Samaritans

The Samaritans call themselves Samerim, interpreted as “the Observers” of the Law.[5] Samaritanism shares with Judaism the Torah, absolute monotheism, circumcision, and Sabbath observance, but differs in its scriptural canon, calendar, hereditary leadership, and sacred geography. Mount Gerizim, rather than Jerusalem, is regarded as the divinely chosen sanctuary and is the direction toward which Samaritans pray.[4][5]

The community consists of four traditional clans and is divided between Kiryat Luza and Holon.[6] Its Pentateuch, Targum, liturgy, chronicles, and legal and grammatical literature preserve an independent textual and ritual tradition.[7] For civil purposes, the state of Israel regards Samaritans as a branch of the Jewish people and applies the Law of Return to them, while the Israeli chief rabbinate and rabbinical courts declared them Gentiles in 1985–1986.[4] These different civic, religious, and communal classifications reflect the Samaritans' position as both Israelite-related and a distinct ethno-religious community.

Samaritan tradition traces the community to Israelites who remained faithful to Mount Gerizim and preserved a priestly succession through Aaron, Eleazar, and Phineas. It presents Jerusalem-centered religion, rather than Samaritanism, as the later deviation from the original Israelite faith.[6][5] Jewish tradition historically associated the Samaritans with foreign populations settled in Samaria after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom. Biblical accounts name settlers from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, while another reconstruction holds that settlers intermingled with surviving Israelites.[6]

The Assyrian ruler Sargon II recorded deporting 27,290 people while leaving others in the land, evidence that the conquest did not remove the entire Israelite population.[5] Modern scholarly reconstructions commonly place the emergence of Samaritanism as a distinct religion in the Maccabean period. A review of Gary Knoppers's work describes a gradual separation from Jewish communities between the fall of the northern kingdom and Maccabean times, informed by archaeology at Mount Gerizim and harmonistic Pentateuch texts from Qumran.[4][8]

Accounts connect this separation with the Ezra-Nehemiah reforms, the expulsion of a high-priestly descendant married to Sanballat's daughter, and the establishment of a competing sanctuary on Mount Gerizim. The chronology remains disputed because Nehemiah places Sanballat in the fifth century BCE, whereas Josephus associates the temple's construction with Alexander the Great.[5] An older Samaritan tradition recorded in an 1880 history claimed that approximately 300,000 Hebrews moved north under Sanballat and that foreigners in Samaria were returned to Persia.[9]

Later accounts say that, after the killing of his governor Andromachus, Alexander expelled the inhabitants of Samaria, installed Macedonian settlers, and annexed the district to Judea in 331 BCE. The displaced community retained Shechem near Mount Gerizim as its center.[9] Near the end of the second century BCE, John Hyrcanus captured Shechem and Mount Gerizim and destroyed the Samaritan sanctuary; surviving sources variously place the event around 128 BCE or in 111 BCE.[5][10] The Jewish Fast-Roll commemorated the victory as the “Day of Gerizim” on Kislew 21.[5] The high priesthood nevertheless continued, and a community remained near Mount Gerizim.[6]

Samaritan communities also existed in Egypt, Damascus, Gaza, and Delos. Two Delos inscriptions discovered in 1979 attest a community oriented toward Mount Gerizim. One, dated between 150 and 50 BCE, begins, “The Israelites on Delos who make first-fruit offerings to Holy Argarizin”; another is dated around 250–175 BCE.[6]

Mount Gerizim, near ancient Shechem and modern Nablus, is the geographic and spiritual center of Samaritanism. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads Gerizim where the Masoretic text reads Ebal in Deuteronomy 27:4 and contains additional readings supporting the mountain's sanctity.[5] Samaritan names for it include Gerizim-Bethel-Luza, the Blessed Mount, the Eternal Hill, the House of God, and the Mount of Inheritance. It remains the direction of prayer and the site of the three annual pilgrimages.[5]

Excavations begun in 1983 uncovered a fortified sacred precinct, approximately 480 marble inscriptions, about 13,000 coins, six-foot-thick walls, gates, and altars. One account dates the sanctuary to as early as the end of the sixth century BCE and estimates that a city of about 100 acres housed roughly 15,000 people.[6] A separate archaeological report describes a Persian-period sanctuary, a larger Hellenistic precinct, a city of approximately 40 hectares, and a possible population of about 10,000.[10]

A later historical account records a Samaritan tradition that sacred vessels and the Ark made by Moses were buried on Mount Gerizim.[9] A church built by Emperor Zeno on the summit became a focus of conflict during Samaritan revolts against Byzantine rule, and one scholarly interpretation connects that experience with later Samaritan literature.[4][11]

Samaritan theology emphasizes the oneness of God, Moses as the sole prophet and supreme mediator, Mount Gerizim as the chosen sanctuary, a future Day of Vengeance and Recompense, and the coming of the Taheb. A Samaritan confession states: “My faith is in thee, Yhwh; and in Moses son of Amram, thy Servant; and in the Holy Law; and in Mount Gerizim Beth-El; and in the Day of Vengeance and Recompense.”[5] Memar Markah similarly says of Moses, “He who believes in him [= Moses] believes in his Lord.”[6] The Taheb is a returning or restoring figure associated with renewed divine favor and final judgment.[4]

Samaritanism has no rabbinate. Leadership rests in a hereditary priesthood headed by the high priest, called Kohen hag-Gadol in Hebrew and Imam in Arabic.[4][5] The priesthood traditionally traced its succession through Aaron, Eleazar, and Phineas. The Aaronic line was considered to have ended in 1623–1624, after which priests of the tribe of Levi and the family of Uzziel assumed the office.[5]

Samaritan scripture consists of the Pentateuch and excludes the Prophets, Writings, Mishnah, and Talmud.[7][12] Samaritan law has no codified oral corpus corresponding to the Mishnah. Its version of the Ten Commandments treats the commandments of the Masoretic version as nine and adds a tenth affirming Mount Gerizim's sanctity.[6] Samaritans observe seven principal festivals according to their own lunisolar calendar. They celebrate biblical holy days but not Purim or Hanukkah, and their dates frequently differ from Jewish observance.[10][6]

At Passover, the community gathers on Mount Gerizim at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. The high priest signals the slaughter while Exodus 12 is read. The sheep are inspected, prepared, roasted in earth ovens for more than six hours, and eaten at midnight with unleavened bread and bitter herbs; remains are returned to the altar and burned.[6] Older accounts also record the selection of lambs born in the preceding Tishri and occasions when access restrictions forced the ceremony to be held in Nablus.[5] Participants mark themselves with the animals' blood.[3]

The Samaritan Pentateuch is an independent textual witness to the Five Books of Moses alongside the Masoretic text and Septuagint.[7] Its variants include the Gerizim reading in Deuteronomy 27:4 and the placement of Deuteronomy 11:29–32 after the Decalogue in Exodus, reinforcing Mount Gerizim's sanctity.[5][9] Pietro della Valle obtained a copy in Damascus in 1616; the text was printed in the Paris Polyglot in 1645 and the London Polyglot in 1657.[5] Harmonistic Pentateuch texts found at Qumran have changed scholarly assessments of its relationship to other ancient textual traditions.[8]

The Samaritan Targum renders the Pentateuch in Samaritan Aramaic and has been dated to the middle of the third century CE; it is generally more literal than Jewish targums.[7] Samaritan Aramaic belongs with Jewish and Christian Palestinian Aramaic to the Late Western Aramaic group within Northwest Semitic.[13] Hebrew remained the language of liturgy, while Arabic eventually displaced Aramaic as the community's vernacular.[6][5]

Documented manuscript holdings include a Samaritan Deuteronomy scroll dated to 1140 and Sam. Ms. 63, a Nablus-associated manuscript containing Genesis 1:1–2:17 and copied by Av Hisdah be Ya'akov ha-kohen.[14][15] Samaritan literature encompasses liturgy, chronicles, law, commentary, grammar, and lexicography in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic.[6] The Asatir, whose final form is dated to the tenth or eleventh century, reinterprets the Tower of Babel through the geography of Mount Gerizim and the valley of Shechem; scholarship connects the account's unusual features with Byzantine-era conflict on the mountain.[11]

Samaritan texts and practices are significant as a surviving nonrabbinic form of Israelite-related religion and as independent witnesses to Pentateuchal textual history. Archaeological evidence from Mount Gerizim and textual discoveries at Qumran have substantially revised scholarship on early Samaritan history and the Samaritan Torah.[4][8]

The Samaritan-Jewish relationship combines shared heritage with sustained conflict. Both communities accept the Torah, observe the Sabbath, and practice circumcision, but their sanctuary claims and accounts of Israelite legitimacy diverge. Samaritan tradition identifies itself as the authentic continuation of ancient Israel and presents Judaism as the continuation of Eli's rival priesthood. Josephus alternately portrayed Samaritans as descendants of foreign colonists and as “apostates of the Jewish nation.”[6][5]

Rabbinic sources variously treated Samaritans as scrupulous Torah observers, non-Jews, or an intermediate legal category.[4] Israel's civil recognition under the Law of Return contrasts with the chief rabbinate's declaration that they are Gentiles. A 2017 government report also says Samaritans may conduct marriage, divorce, and conversion-to-Judaism ceremonies in their own courts.[12]

During persecution in Nablus in 1842, Jerusalem's chief rabbi supplied an authorization that “the Samaritan people is a branch of the Jewish people that confesses to the truth of the Torah.”[6] Historian Steven Fine has described Jewish assistance during the crisis as helping save the community and improve relations after centuries of hostility.[3]

After Israel's establishment, the community was divided between Jordanian-ruled Shechem and Israel. Samaritans were recognized as citizens under the Law of Return in 1949, gained permission to cross the border for Passover in 1953, and established permanent housing in Holon in 1954. The two branches were reunited politically after the Six-Day War in 1967.[6] The 2017 report describes the Samaritans as existing “at the fringes of the Jewish People but with an affinity to it.”[12] The Oslo Accords committed both parties to protect Samaritan religious rights, holy sites, access, and worship.[2]

The contemporary community is divided between Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Holon, south of Tel Aviv. U.S. government reports for 2023 estimated approximately 410 Samaritans in Holon and 450 in the West Bank, primarily around Mount Gerizim.[1][2]

In 1901, 152 Samaritans were recorded in Nablus, including 97 males and 55 females.[5] In 1948, one account counted 58 in Israel and 250 in Shechem; it estimated 350 in 1963 and approximately 500 in both 1977 and 2005.[6] These figures concern different periods and geographic scopes and are not a single continuous census.

The community's four clans and tradition of marriage within the group have created genetic and marital pressures.[6] A 2022 report described disagreement over admitting outsiders and stated that 30 Ukrainian women had married into the community.[3] U.S. representatives met Samaritan leaders as part of engagement with regional religious communities.[2] A United Nations Watch report described approximately 800 Samaritans, about half on Mount Gerizim, who identify as Israelites, follow the Five Books of Moses, use ancient Hebrew, and observe the Saturday Sabbath.[16]

Samaritan origins remain disputed. Samaritan tradition emphasizes continuity from northern Israelites faithful to Mount Gerizim; biblical and Jewish traditions emphasize Assyrian-era settlers or mixed ancestry; and much modern scholarship describes a gradual separation culminating in a distinct Samaritan religion during the Maccabean period.[4][6][8] The community's status is also qualified differently by Samaritan self-identification, Israeli civil law, rabbinic rulings, and government descriptions of affinity to the Jewish people.[4][12]

The chronology of the Mount Gerizim sanctuary remains unsettled. Literary traditions place its establishment in either the fifth or fourth century BCE, while archaeology identifies Persian- and Hellenistic-period sacred precincts.[10][5] Sources also give different years for its destruction by John Hyrcanus, including approximately 128 BCE and 111 BCE.[5][10] Archaeology has refined the history of the site without fully resolving these differences among ancient and later accounts.