Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

Having then indications that the Israelites were not all carried to Assyria, and that one at least of their priests returned, and having the invariable assertion of the Samaritans that they are descendants of this small remnant, and in confirmation of this their physiognomical characteristics, their religion, their possession of an ancient text of the books of Moses, their observation of the Jewish Passover, according to the most ancient form of the rite, we may fairly place the Samaritan literature in the balance against the accounts of the Pharisees—Josephus and the Talmudic doctors—which, as above shown, are in themselves contradictory.

It seems probable that the cause of the division of the Hebrew monarchy is to be sought in an original jealousy between the great tribes of Judah and Joseph who first seized on the land; but, as we have seen above, the religious schism was not complete before the time of the revival under Ezra. Worshippers from Shechem had been received at Jerusalem, and on the return of the Jews the Samaritans were anxious to take part in the restoration of the Temple in the Jewish capital. With regard to the history of the quarrel, Jewish and Samaritan accounts are, as might be expected, diametrically opposed. Josephus, in a passage which has no parallel in the Book of Ezra (Ant. xi 4. 9.), represents ambassadors, including Zerubbabel, as going to Darius and obtaining a decree against the Samaritans, forbidding them to interfere with the building of the Temple. From the Book of Ezra it appears, however, that the enemies of Judah succeeded in stopping the work of restoration (Ezra iv. 24). The Samaritan account is in agreement with this; according to their chronicle the whole of Israel, with the exception of the Jews, wished to build the Temple on Gerizim. An appeal was made to the King, and copies of the law made by Sanballat and Zerubbabel were cast into a great fire; the former leapt out thrice unhurt, the latter were immediately consumed. These traditions cannot of course be put in the same category with the sober history of the Book of Ezra; but in the main the accounts are not discordant, as both acknowledge an appeal to Darius and the hindrance of the Jews by Samaritan opposition.

In tracing the history of the schism, it is important to remember the great similarity of doctrine which certainly existed between the Samaritans and the Sadducees. The Jews never placed their enemies in quite the same category with the heathen. In the remarkable tract on the Cuthim, a Jew is allowed to hold intercourse with a Samaritan in all cases where it might be to his own advantage, but not when it is against his interests. The two tenets which caused the exclusion of Cuthim from the congregation are stated to have been—first, their belief in Gerizim as the true religious centre; second, their denial of the resurrection, which opinion they shared with the Sadducees.

Many details of the Samaritan faith were identical with Karaite and Sadducean tenets, and the view taken of their error appears to have been, with one Jewish party, that, while originally orthodox, they had become mixed with the priests of the high places and corrupted the purity of the faith.

It cannot be doubted that it was the Pharisees who were the deadly enemies of the Samaritans. This sect, originating in the “separation” under Ezra, at once excluded the Samaritans from participation in the building of the Temple. Sanballat was connected by marriage with the Sadducean high-priest—a fact which favours the view that he was an Israelite, not a foreigner—but against this affinity Ezra set his face, and the schism was thus rendered more complete. Gradually the Pharisees gained in power as the Sadducees declined; under the Hasmoneans they obtained at length the high-priesthood, and Hyrcanus succeeded in destroying the Samaritan Temple in 129 B.C. With the exception of a short interval the Pharisees were in power until 35 B.C., and the constant reprisals which for four hundred years had been indulged in on both sides, had left such indelible hatred between the two nations that nothing but entire submission and the abandonment of Gerizim would have induced even the Sadducees to receive into the congregation a people whose religion in other respects was almost indistinguishable from their own.

The Samaritans are, indeed, in the peculiarities of their doctrine almost identical with the original Jewish party—the Karaite and Sadducean sects. They are even called Sadducees in Jewish writings, and their denial of the resurrection was, like that of the Sadducees, based on the declaration that nothing was to be found in the law of Moses on the subject. Again, their version of the law is closely similar to that of the Septuagint, which was a translation authorised by a Sadducean high-priest from a text differing from that finally established by the Pharisees. The animosity of Josephus—who was a Pharisee—the fierce denunciations of the Talmud, written by Pharisees, the destruction of the Gerizim Temple by Hyrcanus—also a Pharisee—all combine to indicate that the Jewish hatred had nothing to do with any foreign origin of the race, but rather was roused by the religious differences of a people whom they knew to be their kith and kin.

It is often supposed that the Samaritans borrowed their religion from the Sadducees. It is surely a simpler explanation that they were a sect originally identical because originally Israelite.

The Samaritan chronicles give a plain account of the origin of their people. At the time of the return from captivity a certain number of the congregation carried into Assyria came back to Palestine under Sanballat. Some thirty thousand, however, remained behind awaiting the Prophet whom they expected as a leader.

Sanballat is called in the Bible “the Horonite.” From this title it has been supposed that he was a foreigner, though the Samaritans call him Lawîni the “Levite.” The place where Israel assembled before crossing into Palestine, and where the first quarrel as to where the Temple was to be built occurred, was Horân, and this may perhaps account for the term Horonite. The Jews, under Zerubbabel, repaired to Jerusalem, the test of the congregation, three hundred thousand in all, beside youths, women, children, and strangers (probably the colonists from Cutha, Hamath, and Ava), were led to Gerizim, where they established the Temple on the 9th of Tizri. Such is the Samaritan account, which gains credibility when we compare it with the Book of Ezra, and from the fact that Sanballat was connected by marriage with a Sadducean high-priest in Jerusalem. The name Lawîni or “Levite” is still preserved as the name of a prophet whose tomb is shown to the west of Shechem.

The quarrels and recriminations of Jews and Samaritans it is useless to follow in detail. The beautiful lessons of Christ were lost on both alike, and the large charity of the parable of the good Samaritan, with the truth that neither at Jerusalem nor on Gerizim was God exclusively to be sought, seem to have been far beyond the comprehension of the disputants. Even in their own accounts the falseness and cruelty of the Samaritans are repulsively prominent; nor does the Jewish character stand high by contrast either for ingenuousness or for charity to their enemies.