non-Jews and worshipped the God of Israel. These people were despised as mongrels by those who had maintained their ethnic and religious purity. Escaping persecution when it broke out in Jerusalem, “Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them” (Acts 8:5). This was the area in which Jesus had encountered the Samaritan woman (John 4), whom Tradition identifies as St. Photini, and it is possible her witness was remembered. With bold preaching about the coming of the Kingdom of
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