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.

but by his adversaries. In fact, it is a slur that they hurl against Jesus in the midst of a hot exchange of invectives: ‘Do we not say well that you are a Samaritan and are possessed by a demon?’ This slur may refer either to the supposed illegitimate origins of the Samaritans (and thus indirectly to the supposedly illegitimate birth of Jesus ⁵⁹) or more likely to the supposed magical powers of the Samaritans (e.g., Simon Magus, Dositheus), attributed in this saying to their consorting with demonic agents. James D. Purvis ingeniously spells out this point by placing it within the larger context of the developing polemic of chap. 8⁶⁰. He suggests that the double charge made by Jesus’ adversaries refers back to (1) Jesus’ accusation that the Jews are ‘not of God’ (8,47) and not Abraham’s children (8,39-40), an accusation that echoes the sort of charge that Samaritans would make against Jews, and (2) Jesus’ claim to be of heavenly or divine origin (‘from above’) and therefore ‘not of this world’ (8,23) — a claim that his adversaries twist into an accusation of being possessed by a demon. It is telling that in v. 49 the Johannine Jesus thinks it sufficient to reply to the adversaries’ double charge with a single denial: ‘I am not possessed by a demon’. Clearly, then, in the mind of the evangelist, the charge of being a Samaritan and the charge of being possessed are two alternate ways of saying the same disparaging thing. Whatever the precise historicity of the debate in John 8 — a great deal of which reflects the polemic between John’s community and Jews or Jewish Christians at the end of the 1st century A.D.⁶¹ — the saying in 8,48 voices the common disdain with which observant Jews viewed Samaritans.

        In the end, the results of our quest are disappointingly meager. We must admit we are not left with very much by way of hard data about the historical Jesus’ interaction with or views about the Samaritans⁶². At best, there is a multiple attestation in Lucan and Johannine traditions that Jesus stood over against the typical Jewish views of the day in that he held a benign view of Samaritans, even when that attitude was not reciprocated. In addition, both Luke and John suggest that Jesus had