The camel blubbers and bawls as his hair is clipped off to make tents for his master
CHAPTER XIX
AMONG THE SAMARITANS
I have just had an interview with a lineal descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses. I refer to Jacob, the high priest of the Samaritans. He belongs to the tribe of the Levites, who in ancient times were at the head of the priesthood, and he claims a genealogical tree reaching from that day to this. His family has lived in Palestine for more than three thousand years, and high priest has succeeded high priest until this man took the position at the age of fifteen, succeeding his childless uncle. He is now almost eighty, and he looks, I imagine, as Aaron and Moses may have looked in the latter part of their lives. Over six feet tall, he has the face and form of a prophet. His long beard falls down upon his chest and his scholarly face is refined and spiritual looking.
I met Jacob here at Nablus on the site of old Shechem, within a stone’s throw of the well where Christ talked with the woman of Samaria. It is not far from a farm which Abraham owned, and about on the spot where Joshua gathered together the tribes of Israel and read them the law of Moses.
Our conversation took place in the heart of the city in the synagogue of the Samaritans. I had to go through vaulted passageways and cave-like streets to reach it. I had an interpreter with me, and as we talked the high priest showed me what he said were the original parchments of the five books of Moses as they were written by Abou, the son of Ben Hassan, the son of Eleazar, who, you remember, was one of the two sons of Aaron by Elisheba, his wife. The high priest tells me that these five manuscripts were written only twelve years after the Israelites came into the Promised Land, and that they are now nearly four thousand years old. They are the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence. They are written in the Hebrew of the times of Moses, upon long sheets of parchment about two feet in width. The scrolls are rolled upon three rods each tipped with a silver knob as big as a teacup, and they can be rolled and unrolled as they are read. The ink is still clear and the letters are distinct although the parchment is yellow with age. The manuscript is treasured by the Samaritans, being kept in a brass case inlaid with gold. It is said to have been dug up about three hundred years ago, and has formed a subject of controversy among oriental scholars. The Samaritans believe that it was written by the grandson of Aaron, as the high priest here claims; but the Jews reject it as false, denouncing the Samaritans as pagan outcasts from the tribes of the Children of Israel.
I was surprised to find that there were any Samaritans living. I had supposed that they had been swallowed up by the people of other faiths. I find, however, that there are about two hundred in Nablus, and that they practise the same religion as they did when Christ came.
They annually celebrate the feasts of the Passover and Pentecost on Mount Gerizim. These feasts are different from those of the latter-day Jews. At the time of Jesus the Feast of the Passover was eaten reclining and as though at the end of a journey rather than at the beginning. The Samaritans eat their Passover with their shoes bound upon their feet and staves in their hand as though ready to start out on their wanderings in the wilderness.
They do this on the top of the mountain, going up there en masse and camping in tents. They smear the blood of the sacrifice upon the tents to commemorate the passage of the angel of death over the houses of Israel. They dress in white garments and kill the animals which are burnt according to the methods in use when Aaron lived. The sacrifice consists of buck lambs each of which is carefully examined that it may be without wound or blemish. At a given signal the throats of the lambs are cut, and at the same time some of the blood is caught in tin tubs and smeared over the tents. As the blood flows the people shout out again and again the words “There is but one God.” At the same time there is a service, beginning with a hymn praising Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and followed by a prayer of thanksgiving.
The meat for the sacrifice is cooked over a fire in the earth. As soon as the animals are killed they are scalded and the wool is pulled off. The entrails are removed and salted. A pole is thrust through each lamb, and it is laid on the hot coals of a fire made in a trench. The meat is then covered with brush and earth. As it cooks, the people continue to pray, and keep on praying until the sunset approaches. At ten minutes after sunset they begin to eat the meat, throwing the bones into the fire without breaking them.