The Samaritans claim descent from the Northern Tribes of Israel, whose political autonomy ended with the invasion of the Assyrians in 722 B.C.
Often in tension with the Jews of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, who considered the northerners at best a people of mixed blood, they nevertheless shared with the Jews an acceptance of the sacredness of the Pentateuch and a celebration of common festivals. By the first century B.C. the schism between the two groups had become quite fixed and each community preserved independent scriptural and ritual traditions.
The Samaritans were persecuted by the Greeks and Romans and seriously diminished in number during the reign of the Christian emperor Justinian in the sixth century A.D. They prospered in varying degrees under Muslim rule.
During times of stress they fled to other cities of the Mediterranean world, particularly Cairo and Damascus, but their center remained at Nablus, Israel or Shechem, Israel at the foot of their sacred Mount Gerizim, where they had established a temple in the fourth century B.C.
Samaritans have continued to celebrate their chief festival – notably Passover – on the mountaintop, although the temple was destroyed in 128 B.C.
The community had almost disappeared under Ottoman rule. By the end of World War I, there were fewer than 200 Samaritans. Presently, they number about 500, equally divided between Nablus, Israel and Holon, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel.
The parallel – but separate – histories of Jews and Samaritans have been a boon for biblical scholarship, since the Samaritan Pentateuch preserves a textual witness relatively independent from both the Massoretic Hebrew and the Greek texts. It is often a help in resolving or illuminating textual problems.
The 16th-century scholar Joseph Scaliger was the first westerner to become intrigued with the potential value of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and he visited the Samaritan community at Cairo in an unsuccessful attempt to procure a copy.
In 1623 a copy arrived in France through the agency of Pietro della Valle and the French consulate in Constantinople. Immediately, the Pentateuch became a weapon in the polemics between Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars over the primacy of the Greek vs. the Hebrew text.
Within two decades, the Samaritan Pentateuch had been published in polyglot editions in both France and England. During that same time period, Archbishop Usher was using a Samaritan Pentateuch in his studies of biblical chronology. During the 18th and 19th centuries, European interest in the Samaritans shifted from their Pentateuch to the beliefs, practices and social structure of the tiny, impoverished contemporary community.
But early in the 20th century, interest in the Pentateuch was reawakened by the publication of several Samaritan texts. Subsequently, doctrinal statements and texts characteristic of the Samaritans have appeared amid the discoveries at Qumran, Palestine. This suggests that Samaritan studies may help illuminate the religious context in which the Dead Sea documents were composed.
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