John P. Meier, «The Historical Jesus and the Historical Samaritans: What can be Said?», Vol. 81 (2000) 202-232

Careful analysis of the Gospels shows that there is not very much hard data about the historical Jesus’ interaction with or views about the Samaritans. There is multiple attestation, found in the Lucan and Johannine traditions, that Jesus, different from typical views of his time, held a benign view of Samaritans and had positive, though passing, encounters with some Samaritans. However, there is gospel agreement, from silence or statement, that Jesus had no programmatic mission to the Samaritans. Besides the above important conclusions, this essay also makes clear the useful distinction between Samaritans and Samarians.

Books on the historical Jesus regularly treat Jesus’ relationship to various Jewish groups and movements of the time, especially the Pharisees¹. Relatively rare, though, in books on the historical Jesus is a detailed consideration of the relationship of the historical Jesus to the historical Samaritans. I stress the adjective historical in each case because in this qualifier lie the rub and the problem. If treatments of the historical Jesus even advert to the question of the Samaritans, the Samaritans are often described in uncritical fashion, with the narrative of 2 Kgs 17 and later polemics being taken more or less uncritically as sober history². In contrast, those studies of the Samaritans which sift