Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

Jacob Shellaby’s ideas were perhaps not far in advance of the high-priest’s. He related very naïvely his delight at the supposed discovery of a gigantic emerald, which he showed us, and which was merely a large fragment of green slag from some old glass-works. He also fully believed in the story of a cave guarded by genii, and full of gold, which might be carried away, but invariably flew back by night to its place, from wherever it might be taken.

Two things struck me very much in my intercourse with the Samaritans during this first visit, and during another stay of a few days in 1875 in Nablus.

First of all it is indisputable that both in features and in figure they bear a strikingly close family likeness to the Jews. It may be urged that the Cuthim are supposed to have been Semitic, but so are the Syrians and Bedawin, yet they are not at all like the Jews. The Samaritans are a very pure stock, the beauty of their priestly family is remarkable; the aquiline nose, the lustrous brown eyes, the thick under lip, the crisp hair, the peach-like down of the complexion, are features pre-eminently Jewish. The lean and weedy figure is again peculiar also to the Palestinian Jews, and contrasts forcibly with the obesity of the Turks and the sturdiness of the peasantry. For hundreds of years the Jews have kept their race pure, and so have the Samaritans. Since the time of Christ at least, Jews and Samaritans have probably never inter-married, yet we find them now closely alike in their characteristic physiognomy.

In the second place, the Samaritans preserve an ancient copy of the Pentateuch, which, though differing in some marked peculiarities, is yet substantially the same as the Jewish text. It is written in the Samaritan character, which closely approaches the most ancient forms of Jewish writing. It cannot be supposed that these Samaritans would have adopted the religion and sacred books of a nation that they despised and hated, and the evidence of the character employed is in favour of the original copies having been made before the time of Ezra, when, according to the Rabbis, the square alphabet was adopted, before indeed the schism between Jew and Samaritan became so intense as it afterwards grew to be.

These facts naturally incline one primâ facie to consider the Samaritans as originally of the same stock with the Jews, and an investigation of the question seems to me to show that they are the last remnants of the scattered Israel, the lost Ten Tribes, whose history has always excited curiosity in the minds of so many.

It will be allowed that but little reliance can be placed on the partisan descriptions of Josephus and of the Rabbinical writers. Unfortunately we gather but little from the Bible which can throw light on the subject, and the Samaritan accounts are all very late, their oldest chronicles dating back only to the twelfth century, though apparently founded on more ancient material. It may, however, be interesting to sketch what is known of their history from various sources.

Sargon, who on his monuments is described as “Destroyer of the city of Samaria and of all Beth Omri,” took away with him in 721 B.C. all the more important and a great host of minor captives, to Assyria. Still a certain proportion of the Israelites would seem to have been left behind, as we find Hezekiah, in 717 B.C., sending messengers through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, inviting Israelites to the Passover, which might not be eaten by strangers, and some actually attended it (2 Chron. xxx. 18). Worshippers from Shechem and Samaria are also noticed as coming to Jerusalem after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xli. 5); thus, though foreign colonists from Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim were sent into Samaria, there is reason to suppose that many of the original Israelite population were left.

The Talmudic doctors invariably call the Samaritans Cuthim. Cutha is a district as yet unknown, but it may be noticed that the Biblical account represents the men of Cutha as serving Nergal, who is known from Cuneiform inscriptions to have been a “lion-god,” worshipped by inhabitants of Cutha, and therefore an appropriate deity to appease when a plague of lions was devastating the land. It is not impossible that the Jews seized upon the close similarity of the name Cuthim with the title Kûsânîya, or “true people,” by which one Samaritan sect distinguished themselves from a second, the Lifânîyeh. The first sect believed in the future life, in future reward and punishment; the latter confined the promises of the law to temporal matters; the latter were named from a word meaning “to make light,” because, like the pupils of the Jewish Hillel, they made the law less stringent, whereas the stronger sect, the Kûsânîya, made its burden heavier, following the example of the school of Shammai.

The foreign colonists, from Cutha, found themselves, as they simply supposed, unable to appease the deity of their new country without special instructions in the peculiarities of his rite. They petitioned therefore for a priest, and an Israelite priest returned and dwelt at Bethel. It is perhaps only natural to suppose that the place here intended in the Bible is Gerizim, which was held by the Samaritans to be the site of Jacob’s vision. It follows from this account that at least one priestly family returned to Samaria, and the Samaritans claimed a descent for their priesthood from Phinehas the grandson of Aaron.

Another curious allegation, brought forward by Josephus and also to be found in the Targums, is that the Samaritans claimed to be Sidonians; this is however plainly contradictory to the view that they were Cuthim, and only serves to show the small reliance that can be placed on the later Jewish accounts.