The foreign colonists, from Cutha, found themselves, as they simply supposed, unable to appease the deity of their new country without special instructions in the peculiarities of his rite. They petitioned therefore for a priest, and an Israelite priest returned and dwelt at Bethel. It is perhaps only natural to suppose that the place here intended in the Bible is Gerizim, which was held by the Samaritans to be the site of Jacob's vision. It follows from this account that at least one priestly family returned to Samaria, and the Samaritans claimed a descent for their priesthood from Phinehas the grandson of Aaron.
Another curious allegation, brought forward by Josephus and also to be found in the Targums, is that the Samaritans claimed to be Sidonians; this is however plainly contradictory to the view that they were Cuthim, and only serves to show the small reliance that can be placed on the later Jewish accounts.
Having then indications that the Israelites were not all carried to Assyria, and that one at least of their priests returned, and having the invariable assertion of the Samaritans that they are descendants of this small remnant, and in confirmation of this their physiognomical characteristics, their religion, their possession of an ancient text of the books of Moses, their observation of the Jewish Passover, according to the most ancient form of the rite, we may fairly place the Samaritan literature in the balance against the accounts of the Pharisees--Josephus and the Talmudic doctors--which, as above shown, are in themselves contradictory.
It seems probable that the cause of the division of the Hebrew monarchy is to be sought in an original jealousy between the great tribes of Judah and Joseph who first seized on the land; but, as we have seen above, the religious schism was not complete before the time of the revival under Ezra. Worshippers from Shechem had been received at Jerusalem, and on the return of the Jews the Samaritans were anxious to take part in the restoration of the Temple in the Jewish capital. With regard to the history of the quarrel, Jewish and Samaritan accounts are, as might be expected, diametrically opposed. Josephus, in a passage which has no parallel in the Book of Ezra (Ant. xi 4. 9.), represents ambassadors, including Zerubbabel, as going to Darius and obtaining a decree against the Samaritans, forbidding them to interfere with the building of the Temple. From the Book of Ezra it appears, however, that the enemies of Judah succeeded in stopping the work of restoration (Ezra iv. 24). The Samaritan account is in agreement with this; according to their chronicle the whole of Israel, with the exception of the Jews, wished to build the Temple on Gerizim. An appeal was made to the King, and copies of the law made by Sanballat and Zerubbabel were cast into a great fire; the former leapt out thrice unhurt, the latter were immediately consumed. These traditions cannot of course be put in the same category with the sober history of the Book of Ezra; but in the main the accounts are not discordant, as both acknowledge an appeal to Darius and the hindrance of the Jews by Samaritan opposition.