SAMARITANS, primarily meaning "inhabitants of Samaritis, or the region of Samaria," is specially used, in the New Testa ment and by Josephus, as the name of a peculiar religious com munity which had its headquarters in the Samaritan country, and is still represented by a few families at Nablus, the ancient Shechem. They claim to be descendants of the ten tribes, and to possess the orthodox religion of Moses, accepting the Penta teuch only and transmitting it in a Hebrew text which for the most part has but slight variations from that of the Jews. But they regard the Jewish temple and priesthood as schismatical, and declare that the true sanctuary chosen by God is not Zion but Mount Gerizim, over against Shechem (St. John iv. 20). The sanctity of this site they prove from the Pentateuch, reading Gerizim for Ebal in Deut. xxvii. 4. With this change the chapter is interpreted as a command to select Gerizim as the legitimate sanctuary (cf. verse 7). Moreover, in Exod. xx. 17 and Deut.
The Samaritans must have derived their Pentateuch from the Jews after Ezra's reforms of 444 B.C., no doubt at the time of the expulsion from Jerusalem in 432 B.C. of a man of high-priestly family (Neh. xiii. 28), who had married a daughter of Sanballat. Cf. Josephus Ant. xi. 8. The story that they possess a copy of the Law written by Abisha, the great-grandson of Aaron, seems to have aroused a strangely wide-spread interest, so that tourists invariably ask to see it and usually claim to have succeeded in doing so. Considering the extreme reverence with which it is regarded, it may safely be said that this manuscript is never shown to them.
In spite of the differences which separated the two communi ties, their internal development and external history ran parallel courses till the Jewish state took a new departure under the Maccabees. The religious resemblance between the two bodies was increased by the institution of the synagogue, from which there grew up a Samaritan theology and an exegetical tradition.
The latter is embodied in the Samaritan Targum, or Aramaic version of the Pentateuch, which in its present form is probably not much earlier than the 4th century A.D., but in general is said to agree with the readings of Origen's TO Icy/apart/coy. Whether the latter represents a complete translation of the Law into Greek may be doubted, but at any rate the Samaritans be gan already in the time of Alexander to be influenced by Hellen ism. They as well as Jews were carried to Egypt by Ptolemy Lagi, and the rivalry of the two parties was continued in Alexan dria (Jos. Ant. xii. 1. 1), where such a translation may have been
produced. Of the Samaritan contributions to Hellenistic litera ture some fragments have been preserved in the remains of Alexander Polyhistor.
The troubles that fell upon the Jews under Antiochus Epi phanes were not escaped by the Samaritans (2 Macc. v. 23; vi. 2), for the account in Josephus (Ant. xii. 5. 5), which makes them voluntarily exchange their religion for the worship of Zeus, is evidently coloured to suit the author's hostility. Under the Maccabees their relations with Judaea became very bitter. They suffered severely at the hands of Hyrcanus, and the temple on Mt. Gerizim was destroyed. Although this treatment established an unalterable enmity to the Jews, as we see in the New Testa ment, in Josephus and in Jewish tradition, the two sects had too much in common not to unite occasionally against a common enemy, and in the struggles of the Jews with Vespasian the Samaritans took part against the Romans. They were not, how ever, consistent, for under Hadrian they helped the Romans against the Jews and were allowed to rebuild their temple on Mt. Gerizim. They seem to have shared in the Jewish dispersion, since in later times we hear of Samaritans and their synagogues in Egypt, in Rome and in other parts of the empire. In the 4th century they enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity, according to their own chronicles, under Baba the Great, who (re-)estab lished their religious and social organization. In 484, in conse quence of attacks on the Christians, the Gerizim temple was finally destroyed by the Romans, and an insurrection in 529 was suppressed by Justinian so effectively that, while retaining their distinctive religion, they became henceforth politically merged in the surrounding population, with a merely domestic history. They are mentioned in later times by the Jewish trav ellers Benjamin of Tudela (1173) and Obadiah Bertinoro (1488 in Egypt), by Sir John Maundeville and others, but little was known of them in Europe till Scaliger opened communications with them in 1583. In consequence of the interest thus aroused, the traveller Pietro della Valle visited them in 1616 and succeeded in obtaining a copy of their Pentateuch and of their Targum. At the present day they live only at Nablus (Shechem), about 150 in number, the congregations formerly existing in Gaza, Cairo, Damascus and elsewhere having long since died out. Their ecclesiastical head is the "Priest-levite," who claims descent from Uzziel the younger son of Kohath (Exod. vi. 18). The line of the high-priests, so called as being descended from Aaron, became extinct in 1623.