Samaritans

• Jews had no dealings with S.; history of ill-feeling

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

• Jews had no dealings with S.; history of ill-feeling

137:7.11In the very midst of Pales­tine there lived the Samar­i­tans, with whom “the Jews had no deal­ings,” not­with­stand­ing that they held many views sim­i­lar to the Jew­ish teach­ings.

• Philip worked among

139:5.10Philip went on through the try­ing times of the Mas­ter’s death, par­tic­i­pated in the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve, and was the first to go forth to win souls for the king­dom out­side of the im­me­di­ate Jew­ish ranks, be­ing most suc­cess­ful in his work for the Samar­i­tans and in all his sub­se­quent labors in be­half of the gospel.

143:4.1For more than six hun­dred years the Jews of Judea, and later on those of Gal­i­lee also, had been at en­mity with the Samar­i­tans. This ill feel­ing be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans came about in this way: About seven hun­dred years B.C., Sar­gon, king of As­syria, in sub­du­ing a re­volt in cen­tral Pales­tine, car­ried away and into cap­tiv­ity over twenty-five thou­sand Jews of the north­ern king­dom of Is­rael and in­stalled in their place an al­most equal num­ber of the de­scen­dants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamath­ites. Later on, Ashur­ba­n­i­pal sent still other colonies to dwell in Samaria.

• assisted armies of Alexander; worked to prevent rebuilding of Jerusalem
• Philip worked among

143:4.2The re­li­gious en­mity be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans dated from the re­turn of the for­mer from the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity, when the Samar­i­tans worked to pre­vent the re­build­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem. Later they of­fended the Jews by ex­tend­ing friendly as­sis­tance to the armies of Alexan­der. In re­turn for their friend­ship Alexan­der gave the Samar­i­tans per­mis­sion to build a tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim, where they wor­shiped Yah­weh and their tribal gods and of­fered sac­ri­fices much af­ter the or­der of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. At least they con­tin­ued this wor­ship up to the time of the Mac­cabees, when John Hyr­canus de­stroyed their tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim. The Apos­tle Philip, in his labors for the Samar­i­tans af­ter the death of Je­sus, held many meet­ings on the site of this old Samar­i­tan tem­ple.

143:4.3The an­tag­o­nisms be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans were time-hon­ored and his­toric; in­creas­ingly since the days of Alexan­der they had had no deal­ings with each other. The twelve apos­tles were not averse to preach­ing in the Greek and other gen­tile cities of the De­capo­lis and Syria, but it was a se­vere test of their loy­alty to the Mas­ter when he said, “Let us go into Samaria.” But in the year and more they had been with Je­sus, they had de­vel­oped a form of per­sonal loy­alty which tran­scended even their faith in his teach­ings and their prej­u­dices against the Samar­i­tans.

143:5.1When the Mas­ter and the twelve ar­rived at Ja­cob’s well, Je­sus, be­ing weary from the jour­ney, tar­ried by the well while Philip took the apos­tles with him to as­sist in bring­ing food and tents from Sy­char, for they were dis­posed to stay in this vicin­ity for a while. Pe­ter and the Zeb­e­dee sons would have re­mained with Je­sus, but he re­quested that they go with their breth­ren, say­ing: “Have no fear for me; these Samar­i­tans will be friendly; only our breth­ren, the Jews, seek to harm us.” And it was al­most six o’clock on this sum­mer’s evening when Je­sus sat down by the well to await the re­turn of the apos­tles.

143:5.2The wa­ter of Ja­cob’s well was less min­eral than that from the wells of Sy­char and was there­fore much val­ued for drink­ing pur­poses. Je­sus was thirsty, but there was no way of get­ting wa­ter from the well. When, there­fore, a woman of Sy­char came up with her wa­ter pitcher and pre­pared to draw from the well, Je­sus said to her, “Give me a drink.” This woman of Samaria knew Je­sus was a Jew by his ap­pear­ance and dress, and she sur­mised that he was a Galilean Jew from his ac­cent. Her name was Nalda and she was a comely crea­ture. She was much sur­prised to have a Jew­ish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for wa­ter, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self-re­spect­ing man to speak to a woman in pub­lic, much less for a Jew to con­verse with a Samar­i­tan. There­fore Nalda asked Je­sus, “How is it that you, be­ing a Jew, ask for a drink of me, a Samar­i­tan woman?” Je­sus an­swered: “I have in­deed asked you for a drink, but if you could only un­der­stand, you would ask me for a draught of the liv­ing wa­ter.” Then said Nalda: “But, Sir, you have noth­ing to draw with, and the well is deep; whence, then, have you this liv­ing wa­ter? Are you greater than our fa­ther Ja­cob who gave us this well, and who drank thereof him­self and his sons and his cat­tle also?”

143:5.3Je­sus replied: “Ev­ery­one who drinks of this wa­ter will thirst again, but whoso­ever drinks of the wa­ter of the liv­ing spirit shall never thirst. And this liv­ing wa­ter shall be­come in him a well of re­fresh­ment spring­ing up even to eter­nal life.” Nalda then said: “Give me this wa­ter that I thirst not, nei­ther come all the way hither to draw. Be­sides, any­thing which a Samar­i­tan woman could re­ceive from such a com­mend­able Jew would be a plea­sure.”

143:5.4Nalda did not know how to take Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with her. She be­held in the Mas­ter’s face the coun­te­nance of an up­right and holy man, but she mis­took friend­li­ness for com­mon­place fa­mil­iar­ity, and she mis­in­ter­preted his fig­ure of speech as a form of mak­ing ad­vances to her. And be­ing a woman of lax morals, she was minded openly to be­come flir­ta­tious, when Je­sus, look­ing straight into her eyes, with a com­mand­ing voice said, “Woman, go get your hus­band and bring him hither.” This com­mand brought Nalda to her senses. She saw that she had mis­judged the Mas­ter’s kind­ness; she per­ceived that she had mis­con­strued his man­ner of speech. She was fright­ened; she be­gan to re­al­ize that she stood in the pres­ence of an un­usual per­son, and grop­ing about in her mind for a suit­able re­ply, in great con­fu­sion, she said, “But, Sir, I can­not call my hus­band, for I have no hus­band.” Then said Je­sus: “You have spo­ken the truth, for, while you may have once had a hus­band, he with whom you are now liv­ing is not your hus­band. Bet­ter it would be if you would cease to tri­fle with my words and seek for the liv­ing wa­ter which I have this day of­fered you.”

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

143:5.7But Nalda would make one more ef­fort to avoid the dis­cus­sion of the em­bar­rass­ing ques­tion of her per­sonal life on earth and the sta­tus of her soul be­fore God. Once more she re­sorted to ques­tions of gen­eral re­li­gion, say­ing: “Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the com­ing of the Con­verter, he who will be called the De­liv­erer, and that, when he shall come, he will de­clare to us all things”—and Je­sus, in­ter­rupt­ing Nalda, said with startling as­sur­ance, “I who speak to you am he.”

143:5.8This was the first di­rect, pos­i­tive, and undis­guised pro­nounce­ment of his di­vine na­ture and son­ship which Je­sus had made on earth; and it was made to a woman, a Samar­i­tan woman, and a woman of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter in the eyes of men up to this mo­ment, but a woman whom the di­vine eye be­held as hav­ing been sinned against more than as sin­ning of her own de­sire and as now be­ing a hu­man soul who de­sired sal­va­tion, de­sired it sin­cerely and whole­heart­edly, and that was enough.

143:5.9As Nalda was about to voice her real and per­sonal long­ing for bet­ter things and a more no­ble way of liv­ing, just as she was ready to speak the real de­sire of her heart, the twelve apos­tles re­turned from Sy­char, and com­ing upon this scene of Je­sus’ talk­ing so in­ti­mately with this woman—this Samar­i­tan woman, and alone—they were more than as­ton­ished. They quickly de­posited their sup­plies and drew aside, no man dar­ing to re­prove him, while Je­sus said to Nalda: “Woman, go your way; God has for­given you. Hence­forth you will live a new life. You have re­ceived the liv­ing wa­ter, and a new joy will spring up within your soul, and you shall be­come a daugh­ter of the Most High.” And the woman, per­ceiv­ing the dis­ap­proval of the apos­tles, left her wa­ter­pot and fled to the city.

143:5.10As she en­tered the city, she pro­claimed to ev­ery­one she met: “Go out to Ja­cob’s well and go quickly, for there you will see a man who told me all I ever did. Can this be the Con­verter?” And ere the sun went down, a great crowd had as­sem­bled at Ja­cob’s well to hear Je­sus. And the Mas­ter talked to them more about the wa­ter of life, the gift of the in­dwelling spirit.

143:5.11The apos­tles never ceased to be shocked by Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with women, women of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter, even im­moral women. It was very dif­fi­cult for Je­sus to teach his apos­tles that women, even so-called im­moral women, have souls which can choose God as their Fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing daugh­ters of God and can­di­dates for life ev­er­last­ing. Even nine­teen cen­turies later many show the same un­will­ing­ness to grasp the Mas­ter’s teach­ings. Even the Chris­tian re­li­gion has been per­sis­tently built up around the fact of the death of Christ in­stead of around the truth of his life. The world should be more con­cerned with his happy and God-re­veal­ing life than with his tragic and sor­row­ful death.

143:5.12Nalda told this en­tire story to the Apos­tle John the next day, but he never re­vealed it fully to the other apos­tles, and Je­sus did not speak of it in de­tail to the twelve.

143:5.13Nalda told John that Je­sus had told her “all I ever did.” John many times wanted to ask Je­sus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did. Je­sus told her only one thing about her­self, but his look into her eyes and the man­ner of his deal­ing with her had so brought all of her check­ered life in panoramic re­view be­fore her mind in a mo­ment of time that she as­so­ci­ated all of this self-rev­e­la­tion of her past life with the look and the word of the Mas­ter. Je­sus never told her she had had five hus­bands. She had lived with four dif­fer­ent men since her hus­band cast her aside, and this, with all her past, came up so vividly in her mind at the mo­ment when she re­al­ized Je­sus was a man of God that she sub­se­quently re­peated to John that Je­sus had re­ally told her all about her­self.

• Philip worked among

143:6.6Je­sus and the twelve camped on Mount Ger­izim un­til the end of Au­gust. They preached the good news of the king­dom—the fa­ther­hood of God—to the Samar­i­tans in the cities by day and spent the nights at the camp. The work which Je­sus and the twelve did in these Samar­i­tan cities yielded many souls for the king­dom and did much to pre­pare the way for the mar­velous work of Philip in these re­gions af­ter Je­sus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion, sub­se­quent to the dis­per­sion of the apos­tles to the ends of the earth by the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion of be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• James and John wished to bid down fire on

162:0.1When Je­sus started up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the ten apos­tles, he planned to go through Samaria, that be­ing the shorter route. Ac­cord­ingly, they passed down the east­ern shore of the lake and, by way of Scythopo­lis, en­tered the bor­ders of Samaria. Near night­fall Je­sus sent Philip and Mat­thew over to a vil­lage on the east­ern slopes of Mount Gil­boa to se­cure lodg­ing for the com­pany. It so hap­pened that these vil­lagers were greatly prej­u­diced against the Jews, even more so than the av­er­age Samar­i­tans, and these feel­ings were height­ened at this par­tic­u­lar time as so many were on their way to the feast of taber­na­cles. These peo­ple knew very lit­tle about Je­sus, and they re­fused him lodg­ing be­cause he and his as­so­ciates were Jews. When Mat­thew and Philip man­i­fested in­dig­na­tion and in­formed these Samar­i­tans that they were de­clin­ing to en­ter­tain the Holy One of Is­rael, the in­fu­ri­ated vil­lagers chased them out of the lit­tle town with sticks and stones.

162:0.2Af­ter Philip and Mat­thew had re­turned to their fel­lows and re­ported how they had been driven out of the vil­lage, James and John stepped up to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, we pray you to give us per­mis­sion to bid fire come down from heaven to de­vour these in­so­lent and im­pen­i­tent Samar­i­tans.” But when Je­sus heard these words of vengeance, he turned upon the sons of Zeb­e­dee and severely re­buked them: “You know not what man­ner of at­ti­tude you man­i­fest. Vengeance sa­vors not of the out­look of the king­dom of heaven. Rather than dis­pute, let us jour­ney over to the lit­tle vil­lage by the Jor­dan ford.” Thus be­cause of sec­tar­ian prej­u­dice these Samar­i­tans de­nied them­selves the honor of show­ing hos­pi­tal­ity to the Cre­ator Son of a uni­verse.

164:1.1That evening a con­sid­er­able com­pany gath­ered about Je­sus and the two apos­tles to ask ques­tions, many of which the apos­tles an­swered, while oth­ers the Mas­ter dis­cussed. In the course of the evening a cer­tain lawyer, seek­ing to en­tan­gle Je­sus in a com­pro­mis­ing dis­pu­ta­tion, said: “Teacher, I would like to ask you just what I should do to in­herit eter­nal life?” Je­sus an­swered, “What is writ­ten in the law and the proph­ets; how do you read the Scrip­tures?” The lawyer, know­ing the teach­ings of both Je­sus and the Phar­isees, an­swered: “To love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neigh­bor as your­self.” Then said Je­sus: “You have an­swered right; this, if you re­ally do, will lead to life ev­er­last­ing.”

164:1.2But the lawyer was not wholly sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion, and de­sir­ing to jus­tify him­self while also hop­ing to em­bar­rass Je­sus, he ven­tured to ask still an­other ques­tion. Draw­ing a lit­tle closer to the Mas­ter, he said, “But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neigh­bor?” The lawyer asked this ques­tion hop­ing to en­trap Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment that would con­tra­vene the Jew­ish law which de­fined one’s neigh­bor as “the chil­dren of one’s peo­ple.” The Jews looked upon all oth­ers as “gen­tile dogs.” This lawyer was some­what fa­mil­iar with Je­sus’ teach­ings and there­fore well knew that the Mas­ter thought dif­fer­ently; thus he hoped to lead him into say­ing some­thing which could be con­strued as an at­tack upon the sa­cred law.

164:1.3But Je­sus dis­cerned the lawyer’s mo­tive, and in­stead of falling into the trap, he pro­ceeded to tell his hear­ers a story, a story which would be fully ap­pre­ci­ated by any Jeri­cho au­di­ence. Said Je­sus: “A cer­tain man was go­ing down from Je­ru­sa­lem to Jeri­cho, and he fell into the hands of cruel brig­ands, who robbed him, stripped him and beat him, and de­part­ing, left him half dead. Very soon, by chance, a cer­tain priest was go­ing down that way, and when he came upon the wounded man, see­ing his sorry plight, he passed by on the other side of the road. And in like man­ner a Levite also, when he came along and saw the man, passed by on the other side. Now, about this time, a cer­tain Samar­i­tan, as he jour­neyed down to Jeri­cho, came across this wounded man; and when he saw how he had been robbed and beaten, he was moved with com­pas­sion, and go­ing over to him, he bound up his wounds, pour­ing on oil and wine, and set­ting the man upon his own beast, brought him here to the inn and took care of him. And on the mor­row he took out some money and, giv­ing it to the host, said: ‘Take good care of my friend, and if the ex­pense is more, when I come back again, I will re­pay you.’ Now let me ask you: Which of these three turned out to be the neigh­bor of him who fell among the rob­bers?” And when the lawyer per­ceived that he had fallen into his own snare, he an­swered, “He who showed mercy on him.” And Je­sus said, “Go and do like­wise.”

• Jews had no dealings with S.; history of ill-feeling

164:1.4The lawyer an­swered, “He who showed mercy,” that he might re­frain from even speak­ing that odi­ous word, Samar­i­tan. The lawyer was forced to give the very an­swer to the ques­tion, “Who is my neigh­bor?” which Je­sus wished given, and which, if Je­sus had so stated, would have di­rectly in­volved him in the charge of heresy. Je­sus not only con­founded the dis­hon­est lawyer, but he told his hear­ers a story which was at the same time a beau­ti­ful ad­mo­ni­tion to all his fol­low­ers and a stun­ning re­buke to all Jews re­gard­ing their at­ti­tude to­ward the Samar­i­tans. And this story has con­tin­ued to pro­mote broth­erly love among all who have sub­se­quently be­lieved the gospel of Je­sus.

166:2.1The next day Je­sus went with the twelve over to Am­athus, near the bor­der of Samaria, and as they ap­proached the city, they en­coun­tered a group of ten lep­ers who so­journed near this place. Nine of this group were Jews, one a Samar­i­tan. Or­di­nar­ily these Jews would have re­frained from all as­so­ci­a­tion or con­tact with this Samar­i­tan, but their com­mon af­flic­tion was more than enough to over­come all re­li­gious prej­u­dice. They had heard much of Je­sus and his ear­lier mir­a­cles of heal­ing, and since the sev­enty made a prac­tice of an­nounc­ing the time of Je­sus’ ex­pected ar­rival when the Mas­ter was out with the twelve on these tours, the ten lep­ers had been made aware that he was ex­pected to ap­pear in this vicin­ity at about this time; and they were, ac­cord­ingly, posted here on the out­skirts of the city where they hoped to at­tract his at­ten­tion and ask for heal­ing. When the lep­ers saw Je­sus draw­ing near them, not dar­ing to ap­proach him, they stood afar off and cried to him: “Mas­ter, have mercy on us; cleanse us from our af­flic­tion. Heal us as you have healed oth­ers.”

166:2.2Je­sus had just been ex­plain­ing to the twelve why the gen­tiles of Perea, to­gether with the less or­tho­dox Jews, were more will­ing to be­lieve the gospel preached by the sev­enty than were the more or­tho­dox and tra­di­tion-bound Jews of Judea. He had called their at­ten­tion to the fact that their mes­sage had like­wise been more read­ily re­ceived by the Galileans, and even by the Samar­i­tans. But the twelve apos­tles were hardly yet will­ing to en­ter­tain kind feel­ings for the long-de­spised Samar­i­tans.

166:2.3Ac­cord­ingly, when Si­mon Ze­lo­tes ob­served the Samar­i­tan among the lep­ers, he sought to in­duce the Mas­ter to pass on into the city with­out even hes­i­tat­ing to ex­change greet­ings with them. Said Je­sus to Si­mon: “But what if the Samar­i­tan loves God as well as the Jews? Should we sit in judg­ment on our fel­low men? Who can tell? if we make these ten men whole, per­haps the Samar­i­tan will prove more grate­ful even than the Jews. Do you feel cer­tain about your opin­ions, Si­mon?” And Si­mon quickly replied, “If you cleanse them, you will soon find out.” And Je­sus replied: “So shall it be, Si­mon, and you will soon know the truth re­gard­ing the grat­i­tude of men and the lov­ing mercy of God.”

166:2.4Je­sus, go­ing near the lep­ers, said: “If you would be made whole, go forth­with and show your­selves to the priests as re­quired by the law of Moses.” And as they went, they were made whole. But when the Samar­i­tan saw that he was be­ing healed, he turned back and, go­ing in quest of Je­sus, be­gan to glo­rify God with a loud voice. And when he had found the Mas­ter, he fell on his knees at his feet and gave thanks for his cleans­ing. The nine oth­ers, the Jews, had also dis­cov­ered their heal­ing, and while they also were grate­ful for their cleans­ing, they con­tin­ued on their way to show them­selves to the priests.

166:2.5As the Samar­i­tan re­mained kneel­ing at Je­sus’ feet, the Mas­ter, look­ing about at the twelve, es­pe­cially at Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, said: “Were not ten cleansed? Where, then, are the other nine, the Jews? Only one, this alien, has re­turned to give glory to God.” And then he said to the Samar­i­tan, “Arise and go your way; your faith has made you whole.”

166:2.6Je­sus looked again at his apos­tles as the stranger de­parted. And the apos­tles all looked at Je­sus, save Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, whose eyes were down­cast. The twelve said not a word. Nei­ther did Je­sus speak; it was not nec­es­sary that he should.

166:2.7Though all ten of these men re­ally be­lieved they had lep­rosy, only four were thus af­flicted. The other six were cured of a skin dis­ease which had been mis­taken for lep­rosy. But the Samar­i­tan re­ally had lep­rosy.

166:2.8Je­sus en­joined the twelve to say noth­ing about the cleans­ing of the lep­ers, and as they went on into Am­athus, he re­marked: “You see how it is that the chil­dren of the house, even when they are in­sub­or­di­nate to their Fa­ther’s will, take their bless­ings for granted. They think it a small mat­ter if they ne­glect to give thanks when the Fa­ther be­stows heal­ing upon them, but the strangers, when they re­ceive gifts from the head of the house, are filled with won­der and are con­strained to give thanks in rec­og­ni­tion of the good things be­stowed upon them.” And still the apos­tles said noth­ing in re­ply to the Mas­ter’s words.

• false Messiah at Mount Gerizim

185:1.6It is sig­nif­i­cant that, while this vac­il­lat­ing Ro­man ruler sac­ri­ficed Je­sus to his fear of the Jews and to safe­guard his per­sonal po­si­tion, he fi­nally was de­posed as a re­sult of the need­less slaugh­ter of Samar­i­tans in con­nec­tion with the pre­ten­sions of a false Mes­siah who led troops to Mount Ger­izim, where he claimed the tem­ple ves­sels were buried; and fierce ri­ots broke out when he failed to re­veal the hid­ing place of the sa­cred ves­sels, as he had prom­ised. As a re­sult of this episode, the lega­tus of Syria or­dered Pi­late to Rome. Tiberius died while Pi­late was on the way to Rome, and he was not reap­pointed as procu­ra­tor of Judea. He never fully re­cov­ered from the re­gret­ful con­dem­na­tion of hav­ing con­sented to the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. Find­ing no fa­vor in the eyes of the new em­peror, he re­tired to the prov­ince of Lau­sanne, where he sub­se­quently com­mit­ted sui­cide.