Jesus’ Encounter with a Woman at the Well: A South Asian Perspective

Abstract

The water of life discourse in the Gospel of John 4 has been of great interest and theological importance to readers of the Bible. This, one of the best-known Bible passages, highlights profound and significant teaching for Christians, which includes but is not limited to: the promised Messiah; God’s saving plan for the world; sovereign grace; living water; eternal life; witnessing for Christ and worshipping God in Spirit and truth. In this article, an attempt has been made to read the encounter through South Asian eyes by placing the sociocultural aspects of the narrative into a present-day South Asian context. Moreover, some applications for Jesus’ counter-cultural behavior are discussed. The article particularly focuses on caste and gender complexities in order to bring out the value of the passage from a South Asian perspective in the twenty-first century.1