Magdalen Lawler discovered this icon of the Woman at the Well many years ago. She has used it ever since as the inspiration for innumerable retreats and conferences. Its appeal to her is that it ...seems to span the traditions of West and East with its lyrical beauty and its deep theology.The icon has encouraged Magdalen to study the gospel passage in detail and to research many accounts of life in first century Palestine. Now her research and retreats are brought together in this beautifully illustrated series of reflections on the Samaritan Woman at the Well.
The dialogue between Jesus and the woman of Samaria, which is related in detail by the author of the fourth gospel, focuses on the sign of Jacob’s well and the living water in its first part ...(4:7b–15). The climax of this section combines the well, the gift of God and the identity of Jesus. By way of allusion, Jesus leads the woman to the recognition of His person’s mystery. If readers wish to comprehend the meaning of this conduct, they cannot limit themselves only to the biblical story of the patriarch Jacob. They must consider the Targum traditions. Only thus is it possible to understand how a woman of Samaria could recognize the mystery of Jesus, a Jew. Setting the story in the cultural context sheds light on the author’s intentions behind the inclusion of the narrative of 4:1–42 in Corpus Johanneum. This is important in relation to the land of Samaria which was then inhabited by people who varied in terms of ethnicity and religion. The woman whom Jesus met at Jacob’s well is described in such a way as to represent all Samaritans: descendants of proto-Samaritans and immigrant heathens. All of them were invited to draw from the source of salvation opened up by Jesus Christ.
When Jesus meets the Samaritan Woman at Jacob's well in John 4, it is a meeting between two colonial subjects in the Roman Empire. In this encounter we find the Samaritan Woman as a triply ...marginalised body, a woman subject to multiple, intersecting forms of oppression within her patriarchal context. Identified as a Samaritan Woman, Jewish rabbis regarded her as unclean, impure, and being menstruous from birth. It can also be deduced that she is an outcast in her own society because she comes to draw from the well at noon, the hottest part of the day when people did not usually fetch water. This Samaritan Woman is nameless, landless and powerless in an imperial, colonial and patriarchal context. The poem of Diana Ferrus, I've come to take you home, in memory of Sarah Baartman, highlights how Baartman was dehumanised and treated as a sexual object by European colonisers. Through a postcolonial reading of John 4, I consider the intersections between the Samaritan Woman and the early life of Sara Baartman in their respective colonial contexts and invite the reader, as the poem invites Baartman, to come home to Africa and resist Western European imperial and colonial patterns and tendencies. Contribution This article has interdisciplinary implications. This is an interdisciplinary study in the sense that it offers a biblical interpretation of John 4 that is informed by the life of Sara Baartman that has been uncovered through anthropology, history and sociology. It is also integrating the field of postcolonial biblical hermeneutics with the theory of intersectionality.
The Samaritan woman in John 4 has been generally viewed as morally loose because of her marital experience. Nigerian women with similar experience are also perceived by many as morally deficient. ...This article examined the woman’s experience in light of divorce and remarriage in Nigeria. Employing the reader-oriented and descriptive methods, the essay found that in his encounter with the Samaritan woman Jesus did not accuse her of any sin. Moreover, the Pentateuchal laws, which were binding also on Samaritans, had provisions by which it was permissible for a woman to be married several times. Therefore, the woman’s marital experience did not necessarily make her morally deficient. The article also found that in Nigeria certain patriarchal factors do force women out of marriage, which also has nothing to do with their moral status. Due to the Christian doctrine that prohibits a woman to marry another man while her husband is still alive, some churches treat women divorcees with contempt and segregation. But this doctrine is based on biblical passages, which if adapted to the Nigerian readers’ context make divorce and remarriage acceptable. This view is in line with Jesus’ open attitude to the Samaritan woman. Therefore, in the Nigerian context the pastoral significance of the Samaritan woman’s story resides not in her morality but in the church recognising that divorce and remarriage do not constitute disobedience to scripture, and that they are not necessarily an indication of moral misconduct on the part of the affected women.Contribution Contributing to the scholarly discussion on the Samaritan woman narrative, the article compared her marital experience with those of Nigerian women affected by divorce and remarriage, and postulated that their experiences are not necessarily an indication of moral depravity on their part.
Genealogies, knowledge, and purity all can provide separate identities with the means for competing self-definition. This article assumes a social location near Ephesus with Samaritan Israelites and ...Judeans in a Jesus-believing network. Rather than providing an analysis in which divisions are transcended, this reading suggests that a negotiation in John 4:4–45 of these three characteristics navigates divisions to create a complex, merged superordinate identity.
This article explores water as portrayed in the story of the Samaritan woman and Jesus in John 4:1-42 on the basis of an ecofeminist theological perspective: a method of valuing the liberation of ...women and nature. The story depicts an event in the context of water shortages, which are characteristic of the region. However, when interpreting the story, a number of scholars have focused on the spiritual living water of Jesus rather than on the value of ordinary, physical, potable water. Based on an ecofeminist theological analysis, this article not only critiques anthropocentric, dualistic, and patriarchal paradigms, but also highlights interdependencies, interrelationships, and mutualities between all creatures and water. This contributes to the pursuit of an alternative Christian worldview which is concerned with all living beings on earth without any disparity. In addition, it is important not to distinguish between the two interpretations of water, as a physical resource and as a spiritual metaphor, especially if this leads us to put a greater emphasis on the former to the detriment of the latter. This article applies an ecofeminist biblical hermeneutic, which articulates and explores the oppression of both nature and women. This looks at the story through the lenses of four different hermeneutics: experience, suspicion, reconfiguration, and transformative action for Church, and proposes a range of ways in which a new interpretation can be justified and applied.
This article addresses the current challenges and concerns of our world, shaped by immigration, exile, language barriers and marginalization, to which people are called to respond. Barriers related ...to race, religion and culture were also a genuine challenge for Jesus and the early community of believers. The Samaritan narrative (Jn 4:1-42) demonstrates a sensitivity to the issue of Jesus' cross-cultural religious ministry through his dialogue with a woman who would have considered him a foreigner. The various themes within this story may function as a challenge regarding how to meet other people despite existing barriers. An authentic response to Jesus constitutes the basis for human relationships and for a united commitment to justice, peace and service of others. Questo articolo affronta le odierne sfide e preoccupazioni del nostro mondo contrassegnato da immigrazione, esilio, barriere linguistiche ed emarginazione, a cui le persone sono chiamate a rispondere. Barriere legate alla razza, alla religione e alla cultura sono state una sfida reale anche per Gesù e per la prima comunità dei credenti. Il racconto dell'incontro tra Gesù e la Samaritana (Gv 4,1-42) dimostra una profonda sensibilità verso la questione del ministero religioso e inter-culturale di Gesù nel suo dialogo con la donna che gli si rivolge considerandolo uno straniero. I vari temi all'interno di questo racconto possono fungere da incentivo a incontrare altre persone attraversando barriere come l'etnia, la religione e l'emarginazione. Una risposta autentica a Gesù è il fondamento per le relazioni umane e per un comune impegno per la giustizia, la pace e il servizio degli altri.
The aim of the article is to investigate the theme of words in prayer. In the dialogue with the work of C. S. Lewis, we ask how it is possible to overcome the limits of our words in order to reach ...God and reality. At first, we point to several possible ways in which our language is limited. After that we focus on the process of ‘gaining faces’, which is the main concept of Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces but which can be complemented by the reading of his Great Divorce. This process is also demonstrated in the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. Last but not least, the article shows that the idea of overcoming the limits of words in our prayer cannot be separated from everyday life and that the principle of prayer should thus become the mode of Christian living.
In Das Evangelium des Johannes (1941), Rudolf Bultmann argues that John's account of the Samaritan woman in John 4:4-42 serves only as a catalyst in bringing the Samaritans to Jesus. Her strange ...question μήτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστός (v. 29, NRSV: "He cannot be the Messiah, can he?") arouses the townspeople's curiosity and they come to Jesus (v. 30). John's profound sense of irony and ambiguity suggests that the woman may not have come to belief in Jesus, but the townspeople have (πιστεύομεν, "we believe," v. 42). Bultmann's reading is no longer accepted, replaced now by the widely welcomed view that the woman has come to faith in Jesus—a conversion story. Revisiting John 4:4-42 here, I offer a semantic argument and suggest that scholarship on John 4 ought to consider the ambiguity of the account—the woman may not have arrived at faith in Jesus.
Utilizing social rhetorical criticism and social cultural texture, this exegetical analysis of John 4 examines the transformational interaction of Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Previous research ...focuses on the woman’s demographic profile without fully investigating the significance of relational demography in the context of first century Mediterranean culture. This analysis of the social cultural texture of John 4 presents a model for Christian leadership that crosses gender, race, and geographic barriers and capitalizes on the benefits of relational demography for organizational success.
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