There was open hostility among Jews and Samaritans in Jesus' day. Enmity had been brewing for centuries, and especially since the return of the exiles from Babylon in the sixth century B.C.E. Though it may be that by Jesus' day few remembered the stories of its origin, but the hostility was still there  and mutually shared.

Believed by tradition to be the remnant of the lost tribes of Israel which disappeared after the fall of Samaria to Sargon II of Assyria in 722 B.C.E., the Samaritans…