{"id":9091,"date":"2022-09-29T16:07:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T20:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/?p=9091"},"modified":"2024-05-11T11:52:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T15:52:01","slug":"samaritans-and-judeans-belonging-to-israel-in-the-gospels-first-century-ce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/2022\/09\/samaritans-and-judeans-belonging-to-israel-in-the-gospels-first-century-ce\/","title":{"rendered":"Samaritans and Judeans: Belonging to Israel in the Gospels (first century CE)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ancient authors:<\/strong><\/em> Anonymous, Gospel of John<\/em> 4:4-30; Anonymous, Gospel of Matthew<\/span><\/em> 10:5-6; and Anonymous, Gospel of Luke<\/em> 10:25-37 (link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Comments (by Maia Kotrosits):<\/b><\/i> In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman is an allegory for Judean-Samaritan relations under colonization. Judeans (Jews) and Samaritans share a relationship to the history and traditions of Israel, as the woman in the passage herself suggests, even while their particular histories differ. While Samaria was the former capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, it was later associated with “foreign loyalties,” and often denigrated by Judeans in the south (on which see Josephos’ narratives about Samaritans at this link<\/a>). The mention of the woman’s “five husbands” is likely an allegory for the five peoples or nations that are said to have settled in Samaria (see 2 Kings 17 and Josephos linked above) before Rome (the current “husband”).<\/p>\n

In either case, this passage demonstrates both an instance of Judean denigration of Samaritans and a strong sense of Judean connectedness to Samaritans as people belonging to Israel. In this passage, we see references to the temple in Samaria (mount Gerizim) and the temple in Jerusalem. Both had been destroyed by the time this text was written: the former under the Maccabees (ca. 112 BCE) and the latter <\/span>by the Romans (in 70 CE). This helps explain why Jesus suggests Israel’s god will no longer be worshipped in those places.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are other places in the New Testament writings which suggest both tension and connection between Samaritans and Judeans. In the Gospel of Matthew 10:5-6, Jesus tells his disciples to go out and heal people and cast out demons. He makes an exception by saying to not<\/em> go to the peoples (ethn\u0113<\/em>), or non-Israelites, or to the Samaritans, but instead only go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” While they are not included in the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Samaritans are also not peoples outside of Israel. In the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells a parable of a “good Samaritan” helping someone who had been robbed by bandits after a priest and a Levite passed by. In this case, the Samaritan becomes the exemplar of how those associated with Israel should act.<\/p>\n

Works consulted: M. Kotrosits, Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence, and Belonging<\/em> (Fortress, 2015), chapter 5; M. Chalmers, “Rethinking Luke 10: The Parable of the Good Samaritan Israelite” Journal of Biblical Literature<\/em> 139 (2020) 543-566 (link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This post is part of the Biblical peoples redux series:<\/p>\n