Page 118 - Gnosis volume 2
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recognized Him, and accepted Him as such.
This is what the Samaritans did, as St. John's Gospel indicates in the episode of Jacob's
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well, and when referring to Christ's stay in Samaria .
The Samaritan woman recognized the Messiah in Jesus: come, see a man, which told
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me all things that I ever did, is not this the Christ? And, at the request of the
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Samaritans who acknowledged Him as the Messiah , Jesus stayed in Samaria for two
days. A great number of people believed in Him there, and said to the Samaritan
woman: now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves,
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and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world .
Then why did not Jesus choose to settle down in Samaria? Why did He not abandon
Zion and the vaults of Solomon's temple, to broadcast His message from Mount Garizim,
in the sanctuary that the Samaritans had erected? Still more, why did He never return to
Samaria and when sending His disciples to spread the Good Tidings, why did He tell
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them: go not in the way of the pagans and into thy city of the Samaritans , enter ye not
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying: the
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Kingdom of Heaven is at hand .
It is interesting to note that, abandoning the side which put up the least resistance,
Jesus deliberately chose to face the esoteric incomprehension of the Jewish elite,
17 John, IV, 1-12.
18 John, IV, 29.
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John, IV, 39.
20 John, IV, 42.
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In the slavonic text: into the city of the Samaritans.
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Matthew, X, 5-7.