Abstract
This chapter explores the internal otherness of the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:1–42; cf. 8:48–49). When seen in the light of Homi Bhabha’s theory of mimicry, the woman can be seen as an active and resistant character: in part, because she is keen to hunt for the identity of a strange traveler, Jesus; in part, because she is bold enough to mimic what Jesus says and does in an anti-colonial sense. Correspondingly, Jesus becomes an ambivalent character in relation to his racial-ethnic and political identity in the sense that he switches back and forth between Jewish and Samaritan identity and between imperial and anti-imperial identity. Thus, the otherness from within becomes unfixable within a binaristic framework by destabilizing the boundary drawn between Samaritans and Jews and between colonizers and colonized.
This is a revised and expanded version of my previously published article: Sung Uk Lim, “Speak My Name: Anti-Colonial Mimicry and the Samaritan Woman in John 4:1–42,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 62, no. 3–4 (2010): 35–51.
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Notes
- 1.
On the relationship between the Johannine community and the Samaritan community, see John MacDonald, Theology of the Samaritans (London: SCM Press, 1964), 33; Birger Olsson, “Structure and Meaning in the Fourth Gospel: A Text-Linguistic Analysis of John 2:1–11 and 4:1–42” (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 1974), 254–256; Robert Kysar, The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel: An Examination of Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Pub., 1975), 160–163; Raymond Edward Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 36–40. Raymond Edward Brown states: “the Johannine community was regarded by Jews as having Samaritan elements” (37).
- 2.
On this, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 28–39.
- 3.
In the current episode (John 4:1–42), the Samaritan woman recognizes Jesus as a Jew (Ἰουδαῖος) (v. 9). In Chap. 6, I will argue that Jesus is more specifically a Galilean Jew or a Jewish Galilean.
- 4.
On the definition of imperialism and colonialism, see to Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1993), 8; Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 16–17. Interconnected as imperialism and colonialism may be with each other, one needs to disentangle one from the other for further analysis. In general terms, imperialism refers specifically to the shaping of an empire, which is created and maintained by dint of the unequal and hierarchical relations of domination and subordination throughout history. In this regard, Edward Said defines imperialism as “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory.” In contrast to imperialism, he further defines colonialism as “the implanting of settlements on a distant territory.”
In a similar vein, Robert Young sees imperialism to be the practice of the centralized power typically featured with the ideology of metropolitan center in distinction to colonialism, which is construed as a pragmatic occupation of lands on the periphery.
- 5.
McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest, 24–25.
- 6.
Raymond Edward Brown, “Johannine Ecclesiology: The Community’s Origins,” Interpretation 31, no. 4 (1977): 379–393; “Other Sheep Not of This Fold: The Johannine Perspective on Christian Diversity in the Late First Century,” Journal of Biblical Literature 97, no. 1 (1978): 5–22; The Community of the Beloved Disciple. Cf. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).
- 7.
Musa W. Dube , “Reading for Decolonization (John 4:1–42),” in John and Postcolonialism: Travel, Space and Power, ed. Musa W. Dube and Jeffrey Lloyd Staley, (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). 63. Musa W. Dube argues: “In other words, the alternative vision of the Johannine community ironically embraces an ideology of expansion, despite the fact that it, itself, is the victim of imperial expansion and is struggling for its own liberation.” Thus, Dube pinpoints the fact that the Johannine community as a colonized community, intentionally or unintentionally, copies the imperial ideology of expansion, while at the same time resisting it.
- 8.
On the mission of Jesus as the Father’s envoy, see Teresa Okure, The Johannine Approach to Mission: A Contextual Study of John 4:1–42 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988).
- 9.
Craig R. Koester, “‘The Savior of the World’ (John 4:42),” Journal of Biblical Literature 109, no. 4 (1990): 665–668.
- 10.
On the relationship between traveler and colonization in John, see Dube, “Reading for Decolonization (John 4:1–42),” 54. Constructing Jesus as a colonizing traveler, Dube construes his travel as a journey in pursuit of a new land to subjugate. Cf. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 2nd ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), 9.
- 11.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), 128.
- 12.
Kyung-Won Lee, “Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? Rethinking the Problems of Postcolonial Revisionism,” Cultural Critique 36 (1997), 92.
- 13.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 107.
- 14.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 42.
- 15.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 107.
- 16.
On this, see Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 153. As such, I consider hybridity, a liminal identity, as creative rather than passive. For instance, indigenous peoples’ mimicry turns out a creative reproduction blended with the native and foreign cultures. In addition, hybridity has a tendency to give rise to a third, new culture, neither indigenous nor foreign. It follows that the colonized have creative agency in the limits of hybridity.
- 17.
On subaltern discourse, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.
- 18.
For Spivak, such an attempt would be impossible. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1987), 332–370.
- 19.
I intentionally design the hyphen in the term “re-construct” with the view to problematizing the term “reconstruct,” which is grounded on the assumption that there is an objective and universal reality. The crucial point to be stressed is that all re-constructions are constructions deriving from a subjective and particular context.
- 20.
On the danger of colonial mimicry for the colonized, see Tat-siong Benny Liew, “Tyranny, Boundary and Might: Colonial Mimicry in Mark’s Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 73 (1999), 12–13 n. 9. It is remarkable that colonial mimicry is a threat to the colonizer by causing ambivalence to them and, at the same time, might be a harm to the colonized by re-inscribing or internalizing colonial ideology unto them. In this sense, mimicry can be divided between colonial and anti-colonial mimicry. For now, I will examine both the colonial and anti-colonial effects of mimicry: that is, (anti-)colonial mimicry.
- 21.
In my opinion, the characterization of the Samaritan woman as ignorant or incomprehensive in contrast to the characterization of Jesus as omniscient amounts to a process of victimization. Such a reading is deeply rooted in any approach that focuses on irony as a literary device. This interpretation assumes that a discourse is monological. To avoid the victimization of the Samaritan woman as a whole, one needs to understand that a discourse is not monological but dialogical. Overall, this chapter is an attempt to pursue a dialogical understanding of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. In such an approach, the object of irony could be Jesus as well as the woman.
- 22.
Gail R. O’Day, Revelation in the Fourth Gospel: Narrative Mode and Theological Claim (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 31–32. On the irony in the Fourth Gospel, see also R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 165–180; Paul D. Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 139–156.
- 23.
On this, see Jean K. Kim, “A Korean Feminist Reading of John 4:1–42,” Semeia, no. 78 (1997): 109–119; Luise Schottroff and Linda M. Maloney, “The Samaritan Woman and the Notion of Sexuality in the Fourth Gospel,” in What Is John? Volume II: Literary and Social Readings of the Fourth Gospel ed. Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998), 157–181. By no means do I intend to deny that the Samaritan woman becomes victimized at the narrative and discursive levels. Rather, my aim is to argue that the woman should be seen as more than simply a victim.
- 24.
Schottroff, The Samaritan Woman and the Notion of Sexuality in the Fourth Gospel, 164.
- 25.
Sandra Marie Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 126–148.
- 26.
On the Greek term Ἰουδαῖος, see Adele Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel (Louisville; London; Leiden: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 213–227; “On Travel, Translation, and Ethnography,” in What Is John?: Readers and Readings of the Fourth Gospel, ed. Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 249–256. The translation of Ἰουδαῖος is of premium importance in understanding the Fourth Gospel. The Fourth Gospel has been charged with anti-Judaism, especially after the Holocaust of the Second World War. According to Adele Reinhartz, the term Ἰουδαῖος carries layers of connotations: political, geographical, ethnical, national, religious, and so on. First, it may denote Jewish leaders or authorities. Second, it may refer to a resident of Judea, or Judaeans. Third, it may symbolize non-believers combined with the cosmos or world. Fourth, it may indicate a national, political, religious, and cultural group. However, the first and second connotations rarely work except for only a few verses in the Fourth Gospel, and the third tends to disregard the historical connotation. It follows from this that the fourth connotation is the most appropriate translation of Ἰουδαῖος.
Cf. John Ashton, “The Identity and Function of the Ἰουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” Novum Testamentum 27, no. 1 (1985): 40–75; James D. Purvis, “Fourth Gospel and the Samaritans,” Novum Testamentum, 17, no. 3 (1975): 161–198.
- 27.
Cf. Jeffrey L. Staley, “The Politics of Place and the Place of Politics in the Gospel of John,” in What Is John? Ii, Literary and Social Readings of the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998), 275. According to Staley, Jesus’ statement can be understood in two different ways, depending on Jesus’ identity between colonizer and colonized. One the one hand, the statement may be an oppressive one in that Jesus—the Jewish colonizer in relation to the Samaritan woman, the Samaritan colonized—justifies the destruction of the Samaritan temple in 128 B.C.E. by saying that the place of worship is not important at all. On the other hand, the statement may be a liberating one in that Jesus—the Jewish colonized, like the Samaritan colonized, under Roman imperial regime—consoles the woman by saying that any place is not unique under God’s sovereignty. Staley seeks to interpret Jesus’ statement in a way that it may liberate the colonized without necessarily giving theological authority to the colonizer. Seen from a deconstructive perspective, I, however, do believe that the statement is perpetually, unavoidably subject to both interpretations.
- 28.
The Samaritan woman as a Samaritan female character stands sharply over against Jesus, a Jewish male character with special reference to race/ethnicity, gender, and religion.
- 29.
Dube, “Reading for Decolonization (John 4:1–42),” 66.
- 30.
On the travel motif of John’s Gospel, see Fernando F. Segovia, “The Journey(s) of the Word of God: A Reading of the Plot of the Fourth Gospel,” Semeia 53: 23–54; Musa W. Dube, “Savior of the World but Not of This World: A Post-Colonial Reading of Spatial Construction in John,” in The Postcolonial Bible, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998): 118–135. Postcolonial criticism has paid close attention to the motif of travel in the plot of the Fourth Gospel, as Fernando Segovia suggests. Given travel, a translocal phenomenon, in the Roman Empire as a result of territorial expansion and domination, Dube paints Segovia’s literary insights with ideologies of the Empire. She presents Jesus and the Johannine community as propounding an imperializing-colonizing ideology, concealed in the Gospel of John in imitation of ancient Roman ideologies, on the minor characters and their communities. Hence, she brings to the fore the colonized, minor characters and their communities—for example, the Samaritan woman and the Samaritan community—as subversive agents to Jesus, a colonizing character, and the colonizing Johannine community.
- 31.
Dube, “Reading for Decolonization (John 4:1–42),” 54.
- 32.
Koester, “‘The Savior of the World’ (John 4:42),” 674–680.
- 33.
Ibid., 676.
- 34.
Ibid., 676–677.
- 35.
On the five husbands of the Samaritan woman, see Ibid., 676. If one interprets the five husbands of the Samaritan woman solely in light of moral standards, one may disregard her active role in investigating Jesus’ identity. On the intertextual level, the woman could be portrayed as an impure character that commits adultery, as in Hosea 1:2. According to this moralistic interpretation, the woman could be regarded as a character that should repent of her sins in the encounter with Jesus as the Christ. This reading focuses on the Samaritan woman as an immoral character under the influence of the ideology of patriarchy underpinning society at large.
On the other hand, an allegorical interpretation postulates that the marital infidelity of the Samaritan woman is closely connected to the religious infidelity of the Samaritans. In this respect, the five husbands of the woman are construed to be the five deities worshipped by the Samaritan people since the Assyrian colonization of the Northern Kingdom. However, this allegorical interpretation is found to be unconvincing in consideration of 2 Kings 17:29–32, because the passage reads that the Samaritans worshipped seven deities, not five, along with Yahweh. It is worth noting that it is five nations that settle in Samaria under the Assyria colonization and introduce seven deities (2 Kings 17:24). It follows from this that the five husbands of the Samaritan woman symbolize the five nations inhabiting the region of Samaria during the Assyrian occupation.
Contra the above-mentioned moralistic and allegorical interpretations, I argue the Samaritan woman represents the Samaritan people and their colonial past. Unquestionably, these interpretations hide and ignore the anti-colonial role of the woman by singling out her marital or religious infidelity.
- 36.
Interestingly enough, the evangelist uses plural pronouns to render some minor characters, such as Nicodemus as well as the Samaritan woman, representatives of their own communities in distinction to Jesus as a representative of the Johannine community. As is the case with Nicodemus, the evangelist employs the first-person and second-person plural personal pronouns in the following passages: “Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You (ὑμᾶς) must be born from above’” (John 3:7); “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our (ἡμῶν) testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you (ὑμῖν) about heavenly things?” (John 3:11–12). Clearly, the evangelist has a tendency to transform such minor characters as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman into representatives of their community, beyond the limits of individual characters, by using the first-person and second-person plurals. At the same time, Jesus is transformed into a representative of the Johannine community.
- 37.
Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, 142.
- 38.
Schottroff and Maloney, “The Samaritan Woman and the Notion of Sexuality in the Fourth Gospel,” 168. Luise Schottroff argues rightly: “the woman becomes God’s messenger, who tells her Samaritan people that Jesus is the Savior of the world” (4:40).
- 39.
On this, see Dieter Georgi, “God Turned Upside Down,” in Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society, ed. Richard A. Horsley (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), 148–150.
- 40.
Cited by Frederick C. Grant, Ancient Roman Religion (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 175.
- 41.
On this, see Dube, “Savior of the World but Not of This World: A Post-Colonial Reading of Spatial Construction in John”; “Batswakwa: Which Traveller Are You (John 1:1–18)?,” in The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories, and Trends, ed. Gerald O. West and Musa W. Dube (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 150–162; Tom Thatcher, Greater Than Caesar: Christology and Empire in the Fourth Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009); Adele Reinhartz, “The Colonizer as Colonized,” in John and Postcolonialism: Travel, Space and Power, ed. Musa W. Dube and Jeffrey Lloyd Staley (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 170–192.
- 42.
Reinhartz, “The Colonizer as Colonized,” 192.
- 43.
See Raymond Edward Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 Vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 172.
- 44.
Wayne A. Meeks, “Galilee and Judea in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 2 (1966), 166.
- 45.
Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, 143.
- 46.
Nikos Papastergiadis, “Tracing Hybridity in Theory,” in Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, ed. Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (London: Zed Books, 1997), 257–281. The terms “Westernized Indian” and “Indianized Westerner,” which Nikos Papastergiadis coins, hint at the idea that Jesus is “Samaritanized.”
- 47.
On the Samaritan origin of the Fourth Gospel, see George Wesley Buchanan, “The Samaritan Origin of the Gospel of John,” in Religions in Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner, 149–175; Edwin D. Freed, “Samaritan Influence in the Gospel of John,” Catholic Biblical Quaterly 30 (1968): 580–587.
- 48.
Meeks, “Galilee and Judea in the Fourth Gospel,” 168.
- 49.
Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel, 75. Duke states succinctly: “For early readers of the Gospel who were Samaritans, for readers who had learned to call such Samaritans sister and brother, and for Christians of every era weary of elitist and bigoted religion, especially in the church, this intended insult, accepted by Jesus with wonderful silence, elicits the smile of irony. For the sake of the sheep ‘not of this fold’ (10:16) Jesus was and is always a Samaritan.”
- 50.
On the honor and shame code in the Mediterranean basin, see Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).
- 51.
Brown, The Gospel According to John, 851.
- 52.
Ibid., 853.
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Lim, S.U. (2021). Reading the Otherness Within. In: Otherness and Identity in the Gospel of John. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60286-4_4
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