Did Jesus Exclude the Samaritans?
from my book A Life Lived & Laid Down for Friends: A Progressive Christology (Wipf & Stock, 2019)
In this rather long chapter, we will be discussing Jesus’ interaction
with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well. It is well-known story from the gospel
of John.
Instead of including the long passage from the Gospel of John 4, I
invite you all to get out your Bibles like you would in an old-school Baptist
church and turn to gospel of John, chapter 4, and read verse 3-42. And after
you do so, return to this chapter and let us delve deep into this story of
Jesus’ intriguing conversation with the Samaritan woman.
Well-Water Talk
As the story goes, Jesus is traveling from Judea in the south to his
home in Galilee in the north. In between Judea and Galilee is Samaria. Weary
from his sojourn, he stops mid-way in the city of Sychar in Samaria. Sychar is
significant because on the outskirts of the city is Jacob’s Well which Jacob
himself dug. Jesus sat aside the well and rested. His disciples went into town
for lunch.
Jesus is alone and a Samaritan woman comes to draw water. This is not
surprising. It is a town in Samaria after all. What is surprising is
that Jesus talks to her. Samaritans and Galileans don’t usually do this.
Jesus asks her for a drink of water from Jacob’s Well. He doesn’t
command it. That it is Jacob’s well is important. Samaritans, Judeans
and Galileans (which Jesus is) all share Jacob as a patriarch of their
ethnic-religions.
The Samaritan woman is surprised by Jesus’ request for water. She can
tell Jesus is not a Samaritan somehow, most likely because of his dialect. She
believes he is Ioudaios, a Greek label usually translated “Jew.”
Virtually all biblical translations translate this as “Jew.” But there is a
great deal of nuance to the label Ioudaios. It’s meaning depends a great
deal on context and focus. David Bentley Hart translates Ioudaios as
“Judeans.” (We will discuss this in depth this later.)
The Samaritan woman says you are an Ioudaios; I am a Samaritan (from
Samaria). We’re not supposed to be talking. Interestingly, Jesus ignores this
point of division. He also doesn’t clarify that he is a Galilean and not from
Judea. He wants to talk about more pressing matters, matters of the heart. He
replies, “If you recognized God’s gift and who it is saying to you ‘Give me a
drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The Samaritan woman retorts, “Lord, you have no bucket and the
well is deep; so where do you get the living water from? Surely you are not
greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself,
and his sons and livestock too?”
The New Jacob
This is a profoundly meaningful statement. The Samaritan woman,
following Jesus’ lead, avoids what divides them. She seems to leave their
divisions aside, which she initially was focusing on, and goes to unity. She in
fact claims camaraderie between herself and Jesus. We share Jacob, she
proclaims. “Our Father Jacob, who gave us this well.”
She then asks an important question. “Are you greater than Father
Jacob,” the one who unites us? Are you going to supersede our Jacob connection
and resort to what divides us?
Jesus implies an answer of “yes.” He is going to replace that old
connection with a new connection. Basically, Jesus claims that whereas Jacob’s
well gives regular water that will leave a person thirsty eventually, my well
gives a water “that gives the life of ages.”
The Samaritan woman indeed wants this water. Who wouldn’t? Who enjoys
being really thirsty and having to get and lug water around.
It is crucial to see what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is basically
staking claim as a new Jacob whose well gives living water. Not only
that, he is claiming that his position of New Jacob will, like the original
Jacob, unite Samaritans and Judeans in their real common source, Yahweh. The
woman and Jesus share a religious father, Jacob. In Jacob there is unity. Jesus
as the New Jacob returns them to the space before the divide, to unity, to
Yahweh.
Jesus then breaks the religious language and talk of Jacob by saying go
and get your husband and come back. We find out in the following back and forth
that the woman doesn’t have a husband, that she’s been married five times (we
don’t know why, whether divorce or death), and that her cohabitant is not her
sixth. Jesus doesn’t judge her. This New Jacob is a person of grace and
forgiveness.
The Samaritan woman is impressed by Jesus’ insight and intuition about
her and her life. She asserts, “Lord, I see that you are a prophet.”
Then, she changes the subject, it seems. In fact, she changes tactics again.
She reverts to division, maybe piqued at his calling out her five marriages and
unmarried status. She says “our fathers worshipped on this mountain; and you
people say that the place where it is necessary to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus responds with a mini-sermon. It is the heart of the text. All
before leads up to this text. Everything after this text is influenced by it.
That it comes in the middle of the story suggests this.
Worship Differentiated
”Trust me, madam, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship [what or who] you do not know, we worship [what or who] we
know; because salvation is from the Judaeans; But an hour comes, and now is,
when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for
indeed the Father looks for those worshipping him so; God is spirit, and it is
necessary that those worshipping worship in spirit and truth.”
Because these words of Jesus are so central, we need to discuss it in
detail.
First, what is striking in this passage of a few sentences is the
number of times the word worship (proskyneō) appears. It appears eight times.
This fact alone tells us that worship is the focus of Jesus’
mini-sermon.
Jesus begins his mini-sermon with a crucial line. “An hour is coming
when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
Jerusalem.”
Remember, a central difference between Samaritan and Judean-Galilean
faith is that the former sees Mount Gerizim as the center of the universe and
the latter sees Jerusalem as the center. Jesus is transcending this divide with
his statement. Gerzim, Jerusalem – neither of our people are correct, Jesus
seems to say. Our worship of God, period, will one day unite us.
Jesus then differentiates their people’s worship. “You – Samaritans
–worship [hos] you do not know. We worship [hos] we
know.” Hart and all other translators translate hos as “what” so that we
get “You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know.” But hos can
also be translated “who” so that we get, You worship who you do not
know. We worship who we know.” Hos as who makes more sense.
This statement – you as a Samaritan worship who you do not know and we
Judean-Galileans worship who we do know – is a theological statement of fact. I
don’t see Jesus’ words as a criticism of Samaritan faith. Samaritans would
agree that they worship a God they cannot fully know. Samaritans as we
discussed see God as unknowable, ineffable, wholly transcendent. Yahweh
is unknowable for the Samaritans, one whom even the faithful do not fully know.
However, they still worship Yahweh. They may see God as unknowable, but
they still worship him. And worship, the act of humbling oneself before
God, itself is an honorable and obedient thing to do.
For Jesus, that he, his disciples, and his people worship a God that is
knowable is also true. This is especially true for those who know God as Father
and preach God as Father, like Jesus does. In his case, the God worshipped is
one who is especially close and knowable, as close as a Father is to his
family.
Samaritans worship a Yahweh that is unknowable. Judeans and Galileans
worship a Yahweh that is knowable, as knowable as a father is knowable. These
are statements of theological fact.
Then Jesus says something that at first blush seems to surely be an
exclusivist claim: “Because salvation is from the [Ioudaios].” However,
this passage is not as simple or straightforward as it would seem
Judean or Jew?
Ioudaios is a very difficult word to translate. It can refer to
someone from the place known as Judea, a province that has Jerusalem at its
center. Ioudaios can also refer to
someone practicing the ethnic religion that includes following Torah,
worshipping Yahweh, and considering yourself part of Israel. In this second
meaning, Ioudaios share Israel and
Jacob, Israel’s namesake.
Things are further complicated
by the fact that some Samaritans considered themselves Ioudaios.[1]
And there was a time surrounding Jesus’ time that, politically speaking, Ioudaios
incorporated Galilee and Samaria.
Judaism scholar Morton Smith gives us a list of what Ioudaios could have referred to:
For clarity, we may recall that the
three main earlier meanings were:
(1) one of the descendants of the patriarch Judah, i.e. (if
in the male line) a member of the tribe of Judah;
(2) a native of Judaea, a
"Judaean";
(3) a "Jew", i.e. a member of Yahweh's chosen
people, entitled to participate in those religious ceremonies to which only
such members were admitted.
Now appears the new, fourth meaning:
(4) a member of the
Judaeo-Samaritan-Idumaean-Ituraean-Galilean alliance[2]
Yet another complicating factor
is the fact that if Ioudaios refers
to someone living in Judea, Jesus himself would not qualify. Jesus was a
Galilean through and through.
So, what does Jesus mean when he
says, “salvation comes from Ioudaios?
Does he refer to the place or to the religion of Jacob?
I think Jesus is referring to
the latter. But not in the modern sense. He is referring to the ancient Ioudaios who practiced the way of God.
He is referring to those who forged the faith of Jacob/Israel and its way of
salvation. Jesus referring to the religious meaning of Ioudaios allows him to include himself as a Galilean (and not a
Judean) with the term.
I also believe Jesus includes
Samaritans in the term Ioudaios. He
includes Samaritans not merely in a political alliance, but a religio-political
one called the Kingdom of God.
Jesus seems to say to the
Samaritan woman you refer to Ioudaios and
compare them to Samaritans (Samaratis in
Greek) and point to what divides us. But I am referring to something more
ancient and lasting and uniting. I am referring to the origin of our salvation,
those ancient, faithful followers of God’s way in whose lineage we stand, a
lineage I am here to embody.
Let us Meet at Jacob’s Well
Could it be that Jesus is saying something like this in John 4:22: “You
all as Samaritans worship God but as unknowable; we worship God
but as knowable; we both worship God because salvation originated from
the descendants of Jacob.” The focus then becomes on the fact that both worship
God and both derive from Jacob whose well they are right next to.
Again, the location of the conversation – Jacob’s well – is key. It is
here where Jacob pitched a tent, created an altar in order to worship God, and
called that altar El-Elohe-Israel – Almighty God of Israel. This is another
point of mutuality.
Samaritans and Judeans both go back to the same center where true
worship of God is born: Israel. Of note, “Israel” is a name later given to
Jacob. Samaritans and Judeans share a common father, Jacob/Israel.
As I mentioned, one reason to doubt Jesus means Ioudaios in the
specific sense of being from Judea is that Jesus is a Galilean. Jesus, as a
Galilean, would have likely viewed Judea just as suspiciously as a Samaritan
would have. We see this suspicion in how Jesus interacts with the Pharisees who
were centered in Judea and represented “Judean Judaism.” In other words,
Galileans and Samaritans both experienced political and cultural tension with
Judea. Hence, a reference to salvation coming from Judea as in Judeans or
“modern Judean Judaism” seems unlikely to me. Jesus is actively resisting
“Judean Judaism” by talking with the Samaritan woman. It simply makes more
sense that Jesus is using the generic meaning of Ioudaios, as pointing
to faithful followers of the faith of Israel/Jacob.
All of this is to say, Jesus is pointing to worship and the shared tie
to the shared salvation offered by God. He is pointing to a uniting God
worshipped by Jacob and Jacob’s sons and by both Samaritans and
Judean-Galileans. And he is proclaiming himself to be the New Jacob. Like the
“old Jacob,” he wants to unite and root Samaria, Judea, and his own Galilee
again in the single source of God, the God of Israel.
The opening sentence of his mini-sermon thus makes clearer sense. On
the ground of God is where salvation resides, not in Jerusalem or at Mount
Gerizim.
God as Father and Spirit
It doesn’t stop there. Jesus goes onto to further harmonize the two
houses divided from one another. Jesus says, “the true worshippers will worship
the Father in spirit and truth; for indeed the Father looks for those
worshipping him so; God is spirit, and it is necessary that those worshipping
worship in spirit and truth.”
“Father” is how Jesus sees God. On the other hand, the Samaritan school
sees God as pure spirit and balk at human-based titles and notions for God,
such as human fatherliness. At the end of his mini-sermon, Jesus connects and
harmonizes the two, Father and Spirit. God is Father but God is also Spirit.
Truth is found in them both. Jesus seems to be saying, let us unite in the true
worship of Father God who is also Spirit.
The amazing discussion around Jacob’s Well ends with the woman saying,
“‘I know that the Messiah is coming’; – the one called Anointed – ‘when that
one arrives he will announce all things to us.’”
Jesus quips, “I am he: I who am speaking to you.” Jesus seems to
say, “I just explained it all to you. You don’t need to search any longer.”
Before she answers, the disciples arrive.
The Good Samaritan II
The conversation switches to one between Jesus and his disciples after
they return from lunch. They arrive and see Jesus talking with the Samaritan
woman. They interestingly ignore this odd scene. It is not anything unusual.
This is what Jesus does, talk to strangers, and seeks transformation in them.
Again not judged, this time not by the disciples, the Samaritan woman
leaves to go into town. She forgets her water jug but doesn’t come back for it.
She trusts the situation enough not to worry about it. The jug is also
something she no longer needs, her thirst quenched by the living water of
Jesus’ well. So she goes into town to tell everyone about Jesus, wondering this
is the Messiah they’ve been waiting for.
Meanwhile, the disciples nag Jesus to eat. But Jesus talks about
another hunger. He says, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
This statement to his disciples seems to parallel his earlier statement
to the Samaritan woman. “I have food to eat of which you do not know” sounds
a lot like “I have water that you don’t know anything about.” These similar
refrains seem to connect and compare the disciples and the Samaritan woman.
Jesus goes onto compare them in another kind of mini-sermon.
“My food is that I may do the will of the one who has sent me and may
bring his work to completion. Do you not say, ‘Four months yet, and then comes
the harvest’? I tell you, Look, lift up your eyes and see the fields, because
they are already white for harvesting. The reaper is receiving wages and
gathering fruit for life in the Age, so that the one sowing and the one reaping
may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘That one is the sower
and another the reaper.’ I have sent you to reap that for which you have not
labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
A field to harvest is the food equivalent of a well to get water from.
The field is ripe and ready to harvest. The seeds were planted by the prophets,
the sages, and the patriarchs, by the anointed ones before and the Anointed One
now, from Jacob to the New Jacob. The field to harvest is the Kingdom and the
life of ages it brings.
Jesus points to those who are already on the case, those already doing
the work of harvesting the fully ripened field. The implication is the
Samaritan woman is harvesting the field.
We have another case where a “good Samaritan” is lifted up as
exemplifying the way of God. She is in town telling her friends that she has
found the anointed one. She is harvesting the field and reaping the reward of
the life of ages. What are you doing, dear disciples? That is what Jesus seems
to infer.
We see Jesus’ meaning clarified by the harvest the Samaritan woman
brings in. “Many of the Samaritans of that city had faith in him on account of
the woman testifying.”
Jesus stays two more days ministering to the Samaritan people. The
story ends with these wonderful words of universal restorationist fervor. “We
know that this man is truly the savior of the cosmos.”
We’ve gone from the restoration of unity between two peoples deemed
enemies to the future restoration of unity between all people. This restoration
of unity comes via a Savior who envisions all people joining together.
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