Samaritan Identity and Impetus: Testing the Hypothesis of the Woman at the Well (original) (raw)

Could the impetus of the vicious rift between the Jews and Samaritans be the place of worship? This paper aims to evaluate the idea of place-focused worship as a leading cause of the Jewish-Samaritan schism. This paper asks the following question: How does the Samaritan woman's understanding of the Jewish-Samaritan schism converge with the available evidence? The paper contends that both the Jews and Samaritans were Israelite-background peoples who worshipped Yahweh and developed identities centered on the proper place of worship. At the very least, the woman at the well’s statement offers insight into the popular-level Samaritan understanding of the schism and Samaritan origins at a time when other sources are silent or polemical.