The Samaritans – An Ancient Israelite People

The heroic story of the Maccabees (celebrated during the festival of Hanukkah) appears nowhere in the Torah or the other canonical collection of Hebrew Scriptures. Where then can you find it? It appears prominently in the Apocrypha section of most Catholic bibles. In a similar sense, most Jews, outside of Israel, are aware of the Samaritans (the Shamerim) only from reports about the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

The Samaritans are a group of 750 indigenous Middle Eastern people. Half of them live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and the other half live in Nablus, near Mount Gerizim in Samaria, an area also known as the West Bank. Samaritans claim ancient ancestry from the Israelite Tribes of Menasha and Ephraim and from priests of the Tribe of Levi. They follow the Torah, but do not hold any other part of the Hebrew Bible sacred. They believe that the Torah selected Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the site of God’s temple in the Holy Land. The Samaritans are believed to have numbered more than a million in late Roman times, but diminished to less than 150 in 1917. That attrition was a result of forced conversions by both Byzantine Christians and Muslim invaders. The Samaritans maintain their identity by a significant amount of inbreeding. In fact, according to research done in the late 1990s, 84% of Samaritan marriages were between cousins, making them the most highly inbred population on the planet. To find the origin of the Samaritans, we must take a brief voyage through a somewhat murky segment of Jewish history and answer the following questions:

1. Who really were the Samaritans?
2. What were they doing in Israel during biblical times?
3. Was there only one good Samaritan?
4. Does that suggest that all of the other Samaritans were bad?
5. Were the Samaritans enemies of the Israelites or were they related to them?
6. Is the area just north of modern-day Israel (called Samaria) connected to the Samaritans?
7. Will insight into Samaritan customs and practices shed light on their identity?

The answers to these questions will lead us into a troubling epoch of Jewish, biblical history scarred by intra-family power struggles, special interests, civil strife, fratricide and enduring rejection.

In the Beginning

The Torah describes how the Israelite people suffered hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, only to be redeemed by the hand of God, under the leadership of Moses. The people, former slaves, identified themselves in accordance with the specific Tribe of Israel from which they originated. The tribes themselves, however, were without structure or leadership. In order to provide both organization and leadership, Moses directed the appointment of Shoftim (translated as Judges) for each tribe. They functioned less like Judges and more like military governors who could organize their tribe for the battles that assuredly would be forthcoming.

The Conquest

By 1250 BCE, under the leadership of Joshua and the tribal judges, the loose confederation of Hebrew tribes were able to capture and take possession of the land of Canaan. The land was divided amongst the respective tribes, except for the Tribe of Levi, which was reserved for the priesthood. The suitability of some of the land for agricultural purposes was uneven and some of the tribes were unhappy with the portion given to them. With the acquisition of the land, the tribes began to see themselves as a single unified nation and petitioned for the appointment of a king.

The United Kingdom of Israel

On or about 1025 BCE, Samuel, an acknowledged Judge and Prophet in Shiloh (an important religious center in the area now known as Samaria), anointed Saul (of the Tribe of Judah) as King of the United Kingdom of Israel. King Saul spent most of his reign (1037-1010 BCE) defending Israel against the Philistines. He and his three sons died in battle against them. In 1010 BCE, Saul was succeeded by King David, who was honored by the Tribe of Judah as an ideal, but not a faultless monarch. He was the putative father of all successive royal households and of a future Messiah. During his reign, David subdued the Canaanite settlement of Jerusalem and made it the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. He selected Jerusalem because it was located in the area of his beloved tribe Judah and situated on defensible terrain. It was not selected because of any discoverable direction in the Torah from the God of Israel. Under the United Monarchy, the Israelites were able to transition from a loose union of related tribes to a strong, sovereign nation with its own homeland.

King Solomon:  Adored by History, But Less So By His Contemporaries

King David was succeeded by his son Solomon. King Solomon had a number of successful military campaigns and acquired an ample amount of neighboring lands for the United Kingdom of Israel. He continued to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of the monarchy and constructed the First Holy Temple to the God of Israel. With his death, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, united as one nation, came to an end after just 105 years. What solvent served to dissolve the unity of the Jewish nation into two divided, warring, adversary monarchies:  the Kingdom of Israel to the north (now Samaria and the West Bank) and the Kingdom of Judah to the south (which included Jerusalem and the Holy Temple)?

1. Ego and Excesses Led to a House Divided

King Solomon’s abusive relationship with his own people is the most frequently offered reason for the dissolution of the United Kingdom of Israel. History tends to immortalize and glamorize important historical figures. It portrays King Solomon as a paragon of wisdom under whose reign the first Holy Temple was constructed. His excesses and lavish living caused great consternation amongst the Israelite people.  It glosses over his personal excesses and self-indulgences, including having hundreds of wives and concubines. Much of this conspicuous consumption was derived from heavy taxes and personal labor requirements extracted from the people of Israel. On the occasion of his death, many Israelites viewed it as an alleviation of a burden and sought a promise of relief from his successor, son Rehoboam.

Rehoboam’s response was the final straw that severed the United Kingdom of Israel in two. Rehoboam answered the request to ease the King’s pressure on the nation by saying, “I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions” (One Kings, 12 (11)).

The people’s response was quick. The ten northern Israeli tribes broke and formed The Northern Kingdom of “Israel”. The remaining tribes (Judah, Simeon, Benjamin and some Levites, who were the Kohanim in the temple) remained in the southern monarchy, which renamed itself Judah. However, the foolish and arrogant statement of Rehoboam was not, by itself, enough to divide a kingdom without significant fissures that early affected the monarchy.

2. Judah’s Temple Mount or God’s Temple Mountain

The Torah ends with the death of Moses before the Hebrew people entered Canaan. Yet, in Deuteronomy 11(29), it directs that a blessing be made on Mt. Gerizim and a curse on Mt. Ebal, both mountains in Canaan which are located in modern-day Samaria. There was a growing resentment amongst the Northern Tribes (especially the Tribes of Ephraim and Menasha, sons of Joseph) that God’s Holy Temple was situated in Jerusalem (David’s Citadel) rather than the site named in the Torah. They found confirmation in the fact that Jerusalem was never mentioned in the Torah.

The city of Shiloh, in Samaria, was the primary religious center of Israel before the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, the Tabernacle (the movable home of God containing the Ark of the Covenant) was brought by Joshua to Shiloh, in the north, where it remained for several hundred years. Shiloh was the site of the priestly House of Eli (who was succeeded by Samuel, the Prophet) and where the Kings of Israel were anointed.

3. The Judah Dynasty  

The Philistines, Israel’s arch enemy, were people who occupied the south coast of Canaan (now Gaza) between the 12^th Century BCE and 604 BCE. They were a maritime people (who originally came from Crete) and were often militarily engaged against the Hebrew tribes, especially Judah, whose lands were in close proximity to the Philistines. It is understandable why all three Kings of the United Monarchy of Israel (Saul, David and Solomon) were chosen from the Tribe of Judah. Jerusalem was selected by King David as his capital because it was a settlement situated in or near Judah with defensible perimeters. As the capital city of the United Monarchy of Israel, David’s son, King Solomon, chose it as the site for Israel’s Holy Temple. As observed, the Torah did not prescribe Jerusalem or the Temple Mount as the dwelling place of the God of Israel. More and more, the Tribe of Judah’s dominance in civil and religious matters irritated most of the remaining Tribes of Israel.

When the ten Northern Tribes broke from the United Kingdom of Israel, it occurred in an unusual way. Instead of adopting a new name for the breakaway Northern Kingdom, they adopted the original name of the United Kingdom, “Israel”. The remaining Southern Tribes (including Judah, Shimon, Benjamin and some priests from the Tribe of Levi) compromised their own tribal identity by submitting to the name of the Kingdom of Judah, thus reaffirming the dominance of the Tribe of Judah. To ensure Judah’s continued eminence, it fostered the notion that any future king or Messiah must be a direct patrilineal descendent of King David of Judah.

The End of the Divided Kingdom and the Birth of the Samaritans

In 931 BCE, when the split occurred, both the North (Israel) and the South (Judah) continued as independent sovereign monarchies. Lacking the strength of their earlier unity, they became subject to the neighboring powers. In 722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was invaded and destroyed by the Assyrians. Most of the people were marched off to undisclosed locations, and their place in history as the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” became legend. However, there were remnants of the Tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, who were not exported to other locations and ultimately became the rootstock of the Samaritan people.

In 587 BCE, the Babylonians destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, conquered the Kingdom of Judah and exported a sizable portion of Judah’s population to Babylonia. However, Babylonian reign lasted fewer than 50 years, when it was overrun and defeated by the Persians in 538 BCE. In that same year, Cyrus, King of Persia, assisted the Jewish population of Babylonia to return to Jerusalem and reconstruct the temple on the original Temple Mount. While it was his intent to make Judah a subject state and collect tribute, Cyrus was, nevertheless, viewed by many Israelites as a Messiah.

The Samaritan Identity Viewed Through Different Lenses

Most historians accept the fact that the original Samaritan people arose out of the Assyrians’ capture and destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. However, the evolution and composition of the Samaritan people often depended upon the political lens through which it was viewed.

Talmudic Judaism’s View of the Samaritans

The Second Temple was created and developed by Israelites from the Southern Kingdom of Judah who had been forcibly exported to Babylonia and later authorized to return to Jerusalem. Their disposition towards Israelites from the Northern Kingdom was colored by its earlier succession and the subsequent years in which they remained military adversaries. In fact, when construction of the Second Temple was started, the surviving Northern Kingdom Israelites offered their assistance in its construction, but were summarily rejected.  Talmudic Judaism preferred to view the Israelites from the north (The Samaritans) as an unacceptable admixture of remnant Israelites that were comprised mostly of Gentile tribes brought into the area by the victorious Assyrians.

Samaritan History of its Own Origin

Samaritan history reports that the Samaritans are the remnants of the Northern Tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (tribes of the sons of Joseph). It maintains that they remained in the Northern Kingdom, true to the God of Israel and to the site of Mount Gerizim, designated by God as, his holy place. The Samaritans also maintain that they never left the land to wander to other places and have been there continuously since Joshua brought them to worship at the holy site of Mount Gerizim. They contend that they have been true to the Torah and to the God of Israel.

Insight Into the Samaritan Origin Through Genetic Sciences

Samaritan origin has fascinated geneticists for some time. There have been many genetic studies of the Samaritans, both to uncover their origins and understand how they survived so many generations of isolation. Peidong Shen and colleagues, in the Journal of Human Mutation, used both mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA of Samaritans to discover their origin and genetic relationship to Near Eastern Jews. The results are fascinating. The mitochondrial DNA (the DNA that traces through the female line) reveal no difference between the Samaritan Jews and the Palestinians in the Levante.  However, the Y chromosome (male lineal history) of the Samaritans had striking similarities to a very specific Y chromosome most often associated with Jewish men. It was clear that they, too, share a common ancestry. The geneticists concluded that the Samaritan lineage is the remnant of those few Jews who did not go into exile when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom, but may have married women who were not Israelites.

Professor Marcus Feldman, PhD of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, similarly concluded that Samaritans descended from Israelite men who married non-Israelite women. It is not unusual that Jewish men, perforce of circumstance, find themselves espoused to Gentile women, and yet pursuant to the patrilineal-ism of the Torah, continue to breed Jewish children into a preserved Jewish society.

Interestingly enough, the same situation later occurred with Ashkenazi Jews. They were thrust out of Israel as slaves, servants, and itinerants into Italy and environs following the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, in 132 CE.  There, they espoused to Gentile women, but patrilineally bred Jewish children with strong Jewish family identity. Thus, based upon chronology and irony, the Ashkenazim are a European latter-day clone of the Samaritans. However, the Jewish authenticity of both groups was dealt a blow when Rabbinical Judaism, for some reason yet to be identified, rejected the Torah’s patrilineal-ism and substituted matrilineal-ism.

According to the Torah, Hebrew identity is passed through patrilineal succession. “Zera” (semen) is the medium for the continuum of God’s designed people. See Genesis 12 (7), Genesis 17 (6-8) and (10-12), Genesis 26 (2-4), Genesis 28 (14) and Deuteronomy 34 (4-5).  The Y chromosome DNA of the Samaritan, which traces their male line, clearly demonstrates common ancestry with the Israelite communities, including the Kohanim (Hebrew Priests) who served in that community.

Rabbinical Attempt to Rewrite the Origin of the Israelite People Through Matrilineal-ism

The pattern of Hebrew men creating children in union with Gentile women, while still retaining strong tribal and religious identity, is not at all unusual. Four of Jacob’s children (Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher) were issue of Egyptian handmaidens and went on to constitute four of the Tribes of Israel. The children of Joseph and his Egyptian wife were Menasha and Ephraim, two Israeli half tribes who ultimately populated the Samaritan people. Moses was married to the daughter of a Midianite priest and to a Nubian woman. His children were issue of those marriages. King David and especially King Solomon had hundreds of wives, many from political alliances with neighboring tribes. The issue of all of those relationships had one thing in common that made them Hebrew children:  their father was an Israelite (patrilineal-ism).

In a more modern vein, of the 14.2 million Jews in the world today, the majority, by far, are Ashkenazi Jews. As noted, Ashkenazis descend from those Jews who were shipped to Europe as slaves and servants by the Romans. Many married Gentile, European women, but retained for themselves and their children Jewish culture and identity. Genetic discoveries demonstrate that more than 40% of the Ashkenazi community originate from four Gentile women.

Undoubtedly, the most tragic damage to the identity of the Israelite people occurred in the second century CE, when the Tannaim (the early rabbis of the Mishna) summarily rejected biblical descent from Hebrew males and substituted descent from Hebrew females. Noted Hebrew scholars of today are still trying to identify the reason or the authority for such a proposed change. Howsoever accommodating to Jewish women that change might appear, it poured Hebrew identity into a genetic Mixmaster (blender) and set it on high speed.

Religious Beliefs of the Samaritans

Samaritans identify themselves as B’nai Yisroel (“Children of Israel”), which is the term used by all Jewish denominations as a name for the Jewish people. Understandably, the Samaritans do not refer to themselves as Jews, which is the derivative from Judah, their historical adversary. Their religious beliefs include the following:

• Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the one true sanctuary chosen by Israel’s God.
• They believe that the dead will be resurrected.
• There is one God, YHWH, which is the same God recognized by the Hebrew prophets.
• The Torah was given by God to Moses.
• They reject all Rabbinical works (such as the Talmud, which includes the Mishna, the Gomorrah and the Midrash). On Shabbat, Samaritans abstain from cooking and kindling of fires (even fires initiated before the Sabbath) and pray barefoot in white garments.
• Their priests are the interpreters of their law and keepers of their tradition. They scrupulously follow the text of the Torah, even to the extent that they require women to move to their own private residences during menstruation for seven days of isolation.
• Their Torah, written in ancient Hebrew script, is essentially the same document as the Masoretic Torah (current Rabbinical version of the Torah), with approximately 6000 differences. Most of the distinctions involve grammar, spelling and interpretation. It does have, however, additional narratives and one major religious confrontation regarding the importance of Mount Gerizim.
• The Samaritans celebrate all holidays mentioned in the Torah, including Passover, Shavuot, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atseret. However, unlike Rabbinical Jews, they do not celebrate the nonbiblical holidays of Hanukkah or Purim. Passover requires the presence of all Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, where, at the appropriate hour, a lamb is slaughtered and its blood smeared on the heads of the firstborn.

The Samaritan Torah and The Masoretic Torah 

Reference has been made to the existence of two Torahs, which appear to have a common origin and subject matter, but are, nevertheless, distinct from each other. While many of the distinctions appear to be technical in nature, there are narratives in one that are not contained in the other, and an essential principle of faith articulated in one that is silent in the other.

If the Torah is the accurately transcribed word of God given at Mount Sinai and sacredly adopted by all Israelite nations as the essence of their faith and their relationship to God, how could there be two Torahs? That question is particularly pertinent when one of the differences is in a fundamental area of faith. If the distinctions, as in this case, go beyond mere transcription errors, then we are left with a series of troublesome questions:

What is known or rationally suspected about the origin of these two Torahs?

1. Manuscripts of the Samaritan Torah are written in a different Hebrew script than the other Hebrew Torah. Samaritans employed the Samaritan alphabet, which is derived from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet used by the Israelite community prior to the Babylonian captivity. Afterwards, Jews adopted the Ashuri script, which is based on the Aramaic alphabet and developed into the modern Hebrew alphabet.
2. Until the 1950s, Bible scholars turned to the Jewish Masoretic text as the definitive version of the Torah, virtually ignoring the Samaritan text. However, in the winter of 1947, a group of archaeological specialists searching through 11 caves in Qumran happened upon the Dead Sea Scrolls. After rigorous study, the scrolls found in Qumran match the Samaritan text more closely than the Masoretic text.
3. In July 2008, the Princeton Theological Seminary researcher, Professor James Charlesworth, posted on the Internet an unknown fragment containing Deuteronomy 27 (4-6), said to be taken from cave 4 in Qumran, giving the commandment to build an altar to the Almighty “in Mount Gerizim.”

The most interesting insight into the controversy regarding God’s selection of the holy site for his Temple can be found in Deuteronomy 11 (29) of both Samaritan and Masoretic Torahs. Mount Gerizim is mentioned as a place for a blessing. In neither of the Torahs is Jerusalem ever mentioned.

In each Torah, the Ten Commandments appear in two separate places: Deuteronomy 5 (6-21) and Exodus 20 (2-17). However, only in the Samaritan Torah, the Tenth Commandment appears as follows: 

And it shall come to pass when the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land of the Canaanites whither thou goest to take possession of it, thou shalt erect unto thee large stones, and thou shalt cover them with lime, and thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this Law, and it shall come to pass when ye cross the Jordan, ye shall erect these stones which I command thee upon Mount Gerizim, and thou shalt build there an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones, and thou shalt not lift upon them iron, of perfect stones shalt thou build thine altar, and thou shalt bring upon it burnt offerings to the Lord thy God, and thou shalt sacrifice peace offerings, and thou shalt eat there and rejoice before the Lord thy God. That mountain is on the other side of the Jordan at the end of the road towards the going down of the sun in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the Arabah facing Gilgal close by Elon Moreh facing Shechem.

The foregoing language, however, does not appear in either of the recitations of the Ten Commandments in the Masoretic Torah. Instead, we find that the First Commandment, of the Masoretic Torah, is not a commandment at all, but simply a declaration. It reads, “I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage.” It is a declaratory statement, which may well have fit as part of the next commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

There are several interesting hypotheses for the absence of the Mount Gerizim language in the Tenth Commandment of the Masoretic Torah:

• Before bringing the Torah to the Second Temple, Ezra and his acolytes (descendants of the former Kingdom of Judah) eliminated the Mount Gerizim language from the Tenth Commandment because it placed into question Jerusalem’s authenticity as God’s selected site for His temple. The division of the First Commandment into two would numerically have accommodated the elimination of the Tenth Commandment about Mount Gerizim, resulting in Ten Commandments.
• The Samaritans were so committed to the holiness of Mount Gerizim that they added to the Tenth Commandment God’s requirement that it be selected as the site for His Holy Temple.

Conclusion

The survival of the Samaritan people is a microcosm of the 4000-year survival of the Children of Israel. It is a testament to their treasured identity; fidelity to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; unyielding resistance to those who would forcibly convert them; and indifference to those of their brethren who arrogantly rejected them.

The Samaritans have preserved the customs and traditions of their origin without paying tribute to the gods of societal alteration and change. They, like their spiritual brothers, the Karites, have survived and been sustained by the Torah alone, without reference to the Talmud or other Rabbinical commentaries.

The confluence of history and modern genetics confirm that the Samaritans existed as an unexported remnant of the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel by the Assyrians. While Samaritan history does not report episodes of intermarriage with the Gentile females from tribes brought in by the Assyrians to replace the Israelites, genetic study of Samaritan mitochondrial DNA suggests that intermarriage did, in fact, occur.

The Samaritans, through the continuity of their patrilineal lineage, were devoted Israelites, consecrated to the laws of the Torah. They never left the land promised to their patriarchs. They differed from their brethren in the Tribe of Judah in many ways.

The Tribe of Judah early rose to leadership among the Israelites in the newly occupied Canaan. The Tribe assumed that its prominence amongst the other tribes was its manifest destiny and did everything to assure the continuum of that notion. After the Northern Tribes revolted, it proffered its tribal name to describe the Southern Kingdom, although that Kingdom included the Tribes of Simeon, Benjamin and part of the Tribe of Levi. It assured its future by asserting that every successor Hebrew king must be a descendant of David (himself from the Tribe of Judah) and that any future Messiah must also be of that lineage.

On return from the Babylonian exile, the Judeans did everything they could to reject and deny Samaritans, the other Israelite group in the Holy Land, from assisting in the construction of the Second Temple. In an effort to suggest that the Samaritans were not Hebrews but a mongrel people who should be avoided and scorned, the Judeans called the Samaritans by the tribal name of the Gentile tribe brought in by the Assyrians.

Today, some utter the word Jew as an epithet, while we, descendants of the patriarchs, speak it with the pride of the people designated by the Creator to help civilize humanity. It is neither! The word Jew is simply an abbreviated form of Judah, the name of one of the sons of Jacob. When we call ourselves Jews, we separate ourselves from the rest of the Israelite nation, both lost and found. When we call ourselves Jews, do we reimpose the arrogance that divided the United Kingdom of Israel?

David Ben-Gurion and the other fathers of the new nation, formed in 1948, sagely renamed the state “Israel” and not Judah. Today, Israel is a land of inclusion, which has sought out and returned to its bosom Hebrew descendants of every color, type and description from the remote portions of the world community.

The Samaritan entitlement to Israeli citizenship in the new nation is not derived from The Law of Return, because the Samaritans are Israelites, who simply never left.

Douglas Kaplan