Mystery: Was John a Samaritan

See also: Mystery:Unsolved_Gospel_Mysteries

John the Apostle was probably a Samaritan; there were about 1 million Samaritans and they were the majority along the roughly 100-mile distance between Jerusalem in the south and Capernaum in the north at the time of Christ. Here are 33 facts supporting this:

1. Samaritans did not celebrate Passover with a meal but with a sacrifice (of a lamb), and the Last Supper is uniquely described in the Gospel of John as not being a Passover meal;
2. Only the Gospel of John refers to the "Passover of the Jews," which is how a Samaritan might have distinguished it from their different Passover; all the other Gospels refer to only the "Passover";
3. Only John describes Jesus's Washing of feet at the Last Supper, which would have been particularly disfavored by Jewish disciples as it was the opposite of hand-washing before eating;
4. John's mother made a request of Jesus that would have been blasphemous among Jewish people then, and thus she was probably not Jewish. See Matthew 20:20-21 ;
5. John is the only Gospel author who never used the term "Gentiles", as Samaritans would not because they were half-Gentile and thus it was not a distinguishing term for them, while the other Gospel authors (and Peter and Paul) repeatedly used that term;
6. John's father's name, translated as "Zebedee", appears nowhere in the Old Testament and is most common today in Nigeria, Africa, which is half Muslim and half Christian;
7. John's unique description of Jesus as possibly coming from the Samaritans;
8. John's sympathy towards Samaritans, including describing how Jesus first disclosed his divinity to a Samaritan woman at a well (which everyone else omitted);
9. the Apostles sent the young John (along with Peter) to evangelize Samaria after the Resurrection, see Acts 8:14 ;
10. John's repeated references -- 10 times more than any other Gospel -- to "the Jews," meaning the Jewish people in and around Jerusalem, was how Samaritans would have referred to their rivals;
11. only the Gospel of John contains a derogatory reference, as Samaritans would have felt, about the Jewish region of Nazareth: “Nathanael said to him, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' Philip said to him, 'Come and see.'” John 1:46
12. the Gospel of John emphasized the concept of the sacrificial lamb -- the "Paschal Lamb" -- which is a central part of Passover for Samaritans but not for Masoretic Jews. John mentions "lamb" 30 times in his Book of Revelation, which is 5 times more than all the other New Testament authors combined.
13. the Gospel of John contains only 27 quotations and allusions to books of the Old Testament -- and some of those, such as John 12:38-41 , appear to be later-added Editorial Comments in the Gospel of John -- which is a total far less than "Matthew (124), Mark (70), and Luke (109)," and the Samaritans recognized only the Pentateuch in the Old Testament;
14. Samaritans rejected "the prophets," and only four times does the Gospel of John refer to "the prophets" -- far less than the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke do -- and 2 of John's references are quoting "the Jews," a third is quoting someone other than Jesus, and the fourth is one of the Editorial Comments in the Gospel of John which is grammatically suspect: "It is written in [should be "by" or worded better] the Prophets ...."
15. among the few references by the Gospel of John to the Old Testament, many are Editorial Comments in the Gospel of John which may have been added later;
16. the universality of the Gospel of John, as in John 3:16 ;
17. his harsh language against Jewish leaders, whom Samaritans already disliked;
18. John refers far less than the other Gospels to a "synagogue" (which Samaritans viewed differently, refraining from building any new ones since Moses), and John's Book of Revelation refers to "synagogues of Satan" which implies a Samaritan influence. See Rev 2:9 and Rev 3:9 .
19. a pejorative reference to Israelites, who were in conflict with Samaritans, is only in the Gospel of John: “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, 'Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!'”
20. the thriving "Johannine community" in the late 1st and 2nd century A.D. had ideological similarities to Samaritan views, and probably included many Samaritans;
21. the mysterious disappearance of most Samaritans, who perhaps converted to Christianity on the strength of John's teachings to them;
22. John had a rivalry with Peter, suggesting they may have had different ethnicities;
23. John was ostracized by other Apostles: despite being the one Jesus loved, John is barely mentioned in the lengthy Gospel of Matthew, is not mentioned at all by Peter or Paul in their extensive letters, and John had to live out his life isolated on the island of Patmos;
24. the lack of parables in the Gospel of John, which was a teaching style used 11 times in Old Testament books not recognized by Samaritans and also in the Greco-Roman world of which Samaritans were not a part;
25. the Gospel of John has more references to "life" than all the other Gospels combined, and the Samaritan version of the Book of Exodus is more pro-life than the Jewish Masoretic translation;
26. John prominently includes multiple quotations of Thomas the Apostle, such as the famous "doubting Thomas" passage at John 20:24-29 , while Matthew omits all this from his Gospel, and subsequently Thomas (a name never mentioned in the Old Testament) evangelized India, all of which implies an ethnic difference between John and the Jewish Matthew;
27. one of the references to Scriptures in the Gospel of John does not appear to be a reference to the (Jewish) Old Testament: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:38 (ESV)
28. John is the only Gospel author who begins each day at midnight as Romans did, rather than the Hebrew method of beginning each day at sunset;
29. John uses the term for "kingdom" in only three verses (possibly added later), far less than its use by the other Gospels, as Samaritans did not have kings and a kingdom as Hebrews and others have; and
30. the name "John" came from an angel for the naming of John the Baptist, is Aramaic rather than Hebrew as no one in the entire Old Testament has the name "John", and none of the Jewish relatives of John the Baptist had that name. Likewise for the name of his brother, "James".
31. many of Jesus's followers were Samaritans, as reflected by how 1 out of 10 of those cured of leprosy based on their faith and the only one who thanked Jesus was a Samaritan in Luke 17:11-19 ; it follows that 1-2 of Jesus's 12 Apostles were likewise Samaritan, as in John and his brother James.
32. Jesus walked with his Apostles without any objecting directly through Samaria, which was between Galilee and Jerusalem, while Jewish people preferred to walk around Samaria rather than through it; this suggests some of the Apostles were Samaritans.
33. John emphasized that Jesus "came to what was his own, but his own people [i.e., Jewish people] did not accept him," while others did accept him. John accepted Him, so John is part of "others" rather than part of Jesus' "own people." The most likely "other" group in the same vicinity was comprised of Samaritans.