Abstract
This article employs the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4 as a prism through which to examine Christian perceptions of and approaches to the outsider – especially the ‘foreigner’, the migrant or the Muslim. The study is particularly concerned with some broadly similar dynamics at play between the Judean and Samaritan communities in the first century and between Jews, Christians and Muslims in our world today. An important aspect of these dynamics, in the story and frequently today as well, is the concern for ritual purity and group separation. The encounter is framed as a potentially fraught and tense ‘ethnic’ encounter, which then, as now, may well entail painful friction over matters ranging from religion to politics to communal metanarrative. Christians, Muslims and Jews remain connected and divided over such realities as scripture, history, land and even the names of prophets and places held in common. The posture of Jesus of Nazareth presents a vital challenge to his followers today in our age of intense nationalism, populism, terror and xenophobia.
Keywords
When Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman at Sychar, he consciously (one wants to say recklessly) transgresses a host of deeply entrenched boundaries: gender, religion, nation, societal status and politics all come into question. The meeting at Jacob’s well represents ethnic encounter at an order of magnitude. This is a ‘dance’ at the borders of an ancient divide implicating everything from metanarrative and origin stories (think divine election) to territory to group history, heritage and sacred texts. Such zones constitute the heart of ‘ethnicity’, and thus identity. 1 It is none too surprising that sociologists sometimes posit ethnic conflict as ‘a normal or chronic condition’. 2 We might say that entire worlds are at stake in the meeting in Samaria. In the face of embedded alienation, Jesus’ approach to the ‘foreign woman’ 3 was a fraught business replete with risk, resistance, and (potential) reconciliation.
When it came to the Judean and Samaritan communities of the first century, the flow of history had long been troubled; 4 at times the stream had been polluted by violence and blood-letting (John 4.9). 5 And, in point of fact, this history did not end in antiquity: a Samaritan community persists into our day, a tiny endogamous group centred at Mount Gerizim near the Palestinian city of Nablus and in Holon, Israel. 6 This bilingual (Arabic and Hebrew) minority of several hundred persons hold tightly to their distinctive Torah and priestly (not rabbinic) traditions, viewing themselves as the heirs of Israel’s story.
In this article I examine a few examples of Jesus’ cultural ‘transgressions’ through the paradigm of ‘separation’ and ‘ritual purity’. 7 Given Jesus’ profile as a Jewish teacher and prophet (and Messiah?), to embrace 8 this Samaritan outsider would be anything but an ‘astute career move’. 9 In this encounter, the potential for ritual contamination is palpable as the teacher makes himself vulnerable, relating to a Samaritan female apparently on the margins of even her own community. 10 By the standards of Jewish halakhah, 11 close or easy interaction with a female outside the family circle, let alone a ‘heretical’ outsider, was at the least a risk to reputation. 12
Purity law is structured around categorization (of people, things, behaviours) and separation of the ‘clean’ from the ‘unclean’. While not every aspect of ritual separation should be characterized as ‘legalistic’, and certainly not as morally invidious, 13 purity regulation centred on gender or genealogical descent can readily turn prejudicial. The line between the ‘pure’ and the ‘impure’ sometimes runs through the human family, in consequence delineating some as ‘outsiders’ or ‘infidels’ by dint of birth. Although the details varied over time and place, scrupulous observance of ‘Torah and tradition’ in everything from food and commerce to gender separation and contact with corpses, fluids and outsiders was integral to life, at least among pious Second Temple Jews. In this connection one thinks, for example, of Mary Douglas’ creative linkage between the ‘ritual symbolism of the body’ and the danger inherent in ‘society’s margins’. 14 In Jesus’ world, voluntary contact with the ‘tainted’ Samaritan woman was clearly ill-advised for a Torah-faithful Jewish man. 15
Ken Bailey gives a twentieth-century example of how Samaritan purity scruples impinged on intercommunal relationships: the setting is the visit of the Samaritan high priest to a notable Arab family in Nablus. 16 The hosts are duty bound to offer some form of refreshment, but the priest is religiously obligated not to consume anything ‘impure’, which would be just about any food or drink they (‘Gentiles’) have. Wisely, the hosts provide him with unpeeled fruit on a plate. The fruit skin protects the actual fruit from impurity. He peels and eats. Problem solved.
Now, for some modern observers, the minutiae of purity law will seem obscure in the extreme, but, even today, such ritual concerns are woven into the warp and woof of life of the stricter Jewish, Muslim and Samaritan communities – all of life is regulated, we might say, from office to kitchen, from bathroom to bedroom. Again, the pattern of separation, regulation and control can manifest a sharp edge when distinguishing between groups of people, and between the sexes. One may think, for example, of the struggle in Saudi Arabia for a woman’s right to drive, or, in Israel, of the secular–religious ‘wars’ over ‘secular’ women seated near religious men on public transport. 17
Certainly, one may doubt whether, for first-century Jews, Samaritans were ‘Gentiles’, 18 but they definitely would have been branded schismatic, ‘heretics’ or ‘foreigners’. 19 Separation was clearly in order. No wonder the disciples are surprised at their master (John 4.27); he constantly proved to be quite unmanageable. With all the potential strikes against the Samaritan (gender, history, theology, ethnicity, social reputation), 20 in a context in which bodily fluids were ready conductors of ‘impurity’, Jesus asks her for a drink from her drinking vessel! 21 The fact of Jesus’ interaction with the woman is surprising enough. The content of what he says shatters every expectation.
Conversation at the well: contest, compassion, conversion?
In most societies, religion, politics and ethnicity have never been hermetically separated realms. Thus, when the woman brings up the topics of Jacob/Israel (John 4.12) or sacred territory (verse 20), she may be exhibiting defensiveness or evasion, but she is not conjuring up a random non sequitur. These ‘ancient quibbles’ are in fact defining issues, still vitally relevant to the relationship between her people and his. Her responses to Jesus’ sensitive, yet pointed, overtures touch a raw nerve in Samaritan–Jewish relations. The generational conflict surfaces in several ways. Jacob was an especially important patriarch in Samaritan lore. 22 So, this ‘Israel’, he is the ‘father’ of which community? Here we also have a story of two hills, Gerizim or Jerusalem. So, who are the true heirs, and centred on which location? 23 Which sacred text has the answers? Is the story of God’s people found in the Samaritan Torah, or the Jewish Torah and other prophetic writings?
For Jews, the Samaritan take on history (and scripture) was subversive and reprehensible – and these sentiments were mutual. 24 Now, it is important that we account for the Samaritan–Jewish divide by way of reference to ‘ethnicity’ and not via modern notions of ‘blood’ or ‘race’. 25 But it is fair to say that, in Judean terms, from the time of the Assyrian conquest, the Samaritan lineage had incorporated foreign elements tilting their religion into corruption. 26 Thus, the rabbis apply two slurs to the Samaritans: ‘Cuthites’ (genealogical denigration) and ‘lion converts’ (religious denigration). 27 At best, the Samaritans had corrupted the covenant. At worst, they were entirely outside the scope of YHWH’s grace. And so the Judean–Samaritan ethnic fissure manifests theological friction, recrimination over lineage and descent, and bitter political clash.
Distilling the Jewish–Samaritan tensions, we see:
competing theological claims centred on the only God; competing but overlapping sacred texts; competing origin stories;
28
competing versions of an enmeshed, violent history; competing claims over ‘acceptable worship’; competing claims over sacral territory; and competing claims over lineage and descent.
These modes of tension are very much with us in today’s world, not least the Middle East. 29 In one form or another, these fissures may also be observed between contemporary Islam, Judaism and Christianity (in all their diversity). 30 By way of illustration, I simply reference some key terms, the mere naming of which evokes intractable divides:
Indeed, for all the interest in the so-called ‘Abrahamic’ faiths, there is reason to doubt whether the forefather of monotheism is really a point of convergence for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is by no means obvious that the rabbinic Abraham of the Akedah, the Abraham of John 8 and Galatians 3—4 35 and the Abraham of Qur’an 3.67 are synonymous. 36
Who is the thirsty Jew?
In view of these painful divides in Adam’s family, where might the model of Jesus point us? I am particularly interested in how we as (Western) Christians relate to the kinds of ‘others’ that too often seem to elicit tension, fear or even repulsion. 37 In seeking to follow Jesus, how ought we to view the covered Muslim woman, the Pakistani immigrant, or the Syrian refugee? The Judeo-Samaritan conflict, we must remember, was a rooted, ancient inheritance into one side of which Jesus was born. His own Jewish people were themselves a people under occupation, their identity constantly under challenge in the broader Roman world. Little wonder that the conflict was liable to ‘go hot’ at a moment’s notice. On occasion, even Jesus’ own apostles were ready to call down destruction on the Samaritan enemy (Luke 9.51–56). Against that backdrop, Jesus comes as a surprise to the Samaritan woman (John 4.9), to his disciples, and to the rest of us.
Purity, covenant standing, reputation – all are at stake in the laws of separation. For Jesus, simple avoidance of the woman at the well (not to mention Samaria itself) would have been quite advisable. Instead, he taxes himself; 38 he humbles himself; he takes the initiative; he asks her for something. In this dialogue Jesus crosses the line without preconditions, with extraordinary sensitivity and confidence, meeting her at her point of need. In the interchange over Gerizim and Jerusalem (John 4.20–24), Jesus is confidently grounded in truth, truth he uniquely embodies (John 14.6). He knows himself, his people, his God. Yet, his eschatological vision explodes narrow and nationalist agendas of every pedigree (Samaritan or Judean): ultimately, even Jerusalem is not the point. The Messiah invites her into full fellowship, in spirit and truth, as a Samaritan daughter of YHWH. Reconciliation on every level of being.
In Johannine context, who is this thirsty Jew waiting by the well? Consider again ‘Father Jacob’ and his ‘ladder’ to heaven; Jesus is himself that link between heaven and earth (John 1.51). Jesus exceeds the stature of even (the Samaritan) Moses (John 1.17, 45; 3.14; 5.46; 6.32) and of their expected teacher-messiah (John 4.25–26). 39 He is indeed the ‘Saviour of the World’ (John 4.42). And what this Saviour offers is nothing less than astonishing. He holds out God’s ‘living water’ 40 (John 4.10–14); the author of life offers the same (John 10.10).
The image of living water evokes ‘streams in the desert’, the eschatological promise of God’s spirit of restoration – a latter-days hope from the great writing prophets of Israel (for example, Isa. 44.3), prophets that the Samaritans did not even read. Jesus pours out the very spirit of God, 41 and to have the Spirit is to belong to the God of Israel (cf. Rom. 8.9–11). There is no ‘partial’ having, no partial belonging, no degrees of ‘citizenship’. Through Jesus, the Samaritan is an heir to the promises of Israel, enjoying hope and inclusion on the same terms as the most pedigreed Zadokite priest in Jerusalem.
Us and them
So, then, as we contemplate the ‘other’ across political, theological and cultural divides, what stance will we choose? Whose model will inform our hearts and action? Reflecting on our world’s phobias, fights and fears, as we think of Muslims ‘over there’ or ‘coming here’, 42 how do we respond? On instinct, we might well choose nationalism and construct zones of exclusion. We may be led by social biases, nervousness over ‘security’, or cultural predilections. Driven by fear we may erect walls to affirm a fragile sense of identity … for, as we have seen, even experts concede that ethnic conflict may be a ‘normal or chronic condition’. And it might even be possible to ‘justify’ resistance or exclusion on well-rehearsed theological grounds.
Or, we can look to Jesus from Nazareth on the edges of a dusty village in Samaria and there recover the purposes of God. God’s word to our world is fundamentally a message of reconciliation. Breaching the barriers remains risky, costly and fraught. But it is the way of our Lord who would call all peoples ‘his chosen and dearly loved’. The Good Shepherd is gathering all his sheep, calling even us back home, in from the margins (John 10.16). We who would be his flock, then, are likewise called to the outsider with initiative, humility and compassion … and without precondition. Surely we are impelled across lines of ethnicity, religion and suspicion, bearing the Lord’s message of hope and reconciliation.