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The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah—Appendix

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    Appendix 15—Location of Sychar, and the Date of our Lord’s Visit to Samaria. (See Book III, ch. 8.)

    1. The Location of Sychar.

    Although modern writers are now mostly agreed on this subject, it may be well briefly to put before our readers the facts of the case.LTJMBA 171.1

    Till comparatively lately, the Sychar of St. John 4. was generally as representing the ancient Shechem. The first difficulty here was the name, since Shechem, or even Sichem, could scarcely be identified with Sychar, which is undoubtedly the correct reading. Accordingly, the latter term was represented as one of opprobrium, and derived from Shekhar (in Aramaean Shikhra), as it were, drunken town or else from Sheqer (in Aramaean Shiqra), lying town. But, not to mention other objections, there is no trace of such as alteration of the name Sychar in Jewish writings, while its employment would seem wholly incongruous in such a narrative as St. John 4. Moreover, all the earliest writers distinguished Sychar from Shechem. Lastly, in the Talmud the name of Sokher, also written Sikhra, frequently occurs, and that not only as distinct from Shechem, but in a connection which renders the hypothesis of an opprobrious by-name impossible. Professor Delitzch (Zeitschrift für Luther. Theol. for 1856, ii pp. 242, 243) has collected seven passages from the Babylon Talmud to that effect, in five of which Sichra, is mentioned as the birthplace of celebrated Rabbis—the town having at a later period apparently been left by the Samaritans, and occupied by Jews (Baba Mez. 42 a, 83 a, Pes. 31 b, Nidd. 36 a, Chull. 18 b, and, without mention of Rabbis, Baba K 82 b Menach. 64 b. See also Men. x. 2, and Jer. Sheq. p. 48 d). If further proof were required, it would be sufficient to say that a woman would scarcely have gone a mile and a half from Shechem to Jacob’s well to fetch water, when there are so many springs about the former city. In these circumstances, later writers have generally fixed upon the village of Askar, half a mile from Jacob’s Well, and within sight of it, as the Sychar of the New Testament, one of the earliest to advocate this view having been the late learned Canon Williams. Little more than a third of a mile from Askar is the reputed tomb of Joseph. The transformation of the name Sychar into Askar is explained, either by a contraction of Ain Askar the well of Sychar or else by the fact that in the Samaritan Chronicle the place is called Iskar, which seems to have been the vulgar pronunciation of Sychar. A full description of the place is given by Captain Conder (Tent-Worker in Palestine, vol. i. pp. 71 &c., especially pp. 75 and 76), and by M. Guérin, La Samarie vol. i. p. 371, although the later writer, who almost always absolutely follows tradition, denies the identity of Sychar and Askar (pp. 401, 402).LTJMBA 171.2

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