The life and teachings of Jesus Author:Arthur Kenyon Rogers Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tions themselves are not probable. The misunderstandings are too constant and too gross, and often the questions are so vague that they hardly have any meaning ;... more » too plainly they only give a catch-word which Jesus can develop. Let us take a single discourse and examine it more carefully, and that we may not be unfair, we will take one where the arguments which can be brought forward for its genuineness are unusually strong. The conversation with the woman of Samaria is very dramatic and spirited, it contains several sentences which show deep spiritual insight, and it betrays a considerable acquaintance with the scenery of the spot, and with Jewish and Samaritan customs. But just because it is so spiritual is it suspicious, easy to understand as an ideal picture, a foil to the unbelief of the Jews, but not so easy to understand as a real scene. The story in the first place does not agree with the facts of history. A successful ministry in Samaria during Jesus' lifetime there are strong reasons for doubting ; after such sayings and such deeds as these the history of the early Church and its slow perception of the universal character of the Gospel is hardly to be understood. Nor is Jesus likely in any case to have amused himself by speaking thus to a dissolute Samaritan woman, to whom his words must have been without meaning; it is to the reader they are spoken rather than to the woman. The questions of the woman, the remark of the disciples, the approach of the Samaritans, every thing serves as an occasion for this spiritual teaching. But the woman's words, however well they serve this purpose, are not very probable in themselves. The comparison with Jacob, the theological question about the place of worship, are brought in somewhat violently; and one remark in particular, when she ...« less