John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 6

I am continuing my preparations for preaching on John 4:1-42 in August by blogging my thoughts on this passage. Previously, I started a commentary, and got from John 4:6 to John 4:8. I could not post the following installment because of other commitments over the weekend, so here it is (belatedly).

John 4:9

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).

John refers to her as the Samaritan woman (also in John 4:7). He uses the term that she would use to describe herself. The term “Samaritan” literally means “keeper”, as in “keeper of the law”. Jews used the pejorative “Cuthim”, after the foreign city of Cutha, to imply that they were the foreigners in the land, and not “true” Israelites (see my earlier blog on the origins of the Samaritans). It’s remarkable, then, that John, a Jew (though one with Hellenistic leanings), uses the term “Samaritan”. John’s irenic use of the term is underpinned by one of the major themes of his Gospel, which is that the Word had come to the whole world, not just the world of the Jews.

John lays down a pattern that we ought to follow. By using the words that a person uses to describe himself or herself with, we respect their sense of self identity. If a person self-identifies as “gay”, “Mormon” or "black" or whatever, it seems to me to be something of a violation to substitute my words for theirs, even if I don't share the values that these terms sometimes convey.

The Samaritan woman certainly recognizes Jesus’ self-identity by baldly stating You are a Jew…. Let’s get this clear; Jesus was a Jew. He was not an Aryan, a Greek, and American or something else, despite various attempts by some (for nefarious reasons) to co-opt him into a non-Semitic ethnic identity. Jesus does not correct her on this issue because, frankly, she is right. She thought he was a Jew; he thought he was a Jew and everybody else at the time thought he was a Jew. If you have a problem with the fact that Jesus was a Jew, I can only appeal to you to stop fighting the evidence and get over it. He was.

The Samaritan woman’s surprise at Jesus’ request is articulated in her question How can you ask me for a drink?. She was undoubtedly aware of the taboos around food that the Jews operated under, because the Samaritans shared most of them. According to the Jewish Rabbis, food given by Samaritans was considered unclean, but there was a concession for food bought from them. To her, then, Jesus’ request was odd, made odder by the fact that he had even spoken to her at all. Jesus crossed several racial and ethnic boundaries here; something that was not lost on her.

When John notes that …Jews do not associate with Samaritans, he is being diplomatic in the extreme. The fact of the matter was that they hated each other, and there had been a long a bloody history of animosity between them.

John 4:10

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Jesus answers her question with a riddle and though I have a couple of theories about why, none appear conclusive. Perhaps John is giving us a stylized and truncated version of the original conversation, because he brings us right to the point and omits to tell us if Jesus actually got the drink that he asked for. Perhaps, sensing the woman’s receptiveness to his message, Jesus deliberately steered the conversation in another direction, forsaking his physical needs to capitalize on the opportunity, which would align the discussion he had with his disciples later on in the passage (John 4:31-38).

Jesus’ startling response to the Samaritan woman, which would be a conversation-stopper in most circumstances, parallels his response the opening question of Nicodemus (a Jew) in the preceding chapter (John 3:1-3). Again, this signals to me that John’s Jesus is concerned with treating Jew and Samaritan even-handedly.

The riddle concerns the gift of God, who it is who asks and living water. It is difficult to overlook a Trinitarian formulation here, with such clear allusions to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

(Note that John does not use the term “Trinity”, which was first used by Theophilus of Antioch in about AD180, then Tertullian in AD211, some 120 years after the writing of John’s Gospel (depending on the date of the latter), but the concept is derived from the basic ingredients presented in the NT; there is One God; the Father is wholly God, the Son is wholly God and the Holy Spirit is wholly God; and yet the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct from each other.)

The gift of God is God Himself. He becomes the gift to those He loves, just as husband and wife become their gifts to their spouses in a marriage. The promise of God’s intimate presence amongst His people is a common trajectory in Biblical scripture; for example, Ezekiel’s oracle ends with the statement “And the name of the city from that time on will be the LORD is there” (Ezekiel 48:35). John, of course, sees this intimate relationship brought into tangible reality by the presence of God in Jesus, “made flesh” in the world (John 1:14).

Jesus refers to himself as who it is who asks. This statement might echo Jesus’ role in John 14:16-17, in which Jesus describes Himself as the One who asks the Father for the Holy Spirit.

The living water, like so many things in John’s Gospel, is a both thing and a metaphor. The thing refers to water that is fresh and flowing, not stagnant. Jews were concerned at keeping water “live”, by keeping it moving. Sometimes they would puncture their cisterns so that there would be a notional flow of water through them. Demons, according to Matthew (Matt 12:43), could not cross “living” water. It was the “thing” that brought refreshment, life and cleansing, and it becomes the metaphor for what the Samaritan woman really needs. The water from the well will serve her for a day, but the “living water” that Jesus promises will serve her for life. It’s a metaphor for God the Holy Spirit, who refreshes, animates and cleanses the Church; the Holy Spirit is, quite literally, the life-breath of God, and He is God’s gift of Himself to the Church. That might seem quite a religious and esoteric thing to say, but think of it like this; the Holy Spirit is the very life of God, and this God-life is what gives life to the church.

John 4:11-12

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and flocks and herds?”

This is where commentators differ. Is she a simple rustic, who has missed the point and cannot see beyond the immediate circumstance of the well; or does she engage Jesus in some intellectual sparring? I tend to believe the latter. This is a remarkable exchange; else John would not have bothered to write it down. What I think is happening here is that the woman is remarking on the immediate, visible circumstance, and the underlying truths behind them, which are best understood when they are viewed against the historical conflict between Jew and Samaritan.

Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep Can this woman lift her gaze? Is she captive to the daily drudgery of lifting and fetching water for her man, who could be too selfish to marry her? Perhaps, but her question could be a double-entendre. She could be flirting by equating “this well” to her own sexuality. It would be unlikely that a Jew would arouse her interests, unless she had got bored with the attentions of the Samaritan men she knew. More likely, she is teasing Jesus’ for his Jewish religion, which she would have regarded as being too limited to draw from the well of Jacob.

I believe that she could see beyond the physical well; however all she could see was her Samaritan religion, which, she thought, was sufficient to her and her community (Jacob’s “sons and flocks and herds”) The problem with her religion was that it was bankrupt, which was patently apparent from its failure to sustain a Temple, or to sustain a faithful relationship with God. What she needed, indeed, was some new and living water, to refresh, animate and cleanse her.

John 4:13-14

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

If I am right about the Samaritan woman’s perceptiveness, then she and Jesus are talking on the same wavelength. Both see how bankrupt her religion is. She has likened it to her journey to the well, carried out with tedious monotony, and with always the same result. The journey to the well, day in and day out, was not enough to heal the divisions in the land or to make that vital connection to God that was now broken.

The well is not enough, yet Jesus promises something more in himself; it is something that He has within His gift. He doesn’t promise say “join my religion and it will sort you out” (as the Jewish missionaries to Samaria would have said), but he gives her a personal guarantee. Faith in Christ is not about signing up to a religion, or a program, but believing in Jesus, the person, who gives us his personal guarantee.

…the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up… The gift of the Spirit will be something experienced continually within the very being of those who receive it – like a spring of water welling up within them. The verb used for “welling up” (Greek hallomai) means literally to “jump up”, and in the only other places where it is found in the NT it has that literal meaning (Acts 3:8; 14.10). It is a vivid metaphor for the activity of the Holy Spirit within those who believe in Jesus, reminding us of the experiential as well as the cognitive side of the Christian faith. The fulfillment of this promise (with its future-tense verbs “I will give”, “will never thirst”; “I will give”, “will become”) awaits the coming of the Spirit following Jesus’ exaltation (John 7:37-39). (Kruse)

And now for something completely different. John 4:14 is partially quoted in the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. In the film, it appears as part of an inscription on a crusader’s shield in a clue to the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. The film infers that eternal life might be gained by drinking from the Holy Grail, which Indiana Jones and his father both do, though the “eternal life” they imbue only survives within the confines of the grail’s secret location. I enjoyed the film, but I do no think that Jesus had this in mind; this “eternal life” is not dunk from a physical grail, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, and it is certainly not constrained by locale.

Finally, this last point is actually important in the context of John’s Gospel. Up to this moment in time, the connection to God and the source of life were regarded as being located in the Temple (in Mount Zion for the Jews and in Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans). Jesus brings that connection and that life out of the Temple such that it can be reached by all persons, wherever they are. In John’s idiom, the true connection to God is made in Jesus, not in the Temple.

To be continued…

Bibliography
• Clements, Roy “Introducing Jesus” Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0 85476 321 X, 1996

• Guthrie, Donald, Commentary on John in The New Bible Commentary, 21st Century Edition, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 85110 648 X, 2002.

• Kruse, Colin G “The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries – The Gospel According to John”, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 8511 327 3, 2003

• Wright, N.T. (Tom) “John for Everyone, Part 1, Chapters 1-10), Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, ISBN 0 281 05302 2, 2003

John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 4

I’m returning to my preparations for preaching on John 4:1-42 in August. In previous weeks I have been blogging my thoughts on this passage, and in the last couple of weeks I took a minor detour into the issue of marriage. This week I’m returning to the text.

I have read a number of commentaries and they appear to fall into two camps;

• The majority view (Tom Wright, Colin Kruse, Donald Guthrie) that regards the woman as a kind of rustic simpleton who is stunned into believing Jesus by the demonstration of his supernatural knowledge of her marital circumstances

• The minority view (Roy Clements) that the woman engages Jesus in some intellectual sparring

As yet, I don’t see any compelling case in the objective evidence why one view should prevail over the other. I think the decision each individual commentator takes might have as much to do with his own perspective and preconceptions as anything else. For the purposes of my meditations today, I’m siding with the minority view for no better reason than that I like it.

That’s not saying that the “other” camp is wrong, or that it has nothing to bring to the table. I found Kruse’s discussion on the authorship of the Gospel most informative, and all of the commentator’s observations resonate with the Christian experience. I humbly submit that I could be wrong. However, having planted my flag in the minority camp, I now need to defend it.

The issue here is whether I’ve “tuned in” to John’s way of thinking. I’m working from the presumption that John sees significance in everything he writes. One of his distinctive characteristics is the inclusion of apparently incidental detail (“…it was about noon”, “His disciples had gone to buy food…”, “…leaving her water jar…” John 4:6, 4:8, 4:28). These details are not the mere “padding” that gives the story vitality and context; they are integral players and they mark things of real significance. These details are “pointers”, just as the word is a pointer to the reality behind what we can perceive (the trajectory of John 1:1 etc). There are multiple meanings to each pointer, but each one ultimately points to Christ.

Before I proceed, I might need another clarification here. I don’t think John is saying something, but meaning something else. I think he is saying something and meaning something else. John’s meanings overlap in layers. In our 21st Century mind-set, we are used to linear logic (one thing leads to another, and to another, and so on), whereas John stacks his meanings on top of each other. That’s what I mean by “tuning in” when we read his Gospel.

Some of these “pointers” are more easily read than others. Unsurprisingly, the commentators come to a consensus on the “easy” pointers, but the “hard” ones are usually left unattended. So, I offer my “working hypothesis” reading of this passage, as follows, in an attempt to identify the pointers and what it is that they are pointing to. This is a necessarily selective process, and if I omit something of importance, or interpret a pointer wrongly, I sincerely ask for your forbearance.

John 4:6

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

Jacob’s well provides the scene, but also the context. It is both a real place, and a metaphor. The place is easily identified, but the metaphor is often overlooked. The Samaritans considered themselves to be the true legacy of the Biblical patriarchs. The “well” they drew from was Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as it was written in the Five Books of Moses. The remarkable thing here is that Jesus comes into the community that is clustered around this well, which clearly signals that his Gospel might be “from the Jews” (John 4:22), but it is for the world (John 3:16), including those neighbors who are antagonistic to his own people. Jesus takes the initiative in the peace process (see Matt 5:9) and offers an alternative to the cycle of violence between these communities.

Jesus is tired from the journey, and sits down to take a break. Big deal, we might say. John, however, wants us to see Jesus’ true humanity. John stresses that Jesus is no super-human, nor even a god in an “earth-suit”, but his “taking on flesh” (John 1:14) brings him fully into our world and our experience of life and death (see Phil 2:5-11). The proto-Gnostics of the Greco-Roman world, by contrast, could not comprehend why the “pure” Divinity would get entangled and corrupted in the dirt of our material existence, so they devised a speculative scheme in which the “Christ” inhabited the body of Jesus, fleeing just before he died on the cross, and returning at the resurrection. Such a view is strongly contested by John, who sees no distinction between the Jesus the man and Jesus the Divine Logos that originated the entire cosmos (see John 1:1-5, Col 1:16-17 etc).

About noon is the hottest part of the day, when all the sensible people are taking a break indoors. All the commentators note that this is an unusual time for the anonymous woman to be filling her jars, and all infer that she has chosen this time to avoid contact with her neighbors. The patent reason for her evasive strategy is her sexually adventurous lifestyle, which will come to light a little further on in this encounter.

John 4:7-8

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food).

Jesus blatantly crosses several boundaries here, which would have sent his conservatively-minded Jewish peers into conniptions. His behavior is shocking, even scandalous.

First, he crosses over from the Jewish side to the Samaritan side. When John writes “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans”, he is being diplomatic in the extreme. In practice, the two were at each other’s throats, and Josephus records that they had come to violent clashes in the first part of the first century, around the same time as this encounter. Yet, here is Jesus sitting down in Samaritan territory. What is he doing?

Second, Jewish males were expected to be highly prudish in their interactions with women. The Jewish Rabbis taught that it was improper even for a man to talk with his own wife in public. Yet, here is Jesus initiating a conversation with a “half-caste” woman. What is he doing?

Third, in separating themselves from the Samaritans, the Jews considered food touched by Samaritan hand to be unclean. I’m not sure what the Rabbis would have thought of water, but they were extraordinarily fussy about what they ate. Rabbinical tradition made a distinction between food that was given, and food that was bought; the former was considered unclean, but the latter was appropriate (Community Rule/Manual of Discipline 5:14-20, after Kruse). Therefore Jesus’ disciples could buy food from the Samaritans (John 4:8), even though it was a risky business given the tensions between the two communities. Yet, here is Jesus asking the woman to give him water. What is he doing?

Finally, the promised Messiah asks a lowly Samaritan for assistance. We, like John’s primary audience, might think it appropriate for the High King to be served by his subjects. But, what I find shocking here is that he needs her. What is he doing?

On this last point, Jesus could have summoned a thousand angels to tend to him, as Satan so deliciously points out in another context (Matt 4:6). However, the Mighty God and Savior of Israel humbles himself to the point at which he is reliant on the ministrations of a woman. Its not the first time, as Mary’s part in the story richly demonstrates (see the Nativity Narrative in Luke 1:26-38). The theology that I read in this is that God could simply do whatever it is He wants to do, but He has set things up such that He needs our inputs. This, I think, is a purely voluntary position that God adopts, and He does it in order to elevate our humble, inadequate service to the heights of His Grand Plan. In other words, God brings us in as partners in His work, not just it’s passive subjects. God works with us, not simply over us, for our ultimate good. This is of critical importance to Christian thinking; the ultimate purpose of God is not simply to create some kind of abstract perfection; His purpose is to redeem you, and me, and the people around us, whoever they may be. To put it in the New Testament idiom; He comes down to us, that we all might rise with Him.

I have run out of time, and there are other things I need to do this week. But I hope to return to the story in subsequent posts.

Bibliography
• Clements, Roy “Introducing Jesus” Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0 85476 321 X, 1996

• Guthrie, Donald, Commentary on John in The New Bible Commentary, 21st Century Edition, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 85110 648 X, 2002.

• Kruse, Colin G “The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries – The Gospel According to John”, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 8511 327 3, 2003

• Wright, N.T. (Tom) “John for Everyone, Part 1, Chapters 1-10), Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, ISBN 0 281 05302 2, 2003

In defence of traditional marriage: Post Script

This week, an email from the Canberra Declaration Team alerted me to the news that the Labor State Conference in Western Australia last weekend passed a resolution supporting homosexual marriage. The Western Australia ALP has joined the ALP state branches in South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the Northern Territory in supporting homosexual marriage including Victoria, which passed a motion supporting homosexual marriage in 2009. Personally, I think the Canberra Declaration crowd are a little too alarmist and reactionary to have a serious impact, but I share their concerns on this issue.

In response, I wrote the following letter to The Honorable Kevin Rudd, my State Member, and my other Parliamentary representatives.

Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010

Dear Sirs,

As a voter in your constituency, I appeal to you to do all you can to oppose the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010, and to retain current Federal Law.

I understand that current Federal Law defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. The Bill proposes to change the definition to the union of two people, regardless of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life, thus opening up marriage to same-sex or non-gendered couples (1).

My opposition to this Bill does not, I sincerely hope, arise from a desire to unduly discriminate against persons of differing sexual orientation or gender identity. I believe that marriage understood as the enduring union of husband and wife is both a good in itself and also advances the public interest (2). I sincerely believe that the proposal to redefine marriage by Parliamentary Bill is not in the public interest, despite the high profile protestations of its advocates. I also believe that it is your job, as our representatives in Government, to defend and advance the public interest, even in the face of popular culture.

My primary reason for believing that traditional marriage (between one husband and one wife) is in the public interest is that the stable, loving and exclusive union between biological father and mother provides the optimum environment for raising children. The sociological evidence is overwhelming. The combined force of Mum and Dad cannot be adequately replaced by Mum and Mum, or Dad and Dad, no matter what the Bill's proponents say. Government ought to do all it can to protect the rights of children by upholding and strengthening marriage.

Further, I believe that the Bill discriminates against persons who, for whatever reason, believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. These reasons may be rationally thought out, or they may be more instinctive, but they will be repressed or even outlawed, if the Bill were passed. The worst examples of such discrimination have denied capable parents from fostering children (3), and have caused adoptive charities having to shut their doors (4). The Bill does not present a win-win outcome.

As it stands, the Bill does not even require a person in such a "marriage" to have a sexual orientation towards his or her spouse, which might yield some surprising outcomes with respect to conjugal rights.

If a recent survey in the UK is a reliable guide, we can expect about 1.5% of the population to self-identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual (5). I imagine that not all these people would be interested in marriage. This divisive Bill would therefore benefit a small minority of the population. I have to ask; at what cost?

At its heart, the Bill seeks to re-orientate marriage around a person's felt needs, but in so doing it fatally wounds marriage as the good and persistent social institution that has served and fostered the public interest for millennia. Our collective experience is that marriage is particularly good in serving the interests of children and women, and I believe it is so precisely because it presents men, especially, with something that's bigger and more important than their felt needs. The Bill attempts to force marriage into being what it is not. It is an ideological crusade that's not based on a sober consideration of the evidence.

One political campaign (for the Sex Party) ran the line "We believe the law should stay out of people's bedrooms". I agree, but the law has already been withdrawn from the bedroom. Why, then, seek to change the law on the basis of an ideological crusade?

Please oppose the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Jacobs

(1) http://www.nswchurches.org/Resources/Papers/Revising_Marriage_pastors.pdf
(2) http://www.winst.org/family_marriage_and_democracy/WI_Marriage.pdf.
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12598896
(4) http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/illinois-catholic-charities-forced-out-of-adoptions-over-homosexual-rights/
(5) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11398629

Reply from Kevin Rudd's Offce

Our ref: rlh:rlh_SR/Jun-11-0530
1 August, 2011

Mr Martin Jacobs
[Address given]

Dear Martin

Thank you for contacting Kevin with your concerns regarding same-sex marriage.

Kevin appreciates you taking the time to share your feedback.

As you are aware, the Government has recently supported an amended motion in Parliament. This motion calls upon Members to gauge the views of their constituents on equal treatment for gay couples, including marriage.

Currently, the Government’s position on same-sex marriage has not changed. The Government believes that the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act, that marriage is between man and woman, is appropriate and is part of standard Labor Party Policy.

Kevin understands same-sex marriage is an issue that many people in the community have strong opinions about. As it is the day-to-day job of Members of Parliament to engage with their constituents and gauge their opinions on important matters, Kevin believes that same-sex marriage should be included in these discussions.

Thank you once again for taking the time to share your views.

If there are any other federal government matters with which Kevin may be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact his Electorate Office on [phone number given] or via email- [email given]

Yours sincerely

Rebecca Hansen, Constituent Officer
The Honourable Kevin Rudd MP
Federal Member for Griffith

In defence of traditional marriage

This week, I have been too busy to write further about the encounter between Jesus and the Samarian woman at the well (John 4:1-42), but the topic hasn't left me yet, and I hope to return next week.

One line of thought that I might consider further is how Jesus reacts to the woman, who appears to be in a highly undesirable domestic union; she has had five husbands and the man she was presently with was not her husband (John 4:18). Interestingly, Jesus knows all about her circumstances, but does not give her a lecture on morality. Does this tell us something about Jesus' views on marriage?

I have no doubt that Jesus (like his Jewish contemporaries) had what we would regard as a highly conservative view on marriage and sexual morality. So, why does he not rebuke the woman for her immorality? The answer, I believe, is that he is saying to the woman that her sins are not what define her, and neither do her "marriages". He offers her a fresh start, and I believe she takes it (I'll explain how and why in a subsequent post).

Does this weaken the argument to preserve the traditional view that marriage is an exclusive, intimate union between a man and woman? To put it bluntly, does Jesus even care about marriage? Yes, I believe he does, but he puts it where it belongs, in the created order, which would make little sense if it were to be divorced from its creator. Marriage is important, but like all creatures, it is only important and meaningful because of it's relationship with the creator (see Matt 6:33). That's why the focus in John 4:1-42 is not on marriage, but the relationship between the woman and Jesus.

Of course, it's impossible to address the subject of marriage without also addressing the current controversy on changing legal definitions of marriage to include same-sex partnerships. Despite the enthusiasm of the media (particularly British and Australian TV - I can't comment on American TV) in promoting same sex marriage, there are good reasons to defend the institution of marriage as an exclusive, intimate and publicly affirmed union between one man and one woman. I worry that those who wish to retain this traditional view may be increasingly marginalized and silenced by (unfounded) claims of bigotry and prejudice. I don't wish to argue the case here and now, but I do recommend a reasoned paper for those who might be interested further here, http://www.nswchurches.org/Resources/Papers/Revising_Marriage_pastors.pdf

John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 3

As in previous weeks (4th June and 11th June), I’m continuing in my preparations for preaching on John 4:1-42 in August by blogging my thoughts and finding what, if any, generate the most interest.

The issue that’s been on my mind this week is the apparent paradox of the unnamed Samaritan woman in the story. The paradox is this; she’s an outcast in her home town, but it’s her testimony that persuades her neighbors to faith in Christ, which can hardly be expected of someone with no credibility in her own community.

I believe that the paradox can be resolved by considering the situation from the perspective of the author (John). That might sound like a trite thing for me to say, but too often we rush into trying to understand scripture from our own perspective, rather than respecting the perspective of the people who first wrote it down.

An outcast in her home town

John’s Gospel is full of apparently incidental details, which support the veracity of his account. In verse 4:6, John notes that it was about noon that Jesus sat down at the well, at which time the Samaritan woman came to draw water (4:7).

It’s in the heat of the day, and Jesus is understandably tired and thirsty (4:6, John doesn’t present a super-human Jesus who is unconstrained by human needs and weaknesses). What is remarkable about this setting is that normally, the women would fill their jars first thing in the morning, when it was cooler and more convenient for the day’s chores, but this woman comes at noon. She probably does so because the other women of the town are absent, and she chooses to avoid them. The reasons for her elusiveness are probably linked to her scandalous domestic arrangements, which Jesus brings to light in verse 4:18; she has had five husbands and the man she was with was not her husband.

Husbands and men

Live-in relationships today are considered the norm (for all the wrong reasons, I believe), but in Jesus’ day they were regarded as shameful. We don’t know the reasons behind the Samaritan woman’s relationships but, as they say, it takes two to tango. Possibly, she flitted from man to man, always in search of a better deal (though the issue of dowries comes to the fore); possibly the fickle men she got entangled with abandoned her; possibly successive husbands died (though this would not have marked her to the same extent as voluntary divorces); possibly she was unable to conceive; probably it was a combination of all or some of the above.

John does not bring us to conclude whether she was a victim or a perpetrator, but from his perspective, such a question would have been immaterial. In my reading of the Bible, I see a continuum between personal and collective guilt, unlike today’s sense of justice, which is concerned with isolating personal culpability. In John’s eyes, then, the woman would have been guilty, but her guilt would have been a reflection of her community’s shortcomings. She might have descended into shameful circumstances, but where were the men in her community who should have protected her welfare and honor? Why did they allow this situation to arise? Why didn’t the men in her hometown act like the husbands that they should have been?

Switching allegiances

It’s this latter thought that came to my mind last week, when I found that the Samaritans had switched political allegiances in the centuries before the encounter at the well. The Wikipedia entry on the Samaritans is difficult to read, but it includes a fascinating passage on the Samaritans' response to the blasphemy of one of the Greek rulers, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The following is adopted from Wikipedia, with my inferences thrown in for good measure.

It is important to understand the rivalry between Samaritan and Jew. The Samaritans gave themselves the name Shamerim, שַמֶרִים, "Keepers [of the Law]", to identify themselves with the Law and God of Moses. The Jews preferred to call them Kuthim, כותים, which is a pejorative term related to the ancient, foreign city of Cuthah. So, both groups contested for the claim to be the “true” Israel, and both accused the other of apostasy and of supporting idolatrous Temples. Josephus reports numerous violent confrontations between Jews and Samaritans throughout the first half of the first century, which is precisely the time of the encounter at the well. Jesus met the woman at the height of hostilities.

Antiochus was one of the Seleucid Kings of Judah from 175 to 163 BC, in the period between the Old and New Testaments. According to 1 Maccabees 1:41-50 he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and mandated death to anyone who refused to worship him. A major obstacle to his ambition was the fidelity of the Jews to their historic religion and their refusal to allow their homeland to be defiled. The universal peril led the Samaritans, eager for safety, to repudiate all connection and kinship with the Jews. The request was granted.

Not only did the Samaritans sever ties with their Jewish neighbors, but, allegedly, they also voluntarily profaned their Temple on Mount Gerizim, which had been erected in the name of YHWH of Israel. Josephus, a pro-Jewish historian, quotes the Samaritans' plea to Antiochus as follows;

We therefore beseech thee, our benefactor and saviour, to give order to Apolonius, the governor of this part of the country, and to Nicanor, the procurator of thy affairs, to give us no disturbances, nor to lay to our charge what the Jews are accused for, since we are aliens from their nation and from their customs, but let our temple which at present hath no name at all, be named the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.

II Maccabees 6:1–2 reports an unwilling reconsecration of both Samaritan and Jewish Temples, as follows;

Shortly afterwards, the Greek king sent Gerontes the Athenian to force the Jews of Israel to violate their ancestral customs and live no longer by the laws of God; and to profane the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus, and the one on Mount Gerizim to Zeus, Patron of Strangers, as the inhabitants of the latter place had requested.

This Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim was destroyed by the Jew, John Hyrcanus in about 128 BC, having existed about 200 years. Only a few stone remnants of it exist today.

So, it is clear that there was a great deal of mistrust between Samaritan and Jew. From the Jewish perspective, the Samaritan would have been regarded as fickle and untrustworthy; the ultimate shibboleth being the Samaritans’ ready rejection of their claims of fidelity to the God of Moses, as opposed to the proud, blood-stained history of the Jew’s dogged allegiance to YHWH. In the Biblical idiom, if Ezekiel 16 is a reliable guide, Samaria had behaved like a shameless woman in offering herself to a long procession of lovers. (Though, ironically, both sides had sinned gravely in this respect and neither had the right to cast the first stone, if John 8:2-11 reflects the pattern).

Faithfulness at a personal and national scale

Was it Samaria’s unfaithfulness that Jesus referred to when he brought the issue of the woman’s husbands to light, or was it the woman’s actual domestic circumstances?

This presents something of a problem in approaching the text, but it might not be an either/or proposition. John, I believe, sees heavenly significance in earthly things and, concomitantly, what we do on earth is reflected in the heavens. The woman’s adultery is both a symptom and a sustaining cause of the Samaritans’ heritage (technically, we might conceivably refer to it as the incarnation of the Samaritan Logos, after John 1:14, but I could be drawing a long bow here). Her relationship with her men is stereotypical of the Samaritan condition. Thus, Jesus’ observations speak to her at a personal level and through her to her neighbors at a corporate level. This, I think, is why her neighbors listen to her testimony, despite her status. They see a metaphor of themselves in her, and the situation to which their collective unfaithfulness had brought them. The woman’s statement in John 4:39 was a personal confession, and a collective one, by extension; and it was one that her neighbors acknowledged for themselves.

A fresh start

One impression I get from this story is that the Samaritan woman and her neighbors were sick of the status quo. The woman had been reduced to filling her jars at noon to avoid the talk of her neighbors, and they had suffered dreadfully under the hand of foreigner and Jew for the sake of religion and Temple.

Jesus, according to John, offers them a fresh start and they embrace his message of hope (John 4:39-42). To the woman he says, “I will be the husband you never had.” To her neighbors he says, “I am the True, Living Temple, and you won’t need to fight over me again.” These are not unrelated ideals, but two aspects of what it means to be reconciled to the God of Father Abraham in a new and living covenant.

John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 2

I’m continuing in my preparations for preaching on John 4:1-42 in August. Last week I looked briefly at the authorship of John’s Gospel and its current popularity. This week I’ll look at the historical context in which the encounter between the Samaritan Woman and Jesus took place.

Who were the Samaritans?

Most people know about the Samaritans from the famous parable in Luke 10:25-37. This very example of the kindly stranger has inspired several movements to adopt the name (including Samaritan’s Purse, and a host of other organizations including suicide counselling, and welfare groups.

The origins of the Samaritans as a distinct ethnic group are murky, and subject to opposing claims from Jewish and Samaritan traditions. What is clear, however, is that the Jews and Samaritans regarded themselves as distinct races from the late 4th Century BC onwards. Their attitudes towards each other vacillated from tolerance to outright hostility. When it is believed that one’s membership of the Kingdom of God rests on one’s ancestry (contrary to the explicit message of the New Testament), the issue of breeding is paramount, so it is worth looking at these competing claims.

The Jewish perspective

From the Jewish perspective, the Samaritans were not considered as the rightful inheritors of the land. Effectively, the First Century Jews regarded them as illegal squatters. The Jews believed that when the Ten Tribes of the Northern Israelite Kingdom were exiled following the Assyrian conquest in 721BC, they were displaced by non-Israelite immigrants from Bablyon, Cutha, Avah, Emath and Sepharvaim. It was from these foreigners that the Samaritans were descended.

Thus, the Samaritans could not claim to be the Sons of Abraham by birth, which excluded them from the covenant that YHWH had wrought with the “true” Israel (see Genesis 12 and 15). The only way that the Samaritans could consider themselves to be a part of God’s Kingdom was to convert, which required regular attendance at the Temple in Jerusalem and all the rites of purification that went with it. This was unacceptable to the Samaritans, who had built their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, only for the Jews to destroy it under John Hyrcanus in 128BC.

It was an earlier historical event that cemented the divide between the Jews and the Samaritans. Around 175 to 163BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes proclaimed himself to be the living incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and threatened death to anyone who would not worship him as such. The Jews remained obstinate, but the Samaritans, eager to secure their own safety, repudiated all connection and kinship with the Jews. Their request was granted. This, I believe, gave the Samaritans the reputation for switching allegiances when it suited them. It is is a characteristic that is possibly alluded to in Jesus’ observation about the Samaritan Woman’s several husbands.

The Samaritan perspective

The Samaritans, unsurprisingly, disputed the Jewish version of events. They claimed that they were properly descended from Abraham, that they were the faithful keepers of the Torah, and it was their Jewish neighbors who were apostate. According to the Samaritan tradition, they were direct descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, and a remnant had survived the Assyrian conquest in situ (see 2 Chronicles 30:1-31:6 ). This claim to have been the faithful children of Abraham adds a certain pique to the Samaritan Woman’s reference to Jacob’s Well as “her” well in John 4:12.

The Jews, the Samaritans claimed, apostatized when Eli, the Priest (see 1 Chronicles 1:3 etc), left the Tabernacle on Mount Gerizim, to build a new Temple under his own rule at Shiloh. The Temple in Jerusalem, according to the Samaritans was an apostate temple, sustained by an illegitimate priesthood, and any attempt by the Jewish proselytizers to convert them to it was met with overt hostility.

Interestingly, the Samaritans had sustained their own patriarchal Priesthood until the 17th Century. In In 1624, the last Samaritan High Priest of the line of Eleazar son of Aaron died without issue, but descendants of Aaron's other son, Ithamar, remained and took over the office.

The Samaritan reaction to Jesus

I believe that it is likely that the Samaritans in general, and the Samaritan Woman in particular, would have initially regarded Jesus as one of the Jewish proselytizers, or at least a Jewish supporter (Jesus was recognizably Jewish, and a religious one at that). This would explain the hostile reception given to Jesus in Luke 9:51-53. It is only when the Samaritan Woman realizes that conversion to the Jerusalem Temple is not on Jesus’ agenda that her attitude towards him begins to soften.

Modern genetics

According to Wikipedia, the population of ethnic Samaritans had dwindled to 712 individuals in 2007, comprising just four families living on Mount Gerizim and in Tel Aviv. Genetic studies indicate that modern Samaritans share a common ancestry with modern Jews, and the study’s authors suggest that a subgroup of the Israelites remained in the Land of Israel that "married Assyrian and female exiles relocated from other conquered lands, which was a typical Assyrian policy to obliterate national identities”.

So, it appears to me that both the Samaritan and Jewish traditions can be justified, based on the historical and genetic evidence, though both draw irreconcilably opposing inferences from it. It all rests on what one considers to be a “true” Israelite, or what constitutes a “true” worshipper.

As we shall see, Jesus cuts right through these issues by changing the paradigm entirely.

John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 1

Josh, our pastor is on leave in August, so some us “laymen” are filling in for the preaching. I am on the roster for the week of 14 August, with the topic of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-42.

I’m going to cheat a little in my preparation by posting some of my thoughts here. I don’t intend to use all of them in my presentation, but if you would like to post a comment or query in advance, please feel free to do so – it will help me discern what might be important or interesting to my audience, rather than what is important or interesting to me.

The Writing of the Gospel

For a more detailed discussion, see the Introduction to John's Gospel in the New Bible Commentary (NBC), from which I gleaned most of the following.

Oral tradition attributes the authorship of John’s Gospel to the Apostle John; the one referred to as the “disciple whom Jesus loved” in John 21:7 etc. and I don’t see any compelling reason to contend it.

The author picks up the narrative of Jesus as he enters his public ministry in Galilee, and follows it to Jerusalem (John, like Mark, omits the nativity narrative). There are many intimate details in the accounts that imply the author as an eyewitness, such as the number of stone jars at the marriage in Cana (John 2:6), the name of the guard whom Jesus healed (Malchus, in John 18:10), and the machinations and courtyard layout of Jesus’ trial (John 18:15-18 etc.).

A couple of potential objections need to be noted; nowhere does John identify himself as the author (though this is the norm for Biblical literature), he appears to regard the Jews as a race apart, and his thinking was markedly Hellenistic. The Hellenistic tone of the Gospel of John is probably the strongest objection there is, but I can see an equally strong counter-argument in that the author could have contextualized his message by using the language and perspective of the leading Greek philosophers of the time (including Philo of Alexandria and the Hermetica). This contextualization would fit well with one of the Gospel’s major themes; that the Word had come into the world of all peoples, not just the world of the Jews (as we shall see with the Samaritan woman), and the author saw it as his mission to give the message a meaningful context in the Greek world.

The date for the writing of the Gospel is impossible to pinpoint. There is good ground for supposing that Justin (c AD150) knew and used the Gospel, and possibly that Ignatius (c AD115) also knew it (NBC). Two Second century manuscripts show the existence and circulation of the Gospel. Scholars generally believe that it post-dates the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), which puts the writing of John’s Gospel at around AD90.

In considering all this, it appears to me that a young John joined Jesus around AD30, followed him through his ministry, trial and execution, and was profoundly affected by the experience. He would have spoken his recollections through his middle life and wrote them down as he approached old age around AD90.

The current popularity of the Gospel of John

An ad-hoc survey on FaceBook recently posed the question about what part of the Bible people would keep if they were threatened with some kind of sanction for doing so. The Gospel of John was voted Number 1.

I don’t think the person who initiated the survey, nor the people who responded, had any intention of ranking the books of the Bible in order of importance, but I find the survey revealing in terms of the current attitude in the believing community on-line. A couple of decades ago, I think the same survey might have crowned Paul’s epistle to the Romans as Number 1, or perhaps Luke’s Gospel. Romans is strongly didactic (it tells us our status and what we should do about it in concrete terms) and Luke is reassuringly factual, both of which would have suited the Evangelical Church’s sense of self-confidence in the 70’s and 80’s.

By contrast, John speaks in picture-language and draws us into a world of divine mystery in which events and words have a heavenly significance that overshadows their immediate context. Instead of speaking about our situation and our behavior, like Romans, John presents us with the supreme model in the person and story of Jesus. Instead of explaining the unseen realm of God, John describes it and invites us to gaze deeply into it, like an icon. John does not present a mythical super-human Jesus, but grounds his vision of divinity very firmly in human flesh (we’ll see how dependent John’s Jesus is on other human beings in the story of the Samaritan woman).

Given that people who express themselves on FaceBook are more likely to be educated and literate (the minimum requirement is that you can read and write, and drive a computer), they are more likely to be attracted to the intellectual challenge of John’s other-worldy perspective on the world in which we live. Could it be that current Evangelicalism is more inclined to savor the mystery of the Gospel now than a couple of decades ago, when it was all about proclaiming a compelling proof? Perhaps, in future, another book in the Bible will rise in popularity to balance out today's starry-eyed mystics. If I was a gambling type, I might put an outside bet on Ruth.

Later on, I’ll get to the context of this encounter and it’s rather surprising outcomes, before exploring what this story means in our context.