TEXTS
he was to be called, so that he might be with her in the Savior’s presence. 69 But since, as Heracleon says, “in intelligible terms, she did not know her own husband, but in simple terms she was ashamed to say that she had a paramour and not a husband,” how was it not pointless to give her the order “Go, call your husband, and come here”? 70 Then, with regard to “You have said well ‘I have no husband,’ ” he says: “because the Samaritan woman had no husband in the world, but she did have a husband in eternity.” 71 Now we have read “you have had five husbands” but we find in Heracleon “You have had six husbands.” 72 And his interpretation is that “by the six husbands is indicated the whole material evil in which she was implicated and to which she was related by fornicating contrary to reason and by which she was abused, rejected, and abandoned.” 73 It should be said to him that if indeed the spiritual woman fornicated, the spiritual woman sinned, but if the spiritual woman sinned, the spiritual woman was not a good tree, for according to the Gospel: “A good tree cannot bear wicked fruit” (Mt. 7:18). 74 This clearly eliminates their16 made-up fables: if it is impossible for a good tree to bear wicked fruit, and if the Samaritan woman, being spiritual, was a good tree, it follows that he would either have to say that her fornication was not a sin or that she did not fornicate. The woman said to him: “Lord, I behold that you are a prophet. Our fathers have worshipped on this mountain, and you say: ‘In Jerusalem is the place where one should worship” ’ (Jn 4:19–20). XII 75 This is already the third time that the Samaritan woman addresses our Savior as Lord,17 and it is also the final time that she is recorded as saying this. But she does not yet suppose that he is greater than the prophets or that he is the one whom they prophesied, but that he is a prophet. 76 Once her first five husbands, along with the one left after them whom she supposed to be her husband, are confuted, the heterodox opinion of those dealing with the Scripture, not being able initially to see who the Word refuting them is, says that he is a prophet, as if he were someone divine who had about him some superhuman quality, but not as great as he actually was. That is why she says, as if somehow looking up and considering herself in a state of contemplation:18 “I behold that you are a prophet.” 77 With regard to “Our fathers” et cetera, one must know the difference between Samaritans and Jews concerning what they 160