Samaritan

Samaritans today are both a religious and an ethnic group located in the Palestinian terrority and Israel. Ethnically, they are descended from the inhabitants to ancient Samaria, the center of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. In 2006, there were less than 700 Samaritans, living near the city of Nablus in the West Bank and in the city of Holon near Tel Aviv. The Samaritans consider themselves to be the remnant of the "lost" ten tribes of Israel, and genetic links between the Samaritans and the ancient Israelites has now been scientifically established. They speak either Modern Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic as their mother language. For liturgical purposes, Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic are used.

In religious terms Samaritanism is a belief system based on the Torah, or frist five books of Moses in the Bible, but which does not include other biblical books. Like Judaism, Samaritanism is descended from ancient Israelite religion, although though there are differences between the Samaritan and Jewish versions of the Torah. The center of Samaritan worship, both today in ancient times, has been Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem. The Samaritans believe that Judaism has strayed from the original teachings of Moses by rejecting Mt. Gerizim, developing a Jerusalem-centered theology, and also be adopting foreign religious influences during the Babylonian exile.

File:Samaria-map.JPG

In the Hebrew Bible, Samaritans were rejected by orthodox Jews because of their mixed blood and because they were considered political enemies of [Judah]. The Samaritan insistence that God should be worshipped at at Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem, though not specifically mentioned in the Bible, was undoubtedly also an issue. In the New Testament, Samaritans were despised by the Judean Jews; and Jesus used the parable of the "Good Samaritan" to dramatize the importance of ethics versus religious formalism.

History

Origins

The Exact historical origins of the Samaritans are controversial. The Samaritans themnselves claim to be the descendants of Israelites of the Northern Kingdom who remained in Israel and Judah after the Assyrian invasion of 722 B.C.E. and during the Babylonian Captivity of 585 B.C.E. The Samaritans believe that they introduced none of the Babylonian religious tendencies that influenced the Jews during this time. Even before this, however, the Israelites of the Southern Kingdom of Judah fell into error by insisting that God be worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple and denying the validity of the northern shrine at Mt. Gerizim.

The Jews, on the other hand, believe that Jerusalem alone was the legitimate center of worhip of the God of Israel. The Samaritans supposedly lost their standing as "true" Israelites by engaging in intermarriage and adopting pagan attitudes after the Assyrian and Babylonian empires conquered Israel and Judah.

Ancient inscription in Samaritan Hebrew. From a photo c.1900 by the Palestine Exploration Fund

. A genetic study (Shen, et al., 2004) validates both origin theories, concluding that contemporary Samaritans indeed descend from the Israelites, while mitochondrial DNA analysis shows descent from Assyrians and other foreign women.

Historically, Assyrians and Babylonians forced many of the inhabitants of Israel and Judah into exile and imported non-Israelite settlers as colonists. How many Israelites remained in the land is debated, as is the question of their faithfulness to the Israelite religious tradition of strict monotheism. A theory gaining prominence among scholars holds that the conquerors deported only the middle and upper classes of the citizens, mostly town-dwellers, replacing these groups with settlers from other parts of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. The lower classes and the settlers intermarried and merged into one community. Leter, the descendants of the Jews exiled in Babylon were permitted to return, and many did. These upper class Jews refused to recognize the descendants of the native Israelites and Judahites as legitimate Jews, due to their intermarriage and merger with pagan settlers. The native group largely followed the same religion that the Jews had followed before the exile, but the Jewish religion underwent considerable reforms during the exile.

Another element in the Jewish rejection of the native group was the issue of the Jerusalem Temple. In the days of the Judges and Kings, the Israelite God was worshipped in various "high places" and shrines. But later, after the Temple was built in Jerusalem, a movement to centralize the religious tradition emerged. In the Bible, the Northern Kingdom of Israel strongly resisted this attempt at centralization. Those Jews returning from exile, however, adamantly upheld the centrality of Jerusalem. They also insisted that those who had intermarried must put away their foreign wives.

Biblical accounts

Several acounts in the Bible shed light on this controversy:

• Moses commanded the people: When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali(Deuteronomy 27:11-13).

• It was reported to the king of Assyria: "The people you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires. He has sent lions among them, which are killing them off, because the people do not know what he requires." Then the king of Assyria gave this order: "Have one of the priests you took captive from Samaria go back to live there and teach the people what the god of the land requires." So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria came to live in Bethel and taught them how to worship the Lord. (2 Kings 17:26-28)

(Archaelogical research indicates that the majority of the inhabitants of Israel during this period lived in rural areas. Thus many of them would not have been displaced by the exile or by the influx of foreign colonists into the towns.)

• They came to Zerubbabel and to the heads of the families and said, "Let us help you build because, like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here." But Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel answered, "You have no part with us in building a temple to our God. We alone will build it for the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, commanded us." Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building. (Ezra 4:2-4)

• All the men of Judah and Benjamin had gathered in Jerusalem. And on the twentieth day of the ninth month, all the people were sitting in the square before the house of God, greatly distressed by the occasion and because of the rain. Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, "You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel's guilt. Now make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives." (Ezra 10:9-11)

Gerizim and Shechem in Scripture

File:Shechem.jpg

Mt. Gerizim and the town of Shechem

Mt. Gerezim overlooks the biblical town of Shechem, where Abraham reportedly built an altar and made his initial covenant with God (Gen 12: 6-7). The Bible says that Abraham's grandson Jacob purchased land there and built another altar on the site (Gen. 33:18-19. When the Israelites entered Canaan after the exodus, Joshua assembled the tribes as Shechem to renew God's covenant with them (Josh. 24). It was also the first capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

The Samaritans understand Mt. Gerizim to be the place where God chose to establish "His Name" (Deut 12:5). Deuteronomy 11:29 states:

• "When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses."

However, after the split between Judah and Israel, the sacred nature of Mt. Gerizim became a bone of contention. Orthodox Judaism during the latter part of the period of the Divided Kingdoms forbade offering sacrifice to God outside of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Israelite shrines at and Bethel, Dan and other "high places" — including Mt. Gerizim — were condemned by the prophets and the authors of biblical books such as Kings and Chronicles.

Archaeological excavations at Mount Gerizim suggest that a Samaritan temple was built there c. 330B.C.E., and when Alexander the Great (356-323) was in the region, he is said to have visited Samaria and not Jerusalem. Earlier temples have not been discovered.

The New Testament (John 4:7-20) records the following illustrative exchange between a Samaritan woman and the Jewish teacher Jesus of Nazareth regarding the Samaritan Temple and relations between Samaritans and Jews:

• Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"... Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

200 B.C.E. to the Christian Era

After the coming of Alexander the Great, Samaria, like Judea, was divided between a Hellenizing faction based in its towns and a pious faction, which was led by the High Priest and based largely around Shechem and the rural areas. Antiochus Epiphanes was on the throne of Syria from 175 to 164 B.C.E. His determined policy was to Hellenize his entire kingdom. A major obstacle to Antiochus' ambition was the fidelity of the Jews to their historic religion. The military revolt of the Maccabees against Antiochus' program exacerabated the schism between Jews and Samaritans. The degree of Samaritan cooperation with the Greeks is a matter of controversy.

• Josephus Book 12, Chapter 5 quotes the Samaritans as saying:

We therefore beseech thee, our benefactor and saviour, to give order to Apolonius, the governor of this part of the country, and to Nicanor, the procurator of thy affairs, to give us no disturbances, nor to lay to our charge what the Jews are accused for, since we are aliens from their nation and from their customs, but let our temple which at present hath no name at all, be named the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.

• II Maccabees 6:1-2 says:

Shortly afterwards, the king sent Gerontes the Athenian to force the Jews to violate their ancestral customs and live no longer by the laws of God; and to profane the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus, and the one on Mount Gerizim to Zeus, Patron of Strangers, as the inhabitants of the latter place had requested.

Both of these sources, of course, are Jewish. The the "request" of the Samaritans to rename their temple was likely made under duress. However, the Samaritans apparentely did not resist nearly as strenously as did the Jews. In any case, the schism between the Jews and Samaritans was now final. After the victory of the Maccabees, this incarnation of the Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim was destroyed by by the Jewish ruler John Hyracanus in about 128 B.C.E., having existed about 200 years. Only a few stone remnants of it exist today.

Samaritans also fared badly under the early part of Roman rule. In the time of Jesus, they were a despised and economically depressed people.

The Common Era

In the first part of the Common Era, Samaria was incorporated into the Roman province of Judea. In the early part of the second century a period of Samaritan revival began. The Temple of Gerizim was rebuilt after the Bar Kochba revolt, around 135 C.E. Much of the current Samaritan liturgy was set by the high priest Baba Rabba in the fourth century.

There were also some Samaritans in the Persian Empire, where they served in the Sassanid army.

Later, under Byzantine Emperor Zeno in the late fifth century, Samaritans and Jews were massacred, and the Temple on Mt. Gerizim was again destroyed. In 529, led a charismatic messianic figure named Julianus ben Sabar (or ben Sahir), the Samaritans launched a war to create their own independent state in 529. With the help of the Ghassanid Arabs, Emperor Justinian I crushed the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. The Samaritan faith was virtually outlawed thereafter by the Christian Byzantine Empire; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community dwindled to near extinction.

[[Image:Gerizim2.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Samaritan cultic center on Mount Gerizim. From a photo c.1900 by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

A large number of Samaritans fled the country in 634 C.E., following the Muslim victory at the Battle of Yarmuk. Samaritan communities were established in Egypt and Syria but they did not survive into modern times. During the mid 800s Muslim zealots destroyed Samaritan and Jewish synagogues. During the 10th century relations between Muslims, Jews and Samaritans improved greatly. In the 1300s the Mamluks came to power; they plundered Samaritan religious sites, and turned their shrines into mosques. Many Samaritans converted out of fear. After the Ottoman conquest, Muslim persecution of Samaritans increased again. Massacres were frequent. According to Samaritan tradition, in 1624, the last Samaritan high priest of the line of Eleazar son of Aaron died without issue, but descendants of Aaron's other son, Ithamar, remained and took over the office.

By the 1830s only a small group of Samaritans in Shechem remained extant. The local Arab population believed that Samaritans were "atheists" and "against Islam", and they threatened to murder the entire Samaritan community. Since Jews and Arabs had good relations at this time, the Samaritans turned to the Jewish community for help; and Jewish entreaties to treat the Samaritans with respect were eventually heeded.

Persecution and assimilation reduced their numbers drastically. In 1919, an illustrated National Geographic report on the community stated that their numbers were less than 150.

Modern times

Samaritan and the Samaritan Torah

The Samaritans now number around 650, divided about equally between their modern homes in the settlement of Kiryat Luza on their sacred Mount Gerizim, and the Israeli town of Holon, just outside of Tel Aviv.

Until the 1980s, most of the Samaritans resided in the Palestinian town of Nablus below Mount Gerizim. They relocated to the mountain itself as a result of the first Intifada, and all that is left of their community in Nablus itself is an abandoned synagogue. But the conflict followed them. In 2001, the Israeli army set up an artillery battery on Gerizim.

Relations with the surrounding Jews and Palestinians have been mixed. In 1954, Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi created the Samaritan enclave in Holon but Israeli Samaritans today complain of being treated as "pagans and strangers" by orthodox Jews. Those living in Israel have Israeli citizenship. Samaritans in the Palestinian territories are a recognized minority and they send one representative to the Palestinian parliament. Palestinian Samaritans have been granted passports by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

As a small community divided between two mutually hostile neighbors, the Samaritans are generally unwilling to take sides in the conflict, fearing that whatever side they take could lead to repercussions from the other.

One of the biggest problems facing the community today is the issue of continuity. With such a small population, divided into only four families (Cohen, Tsedakah, Danfi and Marhib; a fifth family died out in the last century) and a refusal to accept converts, there has been a history of genetic disease within the group. To counter this, Samaritans have recently agreed that men from the community may marry non-Samaritan (i. e. Jewish) women, provided that they agree to follow Samaritan religious practices.

In 2004 the Samaritan high priest, Shalom b. Amram, passed away and was replaced by Elazar b. Tsedaka. The Samaritan high priest is selected by age from the priestly family. The high priest resides on Mount Gerizim.

Religion

[[Image:Samaritans.jpg|thumb|Samaritans, from a photo c. 1900 by the Palestine Exploration Fund.]]

Samaritan scriptures include the Samaritan version of the Torah, the Memar Markah, the Samaritan liturgy, and Samaritan law codes and biblical commentaries. Samaritans claim to have a very ancient version of the Torah, the Abisha Scroll, dating back to a grandson of Aaron, the brother of Moses. Scholars question the age of this scroll, which has not be scientifically dated. It is agreed that some Samaritan Torah scrolls are as old as the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint; scholars have various theories concerning the actual relationships between these three texts.

Samaritans to not accept the Old Testament books of historical writings, wisdom literature, or the prophets as sacred scripture. The Samaritan Torah differs in some respects from the Jewish Torah. An English translation of the Samaritan Torah is pending. Samaritans believe in a Restorer, the "Taheb", who is roughly equivalent to the Jewish Messiah. His ministry will center on Mt. Gerizim, bringing about the unification of Judah and Israel and the restoration of the true religion of Moses. Like the Jews, the keep the Sabbath, circumcise male children, and follow stricts rules regarding ritual purity. They celebrate Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur and other important holidays, but not Purim or Hannukkah. The priesthood remains a central office in their faith. They do not wear tfillin. Lineage is patrilineal, while Jewish lineage is matrilineal.

Religious beliefs

• There is one God, the same God recognized by the Hebrew prophets;
• Their view of God is the same as the Jewish biblical view of God;
• The Torah was dictated by God to Moses;
• Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the one true sanctuary chosen by Israel's God;
• Many Samaritans believe that at the end of days, the dead will be resurrected by Taheb, a restorer;
• They possess a belief in Paradise (heaven);
• The priests are the interpreters of the law and the keepers of tradition; unlike Judaism, there is no distinction between the priesthood and the scholars;
• The authority of classical Jewish rabbinical works, the Mishnah, and the Talmuds are rejected;
• They have a significantly different version of the Ten Commandments (for example, their 10th commandment is about the sanctity of Mt. Gerizim).

The Samaritans retained the Ancient Hebrew script, the high priesthood, animal sacrifices, the actual eating of lambs at Passover, and the celebration of Aviv in spring as the New Year. The original name of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Teruah, at the beginning of Nisan, is not considered a new year as it is in Judaism. Their main Torah text differs from the Masoretic Text, as well. Some differences are doctrinal: for example, their Torah explicitly mentions that "the place that God will chose" is Mount Gerizim. Other differences seem more or less accidental.

Samaritans in the Gospels

The Gospels twice mention good deeds by Samaritans. Jesus teaches that actions speak louder than ethnic identity or pious appearances:

• The parable of the Good Samaritan.
• Jesus asks water from the Samaritan Woman of Sychar (Shechem).

However, the attitude displayed by the Gospel of Matthew differs from Luke's account. According to Matthew 10:5-6, Jesus tells his disciples: "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel." Matthew does not report the parable of the good Samaritan or any story of Jesus entering a Samaritan town.

"The Good Samaritan".
From a collection of public domain Christian clip art.

The Good Samaritan is a famous New Testament parable appearing in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37). The parable is told by Jesus to illustrate that compassion should be for all people, and that fulfilling the spirit of the Law is more important than fulfilling the letter of the Law.

In Luke, a scholar of the Law tests Jesus by asking him what is necessary to inherit eternal life. To begin his answer, Jesus asks the lawyer what the Mosaic Law says about it. When the lawyer quotes the basic law of loving God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and all your mind, and the parallel law of loving one's neighbour as oneself, Jesus says that he has answered correctly— "Do this and you will live," he tells him.

When the lawyer then asks Jesus to tell him who his neighbour is, Jesus responds with a parable of the Good Samaritan. It tells about a traveler who was attacked, robbed, stripped, and left for dead by the side of a road. Later, a priest saw the stricken figure and avoided him, presumably in order to maintain ritual purity. Similarly, a Levite saw the man and ignored him as well. Then a Samaritan passed by, and, despite the mutual antipathy between his and the Jewish populations, immediately rendered assistance by giving him first aid and taking him to an inn to recover while promising to cover the expenses.

At the conclusion of the story, Jesus asks the lawyer, of the three passers-by, who was the stricken man's neighbour? When the lawyer responds that it was the man who helped him, Jesus responds with "Go and do the same."

This parable is one of the most famous from the New Testament and its influence is such that to be called a "Good Samaritan" in Western culture today is to be described as a generous person who is ready to provide aid to people in distress without hesitation.

The parable, as told originally, had a significant theme of non-discrimination and interracial harmony. But as the Samaritan population dwindled to near-extinction, this aspect of the parable became less and less discernible: fewer and fewer people ever met or interacted with Samaritans, or even heard of them in any context other than this one.

See also

• Samaritanism
• Bystander intervention
• Good Samaritan Law
• Samaria - a similar article concentrating more on the geographic area.
• Mount Gerizim
• Holon
• Binyamina

Footnotes

1. Samaritans:History
2. Bible Tools/Definitions: Single Click on "Antiochians I.S.B.E."
3. Jesus and the Samaritan Woman / A Samaritan Woman Approaches:1.
4. What is the Abomination of Desolation?

External links

• Bibliography
• The Samaritans the earliest Jewish sect: their history, theology, and literature by James A Montgomery
• Samaritan Alphabet
• The Origin and Nature of the Samaritans and their Relationship to Second Temple Jewish Sects
• 1911 Jewish Encyclopedia, "Samaritans"
• Samarian chronology and High Priests
• Edward Kaprov Photography
• Edward Kaprov Photography 2
• The Samaritan Update
• Samaritan high priests
• The Samaritans
• Guards of Mount Grizim
• Reconstruction of Patrilineages and Matrilineages of Samaritans and Other Israeli Populations from Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation, by Peidong Shen, et al., in Human Mutation vol. 24 (2004), pp. 248-260
• The Socio politics of the Samaritans in the Palestinian Occupied Territories
• Template:Dlw

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