Samaritanism

Samaritanism maintains its own Pentateuchal text, liturgical traditions, priestly hierarchy, calendar, and sacred geography. Its defining institutional and theological distinction from Judaism is its consecration of Mount Gerizim, overlooking Shechem, rather than Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, as the sanctuary chosen by God.[1]

The Samaritan confession of faith affirms Yahweh as absolutely one, spiritual, incorporeal, and without associate; Moses son of Amram as the unique prophet; the Holy Law as divine revelation; Mount Gerizim as Bethel, the house of God; and a coming Day of Vengeance and Recompense.[2] Samaritan theology rejects the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, while its canon excludes the Prophets, Writings, Mishnah, and Talmud.[2][5]

Despite conquest, persecution, forced conversion, and severe demographic decline — including a recorded population of 152 in 1901 — the tradition survived into the twenty-first century.[2] Archaeology at Mount Gerizim and the discovery of harmonistic Pentateuchal texts at Qumran have renewed scholarly study of Samaritan origins and scripture.[6] In Israel, Samaritans have citizenship rights under the Law of Return and may conduct marriage, divorce, and conversion-to-Judaism proceedings in their own courts.[1][5]

Samaritan origins remain contested, and no single account commands universal scholarly acceptance. Samaritan tradition identifies the community as the continuation of true Israelite religion and traces the division to the priest Eli’s removal of the Ark of the Covenant from Mount Gerizim to Shiloh.[1] The biblical and Jewish counteraccount, based principally on 2 Kings 17:24–41 and Ezra 4:2, 10, connects post-conquest Samaria with settlers brought by Assyria from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim.[1] This account informed the rabbinic name Kuthim and the classification of some Samaritans as gere arayot, or “proselytes of lions.”[7][2]

Historical scholarship has often proposed a composite population. Sargon II claimed to have deported 27,290 inhabitants after Samaria fell in 722 BCE, but the region was not depopulated. The Jewish Encyclopedia accordingly describes an Israelite substratum combined with an uncertain proportion of foreign settlers.[7] Modern scholarship also portrays the emergence of a distinct Samaritan community as a gradual separation from its Jewish counterparts rather than a single rupture.[6] Josephus, by contrast, associates the temple and institutional schism with the age of Alexander the Great, a chronology that does not align neatly with biblical or Samaritan accounts.[2]

A Samaritan temple was built on Mount Gerizim during the Hellenistic period, traditionally around 332 BCE. John Hyrcanus captured Shechem and Mount Gerizim in 128 BCE and destroyed the sanctuary after it had stood for roughly two centuries.[1][2] Excavations beginning in 1983 uncovered temple remains, inscriptions, coins, altars, and evidence of a surrounding settlement.[1]

Under Christian Roman and Byzantine rule, Samaritans experienced restrictions, destruction of synagogues, forced conversion, and loss of access to Mount Gerizim.[2] A temple on the mountain was destroyed in 484 CE, and Justinian’s policies following the revolt of 529 practically extinguished Samaritan political existence.[7] Sources attribute the 529 revolt to Julian son of Sabar and report conflicting casualty figures of 20,000 and 100,000; these cannot be treated as a reliable count.[2] Further revolt occurred in 556.[2]

Religious revivals associated with Baba Rabbah in the fourth century and the high priest Phinehas ben Joseph in the fourteenth helped preserve Samaritan worship and scholarship.[7] By 1901, however, the community numbered only 152 people — 97 males and 55 females.[2]

During the British Mandate, Izhak Ben-Zvi supported Samaritan political, cultural, and economic interests. Israel’s establishment in 1948 divided the community between Shechem under Jordanian rule and a branch in Israel. Samaritans in Israel received recognition under the Law of Return in 1949, moved to permanent quarters in Holon in 1954, and renewed regular contact with the Shechem branch after the Six-Day War of 1967.[1]

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the community’s central sacred text. Samaritans accept the Five Books of Moses while rejecting the Prophets, Writings, and Oral Torah as religious authorities.[1][5] The text is written in an archaic Samaritan script that the National Library of Israel identifies as Daatz.[8]

Researchers comparing the Samaritan and Jewish Pentateuchs have identified approximately 6,000 differences, most involving spelling or scribal conventions.[8] Some variants concern Mount Gerizim: the Samaritan text has a tenth commandment concerning the mountain, substitutes Gerizim for Ebal in Deuteronomy 27:4, and contains additional Gerizim-related wording in Deuteronomy 11 and its Decalogue tradition.[2]

A Hebrew Union College thesis characterizes the Samaritan Pentateuch as a sectarian redaction of a text type used during the Hasmonean period. It discusses additions to Exodus 28:30 and 39:21 concerning the making of the Urim and Thummim, which make the command and its execution structurally correspond.[9] The Qumran discovery of harmonistic Pentateuchal texts resembling Samaritan readings has complicated the older view that all such readings were late sectarian inventions.[6]

Samaritan tradition attributes an important Pentateuch manuscript to Abishua, a descendant of Aaron, although its claimed antiquity is historically unverified.[2] The oldest identified complete manuscript of the Samaritan Aramaic Targum is the Barberini Triglot of 1226 CE.[7] Hebrew Union College catalogs Sam. Ms. 63, a twentieth-century Nablus manuscript containing Genesis 1:1–2:17 and an alphabet-correspondence table, as the work of Av Hisdah ben Yaakov ha-Kohen.[10]

Samaritan theology is strictly monotheistic. Its confession describes God as absolutely one, spiritual, incorporeal, and without partner, rejecting polytheism, divine images, and Trinitarian distinctions.[2] Moses son of Amram is the supreme and unique prophet, and no later prophet possesses equivalent authority.[1]

Mount Gerizim is understood as the divinely chosen place of God’s abode, sacrifice, and inheritance. Samaritan tradition associates it with the blessings in Deuteronomy 11 and 27, Joshua’s altar and twelve stones, the binding of Isaac, Bethel, the patriarchal sanctuaries, Adam’s creation, and the future restoration.[1][2] Samaritan synagogues consequently face Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem.[1]

The taheb, usually translated as “the Restorer,” is understood as a second Moses, though not Moses’ equal. He is expected to restore the people, sanctuary, priesthood, and ancient worship and to reveal hidden truths before resurrection and final judgment.[2]

The religious head is the high priest, or Kohen ha-Gadol. Following a reported break in the Aaronic succession in 1623–1624, priests from a Levitical line assumed the office.[2] The high priest regulates the calendar, directs worship, performs blessings, safeguards manuscripts, and oversees communal rites.[1]

Samaritan religious practice rests on direct interpretation of the Pentateuch rather than rabbinic tradition. The community observes the Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, the Day of Atonement, and the New Year of the seventh month. Purim and Hanukkah are not observed because they do not appear in the Pentateuch.[1]

Sabbath observance is strict and literalistic. Samaritans do not light fires and traditionally remain indoors except for synagogue attendance; they also reject the rabbinic eruv and formal Sabbath-day journey.[2]

Samaritan calculation of Shavuot ties the Omer count to the weekly Sabbath, with the festival occurring on a Sunday. This differs from rabbinic Judaism’s interpretation of the count as beginning after the first day of Passover.[1][9] Samaritan Shavuot is observed as a seven-day festival and is one of three pilgrimage festivals centered on Mount Gerizim.[11]

Passover is the community’s most prominent festival and the occasion of its surviving animal sacrifice. At twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month, sheep are slaughtered on Mount Gerizim, skinned, salted, placed on spits, and roasted in earth ovens. The meat is eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, while bones and uneaten portions are burned before morning.[2] A modern eyewitness account reports that the sheep are slaughtered simultaneously at sundown and that bleachers are erected for visitors, although only community members participate in the meal.[12] The same account contrasts Samaritan Passover with the rabbinic Seder and notes that Samaritan observance draws on neither the Prophets and Psalms nor the Mishnah and Talmud.[12]

Beyond the Pentateuch, Samaritan literature includes an Aramaic Targum, Arabic translations, commentaries, midrashim, theological and legal treatises, liturgical compositions, chronicles, grammars, lexicons, and calendrical writings.[7][2] The fourth-century theologian Markah is among the oldest and most important Samaritan authors whose works survive, while Phinehas ben Joseph encouraged a literary renaissance in the fourteenth century.[7]

Samaritan Aramaic belongs with Jewish and Christian Palestinian Aramaic to the Late Western Aramaic dialect group within Northwest Semitic. These literary languages were based on vernaculars spoken in different areas of the Land of Israel during the first centuries CE.[13] After the Arab conquest of Syria in 632, Samaritan Aramaic gradually yielded to Arabic; later literature was composed mainly in Arabic or, particularly for liturgy, Hebrew.[7]

The Asatir, a collection of Samaritan midrashim that reached its final form in the tenth or eleventh century, places the Tower of Babel on a mountain and parallels Shinar with Mount Gerizim and the valley of Shechem.[14] One scholarly interpretation connects these embellishments with the Church of Mary Theotokos on Mount Gerizim and the Samaritan revolts against Byzantium.[14]

The Samaritan consonantal Pentateuch closely resembles the Jewish text, while its pronunciation tradition differs radically from Jewish traditions.[15] The community’s continued liturgical use of the archaic Daatz script provides a distinctive visual element of Samaritan textual culture.[8]

Samaritanism preserves an independent Israelite textual, priestly, and sacrificial tradition, making it important to scholarship on the history of the Pentateuch and the gradual separation of Jewish and Samaritan communities. The resemblance between Samaritan readings and harmonistic Pentateuchal texts from Qumran has been particularly influential in reassessing the Samaritan Torah’s textual history.[6]

Relations between Samaritans and the Jewish people have included both affinity and hostility.[5] Rabbinic authorities variously classified Samaritans as gere arayot, or “proselytes of lions,” and gere emet, or “true proselytes.” A rabbinic statement preserved in the Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes their reputation for strict observance: “A commandment which the Samaritans follow they observe much more scrupulously than do the Jews.”[7] The tractate Kutim regulated practical relations between the communities.[9]

Samaritans also appear in the Gospel of Luke’s Good Samaritan parable and in John’s account of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, attesting to the prominence of the distinction in the first-century religious landscape.[16]

In the modern Israeli legal framework, Samaritanism is not listed among the formally recognized religions, although Samaritans may conduct marriage, divorce, and conversion-to-Judaism ceremonies through their own courts.[3][5] Israel reported allocations for Samaritan religious services of 33,000 shekels in 1994, 50,000 in 1995, and 52,000 in 1996.[17] Israeli law protects freedom of worship and access to holy places, while the Oslo framework includes commitments concerning Samaritan holy sites and freedom of worship.[17][18]

The modern community is concentrated in Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim near Nablus and in Holon near Tel Aviv. A modern account described Kiryat Luza as home to about half the worldwide Samaritan population.[12] U.S. reporting for 2023 separately estimated approximately 410 Samaritans in Holon and 450 in Judea and Samaria.[3][4]

Reported totals vary by source and year. U.S. reports placed approximately 550 Samaritans near Nablus in both 2001 and 2003.[19][20] Later reports estimated 360 in the area in 2022 and 450 in 2023.[21][4] The Times of Israel reported a worldwide community of about 750, while the National Library of Israel gave a figure of about 800.[11][8] These reports do not necessarily employ identical counting methods.

The recovery from the 1901 population of 152 represents a substantial demographic reversal.[2] Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics does not publish a separate Samaritan count in the cited tables: before the 1995 census Samaritans were grouped with Druze, and from 1995 they were included among persons “not classified by religion.”[22] An Israeli advisory report cites Izhak Ben-Zvi’s The Book of Samaritans, Their History, Settlements, Religion and Literature as a source on Samaritan history and culture.[5]

The principal historical controversy concerns origins. Samaritan tradition, the biblical and Jewish account of Assyrian settlement, and modern reconstructions emphasizing surviving northern Israelites do not fully align.[1][7] Scholarship also debates the date and circumstances of the Mount Gerizim temple and whether the Samaritan Pentateuch’s distinctive readings preserve older textual forms or represent later sectarian revisions.[6][9]

Classification remains unsettled. Earlier U.S. reports called Samaritanism “an ancient offshoot of Judaism,” while later reports describe it as “related to but distinct from Judaism.”[19][3] Other sources call it an Israelite religion or a Jewish sect, reflecting a continuing terminological and communal dispute.[1][2]

The claimed antiquity of the Abishua manuscript and the reported transition from Aaronic to Levitical high priests in 1623–1624 depend substantially on Samaritan tradition and historical secondary sources.[2] Modern population figures also vary: some sources report approximately 750–800 members, while separate 2023 U.S. estimates imply approximately 860.[8][11] The estimates should therefore be presented with their dates and sources rather than as a single uncontested current total.[3][4]