Samaritans, << suh MAR uh tuhnz, >> were citizens of ancient Samaria. The Assyrians destroyed Israel in 721 or 722 B.C. and took the ablest Israelites to Assyria as captives. The Assyrian ruler then forced people from eastern Assyria to settle in the region of Samaria (see Samaria ). The new settlers brought their own religious ideas, but also sought to please “the god of the land.” Many of them intermarried with the remaining Israelites. People with this mixed ancestry and mixed religion came to be called Samaritans.
The Samaritans adopted the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, as their scripture. But the Hebrews to the south refused to associate with them and considered their religion inferior. When the Hebrews rebuilt their temple, they refused help that the Samaritans offered. Eventually, the Samaritans built a temple of their own, but it was destroyed in 128 B.C.
In Jesus’s time, the Jews looked down on the Samaritans as foreigners. Jesus told a story about the Good Samaritan who aided a Jew who was robbed and injured by thieves after the man had been refused assistance by other Jews (Luke 10:30-34). The story is ironic because the Samaritans were not expected to show sympathy toward Jews. The same theme appears in the story of Jesus’s healing of 10 lepers. Only the “foreign” Samaritan leper returned to thank Jesus (Luke 17:11-19).
About 500 Samaritans now live in two communities in the state of Israel. They are the only living descendants of the Biblical Samaritans.
