The Samaritans - a remnant of the ten lost tribes of Israel?
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| The High Priest of the Samaritans (with a Samaritan Pentateuch (Nablus 1920 |
The Samaritans are an ancient ethno-religious group which regard themselves as direct descendants of the Israelites.
Their history as a distinct community begins with the taking of the Kingdom of Israel which had separated from the Kingdom of Judah, by the Assyrians in 722 BC.
The language of the Samaritans is relatively similar to ancient Hebrew. Their lifestyle is based on a unique version of the Torah, written in a special form of Paleo Hebrew (ancient Hebrew alphabet) with around 7,000 variations from the Jewish Torah, mostly semantic ones. Apart from the Pentateuch, the Samaritans do not recognize the rest of the Bible and other Jewish texts as part of their faith.
They consider the Book of Abishua which is an ancient Pentateuch to be the oldest Torah scroll, traditionally written in the 13th century BC by Abishua the great grandson of Aaron the priest. This scroll is jealousy held by the Samaritans inside a safe on Mount Gerizim near the city of Nablus, with only two known outsiders to have ever laid eyes on it.
They consider the Book of Abishua which is an ancient Pentateuch to be the oldest Torah scroll, traditionally written in the 13th century BC by Abishua the great grandson of Aaron the priest. This scroll is jealousy held by the Samaritans inside a safe on Mount Gerizim near the city of Nablus, with only two known outsiders to have ever laid eyes on it.
The essential belief that separated Samaritans from Jews is the Samaritan sanctification of Mount Gerizim which according to their Pentateuch was set by Moses in the Ten Commandments. That is in contrast to the sanctification of Jerusalem by the Jews. However, according to the Judeo-Christian Bible Samaritans and Jews came to a dispute during the early days of the Second Temple, when the returning exiles came back from Babylon and did not see the Samaritans as Jews. They therefore declined the Samaritan request to participate in the Temple's construction.
In the 4th century BC, after the conquest of the Holy Land by Alexander the Great, the Samaritans rebelled against the Greek regime. In the outcome of this uprising the city of Samaria was destroyed and a Macedonian military colony was set on top of its ruins. Following those events the Samaritans were forced to move their center to Mount Gerizim.
In 111 or 108 BC the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was destroyed by Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus in retaliation to the Samaritan alliance with the Seleucid Empire.
In 111 or 108 BC the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was destroyed by Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus in retaliation to the Samaritan alliance with the Seleucid Empire.
In the Roman era the Samaritans which did not participate in the Jewish revolt against the Romans, grew to become a large community of over a million.
They shrank to several tens of thousands in the wake of the bloody suppression of the Third Samaritan Revolt (529 AD) against the Byzantine Christian rulers, and their mass conversion to Islam in the early Muslim period in the Holy Land.
Samaritans suffered persecution also under others who ruled the Holy Land. During the Ottoman Empire period the Samaritan community in Damascus was massacred by the thousands.
As of 2013, the Samaritan community counts approximately 800 people, divided between the community center near Nablus and the city of Holon in Israel.
They shrank to several tens of thousands in the wake of the bloody suppression of the Third Samaritan Revolt (529 AD) against the Byzantine Christian rulers, and their mass conversion to Islam in the early Muslim period in the Holy Land.
Samaritans suffered persecution also under others who ruled the Holy Land. During the Ottoman Empire period the Samaritan community in Damascus was massacred by the thousands.
As of 2013, the Samaritan community counts approximately 800 people, divided between the community center near Nablus and the city of Holon in Israel.
A genetic research from 2004, led scholars to speculate that most modern Samaritans descent from a group of Israelite priests which were not exiled from the kingdom of Israel along with the ten tribes of Israel. Scholars now believe that those men were married to women of Assyrian descent and women from other ethnic groups, which were deported to what was the Kingdom of Israel in accordance with Assyrian policy.
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