Difference between revisions of "Mystery: Was John a Samaritan"

Revision as of 22:31, June 7, 2024

See also: Mystery:Unsolved_Gospel_Mysteries

John the Apostle was most likely a Samaritan, in light of at least the following 20 reasons. Alternatively, John could have been different from the other disciples in some other fundamental way.

• 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 ;
• 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;
• John's unique description of Jesus as possibly coming from the Samaritans;
• John's sympathy towards Samaritans, including describing how Jesus first disclosed his divinity to a Samaritan woman at a well (which everyone else omitted);
• the Apostles sent the young John (along with Peter) to evangelize Samaria after the Resurrection, see Acts 8:14 ;
• 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;
• 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
• 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.^[1]
• the Gospel of John contains only 27 quotations and allusions to books of the Old Testament, far less than "Matthew (124), Mark (70), and Luke (109),"^[2] and the Samaritans recognized only the Pentateuch in the Old Testament;
• 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 ...."
• 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;
• the universality of the Gospel of John, as in John 3:16 ;
• his harsh language against Jewish leaders, whom Samaritans already disliked;
• the thriving "Johannine community" in the late 1st and 2nd century A.D. had ideological similarities to Samaritan views, and probably included many Samaritans;
• the mysterious disappearance of most Samaritans, who perhaps converted to Christianity on the strength of John's teachings to them;
• John had a rivalry with Peter, suggesting they may have had different ethnicities;
• 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,^[3] and John had to live out his life isolated on the island of Patmos;^[4]
• 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;^[5]
• 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;^[6] and
• the name "John" is Aramaic rather than Hebrew: no one in the entire Old Testament has the name "John".^[7] Likewise for the name of his brother, "James".

References