location, location, location

In the gospel texts, we find specific territorial referentces:  Bethlehem, Galilee and Samaria.

Traditional exegesis of these territories accounts for them in ways that support the proto-Christian historical trajectory:  Bethlehem is necessary because it figures in the Ruth/David history, and therefore it is necessary that Bethlehem be cited as the location of the birthplace.  Galilee is necessary because the Galilee was a poor northern province.  Both the location and the poverty heighten the impact of a “revolutionary” Jesus, who preached to the poor.  Samaritans are important because Samaria was a different country, and including it indicates that the “gospel” was spreading outside the boundaries of Judea.  It also offers the opportunity to create a contrast between “bad Jew” and “good Samaritan.”

The answer to this traditional exegesis is “yes, but no.”  Yes, the points made are valid to support that particular historical agenda.   However, there are other canonic and historical reasons to stipulate these three locations.

Bethlehem is not only noted in the Ruth and David narratives, it figures in the introduction of Judges 19.  Thus in Bethlehem, we have not only a link to a site connected with the progenitors of the progatonist, we have a link to a tale of brutality and butchery which appears early in the Judean canon.

The reference to Galilee is significant not only because the territory was in the north, and poor, but because it was in Galilee that Hadrian commenced his counter-attack against bar Cochba and his rebels.

Samaria is significant for a number of reasons: 

Samaria had been part of Israel, when the kingdom of Judea divided into the dual kingdoms of Isreal and Judea.  In the days of Ahab, Benhaded II attacked it with 32 vassal kings, but was defeated (1 Kings 20:1-21).  Benhadad assailed Samaria again the next year, but was routed and surrendered to Ahab (1 Kings 20:28-34).  According to the text, Ahab’s army was no more than “two little flocks of kids.”

When Jehoram succeeded to the throne of Israel, Benhadad attacked Samaria again. It seemed that Benhadad would victorious,  but his soldiers were frightened off by the noise of chariots and horses and a great army, which caused them to flee. 

Under Hoshea, the last king of the northern kingdom, the Assyrians invaded. (722/721 BCE, 2 Kings 10).  They conquered the city.  A fragment of an Assyrian inscription attributed to Sargon II was found on the eastern slope of the acropolis.  It says:

The Samaritans who had agreed with a hostile king)…I fought with them and decisively defeated them…carried off as spoil.  50 chariots for my royal force…the rest of them I settled in the midst of Assyria…the Tamudi, Ibadidi, Marsimani and Hayappa, who live in distant Arabia, in the desert, who knew neither overseer nor commander, who never brought tribute to any king—with the help of Ashshur my lord, I defeated them.  I deported the rest of them.  I settled them in Samaria.  (Sargon II inscriptions)

Also:

The inhabitants of Samaria, who agreed and plotted with a king hostile to me, not to do service and not to bring tribute to Ashshur, and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords.  I counted a spoil 27,280 people together with their chariots and gods in which they trusted.  I formed a unit with 200 of their chariots for my royal force.  I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria.  I repopulated Samaria more than before.  I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hands.  I appointed my eunuch as governor over them.  And I counted them as Assyrians.  (Nimrud Prisms)

Little information about Samaria remains from the Babylonian period.   In the mid 5^th century BCE, in the Persian  era, the city reemerged in importance.  Ezra 4:10/Nehemia 4:7-8 documents the tensions between the ruling family  of Sanballat and Jerusalem. 

In 332 BCE, Samaria became Hellenized, and, following a revolt by the Samaritans, the territory was settled by Macedonians.

We note, therefore, that Samaria figures in the gospel narratives because it had its own history of rebellion against invaders, and its own history of the deportation of its inhabitants.

In addition to its historical similarities to the bar Cochba revolt, there are religious elements that are addressed by the inclusion of Samaria in the gospels.  Samaritans considered their worship to be true to the ancient worship as practiced in the land of Israel before the Babylonian Exile.  Samaritans claimed that the Judaism practiced in Judea was an altered and amended praxis brought back by those exiles who returned.   Samaritans and Judeans lived in mutual antagonism at the time of the bar Cochba revolt. 

In including Samaritans in the gospel narratives, the bar Cochba creators included those who had been historically connected to the ancient land of Israel, who claimed to practice “true” Judean worship, and who had been ostracized by “normative” Judean praxis.  

In the Johanine narrative, 4:1-26, we find the story of the woman at the well.  At the beginning of the narrative, we are told Jesus is going to Galilee.  He has to pass through Samaria.  He comes to a town near the field that Jacob had given to Joseph (in John, we find a connection between the progatonist and Jacob).  Jacob’s well was there (it was at the well that Jacob met Rachel).  A woman comes to draw water.  Jesus says to her “give me a drink.”  (Jacob met Rachel by asking her to give him a drink—the Johanine author is using both the device of intertextual conversation in the form of referencing narratives from the Judean canon, and the device of  using specific phrases from those narratives.)  The woman tells him that her fathers worshipped on the mountain where the well is, thus telling him that as a Samaritan, she is one of those who is of the “true” ancient form of worship in Israel. 

 Jesus then tells her that he knows she was in a levirate marriage (married to five men, but having been in only one contract—t his links her to Judean praxis from both Genesis and Deuteronomy).  She agrees with him, and points out that those in Jerusalem claim that Jerusalem is the only place where one can worship G-d.  Jesus tells her that worship will occur neither on her mountain nor in Jerusalem.  From this we can infer that the Johanine text was written not only after the destruction of the Temple, but after Hadrian announced that the rebuilt Temple would be dedicated to Jupiter.

Thus even while referencing a presumably “foreign” people, the Samaritans, the constructor of the Johanine narrative links the tale to the common heritage in the land and the practice of Israel.

The narrative of the Samaritan in Luke 17:11-20 (commonly known as the parable of the “good Samaritan”) locates the scene on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem.  He identifies the victim as a man who is “half-dead.”  He identifies the first two to arrive on the scene as a cohen and a levite. The third man to arrive, the man who helps, is a Samaritan who is journeying—in other words, he is in Judea where he might be the target of antagonistic judeans. 

According to Levicitus, neither the cohen nor the levite were permitted contact with the dead, because it would render them impure to perform their cultic function in the Temple.  A man who is half-dead might die.  Contact with him would render them impure.  It is neither good nor bad.  It is observance of the law.  If we are assuming that the tale was written around the time of the bar Cochba revolt, the Temple had not only been destroyed, Hadrian had made it known that the Temple, when rebuilt, would not be in service to the Judean G-d.  Thus the cultic function of both the cohen and the levite were redundant.  The cohen and the levite were not only building a fence around the law by not touching a man who was almost dead, but in the absence of any Temple praxis, the reason for their observance of the law was no longer active. 

The Samaritan, who was not a participating member of the Judean Temple cult ,was not bound by those same restrictions  (which were not longer pertinent) but was at risk of personal harm due to antagonisms between Judeans and Samaritans.

The moral of the parable is not “ bad Jew/good Samaritan,” but  some of those who you might expect to offer assistance may be bound up in their own rules and be unable to recognized that those rules no longer apply, while others who might be expected to be antagonists may turn out to be of assistance, in spite of the possibility that their offer of assistance may make them targets of antagonism.