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.

spoken in Matt 10,5b-6 is found in neither the Marcan nor the Q form of the discourse. Clearly, then, Matthew himself has chosen to insert this prohibition into the traditional missionary discourses that he has inherited and combined. Consequently, the key prohibition of entering a Samaritan town must come either from Matthew’s redactional creativity or from his special M tradition.

        (b) An argument in favor of the prohibition being a purely Matthean creation might be constructed on the basis of a parallel logion found later in the Gospel. At 15,24, Matthew inserts a similar negative statement into his reworked version of Mark’s story of the Syrophoenician woman who begs Jesus to exorcise her daughter (Mark 7,24-30). (To be exact: the Syrophoenician woman of Mark’s story becomes a Canaanite woman in Matthew’s version, Matt 15,21-28.) Only in the Matthean form of the story (at Matt 15,24) does Jesus apply to himself a description that echoes his command to the Twelve in Matt 10,6: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (ou)k a)pesta/lhn ei) mh_ ei)j ta_ pro/bata ta_ a)polwlo/ta oi!kou 'Israh/l). Since Matt 15,24 is not only a Matthean insertion into the Marcan story but also clearly a product of Matthew’s own creative activity (and not a traditional logion) as he redacts this Marcan pericope, the suspicion arises that the same is true of the insertion of Matt 10,5b-6 into the Marcan and Q traditions of the missionary discourse. However, the case is far from clear. The presence in 10,5b-6 of a number of rare words or phrases gives one pause. The phrase ‘to the Gentiles’ (ei)j o(do_n e)qnw=n) occurs only here in the NT, and ‘a city of Samaritans’ (po/lin Samaritw=n) occurs only here in Matthew. Hence the presence of M tradition that Matthew has redacted for his own purposes is a possibility, some would say even a probability³⁷.

        (c) I might also add as an aside: I consider at least the saying in Matt 15,24 unhistorical in its present context, since, in Volume Two of my study of the historical Jesus, I have already decided on other grounds that the underlying Marcan story about the Syrophoenician woman does not reach back to the historical Jesus. A fortiori, that must be true of Matthew’s editorial addition to the story³⁸.

        While these considerations do not prove beyond a doubt that Matt 10,5b-6 does not go back to the historical Jesus, they do place the