Samaritan woman at the well

The Samaritan woman at the well is known from the Gospel of John (John 4:1–42), which places her encounter with Jesus at Jacob’s well near the town of Sychar in Samaria in the early first century. Traveling from Judea toward Galilee, Jesus sat by the well about noon and asked a Samaritan woman who had come to draw water to give him a drink. She expressed surprise that a Jew would ask water of a Samaritan, since, as the evangelist notes, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus spoke of a gift of God and of “living water.” When she observed that he had no bucket and that the well was deep, and asked whether he was greater than their ancestor Jacob who had given the well, he contrasted water that leaves a person thirsty again with the water he would give, which would become a spring welling up to eternal life. She then asked for that water so that she would not have to keep coming to draw.

Jesus told her to call her husband. She answered that she had no husband. He replied that she had spoken truly: she had had five husbands, and the man she had at present was not her husband. Perceiving him to be a prophet, she raised the cultic dispute between Samaritans and Jews over whether God should be worshiped on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem. Jesus answered that a time was coming when worship would be neither on that mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and truth, because God is spirit. She said she knew that the Messiah, called Christ, was coming and would explain all things. Jesus said to her that he who was speaking to her was he. His disciples then returned and were astonished that he was talking with a woman. The woman left her water jar, went into the town, and told the people to come and see a man who had told her everything she had ever done, asking whether he might be the Messiah. Many Samaritans from that city believed because of her testimony. They invited Jesus to stay; he remained two days, and many more believed because of his own word, saying they had heard for themselves and knew that he was truly the Savior of the world.

The New Testament does not name the woman, give her parentage, or record dates or places of birth, death, or burial. The scene belongs to Roman-period Samaria. Jacob’s well has long been identified with a deep well near Askar, commonly associated with ancient Sychar, close to Shechem (Nablus) and Mount Gerizim. The episode, unique to John, has been central in Christian theology, patristic commentary, liturgy, and art for the themes of living water, worship in spirit and truth, the reach of the Gospel beyond Judea, and the woman’s role as a witness who brings others to Jesus.

In later Christian tradition, especially in the Greek East, she was given the name Photini or Photina (Greek Photine, “the enlightened” or “luminous one”; in Slavonic, Svetlana). Eastern synaxaria and related legends, which are not corroborated by contemporary historical evidence, relate that after the Resurrection she was baptized, that she preached in various regions including North Africa (often Carthage), and that she was martyred at Rome in the reign of Nero, sometimes together with family members named only in those legends. Such accounts contain legendary features and cannot establish a verified biography, year of death, or burial place. Western martyrologies likewise commemorate her as Saint Photina. She is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic churches, and the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox calendar commemorates Saint Photini on 26 February and on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the fifth Sunday of Pascha; the Roman Martyrology lists Saint Photina on 20 March. Orthodox hymnography often styles her “equal to the apostles” because of her evangelizing role in the Johannine narrative. No reliable source records a formal canonization by a named pope; her cult is that of an early New Testament figure recognized by liturgical tradition.