CHAPTER 6. DISTANTIATION: THE EXEGETICAL MOVE ON THE SELECTED TEXTS IN JOHN
6.2 Jesus’ discourse with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42) .0 Introduction
6.2.1 Conflict between Jews and Samaritans: the origin of the Samaritans
The primary purpose of this work is not to deal with the conflict between these two social groups. However, a brief look into their relationship matters in order to shed some light on the pivotal role of the Samaritan woman after her encounter with Jesus. It is argued that the main reason for the Judeans’ rejection of Samaritans is rooted in the event narrated in 2 Kings 17. This story reports the conquest of Samaria by Assyria and the subsequent deportation of its inhabitants (2 Kings 17:5-6). The Assyrians are said to have conquered and exiled the people of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C.E., and repopulated the Samaritan region with people from throughout the empire. According to Burge, the remnant of the defeated Jews of the northern kingdom mixed with other conquered people like Persians and others (Burge 2000:140-1).
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This hypothesis makes the Samaritans a mixed race, descending from two groups: “the remnant of the native Israelites who were not deported at the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C and the foreign colonists brought in from Babylonia and Media by Assyrian conquerors of Samaria” (Brown 1984:170). Seen as a mixture of different tribes, the Samaritans were no longer pure “Jews” (Pummer 1987:3). This mixture, Burge argues, rendered the land religiously impure (Burge 2000:140-1). From this view then, the Samaritans were considered by the Judean authorities as a different ethnic group.
Judeans considered the Samaritans as defiled Gentiles, and so there was an ethnic barrier between them.
However, the Samaritans themselves claimed to be a branch of Israel, having Jacob as their ancestor like the Jews, tracing their origin back to the high priest Eli who withdrew from Shechem to establish a rival cult at Shiloh. Later on, Israelites expanded their control from Shiloh to Jerusalem through David and the Judean monarchy. They claimed then that they were true Israelites and that Samaritan worship was an authentic expression of the Israelite faith (Purvis 1968:88-9; Pummer 1987:3). There was much to justify their claim, since it is now accepted that ancient empires largely moved the ruling elite of conquered territories from one region to another to prevent them mobilizing revolt, while leaving the peasantry largely untouched to ensure continuing food production and hence to ensure their continued appropriation of the agricultural surplus. Maccoby, for instance, supports the idea by arguing that the Samaritans are Israelites who were left behind in northern Israel by the Assyrians, as the latter could not exile the whole population of Israel but a portion of it. However, he also argues that after a lapse of time, those Israelites left behind allied themselves with the “Jews” who returned from exile, not with the Gentile nations (Maccoby 1989:15).
However, the only written accounts we have of the return of the exiles from Babylonia is written by the Judean elite, who contested the control of other elites in Palestine in their restoration of a Judean temple state. They did not recognize the worship of those Israelites who continued the tradition of the Northern Kingdom to worship in temples outside of Jerusalem, and also challenged their racial purity. Thus, the identity and the
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religion of the Samaritans were contested by the Judeans who did not recognize the Samaritans as genuine Israelites nor as exercising true worship of Yahweh. It continued a history of conflict between the Northern Kingdom and Judea which began even before the Exile, as the Davidic monarchy attempted to centralize the worship of Yahweh in the Jerusalem temple under the control of the Judeans. The returning Judean exiles considered them as religious apostates and idol worshippers. For their part, the Samaritan elite (who had been put there as exiles themselves to rule the conquered Northern Kingdom) put obstacles in the way of the restoration of Jerusalem and the Judean monarchy, and later helped the Syrian rulers in their wars against the Jews in the second century B.C.E. (Brown 1984:170). In retaliation, the temple on Mount Gerizim was burnt down probably by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus when he conquered Samaria (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13:254). Whitacre (1999:102), citing Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18:30, notes that Judean animosity toward the Samaritans was greatly intensified about twenty years before Jesus’ ministry when some Samaritans reportedly defiled the temple in Jerusalem by scattering human bones in the courtyard during Passover.
The conflict between the Judeans and the Samaritans thus had regional, ethnic and religious aspects. The animosity was to the extent that the Judeans avoided passing through the Samaritan land let alone drink their water as Jesus wanted to do at the well.
Thus, the background between these two groups is portrayed by quarrels and discrimination against the Samaritans on the part of the Judean Pharisees and their Rabbinic successors. They also ruled that Samaritan women should be deemed permanently unclean since their observance of the purity rules could not be guaranteed.
Consequently all Samaritan men should likewise be deemed permanently unclean by virtue of their association with the women: “The daughters of the Samaritans are [deemed as] menstruants from their cradle; and the Samaritans convey uncleanness to what lies beneath them in like degree as [he that has a flux conveys uncleanness] to what lies above him, since they have connexion with menstruants” (m. Niddah 4:1, Danby 1933: 748).
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Moreover, the Rabbis did not allow men and women to be in open contact in public: “He who talks much with womankind brings evil on himself. He neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna” (m. Aboth 3:4, Danby 1933: 446). This is likely to have been true in the first century C.E. also. Given that situation, it was surprising to see Jesus break that tradition by taking the route through Samaria as the author narrates in the text.