Samaria and Samaritans

As I was planning my next trip to the Holy land in May of 2014, and while I was preparing for the trip, I revisited certain portions from the Bible, and my attention was caught by one portion from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus Christ answered the question of a lawyer and spoke to the crowd telling the parable about a good Samaritan.

«And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
And He said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise».

Gospel of Luke 10:25-37

In another portion – in the Gospel of John, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman and talks to her at a water well.

«And He must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.
There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give Me to drink.
(For His disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)
Then saith the woman of Samaria unto Him, How is it that Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
The woman saith unto Him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast Thou that living water?
Art Thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life».

Gospel of John 4:4-14

When I reread again the parable of Jesus Christ about a good Samaritan and the story of his conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well, I wondered if these Samaritans still exist, who they are and what they are doing, what their life is like, and, naturally, I had a desire to get acquainted with these Samaritans closer, to learn about their culture and everyday life. Having set a goal for myself, I immediately began to take action.

So, who are these Samaritans so frequently mentioned in the Bible? Of course, they are not Martians, neither they are citizens of a Russian city Samara.

The Samaritans (this name means Keepers of the Truth) are an ethno-religious group of over 700 people (as of 2008), living in a separate quarter in Holon (more than a half of their number) and in Shechem (Nablus). The Samaritans consolidated as an ethno-religious group in the beginning of the epoch of the SecondTemple (516 before Our Era – 70 Our Era) on the territory of Samaria.

The Samaritans themselves believe that they are the descendants of the citizens of the kingdom of Israel, in particular – of the tribe of Joseph, which divided into the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, remaining faithful to their true inheritance.

But according to the Jewish tradition, the Samaritans are the descendants of the “Cuthims” (or Cuthah in Josephus’s spelling) resettled by the Assyrians to the territory of the former kingdom of Israel, who soon adopted Judaism from their neighbours, the Jews.

In the Old Testament, in the First Book of Kings (16:24) there is a story about the king of Israel named Omri (circa 875 before Our Era), who bought the hill Samaria from a man named Shemer for two talents of silver, and built a city upon it – Samaria, making it his royal residence; the capital of Israel was moved to Samaria from Tirza, but the cult centers in Israel remained in Bethel in the south and Dan in the north of the country.

The new capital developed rapidly, a rich palace of the Kings of Israel was built in it; its inner walls were decorated with carved ivory. Samaria was considered to be one of the strongest fortresses in the region; the city’s defensive fortifications system partially survived till our days. The Assyrians held the city under a siege for four years (726-722 before Our Era).

In 722, Israel was captured by the Assyrians. They drove the Jews out and to their lands brought settlers from Mesopotamia and Syria: the Cuthah, the Chaldeans, and the Aramaeans (2 Kings 17:24). These settlers were then called the Samaritans.

The Bible tells us that a real disaster for the local people in the country that was ransacked by the Assyrian invasion were lions. Believing that they had made the local deity angry, the Samaritans decided to worship the God of Israel. Over the years, they built a temple for Him in the city Shechem on MountGerizim, setting it in opposition to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which caused hostility on the side of the Jews. Along with the God of Israel the Samaritans continued, according to the Bible’s testimony, to worship their own gods also (2 Kings 17:29-31).

Strong cultural differences between the Jews of the north and south of Canaan existed even from the ancient times, but after the Jewish return from Babylonian captivity there came about the final separation between the Jews and the Samaritans that was accompanied by mutual hostility on both sides.

If one takes a close look at the Samaritan’s habits and culture, he can notice several differences from the habits and culture of the Jews. The Samaritans wear a Jewish traditional hat called kippah. The Samaritans also have a different Mezuzah¹. The Jewish text of Mezuzah is placed in a case, while the Samaritans affix it to the doorpost without a case – usually, above the entrance. The Samaritans have the habit of taking off their shoes when entering a synagogue. In the Samaritan synagogues there are no traditional benches, everyone is sitting and praying on the carpets. The Samaritan Matzah² is also different, it is larger than its Jewish equivalent, and it is always round in shape. Unlike the Jews, the Samaritans do not pay attention to the custom of separating dishes for dairy and meat products. The Samaritan text of the Bible (Torah) is also different, in particular – the book of Joshua. According to the Samaritans, the children’s nationality is determined by the father’s line, not by the mother’s nationality. The Samaritans do not celebrate the Jewish feasts Hanukkah and Purim. During Sukkot, the feast of the Tabernacles, the Samaritans decorate the ceilings of their apartments with fresh vegetables and fruits arranging them in beautiful combinations. 

Mezuzah¹ – (in Hebrew means a “doorpost”) is a sacred manuscript inscribed with specific texts from the Bible – Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four through nine, and chapter eleven, verses thirteen through twenty one. The text has one hundred and seventy seven words in it. Mezuzah is usually placed in a case, upon its outside the letter ש (shin) is traditionally inscribed, and mezuzah is affixed to the upper third of the doorpost on the right side of the door. In most communities, mezuzah is tilted with its top end inside.

Matzah² – literally, “squeezed out,” “void of water” (unleavened bread); flat loaves made of unfermented dough (unlike the leavened dough); the only kind of bread which is allowed to eat during the Passover week.