not stop a passer-by from stepping in.
Q 08Which painter copied Delacroix's Good Samaritan in 1890 while living in an asylum in Provence?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh painted it at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, one of more than 30 copies he made there after artists he admired.
Q 09Which coins, two of them, did the Good Samaritan leave to pay for the wounded man's care?
Denarii
Denarii were silver coins each worth about a day's wage for a laborer, so the gift came to roughly two days' pay handed over for a complete stranger.
Q 10Which instruction did Jesus give at the very end of the Good Samaritan conversation?
Go and do likewise
Go and do likewise turns the lesson into a task: the conversation began with whom a person has to love, and it ends with an order to act as a neighbor.
Q 11After the first passer-by in the Good Samaritan story, who was the second man to pass the victim?
A Levite
A Levite, from the tribe whose men sang, played music and stood guard in the Temple, came right up to the spot and looked before he walked on too.
Q 12Who asked Jesus the questions that led to the parable of the Good Samaritan, hoping to test him?
A lawyer
A lawyer is the wording of older translations for an expert in the Jewish religious law, and this one stood up in public to put Jesus to the test.
Q 13Before telling the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus was first asked how a person could inherit what?
Eternal life
Q 21The command to love God with all your heart, quoted before the Good Samaritan, is from which book?
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy gives it straight after the call for Israel to hear that the Lord is one, and then tells parents to teach these words diligently to their children.
Q 22The command to love one's neighbor, cited before the Good Samaritan, is from which biblical book?
Leviticus
Leviticus sets the command in a chapter of everyday rules, in the same verse that bans seeking revenge or bearing a grudge.
Q 23According to the law quoted before the Good Samaritan parable, how should a person love a neighbor?
As yourself
As yourself is the measure, and Jesus told the man who quoted it that he had answered correctly: do this, he said, and you will live.
Eternal life was the opening topic, and Jesus replied with a question of his own, asking the man what was written in the Law and how he read it.
Q 14How did the Good Samaritan carry the wounded traveler from the roadside to a place of shelter?
On his own animal
On his own animal went the injured man, and once they arrived the Samaritan did not simply drop him off: he personally looked after him there.
Q 15To whom did the Good Samaritan hand money the next day so the wounded man's care would continue?
The innkeeper
The innkeeper received the money with a simple instruction to take care of the man, so the rescue carried on after the Samaritan had left.
Q 16Which emotion does the Gospel say moved the Good Samaritan when he first saw the beaten traveler?
Compassion
Compassion is the turning point of the story: the two earlier travelers also saw the man, but only this time did seeing lead to stopping.
Q 17Asked who had been a neighbor, how did Jesus's questioner describe the Good Samaritan?
The one who showed mercy
The one who showed mercy was his reply, a description that gets the answer right without ever using the word Samaritan.
Q 18Which of these parables appears in the same Gospel as the Good Samaritan?
The Prodigal Son
The Prodigal Son comes five chapters later, as the last of three stories about lost things, following a lost sheep and a lost coin.
Q 19In the fourth Gospel, where does Jesus sit down and ask a Samaritan woman for a drink?
Jacob's well
Jacob's well, near a town called Sychar, is where the woman is astonished to be spoken to at all, because Jews and Samaritans did not associate.
Q 20Samaritan's Purse, the relief charity founded in 1970, sends children gifts packed in what?
Shoeboxes
Shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies and personal items are collected by schools and community groups each November for its Operation Christmas Child project.
Q 24Which two sisters host Jesus in the story that directly follows the Good Samaritan parable?
Mary and Martha
Mary and Martha come next: one sits listening at Jesus's feet while her sister, distracted by all the preparations, asks him to tell her to lend a hand.
Q 25Samaritans, the charity founded in 1953 by London vicar Chad Varah, is best known for running what?
A crisis telephone helpline
A crisis telephone helpline for anyone in distress or at risk of suicide is its core service, and despite the biblical name the organization itself is not religious.
Q 26A grateful Samaritan is the only one of ten men to thank Jesus for curing them of which disease?
Leprosy
Leprosy kept the ten standing at a distance as they called out, and when a single man came back Jesus pointedly asked where the remaining nine were.
Q 27The author of the Gospel containing the Good Samaritan is traditionally said to have had which job?
A physician
A physician is how the letter to the Colossians describes him, which is why tradition treats him as both a healer and a disciple of the apostle Paul.
Q 28Which pope made the Good Samaritan the heart of Fratelli tutti, his letter on human fraternity?
Francis
Francis treated the story as the core of the whole document, urging readers to be Good Samaritans who carry the pain of others' troubles instead of stoking resentment.
Q 29Samaria, home of the Samaritans, lay between Judea to the south and which region to the north?
Galilee
Galilee could be reached from Judea by going straight through Samaria, the route the fourth Gospel says Jesus took on the day he met a Samaritan woman.
Q 30What did the Good Samaritan promise to do on his return journey past the wounded man's lodging?
Repay any extra costs
Repay any extra costs was the pledge, an open-ended promise that left the final bill for a stranger's recovery to be set by somebody else.