Meaning of SAMARITAN

In the only passage of the OT where this term is found, it designates an inhabitant of the ancient kingdom of Israel (2 Kings 17:29).

The NT calls Samaritans the inhabitants of the district of Samaria, in central Palestine (Lk. 17:11-19).

Sargon claims to have deported 27,280 Israelites when he took over this region. However, the conqueror left Jews there, who revolted.

Sargon decided to act so that they would lose their own identity by introducing settlers from Hamat, Babylon and Arabia into the country (cf. 2 Kings 17:24).

These people introduced their own idolatrous cults in Samaria. The population was then very scattered, and the land, devastated by wars, had been left uncultivated.

Wild animals abounded, including lions, like God's scourge. The new settlers let the king of Assyria know that they attributed these evils to Jehovah, God of the country, whose worship they did not know.

The monarch ordered one of the priests of Israel who had been deported to settle in Bethel, and to teach these people the religion of Jehovah.

The priest could not persuade them to abandon their ancestral idols. Raising the emblems of their gods on the high places of the Israelites, they mixed their false religion with that of Jehovah (2 Kings 17:25-33) and maintained this hybrid cult after the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 17: 34-41).

Esar-haddon maintained the policy of his grandfather Sargon (Ezra 4:2). Asnapar (Assurbanipal) finished colonizing the territory by adding people from Elam and beyond to its population (Ezra 4: 9, 10).

The new province of the Assyrian empire lacked all power. King Josiah and his faithful traveled throughout Samaria destroying the idols of the high places (2 Chron. 34: 6, 7), thus supporting the influence of the Israelites who remained in Samaria and their priests.

Much later there were still Samaritans who went to Jerusalem to attend worship at the Temple (Jer. 41:5).

When Zerubbabel led an expedition of Israelites back from Babylon to Jerusalem, the Samaritans asked permission to participate in the restoration of the Temple; They claimed to have worshiped the God of Israel since the time of Esarhaddon. Zerubbabel and the leaders rejected their collaboration (Ezra 4:2).

Most Jews refused from the beginning to participate with the Samaritans on both a social and religious level.

This separation degenerated into intense antipathy (Ezra 4:3; Ecclesiastes 50:25, 26; Luke 9:52, 53; John 4:9). The Samaritans were not of pure Jewish race and practiced a mixed religion.

Josephus (Ant. 9:14, 3) says that they claimed kinship with the Jews when the latter's condition was prosperous, but that they claimed Assyrian origin if the Jews fell prey to adversity.

Zerubbabel, Joshua and the leading Israelites having refused the help of the Samaritans to rebuild the Temple, they then joined the opponents of this reconstruction (Ezra 4:1-10).

They were also opposed to Nehemiah restoring the walls of Jerusalem (Neh. 4:1-23). The leader of the Samaritans was then Sanballat, the Horonite, whose son-in-law was excluded from the priesthood by Nehemiah.

Sanballat was probably the one who erected the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim (see SANBALAT). From then on, Jews expelled from Jerusalem for disciplinary reasons usually went to Gerizim, where they were welcomed by the Samaritans (Ant. 11:8, 7).

During the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Samaritans renounced their kinship with the Jewish race and, to flatter the tyrant, declared that they wanted to consecrate their temple of Gerizim to Jupiter, defender of foreigners (2 Mac. 6:2).

Around the year 128 B.C. John Hyrcanus took possession of Shechem and Mount Gerizim, destroying the temple of the Samaritans (Ant. 13:9, 1), who later continued to celebrate their cult on its ancient site. This is what they continued to do in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 4:20, 21).

Their doctrines were then very analogous to those of the Sadducees. Like them, they waited for a Messiah. From the OT they only accepted the Pentateuch. They readily received the Gospel that was announced to them by Philip, with the testimony of the signs and miracles performed by him (Acts 8:5, 6).

Furthermore, Christianity, in contrast to Judaism, welcomed Samaritans and Gentiles on the same ground as the Jews.

The Christ rejected by Judaism thus collapsed the intermediate wall of separation, and because of the national unbelief of the Jews, God opened the door of his mercy to all (Eph. 2: 11-22; cf. Rom. 11: 25 -36).

In and around Nablus, ancient Shechem, a small Samaritan community still exists.