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Did the Samaritans welcome Jesus or turn him away?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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On his last journey to Jerusalem a Samaritan village refuses to receive Jesus “because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem”; he goes on to another village.
And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.
Earlier, many Samaritans of Sychar believe in Jesus and ask him to stay; he stays two days.
And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word; And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
The objection
Luke says that the Samaritans did not receive Jesus. John says that they welcomed him, believed in him and asked him to stay. Critics ask whether the Samaritans received Jesus or not.
The answer
The two Gospels describe different places at different times. John 4 tells of the town of Sychar, early in Jesus’ ministry, when he passed through Samaria on his way north from Judea to Galilee (John 4:3–5). A woman he met at the well told the town about him, many believed, and they asked him to stay. Luke 9 tells of an unnamed village, much later, when Jesus “stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Its people would not receive him, and Luke gives the reason: “because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem” (9:53). Luke himself notes that Jesus then went on to “another village” (9:56).
The reason Luke gives fits what we know of the time. Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim, not at Jerusalem (John 4:20), and relations with Jews were bitter: “the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (John 4:9). Galileans going up to the feasts often took the road through Samaria, and Josephus records that some twenty years later a party of them was attacked at Ginea, a village on the Samaritan border, and many were killed. A village might well refuse lodging to a Jewish teacher on his way to the Jerusalem feasts, while the people of Sychar, meeting him on his way out of Judea, received him gladly. Luke elsewhere shows Samaritans who did respond to Jesus, such as the healed leper who alone came back to give thanks (Luke 17:15–16).
From the classic commentators
at this time there lay, in the road they took, a village that was called Ginea, which was situated in the limits of Samaria and the great plain, where certain persons thereto belonging fought with the Galileans, and killed a great many of them.Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20.6.1, tr. William Whiston (1737)
Sources
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible: Luke 9 (1832), at Bible Hub
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, tr. Whiston, at CCEL