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.

burden of proof on anyone who would make that claim³⁹. My own view is that this saying is more likely a product of some group within the first Christian generation that opposed widening the proclamation of the gospel to groups other than Jews. Still, one must note an important paradox here. The saying in Matt 10,5b-6 may not be ‘authentic’ in the sense of having been said by the historical Jesus. Yet it may be ‘authentic’ in a broader sense. Namely, if we may put aside the question of the intentions of its creator(s), the saying seems to reflect accurately what in fact happened during the public ministry: neither Jesus nor his immediate disciples pursued a formal, programmatic mission to the Samaritans as a group in the way that they pursued such a mission to their fellow Jews in Galilee and Judea. In addition, we should take note of the telling point of view presupposed in Matt 10,5b-6: Samaritans are not Gentiles, but neither do they belong to ‘the house of Israel’ — even to those Israelites considered ‘lost’⁴⁰. Thus, the saying in Matt 10,5b-6, coming probably from Christian Jews of the first generation of the church, captures well the ambiguous status and marginality of Samaritans in the eyes of both Christians and Jews in the 1st century A.D.

        The fact that Jesus did not undertake a formal mission to the Samaritans as a group does not, however, exclude the possibility of occasional encounters with or references to Samaritans — which is precisely what we find in the Gospels of Luke and John. Nevertheless, while they supply more extensive references to Samaritans, Luke and John must be approached with suspicion as sources for the historical Jesus’ interaction with Samaritans. Of all the NT authors, it is only Luke (explicitly) and John (implicitly) who refer to Christians preaching the gospel to Samaritans in the early days of the church (see Acts 1,8; 8,1,5-25; 15,3; cf. John 4,35-38). The possibility that Christian history is being read back into the public ministry of Jesus is