The Samaritan woman at the well is an episode in the life of Jesus that appears only in the Gospel of John, in John 4:4-26.[1] In Eastern Orthodox Church tradition, she is known as Photine (from φως, the luminous one).
According to the John 4:
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)[2]
This episode takes place after the return of Jesus to Galilee according to Andrew Lincoln.[3] Culturally there was great enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans, who were considered a half-breed race by the Jews.[4]
This Gospel episode is referred to as "a paradigm for our engagement with truth", in the Roman Curia book A Christian reflection on the New Age, as the dialogue says: "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know" and offers an example of Jesus Christ the bearer of the water of life.[5]
The passages that comprise John 4:10-26 are sometimes referred to as the Water of Life Discourse which forms a complement to the Bread of Life Discourse.[6]