Samar´itans See picture.

The Samaritan Pentateuch. (Heb. shōmerōnı̂m). Mentioned in 2 Kings 17:29 as “the people of Samaria.”
It is customary to refer the Samaritans in this passage to the colonists brought by the king of Assyria in
place of the deported Israelites; but the text seems rather to mean that these colonists put their gods
into the houses of the high places that the Samaritans, i.e., the former inhabitants of Samaria, had made
for their own religious use. But the Samaritans of subsequent history and of the NT are the descendants
of the colonists brought in by the king of Assyria.
The Captor and the Captivity It was Shalmaneser V, who reigned five years, beginning with 727, who laid
siege to Samaria; but his successor, Sargon II, claimed to have taken it. At least he did the mopping up at
the end of the campaign in 722 b.c. Sargon carried off 27,290 inhabitants as he himself recounts. He
took fifty chariots as “the portion of his royalty” and contented himself with the same tribute as “the
former king.” Thus it is plain that he neither desolated nor depopulated the land. But he put an end to
its independence and set over it an Assyrian governor. In 720 we find Samaria, with Arpad, Simyra, and
Damascus, joining in the revolt headed by Hamath.
Extent of the Captivity The captivity must have been confined to Samaria and a small surrounding
region. In Hezekiah’s time (2 Chronicles 30:11), in Josiah’s (34:9), and even in Jeremiah’s (Jeremiah 41:5)
there were Israelites in the Northern Kingdom who clung to the worship of God at Jerusalem. The
27,290 captives taken away by Sargon may, indeed, have been increased afterward by him or by other
monarchs. But all the indications are that the depopulation was not thorough and was limited to the city
of Samaria and its vicinity. This would account for the fact that the Galilee of our Lord’s day was a Jewish
region. The Samaria of Josephus, indeed, embraced what was formerly the territory of Ephraim, but the
Cuthaean Samaritans “possessed only a few towns and villages of this large area” and western
Manasseh.
Repeopling The repeopling was not done all at once. In settling the affairs of that unquiet region more
than one band of colonists was brought in. Heathen colonists were introduced by Sargon in 721 and
again in 715 b.c. (2 Kings 17:24), by Esarhaddon, 680 b.c. (Ezra 4:2), and finally by Osnapper, i.e.,
Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian emperor (669-626 b.c.), who added people from Elam, etc., to the
population.
Resultant Population The Samaritans were a mixed race with a pagan core (Ezra 4:2). Their blood would
become more and more Hebraized by the addition of renegade Jews and by the intermarriage with
surrounding Israelites, who would find among them the familiar worship of former times.
Worship Since the priest who was sent to “teach them the custom of the god of the land” was of the
Samaritan captivity, and not from Jerusalem (2 Kings 17:27), their worship must have descended from
that of Jeroboam. The schism headed by Jeroboam was not religious, but political (1 Kings 12:4, 16), and
his object was to separate Israel not from God but from Jerusalem. His golden calves were designed as
images of the God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. The notion of plurality is not so
clearly marked in Hebrew as in English, “hinnēh, lo!” being an interjection (“Behold, your gods!”). There
is no sign of plurality, except the verb heʽĕlûkā. But ʼĕlōhı̂m, even when it refers to the one God,
sometimes has a plural verb, and that in cases where we should not expect it (Genesis 20:13; 35:7; 2
Samuel 7:23, in reference to this very deliverance from Egypt; Psalm 58:11, a participle. Thus,
Jeroboam’s sin may have been a violation not so much of the first commandment as of the second.
Indeed, archaeological research suggests that the two golden calves served not as idols but as supports
for the invisible presence of Yahweh. This is indicated by popular contemporary Near Eastern
iconography, where the gods of the heathen, such as Baal, are pictured enthroned on the back of a bull
or some other animal. With all the Jewish horror of Jeroboam’s worship, the charge is not usually that
he introduced other gods (perhaps only in 1 Kings 14:9, where the reference is possibly to images; and 2
Chronicles 11:15), but that it was schismatic (13:9) and irregular (1 Kings 12:31-33). Now, while he
decisively separated the people from Jerusalem, it would be altogether for his interest to conciliate
them by making the new worship as much like the old as possible (in 1 Kings 12:32 note the phrase “like
the feast which is in Judah”). For a few needful changes he might plausibly argue that David and
Solomon had taken great liberties; that the Temple with its burdensome cost was far enough from the
simple Tabernacle, for whose construction God Himself had given minute directions; that Jerusalem had
no special divine sanction; and finally that he himself had just as good a divine call as David and better
than Solomon or Rehoboam. Putting all these things together with what is said under the next head of
the probability that copies of the Pentateuch would be preserved in the Northern Kingdom, we may be
reasonably sure that Jeroboam’s ritual would not be very far from that handed down from Moses. This
would act as a purge on the imported polytheism of the transplanted peoples but would result in little
more than a dual worship —a mixture of paganism and Judaism.
Samaritan Pentateuch Whether the Northern Kingdom would be likely, in separating from the Levitical
worship, to carry the Pentateuch with it is a question that, in the lack of positive evidence, everyone
must answer according to his own judgment. The Tabernacle was most of the time in the territory that
afterward belonged to the kingdom of Israel. It was in Shiloh till the time of Eli, about 1051 b.c. (1
Samuel 4:3). Shiloh was long remembered as its resting place (Psalm 78:60; Jeremiah 7:12, 14; 26:6). At
the close of David’s reign, 960 b.c., it was no farther S than Gibeon (1 Chronicles 21:29), a little S of the
border. The focus of the old worship thus having been in the Northern Kingdom, of course there would
be copies of the ceremonial law there, and it is hardly conceivable that there should not be copies of the
whole Pentateuch, if not more of the Bible, at least in the Levitical cities. It is therefore not impossible
that the Samaritan Pentateuch came into the hands of the Samaritans as an inheritance from the ten
tribes whom they succeeded. However, it is much more probable to conclude that it was introduced by
Manasseh (cf. Josephus Ant. 11.8. 2, 4) at the time of the foundation of the Samaritan sanctuary on Mt.
Gerizim.
First Discord Between Jews and Samaritans That the Samaritans who wished to join with the Jews are
called “enemies” in Ezra 4 may mean either that they were then seen to be enemies in disguise or that
they were enemies when the account was written. Perhaps the latter; for in the refusal no charge of
hypocrisy was made against them. It was only that the right to build belonged to others and that they
could have no part in it. The genealogies were carefully kept (Ezra 8), and it is probable that
considerations of birth were so prominent that there was no need of inquiry into anything else. Were
the Jews right? It is not for us to judge. We can only inquire for our own instruction. We must believe
that they knew their own business best and presume that they were right. Yet there are some facts that
cannot escape our notice. Their course in regard to aliens and children of mixed marriages, as shown
in Ezra 10:3 and indicated in Nehemiah 13:1, 3 (cf. “ever” of v. 1, with “to the tenth generation”
of Deuteronomy 23:3), though natural and probably justifiable under the circumstances, was yet, so far
as we know, somewhat in advance of what God had required. Aliens and slaves were allowed to eat the
Passover if they were circumcised (Exodus 12:44, 48-49; see Moabites).
Subsequent History The subsequent history of the Samaritans is touched on in the Bible and in
extrabiblical literature. Ancient. The relation between Jew and Samaritan was one of hostility. The
expulsion of Manasseh by Nehemiah for an unlawful marriage, and his building of the Samaritan temple
on Mt. Gerizim by permission of Darius Nothus, took place about 409 b.c. The inhospitality (Luke 9:52-
53) and hostility of the Samaritans induced many pilgrims from the N to Jerusalem to go on the E of the
Jordan. The Samaritans sometimes, using rival flames, perplexed the watchers for the signal fires that
announced the rising of the paschal moon from Mt. Olivet to the Euphrates. They rejected all the OT
except the Pentateuch, concerning which they claimed to have an older copy than the Jews and to
observe the precepts better. The Jews repaid hate with hate. They cast suspicion on the Samaritan copy
of the law and disallowed the steadfast claim of the Samaritans to Jewish birth (John 4:12). Social and
commercial relations, although they could not be broken off (4:8), were reduced to the lowest possible
figure. “The Samaritan was publicly cursed in their synagogues—could not be adduced as a witness in
the Jewish courts—could not be admitted to any sort of proselytism, and was thus, so far as the Jew
could affect his position, excluded from eternal life.” It ought to be said, however, that the rabbinic
regulations for the relationships of Jews and Samaritans varied greatly at different times and that the
older Talmudical authorities inclined to treat the Samaritans more like Jews. In 332 the Samaritans
desired Alexander the Great to exempt them from tribute in the sabbatical year, on the ground that, as
Israelites, they did not cultivate the land during that year. Becoming satisfied that they were not actually
Jews, he deferred granting their request (Josephus Ant. 11.8.6, cf. 9.14.3) and on account of their
conduct besieged and destroyed Samaria. John Hyrcanus took “Shechem and Gerizzim, and the nation of
the Cutheans, who dwelt at that temple which resembled the temple which was at Jerusalem, and
which Alexander permitted Sanballat, the general of his army, to build for the sake of Manasseh, who
was son-in-law to Jaddua the high priest, as we have formerly related; which temple was now deserted
two hundred years after it was built” (Josephus Ant. 13.9.1; as for Manasseh, cf. Ant. 11.7.1-2). The
temple on Gerizim was “deserted,” 130 b.c. This gives about 330 for the date of its building. The
“Sanballat the Horonite” (see Horonite) of the Bible was contemporary with Nehemiah, 445 b.c., and
was father-in-law of one of the sons of Joiada the son of Eliashib, the high priest (Nehemiah 13:28). But
the Sanballat of Josephus was a Cuthaean, of the same race as the Samaritans, and was sent to Samaria
by Darius Codomanus, the last king of Persia (d. 330). He was father-in-law to Manasseh, the brother of
the high priest Jaddua, who was the son of John, the son of Judas, the son of Eliashib (Josephus Ant.
11.7.1-2). There must, therefore, have been two Sanballats, unless Josephus has confused the account.
In the persecution under Antiochus, 170 b.c., the Samaritans disowned their relation to the Jews and
consecrated their temple on Mt. Gerizim to Jupiter. Later History. After the destruction of Samaria by
Alexander the Great, Shechem became more prominent, and there, after the conquest by John
Hyrcanus they built a second temple. With lapse of time they reacted from their polytheism into an
“ultra Mosaism.” In our Lord’s time they still preserved their identity after seven centuries; and “though
their limits had been gradually contracted, and the rallying place of their religion on Mount Gerizim had
been destroyed one hundred and sixty years before by John Hyrcanus (130 b.c.) and though Samaria
(the city) had been again and again destroyed, and though their territory had been the battlefield of
Syria and Egypt, still preserved their nationality, still worshipped from Shechem and their other
impoverished settlements toward their sacred hill; still retained their nationality, and could not coalesce
with the Jews.” In the first century the Samaritans were numerous enough to excite the fears of Pilate,
whose severity toward them cost him his office (Josephus Ant. 18.4.1-2), and of Vespasian, under whom
more than 10,000 were slaughtered after refusing to surrender (B. J., 3.7.32). They greatly increased in
numbers, particularly under Dositheus, about the time of Simon Magus. In the fourth century they were
among the chief adversaries of Christianity. They were severely chastised by the emperor Zeno and
thereafter were hardly noticed till the latter half of the sixteenth century, when correspondence was
opened with them by Joseph Scaliger. Two of their letters to him and one to Job Sudolf are still extant
and are full of interest. Shechem is represented by the modern Nâblus, corresponding to Neapolis,
which was built by Vespasian, a little W of the old town. Here has been a settlement of about two
hundred, who have observed the law and kept the Passover on Mt. Gerizim “with an exactness of
minute ceremonial which the Jews have long since intermitted.” w.h.; m.f.u.; h.f.v. Bibliography:M.
Gaster, The Samaritans—Their History, Doctrines and Literature (1925); J. A. Montgomery, The
Samaritans (1968); J. D. Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect (1968);
R. J. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews (1975).