JACOB’S WELL

A deep well (22.5 m), located on the eastern edge of Nablus, is venerated as the spot where Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman (John 4).

The existence of a well in the immediate vicinity of so many springs tends to confirm the traditional attribution to Jacob. When he bought land to settle down (Gen. 33:18-20) the water rights to the springs would have long been assigned; the only alternative to perpetual disputes was to find his own source of water. The same, of course, is true of any other latecomer.

About AD 380 a cruciform church was built, incorporating a baptistery associated with the exposed well-head. After destruction in the Samaritan uprising of 484 or 529, the church was rebuilt and survived until the C9. Early Crusader pilgrims speak of the well but not the church, which is first mentioned in 1175 as belonging to the Benedictine sisters of Bethany. Its construction may have been made possible by the patronage of Queen Melisande, founder of the abbey at Bethany, who was exiled to Nablus in 1152 and lived there until her death in 1161.

The Greek Orthodox Church acquired the ruined site in 1860, and restored the crypt with the well to Christian use in 1893. The half-built church, like that on the Mount of Temptation, was a victim of the troubles that beset Greece and Russia during and after the 1914-18 war. It reflects the general lines of the Crusader church. The T-shape of the crypt and the steps leading down to it are medieval.

Source: The Holy Land by Jerome Murphy- O’Connor