Appropriating Traditions

The force John's presentation of Jesus would have had for his community hinges to a significant degree on the well's patriarchal heritage. Jesus's offer of “living water” (4.10), after first meeting with incredulity (“Sir you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

But John's account depicts the superiority of Jesus to the Jacob traditions. This is typical of the Fourth Gospel, which often compares its protagonist favorably to luminaries such as Moses and Abraham.^[319] Notably, the narrative in John 4 does not take direct issue with the well's patriarchal heritage but rather relies on its potency to press home the eminence of Jesus, demonstrated through the superiority of his gift. In contrast to the water one receives through lowering a bucket into the well (φρέαρ), Jesus's offering becomes its own “spring of water” (πηγή ΰδατος) in the recipient, welling up (άλλομένου) to eternal life (vv. 13-14).

The political dimensions of Jesus's gift, along with their implications for John's community, come to light with the narrative's allusion to further traditions. These concern Samaria's history as a colonized territory and emerge via Jesus's diagnosis of the Samaritan woman's condition: “you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (4:18). The reference to five husbands along with a contemporary extramarital dalliance functions as an allegory for Samaria's submission to various peoples under Assyria (2 Kgs 17:24; Josephus, A.J. 9.288) and the present experience of Roman hegemony (Koester 1990, 675).^[321] The special knowledge required to render this assessment of the woman's/Samaria's condition earns Jesus recognition as a prophet (4:19).^[322] But just as critical, the narrative offers an implied contrast between the rule of colonizing powers and Jesus, whose gift promises a more fulfilling life. Thus, though the countercultural nature of Jesus's promise reaches new heights in the subsequent portions of John 4 (see below), it is already implicated here in the comparisons offered. Jesus ought to be the sole source of legitimation and life for the evangelist's community. What John envisages such loyalty to entail for these Jesus followers, living in the shadow of Rome, emerges when Jesus takes up the spatial dimensions of worship.