Samaritan woman at the well
woman met by Jesus at the well (John 4:5–26)
The Samaritan woman at the well, also known as Photini of Samaria, is a figure from the Gospel of John. John 4:4–42 relates her conversation with Jesus at Jacob's Well near the city of Sychar or Shechem.
Biblical account
The World English Bible's text reads:
He needed to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Samaritan woman at the well” is woman met by Jesus at the well (John 4:5–26). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Samaritan, woman and well, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “woman met by Jesus at the well (John 4:5–26)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q292242. VIAF identifies the subject as 73043913. The Library of Congress control number is n92006801. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samaritan woman at the well” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.