Result!

I received my grade for my Masters' thesis.

Great news! Laidlaw Graduate School has given me an "A" for my Masters thesis. The two examiners gave it very high praise indeed. One of them recommended that I submit it for publication; and each of them recommended I go on to doctoral studies. My supervisor concurred with both recommendations. It was a fantastic result and I'm stoked!

"Parable of the Good Samaritan" by Balthasar van Cortbemde (1647) public domain

The title of the thesis is "Identifying the Grateful Victim: An Exegetical Study." It is essentially a 30,000 word exegetical defence of four primary assertions of an idiosyncratic reading of the NA²⁸ Greek text of the merciful Samaritan passage (Luke 10:25–37). The idio in "idiosyncratic" is literal – it's my own reading. I call it the "Grateful Victim Viewpoint" (GVV). I'm hoping the title alone will give you a clue as to the major difference between the GVV and the conventional reading – what I call the Prevailing Consensus View (PCV) – because I haven't got enough time right now to go into it at length.

Here are a few of the tremendously encouraging things the examiners had to say. Since one used my surname and the other my first name, I've harmonised both as "the author".

The External Examiner:

This is a very well written and argued case for the Grateful Victim Viewpoint of the Merciful Samaritan Parable (Luke 10:25–37).The thesis is carefully structured and systematic in its argument which makes this a very readable thesis. The author displays a high level of skill in writing and especially in his ability to sustain an argument over a wide canvas.

The use of secondary sources cover a wide range of literature and the author has also used primary sources from the 1st C other than the Bible, such as Philo, showing this is a Masters undertaken at a high level .... The title of the thesis says it is an exegetical study which is evident throughout. There is excellent attention to the Greek text, and there is good support from the lexicons and other dictionaries when necessary.

This is certainly an excellent thesis deserving of a high grade. It is thorough, carefully written, and has an argument style which is clear, bold, and makes for exciting reading.

The Internal Examiner:

This thesis is a superb example of examining a passage of the New Testament in depth. Over the course of several chapters, the author examined the parable of the merciful Samaritan from several different angles in order to tease out a coherent picture of what was happening in the interaction between Jesus and an unnamed lawyer and the parable it provokes. To achieve this, the author drew together his analysis of the text in question, the substantial body of scholarship on the parable, and a set of research questions that have enabled him to respectfully handle and interpret the text in a thoroughly convincing way.

Throughout the thesis, the level of research undertaken was of very high quality. The author has engaged with a variety of resources in a critical but fair way and has presented a strong argument for his thesis based on that research.

Overall, the thesis was coherent and theologically sound. The presentation of the GVV interpretation of the parable of the merciful Samaritan highlighted how some other interpretations of the parable lack that same consistency and attention to the details of the parable. The author's interaction with the text was masterful and he showed a careful eye for detail in his translation of Luke 10:25-37. It set a solid foundation for the subsequent chapters, which interpreted the text and could be used as a superb example to others engaged in similar work.

This thesis makes a considerable contribution to the study of the parable of the merciful Samaritan. The author offers a fresh, holistic, and coherent interpretation of one of the most popular parables in the Third Gospel. His Grateful Victim Viewpoint interpretation removes many of the inconsistencies of other interpretations and presents a simple and surprisingly straightforward take on the text, which is also deeply thought-provoking and challenging to the reader. It has certainly added a new dimension to how I will read the parable from now on.

Now that review would make an excellent forward to the book!

God bless.