Changing Images of the Samaritan Woman in Early Reformed Commentaries on John

Abstract

Medieval Christians were fascinated by the character of the Samaritan woman, whose story is presented in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Numerous legends celebrating her life history recounted in imaginative detail the heroic deeds of this convert to Christ. The Bible itself, of course, gives no information about her following her encounter with Jesus, nor does it even mention her name. But medieval hagiographers named her Photina and recounted her brave witness to the gospel, leading to her ultimate martyrdom. One legend reports that she converted the daughter of Nero and was martyred in Rome. Another places her in Carthage, where she preached the gospel and died in prison. Although ancient and medieval commentaries on the fourth Gospel do not commemorate these extracanonical accomplishments, they portray the Samaritan woman's personality and discipleship in equally flattering ways. Not only does she beautifully model the sinner's conversion to Christ, but she also demonstrates admirable zeal in bearing witness to Christ among her fellow Samaritans. On the basis of her testimony, a host of the citizens of Sychar come to faith in Christ, a feat matched by none of Jesus' disciples in the pages of the Gospels.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.