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 unique God of Israel according to the prescriptions contained in the five books of Moses. Over the centuries, this religion had developed distinctive practices such as circumcision of infants, the prohibition of eating pork, the observance of every seventh day as a day of rest, an emphasis on the need to have one central sanctuary, and annual celebrations of special feasts of pilgrimage to this central sanctuary (e.g., Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles). This core religion of Israel experienced various traumas, transformations, and developments under the assaults and influences of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic empires.

        During the last centuries before the turn of the era — though at different times and in different ways — Samaritanism and Judaism emerged from the crucible of all this historical turmoil as two major expressions of the ancient religion of Israel, the ancient worship of Yahweh. Neither religion was immediately derived from the other and neither broke away from the other³¹. There was no one, definitive moment of schism³². Indeed, in a real sense, there was no schism at all. This helps explain the strange symbiosis of the these two latter-day forms of ancient Israelite religion, at times in fierce opposition to each other, at times in uneasy rapprochement³³.

        It is within this unclear and fluctuating situation in the 1st century