gospel · 28 · Sychar
Three things about the scene are startling and are usually read past. It is the longest exchange Jesus has with any individual in the gospels, longer than with Nicodemus, Pilate or Peter. The disciples come back and marvel that he was talking with a woman, and John records that none of them asked why, which is a very dry piece of narration. And she goes into the town and brings it out, so that John says twice that the Samaritans believed because of the woman's testimony — the verb is the one used of apostolic preaching. She is unnamed in the gospel. The Byzantine tradition gives her the name Photine, the enlightened one, styles her equal-to-the-apostles, and carries a whole later account of her martyrdom under Nero; none of that is needed for the scene and none of it is asserted here beyond the name. What the row records is what John records: a conversation at a well at noon, and a town that believed on a woman's word.
The longest conversation Jesus has with anybody in the four gospels — and many of the Samaritans of that town believed because of her word.