The Thirteenth Disciple: The Samaritan Woman As Savant

The story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well plays a much more important role for the Gospel of John's overall literary strategy than customarily supposed. This book discards the cultural bias that a woman and a Samaritan was an inferior Torah student compared to a Judahite man and adopts a very different expectation of the Samaritan Woman: that she was theologically literate and probably a theological leader in the Samaritan community. The book shows that the Samaritan Woman was the exemplary disciple, one who listens, discerns, comes to belief and then becomes the outstanding evangelist of the gospel. She is the thirteenth disciple, the exemplar of all they would become, the pioneer witness and evangelist to the world. The book is suitable for all thoughtful Bible readers.