Samaritan

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Samaritan

Samaritans ( Hebrew) "Shamerim Yisraelim" are both a religious and an ethnic group. Ethnically, they are descended from a group of inhabitants that have connections to ancient Samaria from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the beginning of the Christian era. Religiously, they are the adherents to Samaritanism, a religion based on the Torah. Samaritans claim that their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, predating the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but that claim has historically been rejected by normative Judaism.

In 2005 there were about 700 Samaritans, living mostly in Kiryat Luza on the holy Mount Gerizim near the city of Nablus in the West Bank, and in the city of Holon in Israel.

The Samaritans speak either Modern Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic as their mother language. For liturgical purposes, Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic are used.

History

According to 2 Kings 17 and Josephus (Antiquities 9.277–91), the children of Israel were removed by the king of the Assyrians (Sargon II, see special wording of 2 Kings 17 which mentions Shalmaneser in verse 3 but the "king of the Assyrians" from verse 4 onward), to Hala and Habor by the river of Gozan, in the cities of the Medes. The king of the Assyrians then brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avah, Emath, and Sepharvaim to place in Samaria. Because God sent lions among them to kill them, the king of the Assyrians sent one of the priests from Bethel to teach the new settlers about God's ordinances. The eventual result was that the new settlers worshipped both the God of the land and their own gods from the countries from which they came.

The Talmud accounts for a people called "Cuthim" on a number of occasions, mentioning their arrival by the hands of the Assyrians. On the other hand, the Samaritans have always claimed to be the descendants of Israelites of the Northern Kingdom who remained behind during the Babylonian Captivity, and thus introduced none of the religious changes brought about among the Jews during this time. Some modern scholars agree. A genetic study (Shen, et al., 2004) concluded from Y chromosome analysis that Samaritans descend from the Israelites (including Cohen, or priests), and mitochondrial DNA analysis shows descent from Assyrians and other foreign women, effectively validating both local and foreign origins for the Samaritans.

Some date their split with the Jews to the time of Nehemiah, Ezra, and the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. Returning exiles considered the Samaritans to be non-Jews and, thus, not fit for this religious work.

End of the Judean Exile

When the exile ended in 538 B.C. and the exiles returned home again, they found that their former homeland was now populated by other people who had claimed this land as their own and that their former glorious capital still lay in ruins.

According to 2 Chronicles 36.22–23, the Persian Emperor Cyrus, who returned the exiles to their homeland, explicitly ordered the people to rebuild the temple. The prophet Second Isaiah identified Cyrus as "The Lord's anointed" (meshiach; see Isa 45.1). The temple was rebuilt over a period of several decades.

''2 Chr 36:22-23 in the KJV says:

22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,

23 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.

The project was first led by Sheshbazzar (about 538 B.C.), later by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and later still by Haggai and Zechariah (520–515 B.C.).

The Temple was completed in 515 B.C.

Ezra 6:15-16 in the KJV says:

15 And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.

16 And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy,

The Samaritans built their rival Temple on Mount Gerizim, near Shechem.

Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim

The precise date of the schism between Samaritans and Jews is unknown, but was certainly complete by the end of the fourth century BCE. Archaeological excavations at Mount Gerizim suggest that a Samaritan temple was built there c. 330BCE, and when Alexander the Great (356-323) was in the region, he is said to have visited Samaria and not Jerusalem. ¹

It was also understood to be the place where God chose to establish His name (Deut 12:5).

Although this and similar references are to Jerusalem, the Samaritan identification of the "place" as Mount Gerizim made it the focus of their spiritual values.

As the Samaritan woman informed Jesus, the mountain was center of their worship (John 4:20).

Antiochus Epiphanes and Hellenization

In the second century B.C. a particularly bitter series of events eventually led to a revolution.

When Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a Syrian king who had control of the region, tried to obliterate Jewish religion, he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and placed his statue in the most holy place in the temple, where he sacrificed pigs.

The authority of the high priesthood was severely damaged when first Jason and then Meneleus bought their office from Antiochus.

The persecution and death of faithful Jewish persons who refused to worship and kiss Antiochus’ image eventually led to a revolt led by Judas Maccabeus and his family.

Judas’ priestly family, the Hasmoneans, introduced a dynasty that ruled during a period of conflict, with tensions arising both from within the family as well as from external enemies.

Samaritans bow to imperial pressure

Antiochus Epiphanes was on the throne of Syria from 175 to 164 BC. His determined policy was to Hellenize his entire kingdom. The greatest obstacle to his ambition was the fidelity of the Jews to their historic religion.
The universal peril led the Samaritans, eager for safety, to repudiate all connection and kinship with the Jews. They sent ambassadors and an epistle asking to be recognized as belonging to the Greek party, and to have their temple on Mt. Gerizim named "The Temple of Jupiter Hellenius." The request was granted. This was evidently the final breach between the two groups indicated in John 4:9, "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. ²

Several centuries before the birth of Jesus, the Samaritans had built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim to rival the one in Jerusalem. Here, they offered sacrifices according to the Mosaic code. Anderson notes that during the reign of Antiochus IV (175-164 B.C.):

the Samaritan temple was renamed either Zeus Hellenios (willingly by the Samaritans according to Josephus or, more likely, Zeus Xenios, (unwillingly in accord with 2 Macc. 6:2) Bromiley, 4.304). ³

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.

In 167 B.C. the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes set up an altar to Zeus over the altar of burnt offerings in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. He also sacrificed a pig on the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is known as the "abomination of desolation." ⁴

This Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim was destroyed by John Hyrcanus in about 128 B.C., having existed about 200 years. Only a few stone remnants of it exist today.

164 BCE to Modern Times

During the Hellenistic period, Samaria (like Judea) was largely divided between a Hellenizing faction based in Samaria (Sebastaea) and a pious faction, led by the High Priest and based largely around Shechem and the rural areas.

Samaria was a largely autonomous state nominally dependent on the Seleucid empire until around 129 BCE, when the Jewish Hasmonean king Yohanan Girhan (John Hyrcanus) destroyed the Samaritan temple and devastated Samaria.

Samaritans fared badly under Roman rule, when Samaria was part of the Roman province of Judea, in the early part of the Common Era. However, this period was also something of a golden age for the Samaritan community. The Temple of Gerizim was rebuilt after the Bar Kochba revolt, around 135 CE. Much of Samaritan liturgy was set by the high priest Baba Rabba in the fourth century.

There were 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. Under 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.

A large number of Samaritans fled the country in 634 CE, 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 fanatics 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 all 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. 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. The Samaritans turned to the Jewish community for help, as Jews and Arabs had good relations at this time, and Jewish entreaties to treat the Samaritans with respect were eventually heeded.

In the past, the Samaritans are believed to have numbered several hundred thousand, but persecution and assimilation have reduced their numbers drastically. In 1919, an illustrated National Geographic report on the community stated that their numbers were less than 150.

Modern times

The Samaritans now number just under 650, divided about equally between their modern homes 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 the 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. This often poses a problem for women, who are less than eager to adopt the strict interpretation of biblical laws regarding menstruation, by which they must live in a separate shack during their periods and after childbirth. Nevertheless, there are a few instances of intermarriage. Apart from that, all weddings within the Samaritan community are first approved by a geneticist at Israel's Tel HaShomer Hospital, in order to prevent the spread of genetic diseases.

In 2004 the Samaritan high priest, Shalom b. Amram, died 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

The Samaritan religion is based on some of the same books used as the basis of Judaism, but these religions are not identical. Samaritan scriptures include the Samaritan version of the Torah, the Memar Markah, the Samaritan liturgy, and Samaritan law codes and biblical commentaries. Samaritans appear to have texts of the Torah as old as the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint; scholars have various theories concerning the actual relationships between these three texts.

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 (possibly a prophet, some say Moses);
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;
Samaritans reject Jewish codes of law;
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. Yom Teruah (the biblical name for Rosh Hashanah), at the beginning of Tishrei, 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.

Scriptures

Samaritan law is not the same as halakha (Rabbinical Jewish law). The Samaritans have several groups of religious texts, which equate to Jewish halakhah. A few examples of such texts are:

Torah
- Samaritan Pentateuch - only inspired text.
Historical Writings
- Samaritan Chronicle, The Tolidah (Creation to the time of Abishah)
- Samaritan Chronicle, The Chronicle of Joshua (Israel during the time of divine favor) (Fourth Century, in Arabic and Aramaic)
- Samaritan Chronicle, Adler (Israel from the time of divine disfavor until the exile)
Hagiographical Texts
- Samaritan Halakhic Text, The Hillukh (Code of halakhah, marriage, circumsion, etc.)
- Al-Asatir - legendendary Aramaic texts form 11th 12th centuries, containing:
  - Haggadic Midrash, Abu'l Hasan al-Suri
  - Haggadic Midrash, Memar Markah - 3rd or 4th century theological treaties attributted to Hakkam Markha
  - Haggadic Midrash, Pinkhas on the Taheb
  - Haggadic Midrash, Molad Maseh (On the birth of Moses)
Defter, Psalms and Hymns.

List of the Samaritan High Priests (from 1613)

''For a complete listing of Samaritan High Priests, see [http://www.hostkingdom.net/Holyland.html#Samaria

Line of Eleazar:

1613-1624 Shelemiah ben Pinhas

Line of Itamar:

1624-1650 Tsedaka ben Tabia Ha'abta'ai
1650-1694 Yitzhaq ben Tsedaka
1694-1732 Abraham ben Yitzhaq
1732-1752 Tabia ben Yiszhaq ben Avraham
1752-1787 Levi ben Avraham
1787-1855 Shalma ben Tabia
1855-1874 Amram ben Shalma
1874-1916 Yaacov ben Aaharon ben Shalma
1916-1932 Yitzhaq ben Amram ben Shalma ben Tabia
1933-1943 Matzliach ben Phinhas ben Yitzhaq ben Shalma
1943-1961 Abrisha ben Phinhas ben Yittzhaq ben Shalma
1961-1980 Amram ben Yitzhaq ben Amram ben Shalma
1980-1982 Asher ben Matzliach ben Phinhas
1982-1984 Phinhas ben Matzliach ben Phinhas
1984-1987 Yaacov ben Ezzi ben Yaacov ben Aaharon
1987-1998 Yosseph ben Ab-Hisda ben Yaacov ben Aaharon
1998- 2001 Levi ben Abisha ben Phinhas ben Yitzhaq
2001- 2004 Shalom ben Amram ben Yitzhaq (Saum Is'haq al-Samiri)
from 2004 Eleazar ben Tsedaka (he is the 131-st Samaritan High Priest)

Samaritans in the Gospels

Because of the mutual dislike between Jews and Samaritans, 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.

Samaritan Media

The Samaritans have a monthly magazine started in 1969 called A.B.-The Samaritan News, which is written in Samaritan, Hebrew, Arabic and English and deals with current and historical issues with which the Samaritan community is concerned.

Literature:

Cornel Heinsdorff: Christus, Nikodemus und die Samaritanerin bei Juvencus. Mit einem Anhang zur lateinischen Evangelienvorlage (= Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Bd. 67), Berlin/ New York 2003

Footnotes

External links

Samaritan culture and history | Jewish denominations

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