Transcending Alterity: The Proverbial Strange Woman Meets the Johannine Samaritan Woman

Abstract

<p>In the Gospel of John (4:1-42), a story is told ofa Samaritan woman who goes to a well to draw water. While she is there, she encounters Jesus. They converse about living water and true worship. This encounter so impresses the woman that she returns to the Samaritan city of Sychar and tells the people about him. In response, the Samaritans come to meet Jesus, invite him to stay, and, after two days, declare him to be the "savior of the world."</p> <p>Legitimated by a comparison between Wisdom motifs and the Johannine presentation of Jesus, this narrative is interpreted against the background of the Wisdom tradition of early Judaism. The Samaritan Woman follows the paradigm of the Strange Woman found in Proverbs 2:16-19, 5:1-23, 6:23-35 and 7:5-27. Like the Strange Woman, the Samaritan Woman is depicted as an adulteress, as a foreign woman and as a foolish woman. Moreover, the Strange Woman is constructed as the polar opposite of Lady Wisdom and the Samaritan Woman is constructed as the opposite of Jesus: she is female, he is male~ she is a Samaritan, he is a Jew; she does not know, he does know. In this way, both the Strange Woman and the Samaritan Woman symbolize alterity.</p> <p>The narrative genre of the gospels, however, allows development of character to take place - a movement which is not possible within the didactic genre of Proverbs. Within the symbolic layer of the Johannine community, she is no longer an adulteress, but she finds her "legitimate husband" in Jesus. No longer a foreign woman, she is given the possibility of rebirth "from above." No longer ignorant, she brings others to belief through her word. The symbols of alterity are thus reconfigured in the new community.</p> <p>The emphasis on the symbolic representation of this character undermines the recent historical-critical arguments which claim that the Samaritan Woman narrative is based on the story of a historical person.</p>