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.

        The Hebrew text contains a number of philological problems. For instance, should one press na4ba4l (‘foolish’) to carry the weighty sense of one who rebels against God or denies the existence and power of the true God — thus implying that the Samaritans, by their use of a rival sanctuary, in effect reject the true God of Israel? And should one see here the distinction, common in later Jewish texts, between gôyîm understood as ‘Gentiles’ and (am understood as the chosen people Israel? In any event, by putting those who dwell at Shechem in the same basic category as the Edomites and the Philistines, traditional enemies of Israel, Sir 50,25-26 apparently intends to deny the Samaritans any claim to be part of Israel, the chosen people of God. Perhaps Ben Sira shares the view of the final redactor of 2 Kgs 17, who, as we have seen, implies that the Samaritans are a mixed race practicing a polytheistic religion. As we have also seen, Josephus is completely in accord with this tendency, which he underscores by calling the Samaritans ‘Chutheans’, i.e., people from the region of Kuthah, one of the pagan populations brought in by the king of Assyria after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel (see 2 Kgs 17,24)²⁵.

        Muddled accounts of the Samaritans and their religious stance continue down into Hasmonean times and beyond. We are told, for instance, in 2 Macc 6,2 (cf. 5,23) that, under pressure from the Hellenizing policies of the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV (175-164 B.C.), the Samaritans accepted Hellenistic influence in their sanctuary by naming their temple Zeus Xenios (Zeus the Friend of Strangers)²⁶.