A Response to My "The Woman at the Well: Scorned Sinner or Holy Woman?"

I received the following in response to "The woman at the well: scorned sinner or holy woman?"

Remember brother that she was a Samaritan, the Samaritans no longer followed the Law because they had integrated idolatry into Judaism. this was the reason the Jews would walk around Samaria rather than risk any contact with a Samaritan. the woman was an adulterer, but she did not know the truth. she was waiting for the Messiah because He would teach her the truth. Jesus had compassion on her because she didn't pretend to know the truth, she was honest, and she desperately needed/wanted the truth. she went to the well at noon time in order to avoid the scorn from the other Samaritan women, none of them would go to get water in the heat of noon. she was a sinner even by Samaritan standards, yet He used her to reach the whole town. God reveals Himself to those who desperately need His healing touch, and then because of their testimony countless others are saved. if you look at the background of many powerful preachers today, you wont see a born man of God, you will see a retch who has been healed.

God bless you and your heart to know the Word :)

in His grip, sp.

He made two points.

1. She was a sinner, thus not holy.


2. She would not have been stoned for adultery since Samaritans do not obey Jewish laws

To the first point, I agree that she is indeed a sinner; however, no more than any Jew is a sinner nor any more than any of us is a sinner.

The Gospel of John never accuses this poor woman of any sin except that she lives with a man who is not her husband. And I have accounted for that in my previous post. I have also accounted for the scorn of the other women in my previous post.

Does her being a sinner mean that she is not holy? That's sort of a trick question.

If I were using the word "holy" to mean sacred, then I would agree that she can not be holy if she is a sinner.

However, I was using the second definition of the word "holy": "set apart". Thus, she can be a sinner and also be set apart by the Lord for a special purpose.

To the second point, I disagree.

First a historical background:

When the Assyrian Empire conquered ancient Israel, it deported the upper classes of the Israelites to Assyria, replacing them with settlers from other parts of the Assyrian Empire. The lower classes and the settlers intermarried and merged into one community, the Samaritans. They practice Samaritanism which is a religion based on the Torah. (See 2 Kings 17). Because God sent lions among them to kill them, the king of the Assyrians sent one of the priests from Bethel to teach the new settlers about God's ordinances. Currently there are about 700 Samaritans living in Israel and in the West Bank.

Now my response to the second point:

When the exiled Jews returned they had to make a choice to either recognize the Samaritans as Jews or not. There was a bit of economic-social-political wrangling. The result is that the returning Jewish exiles decided not to recognize them. The reason that was given is that the Samaritans do not practice pure Judaism because they sometimes refer to the native gods of the imported people groups. (While I am not going to call this assertion a lie, because I'm sure the accusation must have been based on some shred of truth, I do believe that this aspect of the Samaritans was overblown.) The Samaritans, on the other hand, claim that their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, predating the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but that claim has historically been rejected by normative Judaism. Thus, started the rift between the two groups. Over the years, the divide became so great that the two groups literally hated each other.

The Samaritans do believe that there is only one God, the same God recognized by the Hebrew prophets. Their view of God is the same as the Jewish biblical view of God. They believe that the Torah (their version) was dictated by God to Moses.

The two religions are essentially the same.

Their main Torah text differs slightly from the Jewish text (Masoretic Text). Some differences are doctrinal: for example, their Torah explicitly mentions that "the place that God chose to establish His name" is Mount Gerizim. Other differences seem more or less accidental.

The form of the letters in the manuscript copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch, called the Samaritan alphabet, is different from that of the Hebrew copies, and is probably the same as that which was in general use before the Babylonian captivity. There are other peculiarities in the writing.

There are differences between the Hebrew and the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch in the readings of many sentences. In about two thousand instances in which the Samaritan and the Jewish texts (Masoretic text) differ, the Septuagint (LXX) agrees with the Samaritan. For example, Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the LXX reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the Masoretic text, however, the same passage reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." The New Testament, when quoting from the Old Testament, agrees as a rule with the Samaritan text, where that differs from the Jewish text (Masoretic text).

The Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments commands to build the altar on Mt. Gerizim, which would be the site at which all sacrifices should be offered.

Although the Samaritans adhere to the Torah (the first five books of the bible), they reject the Halakha (Rabbinical Jewish law).

However, the laws concerning the putting to death of adulterers is found in the Torah.