Jesus and his disciples were in a foreign land, the land of Samaria. It had once been recognized as the birthplace and capital of the Jewish faith. It was in Samaria and at Shechem that God told Abraham that the land would belong to his descendants. But later the Israelites were defeated by the Assyrians, who then settled in the land and mixed with the population. So in Jesus' day the people of Israel viewed the Samaritans as half-breeds and false worshipers. Jesus' parable of the "good Samaritan" was a contradiction; to the Jews there were only bad, corrupted and devious Samaritans. To the Jews there was no such person as a "good Samaritan." For instance, while the Samaritans called the town Jesus stopped at by the old name of Shechem, meaning oak, the Jews called it Sychar, meaning drunk…