Where was Sychar, the Samaritan town of John 4?

Question

Accepted Answer

Sychar was most probably the village of Askar on the lower slope of Mount Ebal, on the eastern edge of today's Nablus in the West Bank, about a kilometre north of Jacob's well; the map point stands there, about 49 km north of Jerusalem in a straight line. Many scholars, however, hold that John meant Shechem itself, the mound of Tell Balata, which lies under a kilometre from Askar and only a few hundred metres from the well. The well is not in doubt; the question is which town the woman came from. The case for Askar is that early witnesses keep the two places apart. Eusebius lists Sychar separately from Shechem, and the Pilgrim of Bordeaux in 333 was shown Sichem with Joseph's tomb and, a mile away, a place called Sechar, from which the Samaritan woman came down to draw water. The case for Shechem is its nearness to the well and the word of Jerome, who took Sychar for a mistaken reading of Shechem. Against it, the old city on Tell Balata had been destroyed by John Hyrcanus about 107 BC, and it is not clear that anyone lived there in Jesus' day. For John the town matters as much as the well. The woman “left her waterpot, and went her way into the city”; while its people came out, Jesus told the disciples, “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest”, perhaps pointing to the plain below Askar. The Samaritans “besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days”, and said at the end: “we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” The site of the well itself is treated in a separate question.