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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The Samaritans
The people of the hill country between Judea and Galilee worshiped Israel's God on Mount Gerizim, not in Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans each claimed to be the true heirs of Israel, and centuries of hostility lay between them.
Two neighboring towns, both sure they kept the old faith properly, both still telling stories about what the other side did. The Samaritans lived between Galilee and Judea. They worshiped the same God and kept the law of Moses, but they held that Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, was the place to worship him. Jews thought them half-foreign and wrong. Samaritans resented Jerusalem. Galilean pilgrims passing through their country could meet insults and sometimes violence.
The Samaritans worshiped Israel's one God. They rejected Israel's history after Joshua and wrote worship on Mount Gerizim into the Ten Commandments. Josephus tells how the Jewish ruler Hyrcanus took Shechem and Gerizim, with the Samaritans' temple, which "was now deserted two hundred years after it was built". Keener says John Hyrcanus destroyed it. While Coponius governed Judea, Josephus reports, some Samaritans "came privately into Jerusalem, and threw about dead men's bodies, in the cloisters" during Passover. They were shut out of the temple afterward. Galileans traveled through Samaria to the festivals, and under the governor Cumanus the villagers of Ginea killed Galilean pilgrims (Josephus). Each side circulated stories of the other's atrocities. Violence was the exception, Keener notes, but the writings of both are hostile. Jewish tradition held a Samaritan woman to be continually unclean, so a Jew who drank from her vessel would be defiled. Wright says each side held that it alone inherited what God promised Abraham and Moses, and so owned the land by right. Jews counted Samaritans half-breeds and false worshipers. Blomberg, citing Martina Böhm, notes that the two main differences were where to worship and how. Herod rebuilt the old capital as a Greek city named Sebaste for Augustus, while the Samaritans lived in the countryside around Shechem. They awaited a restorer like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-18), and Josephus tells of a false prophet who drew them after him. Magen's excavations on Mount Gerizim found a sacred precinct with an altar and burned bones. It was first built in the Persian period on the pattern of Jerusalem's (Price and House).
An analogy: two churches that split generations ago, each with its own building on its own hill, each sure it is the true one. They share a Bible and a history, and their members still cross the street to avoid each other.
A Samaritan village refusing pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, as in Luke 9:52-53, acts out an old quarrel over where God should be worshiped, and a Samaritan hero in a story told to Jews turns the expected ranking upside down. In John 4:9 a Samaritan woman is surprised that a Jew asks her for a drink. In Acts 8:5 the message goes to a city of Samaria.
Not two churches with the same Bible. The Samaritans rejected Israel's history after Joshua and wrote worship on Mount Gerizim into their Ten Commandments. The quarrel had blood in it too: a Jewish ruler destroyed their temple, and pilgrims were killed on the road. Still, they were neither foreigners nor pagans; they worshiped Israel's God.
Which road the Galilean pilgrims took. Josephus says it was the custom of the Galileans to travel through Samaria to the festivals. Keener's notes say pilgrims often took that short route, though some went around. Wright says most pilgrims preferred to go down the Jordan valley to Jericho and up to Jerusalem, as safer. Bailey goes further, writing that "Pious Jews usually traveled around Samaria to avoid defilement." Strauss, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary, and the Zondervan atlas side with Josephus. For them the road through Samaria was the usual one, three days at the least, since the way through Perea meant passing through Gentile territory, though some went around.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-10-25-37\/","n":"Luke 10:25-37, The Samaritan on the Jericho road","s":"A lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life and then who his neighbor is. Jesus tells of a man left half dead on the road to Jericho, passed by a priest and a Levite and rescued by a Samaritan.","r":"Luke 10:25-37"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-17-11-19\/","n":"Luke 17:11-19, Ten lepers and the Samaritan who came back","s":"On the border between Samaria and Galilee ten men with leprosy call to Jesus from a distance. He sends them to the priests, they are cleansed on the way, and only one, a Samaritan, comes back to thank him.","r":"Luke 17:11-19"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/john-4-1-42\/","n":"John 4:1-42, A Samaritan woman at Jacob's well","s":"Tired at noon, Jesus sits on Jacob's well and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. They talk about living water, her husbands and the right mountain for worship, and her town comes out to meet him.","r":"John 4:1-42"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/john-8-31-59\/","n":"John 8:31-59, Abraham's children, and before Abraham, I am","s":"Jesus tells Judeans who had believed him that the truth will make them free. They answer that they are Abraham's children and were never slaves, and the argument ends with Jesus saying before Abraham was, I am, and stones in their hands.","r":"John 8:31-59"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/acts-8-4-25\/","n":"Acts 8:4-25, Samaria and Simon the magician","s":"Philip preaches the Messiah in Samaria, and even the famous magician Simon is baptized. When Peter and John lay hands on the Samaritans and they receive the Spirit, Simon offers money for the power.","r":"Acts 8:4-25"}
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Luke 9:52-53 and 10:33
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Luke 9:52, 9:53 and 10:33
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13.9.1, 18.2.2 and 20.6.1, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, comment on Luke 10:25-37
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Luke 9:52-56 and 10:33-35
- Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 7.4 The Good Samaritan
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 4:9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 4:4 and 4:9
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ch. 15, The Woman at the Well, opening
- Mark L. Strauss, Luke, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, sidebar Samaria
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Life of Christ
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Samaria and Samaritans
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, ch. 12, John 4:4-5 New Testament Samaria
