Samaritans

• 1. Introduction

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  The Samaritans, who often prefer to be called Israelite Samaritans, numbered about 900 people as of 2024. That makes them one of the smallest surviving ethnoreligious groups in the world. During the early modern period, their count fell to around 100. They live mainly on Mount Gerizim near Nablus, the ancient Shechem, and in Holon near Tel Aviv. Their faith, Samaritanism, is an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion that developed alongside Judaism. According to Samaritan tradition, their line of high priests has continued without interruption for 3600 years, beginning with Aaron. Samaritans say they, and not the Jews, carry the most authentic form of the covenant given to Moses. Who are they, and where did they come from? Why do two peoples with so much in common disagree over a single mountain? And how does a community endure when empires, revolts and forced conversions keep cutting its numbers?

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• 2. Two Origin Stories

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  The fullest Samaritan account of their own past is the Kitab al-Ta'rikh, compiled by Abu'l-Fath in 1355. The scholar Magnar Kartveit calls it a fictional apologia built from earlier sources, including Josephus. In this telling, a man named Eli, son of Yafni and treasurer of the Israelites, tried to seize the high priesthood from the heirs of Phinehas. He gathered followers, bound them with an oath, and sacrificed on the stone altar without using salt. High Priest Ozzi rebuked him and disowned him. Eli and his followers moved to Shiloh and built a rival temple, a replica of the original on Mount Gerizim. Israel then split into three factions. One was the loyal community at Gerizim, one was Eli's breakaway group, and one was made up of heretics who worshipped idols tied to Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Judaism, in this account, emerged later from those who followed Eli.

  The Hebrew Bible tells the story differently. After the death of King Solomon, the kingdom split into northern Israel, whose last capital was Samaria, and southern Judah, ruled from Jerusalem. The Deuteronomistic history, written in Judah, presents the north as a sinful kingdom punished for idolatry and destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The annals of Sargon II claim the deportation of 27,290 inhabitants. According to 2 Kings, Israelites were removed to Halah, to Gozan on the Khabur River, and to the towns of the Medes. The Assyrian king then placed settlers from Babylon, Kutha, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim in Samaria. Lions began killing the newcomers, so the king sent a priest from Bethel to teach them God's ordinances. The settlers ended up worshipping both the God of the land and the gods they had brought with them.

  That biblical account shaped the names outsiders used. The Talmud and rabbinic literature call the Samaritans Cuthites or Cutheans, after the city of Kutha, in what is now Iraq. Josephus uses Cuthaeans when he describes John Hyrcanus destroying the temple on Mount Gerizim. He also uses Khuthaioi, a term for peoples of Media and Persia supposedly sent to replace the exiles, though these were in fact Hellenistic Phoenicians or Sidonians. Josephus is a prejudiced witness by many accounts, and he calls the Samaritans both a distinct, opportunistic people and a Jewish sect. The Books of Chronicles, meanwhile, never mention an Assyrian resettlement. They show King Hezekiah of Judah inviting northern tribes such as Ephraim and Manasseh to Jerusalem for Passover.

  Modern scholars have moved away from the picture of one population wholly replacing another. Adam Zertal, reading changes in material culture, estimated that only 10 percent of Samaria's Israelites were deported. He thought the imported settlers numbered no more than a few thousand. Gary Knoppers described the change as "not the wholesale replacement of one local population by a foreign population, but rather the diminution of the local population". Archaeologist Eric Cline offers a middle view. He puts the deported at about 40,000 and the refugees to Judah at about 80,000. Between 100,000 and 230,000 Israelites, he says, stayed in Samaria and intermarried with the settlers. Kartveit argues that the people who became Samaritans had varied origins, and that the temple project on Mount Gerizim gave them a shared mark.

  Most modern scholars see a gradual estrangement over several centuries, not one clean break. The rabbis of the Mishnah themselves found it impossible to draw a clear line between the two groups. Proposed dates for the schism run from the time of Ezra to the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-136 CE.

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• 3. Keepers of the Law

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  Inscriptions from the Samaritan diaspora on the island of Delos, dating as early as 150-50 BCE, preserve the oldest known name the Samaritans gave themselves. They wrote Bene Israel, meaning children of Israel. In Samaritan Hebrew they call themselves Israel, B'nai Israel, and also Shamerim. That last word means Keepers or Watchers, from a Semitic root meaning to watch or guard. Several Christian Church Fathers noticed this. Epiphanius of Salamis in the Panarion, Jerome and Eusebius in the Chronicon, and Origen in his commentary on John's Gospel all remarked that the name meant guardians of the Law. In their view it was not simply a place name for people of the region of Samaria. Modern Hebrew uses Shomronim, meaning inhabitants of Samaria, and Arabic uses al-Sāmiriyyūn.

  The Law they guard is the Samaritan Pentateuch. Samaritans believe it is the original, unaltered Torah given to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai. It differs in places from the Masoretic text used in Judaism, and Samaritan tradition holds that Ezra fabricated key parts of the Jewish version. Their Book of Joshua also differs from the Jewish one, which focuses on Shiloh. Other works fill out the tradition, among them the Memar Marqah, called The teaching of Marqah, and a liturgy known as the Defter. There are also Samaritan law codes and biblical commentaries.

  The Torah's own geography anchors the dispute. The Bible describes Moses ordering Joshua to place six tribes on Mount Gerizim, the Mount of the Blessing, and six on Mount Ebal, the Mount of the Curse. Both mountains rise by Shechem, on the southern side of modern Nablus. Samaritan tradition says Joshua built a temple there, called al-haikal, and set a tabernacle, al-maškan, inside it in the second year after entering Canaan. Samaritans teach that the Torah refers to Mount Gerizim 13 times. They contrast this with Judaism, which relies on later prophets and writings to establish the holiness of Jerusalem.

  The mountain is also where Samaritans place the binding of Isaac. They say God commanded Abraham to offer his son there, then stopped the sacrifice as the ultimate test of obedience. Deuteronomy 12:5 speaks of the place where God chooses to establish his name. Judaism reads this as Jerusalem, while the Samaritan text points to Gerizim. A Jewish scholar named Andronicus ben Meshullam is recorded arguing the Jewish side at the court of King Ptolemy VI Philometor in the 2nd century BCE.

  Archaeology shows no habitation on Gerizim in the Assyrian and Babylonian periods. It does reveal a sacred precinct there by the 5th century BCE, and a lavish expansion early in the Hellenistic era. By the time of Antiochus III the Great, the temple town covered 30 dunams. Samaritans living abroad keep the Sabbath, ritual purity and every festival, with one exception. The Passover sacrifice can be offered only on Mount Gerizim. In the Gospel of John, a Samaritan woman puts the question to Jesus directly, asking whether Gerizim or Jerusalem is the place where God commanded Abraham to bind Isaac.

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• 4. Rulers and Rebels

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  Sanballat the Horonite, governor of Samaria under Persian rule, appears in Ezra-Nehemiah as the rival of Nehemiah. Nehemiah governed the new province of Yehud Medinata, and the two clashed over rebuilding Jerusalem's walls. Yet the same text suggests everyday relations were friendly. Intermarriage seems to have been common, and the High Priest Joiada married Sanballat's daughter. Sanballat's sons bore the Israelite names Delaiah and Shelemiah. The name Jeroboam, used by northern kings, turns up on Samaritan coins, and the Wadi Daliyeh documents show many such names. Material evidence from this period shows Jews and proto-Samaritans sharing a language and script.

  In 331 BCE, the Samaritans rebelled against their Macedonian conquerors and murdered the prefect Andromachus. The army answered with a brutal reprisal. Samaria as a whole was devastated by the conquest and the colonization that followed, though its southern lands were spared. Under Greek rule the Samaritans were generally more populous and wealthier than the Judeans until 164 BC.

  Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who reigned from 175 to 163 BCE, tried to Hellenize his entire kingdom and standardize worship. The Samaritan temple was renamed for Zeus. Josephus says the Samaritans accepted this willingly, while 2 Maccabees says it was forced, naming an envoy called Gerontes the Athenian. In a letter quoted by Josephus, the Samaritans ask the king to treat them as distinct from the Jews in both race and customs. They also ask that their temple be named for Jupiter Hellenius. The scholars E. Bickerman and M. Stern defend the letter as genuine.

  Around 110 BCE, the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and devastated Samaria. Only a few stone remnants of the temple survive. This campaign confirmed hostility between Jews and Samaritans, and the resentment it caused lasted for centuries.

  The Roman period brought the Samaritans into the Christian gospels. In the account of the Samaritan woman at the well, many Samaritans accept Jesus through her testimony, and he stays in Samaria for two days. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a priest and a Levite walk past a beaten man left half dead. Only the Samaritan helps him.

  In 67 CE, during the First Jewish-Roman War, a significant Samaritan uprising gathered on Mount Gerizim. The general Vespasian sent a relatively small force under Cerialis. Some Samaritans surrendered, but most fought. Josephus reports that 11,600 were killed. In 72 or 73 CE, Vespasian founded Flavia Neapolis on the site of Mabartha, near Shechem. Scholars disagree on whether this was meant to counter Samaritan influence or was simply a strategic choice. The new city included Samaritans and pagans, and its coins avoided pagan symbols.

  Samaritans also lived far from Samaria. Ergasion the Samaritan appears in a pagan group in Athens in the 4th or 3rd century BC. A family at Caunos in Caria set up an inscription naming the father, Simon, as coming from Shechem. The rest of the family bore Greek names, including Dionysia and Cleopatra.

  The defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt left Judea depopulated, and Samaritans spread into former Jewish areas such as Emmaus, Sha'alavim and the Beit She'an Valley. The source finds no concrete evidence that Jews and Samaritans cooperated in that revolt. The 4th century then brought a Samaritan cultural revival. The high priest Baba Rabba organized and formalized much of the liturgy. A new Samaritan alphabet, derived from the ancient Paleo-Hebrew script, appeared in this period. Later chronicles credit Baba Rabba with building synagogues in villages including Awarta, Salem and Tira Luza.

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• 5. The Byzantine Collapse

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  Samaritan sources call the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno, who reigned from 474 to 491, "Zait the King of Edom". They say he travelled to Neapolis, summoned the elders and demanded they convert to Christianity. When they refused, many were killed and the local synagogue was rebuilt as a church. Zeno also took over Mount Gerizim and built there, including a tomb for his recently deceased son. A cross stood on that tomb so that Samaritans bowing before God would also bow before it.

  By 484, the Samaritans had risen in revolt. They attacked Neapolis, burned five churches built on former Samaritan holy sites, and mutilated Bishop Terebinthus while he officiated at Pentecost. The rebels chose a king named Justa and moved to Caesarea, where a notable Samaritan community lived. Several Christians were killed there, and the church of Saint Sebastian was destroyed. Justa celebrated with games in the circus. According to the Chronicon Paschale, Asclepiades, the dux Palaestinae, defeated the rebels, killed Justa and sent his head to Zeno. Procopius adds that Terebinthus appealed to Zeno for revenge and that the emperor went to Samaria himself. Some modern historians think the order of events should be reversed. On that reading, Zeno's persecution followed the rebellion, around 489. Afterward the Samaritans were banned from Mount Gerizim, and a signaling tower was built on its summit to warn of unrest.

  In 529, a charismatic, messianic leader named Julianus ben Sabar, also given as ben Sahir, led the Samaritans of Palaestina in a war for their own state. Emperor Justinian I crushed the revolt with help from the Ghassanids. Tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. Their faith, once a religio licita, was virtually outlawed. A population that had been at least in the hundreds of thousands dwindled to tens of thousands. The archaeologist Claudine Dauphin calls the Byzantine response an act of ethnic cleansing that decimated five successive generations.

  Menachem Mor offers a different reading of the numbers. He argues that the decline between the 5th and 6th centuries came mostly from Christianization, not from the uprisings. In his view, many urban Samaritans converted, some under pressure and some willingly. Samaritan sources preferred to blame coerced conversion, and Christian sources preferred to blame rebelliousness, so both concealed the pattern. The archaeological findings show no change in the local population's identity during the Byzantine period.

  The community did not vanish. In 570 CE, an anonymous Christian pilgrim from Piacenza passed through several Samaritan cities and villages in the plains below Sebaste. He recorded that, wherever he went, the locals "burned away our footprints with straw", out of horror at both Christians and Jews.

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• 6. Caliphs and Sultans

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  By the time of the Muslim conquest of the Levant, small Samaritan communities already lived in Egypt, Syria and Iran. Like Jews, they were generally treated as People of the Book and kept the right to worship. Adult men paid the jizya, a protection tax, as dhimmi. That changed in the late Abbasid period, when persecution grew. During the reign of the caliph al-Ma'mun, from 813 to 833, anarchy brought clashes and famine, and many Samaritans fled and left their faith, according to the Chronicle of Abu l-Fath. In 830, the rebel ibn Firāsa forced conversions and filled prisons with Samaritan men, women and children. He even charged a fee for permission to circumcise sons on the eighth day.

  A second uprising followed when the caliph al-Mu'tasim raised taxes. Rebels took Nablus and set fire to the synagogues of the Samaritans and of the Dosithians, a Samaritan sect. In 842, Abu-Harb Tamim led yet another uprising, and the Samaritan High Priest, wounded in the fighting, died in Hebron. Under al-Mutawakkil, who ruled from 847 to 861, restrictions on dhimmi returned and prices rose. The chronicle says many families lost faith from the price rises and from weariness of paying the jizya. The red tarboosh worn by Samaritan men may go back to his order that non-Muslims be visibly distinguished, though this is disputed.

  Archaeology backs up the written record. During the 8th and 9th centuries, winepresses west of Samaria stopped operating while their villages carried on. One theory holds that Samaritan villagers who converted to Islam kept farming but could no longer make wine. By the 9th century, villages such as Sinjil and Jinsafut were already Muslim. From the 11th century, the Samaritans spoke only Arabic. The al-Hakim Edict of 1021, ordering Jews and Christians in the southern Levant to convert or leave, hastened the decline.

  The Crusaders took Nablus, where most Samaritans lived, and massacres struck Samaritan coastal communities at Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre and perhaps Ascalon. Later hardship came from Muslim raiders. In 1137, the Damascene commander Bazwādj raided Nablus and carried off 500 Samaritans to Damascus.

  The Ottoman censuses of 1525-1526 count 25 Samaritan families in Gaza and 29 in Nablus. By 1596-1597, only 8 families remained in Gaza, 20 in Nablus and 5 in Safed. In early 17th-century Damascus, the Pasha Mardam Beqin's reign saw most of the community massacred or converted, and survivors such as the Danafi family returned to Nablus. In 1624, the last High Priest of the line of Eleazar died without issue, and descendants of Aaron's other son, Ithamar, took the office. That same year, access to the summit of Mount Gerizim was outlawed, and Passover sacrifices were confined to the eastern slopes.

  In the early 18th century, the poet and author Ibrahim al-Danafi, who worked for the Tuqan family that dominated Nablus, bought the hill of Pinehas and a plot on the summit for the community. The 1759 earthquake and the epidemic that followed ended the recovery. In the 19th century, most Samaritan families lived in Harat el-Somra, a crowded Nablus neighborhood, and gathered at the modest synagogue called el-Kanis. Some sold ancient manuscripts to keep their institutions running.

  In the 1840s, the ulama of Nablus declared that Samaritans were not People of the Book and must convert or die. In 1841, locals tried to force the conversion of two children of a Samaritan widow. Her young daughter died from fear, and her 14-year-old son converted. The Jewish Hakham Bashi Chaim Abraham Gagin then ruled that the Samaritans were "a branch of the children of Israel, who acknowledge the truth of the Torah", and so deserved protection. The preaching stopped, though the community paid bribes totaling about 1000 GBP and could not sacrifice on Mount Gerizim until 1849.

  Many who converted stayed in the same villages. The Samaritan historian Benyamim Tsedaka notes that converts often kept their surnames, so Arab families in places with altered Hebrew names still bear Samaritan ones. In 1940, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a historian and future Israeli president, wrote that two thirds of the residents of Nablus and its neighboring villages were of Samaritan origin.

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• 7. Dual Citizens

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  The censuses of 1922 and 1931 under the British Mandate counted 163 and 182 Samaritans in Palestine. Of the 1931 total, 147 lived in Nablus, with small groups in Tulkarm, Jaffa and As-Salt. Better medical care, work in the public sector, and Samaritan men marrying Jewish women all helped the community grow. During the 1929 riots, Arab rioters threw stones at Samaritans performing the Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim, along with their guests. The Palestine Police Force stepped in and prevented any deaths.

  In the late 1950s, around 100 Samaritans left the West Bank for Israel under an agreement with the Jordanian authorities. In 1954, Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi fostered a Samaritan enclave in Holon, at 15a Ben Amram Street. Under Jordanian rule, the Samaritans of Holon could visit Mount Gerizim only once a year, at Passover. Israel took the West Bank in the Six-Day War of 1967. Violence during the First Intifada, from 1987 to 1990, pushed the Samaritans of Nablus to move up to Mount Gerizim, near the Israeli settlement of Har Brakha. They settled in the village of Kiryat Luza and left behind an abandoned synagogue in Nablus.

  In the mid-1990s, the Samaritans of Kiryat Luza received Israeli citizenship. After the Oslo Accords they also became citizens of the Palestinian Authority. They are the only people to hold dual Israeli-Palestinian citizenship. As of 2024, about 460 Samaritans lived in Holon and about 380 in Kiryat Luza. Those in Holon mostly speak Modern Hebrew and serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Those in Kiryat Luza speak South Levantine Arabic and are not subject to mandatory conscription.

  The Samaritans of the West Bank tend to be fluent in Hebrew and Arabic and often use both a Hebrew and an Arab name. A reserved seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council was theirs in the election of 1996, but they no longer hold one. Some hold political office in Nablus, and at least one Samaritan, Nader Sadaqa, has been involved in Palestinian militancy. As a small community divided between neighbors in a hostile region, Samaritans have been wary of taking sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  The population count tells the recovery in numbers. There were 141 Samaritans in 1919 and 150 in 1967. By 2011 the figure was 745, and it reached 820 by 2019.

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• 8. Surviving Small

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  Four families make up the Samaritan community today: Cohen, Tsedakah, Danafi and Marhiv. A fifth, the Matar family, died out in 1968. Demographic work in the 1960s traced pedigrees across the last 13 generations. The Cohen family descends from the tribe of Levi, and the Tsedakah family claims Manasseh. The Danafi and Joshua-Marhiv families both claim Ephraim. With few converts accepted, Samaritans often marry within extended families, sometimes first cousins. Genetic disorders have appeared because of the small gene pool.

  The community has tried to widen that pool. In Holon, men may marry non-Samaritan women, primarily Israeli Jewish women, if they agree to follow Samaritan practice. A six-month trial period precedes joining. Many women balk at the strict Levitical laws, under which a woman lives in a separate dwelling during her period and after childbirth. Every marriage inside the community is approved first by a geneticist at Tel HaShomer Hospital. Through international marriage agencies, a small number of women from Russia and Ukraine who accept Samaritan practice have married into the Kiryat Luza community. Polygamy was reported among Samaritans until sometime in the 19th century and is now practically unheard of. Some young people leave for Judaism, among them the Israeli television presenter Sofi Tsedaka, who made a documentary about leaving at age 18.

  Genetic studies support the Samaritan claim of ancient Israelite roots. Of 12 Samaritan men sampled, 10, or 83 percent, carried Y chromosomes of haplogroup J, which covers three of the four families. The Cohen family, the most important, belongs to haplogroup E. A 2004 study by Shen and colleagues concluded that most Samaritan paternal lines trace to a common ancestor in the Israelite priesthood, projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest. Samaritan Y chromosomes are far closer to Jewish ones than to those of their Palestinian neighbors. Maternal lines are most similar to Iraqi Jews. On the whole genome, Samaritans cluster with other Levantine populations, and they show significant genetic drift that sets them apart.

  At the head of the community stands the High Priest, the 133rd in the line, who lives on Mount Gerizim. The eldest member of the priestly family is chosen for the office in each generation. The current holder, Aabed-El ben Asher ben Matzliach, took office on the 19th of April 2013.

  Beyond the Levant, a Brazilian group called Shomrey HaTorah, known as Neo-Samaritans Worldwide, observes Samaritan traditions without belonging to the community. It has approximately hundreds of members.

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