<p>4:19 <i>The woman said to him: Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet</i>- Now she is sure that this exhausted, dehydrated Jew is more than a random guy sitting by a well, cadging a drink off a Gentile. Yet having been convicted by Him of a sinful life, even though He did it in the kindest possible way, she prefers to wiggle out of those personal issues by getting into theology. We know from Acts 8 that people from Samaria formed a significant part of the earliest Christian community. Yet all converts are prone to return to their former beliefs in some ways at some times. The Samaritan view of Messiah was likewise that he would be the re-incarnation of a prophet, specifically Moses (Jn. 4:19,25). It therefore seems likely that the idea of a pre-existent Christ / Messiah developed as a result of the early Jewish and Samaritan converts returning to their previous conceptions of Messiah. For these were less taxing to their faith than the radical idea that an illiterate Jewish teenager called Marryam in some dumb Galileean village actually conceived a baby direct from God Almighty. Uninspired documents such as the <i>Preaching Of Pete</i>r and the <i>Gospel Of The Hebrews</i> also make the false connection between Jesus and a re-incarnated Moses, Elijah etc. Clearly enough, the idea of a pre-existent, incarnated Jesus had its roots in paganism and apostate Judaism.</p>