The missing cultural group

Most discussions of the cultures present during Jesus’ incarnation include the Jews, the Romans and the Greeks. It is widely agreed that three of the Gospels can be said to target these groups. But there is another group that is often overlooked – and that is the target of the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. That group is the Samaritan Israelites.

History of the (Samaritan) Israelites

Primordial History

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and all its living things along with humans, creatures who bore his image to be stewards of His Creation. In order for these humans to respond in love to the love he gave, these humans needed the opportunity to freely choose the object of their love. As we now know, these humans chose to misdirect their love, causing broken relations between the humans themselves, between the humans and God and between the humans and the earth.[1]

But God’s love for the humans did not change and God began a plan to restore His image-bearing creatures, as well as all of Creation, to Himself. This plan ultimately would be carried out through a “seed of the woman.” But first we read of the horrors of the rebellion multiplying to a point where God saw fit to destroy most of humanity with a flood. Even then the rebellion continued to the point where God needed to confuse the common language so that those image-bearers would spread out and form different nations.[2] 

Patriarchal History

The next stage of the plan begins to unfold when God called Abraham to leave the land of Mesopotamia to go to “a land I will show you[3].” When Abraham first arrived in the land of Canaan, a land which God promised would belong to Abraham’s descendants, he built an altar at Shechem. It would be through Abraham’s descendants that the “seed of the woman” would come through which the whole world will be blessed. This promised “seed of the woman” would come through Abraham[4], Abraham’s son Isaac[5] and Abrahams’ grandson, Jacob[6], who would be renamed Israel[7]. Israel would have 12 sons and a daughter[8] through which Israel would gradually become a nation[9]. Jacob also built an altar at Shechem when he returned from his relatives in Paddan Aram[10].

Israel United and Divided

Because of a famine, Israel would end up in Egypt where they became slaves, but God returned the nation of Israel to settle in the land of Canaan[11]. When Joshua led Israel into the land of Canaan, after conquering Ai, he renewed the covenant at Mt Ebal and Mt Gerizim[12]. Later on, Joshua had Israel renew their covenant in Shechem[13].

Ultimately, Israel’s disordered love would lead to the nation being divided in two[14]. The northern 10 tribes, identified as “Israel,” and the southern 2 tribes identified as “Judah” (the second tribe, Benjamin, was much smaller than Judah). When the northern tribes separated from the southern tribes, they no longer celebrated worship in Jerusalem and became susceptible to worshipping idols and foreign gods. Even so, the southern tribes were not much better, and so God saw fit to discipline both the northern tribes and the southern tribes.

Israel in Exile

First, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern tribes[15]. The leaders of those tribes were captured and scattered through the Assyrian Empire where they were lost to history, while those left behind were unable to reorganize into tribes. The Assyrians created a capital city, called Samaria[16], in what was central Israel. That whole province eventually became known as Samaria, and the inhabitants, some Israelite and some not, became known as “Samaritans.”

Later, the Babylonian Empire overtook the Assyrian Empire (including the land of northern Israel and the capital of Samaria) also captured Jerusalem and brought the leaders of the southern tribes into captivity in Israel[17]. Since most of the Israelite exiles in Babylon were mostly from the tribe of Judah (Hebrew “Y’hudai”), those exiles began to be referred to as “Y’hudai.” (Greek “Ioudaioi”). That name transferred into the English language as “Jews[18]”.

Israel Returns

When the Persians captured Babylon, they allowed the Y’hudai to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and, later, the walls. It may have been in this time period that the remnants of the northern tribes started to build an alternate temple on Mt Gerizim which was now located in the land known as Samaria[19]. The Israelites in Samaria (people we can now call the Samaritan Israelites[20]) had their own version of the Torah and did not accept the rest of the writings in the Tanach. They believed that Mt Gerizim was where they should worship, and not in the Jerusalem of the Jews[21]. In Ezra 4, when we see the “enemies of Judah and Benjamin” offer to “help rebuild the temple,” that wouldn’t have been the Samaritan Israelites because they wouldn’t have anything to do with the “Jews.”

Israel’s exile in the Assyrian and Babylonian empires was cataclysmic, but there was hope, not only that the people of Israel would return to the Promised Land but that the kingdom of Israel would be united, restored, and a blessing to the world[22]. That time would come after the Persian Empire was replaced by the Greek Empire and then the Greek Empire was replaced by the Roman Empire.

The First Century Mission of Jesus

In the fullness of time[23] Jesus, the “seed of the woman” promised since Genesis, was born in humble circumstances to the Jewish remnant of the Kingdom of Israel. Although his ministry did touch some non-Israelite people, Jesus’ focus was on Israel[24], not just the Judean Israelites but the Samaritans as well.

The Gospel of John[25] is the only gospel that records Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman and the people of Sychar.[26] The Gospel makes it clear that this encounter was intentional. The Gospel makes a point to note that this encounter occurred “near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph” and that “Jacob’s well was there.” This place was also meant to evoke all the previous mentions of Shechem in the Bible, directing the reader to, among other things, the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy[27] that the Messiah would reunite the northern and southern kingdom of Israel.

The Gospel of John gives many other clues that it is targeted towards the Samaritan Israelites. Here are a few examples:

• Unlike the other gospels, Jesus is not being presented in this Gospel as Galilean (Mk. 6:1-4; Lk. 4:23-24; Matt. 13:54-57), but as Judean. (Jn. 4:43-45) So it is possible that the way to understand verse 11b – “his own (people) did not receive him” – could be to see that, in this Gospel, Jesus belongs to the Judeans in a way that is not stated in the other Gospels.
• John 1:14-15 Jesus “tabernacled” or “pitched a tent among us.” In the Gospel of John there is greater degree of connection between Jesus and the Tabernacle and less of a connection to the temple.
• John 1:26-28 John believed that his authority was based on God’s approval but that the Jewish leaders did not know. This would become a repetitive theme in the entire Gospel, resulting in a fully developed court case against Israel’s formal leadership.
• John often provides translations or simple explanations of Hebrew and Aramaic terms or names in Greek. This is normally taken to mean that John had a Gentile audience in view who knew little about Judaism. However, many of the Samaritans did not live near Judea and may not have had a command of Aramaic or Samaritan Hebrew.
• Because John does not include the Bethlehem birth narrative, as Matthew does, there is less of a link between Jesus and Judea – a connection that John consistently avoided because of his outreach to Samaritan Israelites.
• John 1:47-51 Jesus referred to Nathanael, not as Ioudaioi (Jew/Judean) in whom there is no guile, but in a more generic way: “an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.” This terminology was perfectly fitting for a Samaritan audience. Nathanael referred to Jesus not as the King of the Ioudaioi only, but as the King of Israel.
• John’s Gospel, like Matthew’s Gospel, is full of Old Testament references. However, John’s Gospel contains abundant negative references to the Ioudaioi. Close examination shows that these negative references are directed toward the Jewish leaders and not towards the Jewish people as a whole. However, these references are so abundant[28] that they were even used by people in the church to justify their antisemitism. 

The Gospels and the World of Jesus

Jesus’ confined His ministry mainly to the Judean and Samaritan Israelites. After His resurrection, the church was released to the Romans and Greeks, the rest of the world.

	Matthew	Mark	Luke	John
Portrait of Jesus	King of the Jews	Servant	Teacher	Son of God
Intended readers	Judean Israelites	Action oriented Romans	Cultured Greeks	Samaritan Israelites
Key phrases	Kingdom of heaven, fulfilled	Kingdom of God, Immediately, now	Kingdom of God, Son of man	Believe, Word of God, only begotten Son, eternal life
Focus	Jesus is the Messianic King of the promised Davidic kingdom	Jesus came to suffer and die in order to claim victory over sin and death	Jesus is the perfect Son of Man, the Messiah prophesied by the prophets, the Savior of the world	Jesus Christ is the fully divine Son of God who existed before creation, the sacrificial Lamb of God through whom we receive eternal life
Prominent sections	sermons	miracles	parables	teachings
genealogy	Traced to Abraham	none	Traced to Adam	none

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[1] Genesis 1-3

[2] Genesis 4-11

[3] Genesis 12:1-9

[4] Genesis 15:1-6

[5] Genesis 21:1-7

[6] Genesis 25:21-23; 27:1-29

[7] Genesis 32:21-28

[8] Genesis 29:31-30:24

[9] Exodus 1:1-22

[10] Genesis 33:18-20

[11] Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

[12] bibleatlas.org/mount_ebal.htm; www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gerizim-mount; 

[13] Joshua 24:1-27

[14] 1 Kings 11, 12

[15] 2 Kings 1 5

[16] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaria

[17] 2 Kings 24, 25

[18] Ezra 4:23

[19] www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/the-temple-on-mount-gerizim-in-the-bible-and-archaeology

[20] whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5706; www.the-samaritans.net/mount_gerizim; www.gotquestions.org/mount-Gerizim.html

[21] weekly.israelbiblecenter.com/understanding-samaritans-israelites; http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_1319.cfm

[22] Isaiah 8:5-6; Ezekiel 34:11-16; 37:15-22

[23] Galatians 4:4

[24] Matthew 15:21-28

[25] John 4:1-42

[26] It is not known if Sychar refers to the town of Shechem itself or is a town near Shechem.

[27] Ezek 37:15-23

[28] John 1:19; 2:18; 5:16,18; 6:41,52; 7:1,13,15; 8:48,52; 9:19, 22; 10:24, 31