Conclusion

How do the Fountain of Glauke and Jacob's Well in John 4 compare in their contribution to community identity? Both intersect with powerful traditions and spatial contexts; yet we have observed that the water sources capitalized on these allusions in different ways and for different types of communities.

Our two interpreters—Roman planners of Corinth, and John's Gospel— exploited traditions for their own purposes. Appropriating the archaic looking fountain as “Glauke,” Roman Corinth claimed stewardship in a localized and visual manner over a Greek cultural tradition. But in doing so the colony planners also projected a Roman-ordered view of the world, signaling containment of the unruly Medea figure within the nearby Roman spaces, most notably the forum. By the same token the narrative in John 4 displays a knowledge of biblical traditions pertaining to Jacob's Well and Samaritan history while advancing the evangelist's own aims. Jesus is greater than his counterpart, Jacob, by virtue of the superiority of his life-giving water. In turn, this superior life sets him apart from Samaria's colonizers who have brought no such fulfillment. For John's community, Jesus's superiority to referenced traditions requires looking to him for legitimation, rather than patriarchal traditions or this world's rulers. Such a commitment entails a markedly different response to the wider civic context than that implied by Roman Corinth's appropriation of Glauke.

Indeed, the colony's stewardship of Glauke and John's treatment of Jacob's Well differ strikingly in the spatial reconfiguration enjoined by each. With the Roman planners' embrace of Glauke within the local setting of Corinth, the fountain came to serve as a landmark leading to the forum, where symbols of Roman civic values proliferated. In this way the wider spatial context, providing an interpretive framework for the fountain, encouraged full identification with the colony's Roman status. By contrast, John 4 propounds a delocalized form of community self-understanding. In place of the mediation of familiar cultic sites, John's delocalized form of worship (“in spirit and in truth”) substitutes Jesus in his role as messiah—savior of the world (4:42).^[335]