Tent Work in Palestine — Part 24

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.

By the time of our Lord the hatred of the two people had become greater than their aversion to the heathen. Wine for the Temple passing through Samaria became unfit for use, a Jew was forbidden to help a wounded Samaritan or a Samaritan woman in trouble. On the other hand, murder and treachery are charged against the Cuthim; they lighted false beacons in order to confuse the Jewish calendar depending on the appearance of the new moon; they betrayed the Jews to the Romans; they polluted the Temple with bones. Such crimes could never be forgiven, and the Jews in contempt cast them out as heathen and foreigners.