sign in sign up
<<
Home , Samaria

FOR WE, LIKE YOU, WORSHIP YOUR GOD: 1 Three Biblical Portrayals of Samaritan Origins

by

MORDECHAI COGAN Beer Sheva

Rabbinic traditions trace Samaritan2 origins back to the biblical report of the forced settlement of foreigners in by the Assyrians towards the end of the 8th century BCE, a report which earned them the opprobrious by-name Kutai.3 Most historians, however, view the biblical portrayals critically and recognize in them the polemic of the Judaean community in against their rivals in the North. In similar fashion, the claim of the Samaritan community itself to being the true , "who keeps (hšmrym) the truth" and who are lineal descendants of "the and the , sons of ",4 is given little credibility; it is a claim seen as a late fiction which seeks to legitimize the Samaritan brand of Israelite religion. The present in- vestigation reviews the biblical sources once more, seeking to clarify just how partisan they are in actuality.

1 Delivered at the 12th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem, 24 August-2 September 1986. 2 The term "Samaritan" refers to that group which broke with , ap- parently during the era of the (so J. D. Purvis, The and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect [Cambridge, Mass., 1968]); the residents in the former kingdom of Israel, whether native born or of foreign origin, until the Samaritan cleavage are here referred to as "Samarians". R. J. Coggins, Samaritansand Jews(Oxford, 1975), p. 164, leans toward overcautiousness in shun- ning all attempts at finding "any one decisive event [that] played a special part in widening the breach between Jews and " in the pre-Christian era. Cf., too, F. M. Cross, "Samaria and Jerusalem", in H. Tadmor and I. Eph�al (ed.), The World History of the Jewish People, The Restoration-ThePersian Period (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 91-4 (Hebrew). 3 , Antiquities,ix.288 is the earliest reference to Kutai; cf. the discussion of the assorted rabbinic materials by G. Alon, "The Origin of the Samaritans in the Halakhic Tradition", in Jews,Judaism and the ClassicalWorld (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 354-73 (= Tarbiz 18 [1947], pp. 146-56). 4 J. Macdonald, The Samaritan ChronicleNo. II (or: SepherHa-Yamim) From Joshua to Nebuchadnezzar,BZAW 107 (1969), p. 85, v. 16 (H*). 287

The locus classicus on the subject is undisputedly 2 Kgs xvii 24- 33.5 The territory of the kingdom of Israel is here described as having been emptied of its population by the Assyrian conquerors and then resettled by ethnically diverse peoples brought to Samaria by an unnamed "king of " .6 6 The new residents of Samaria adopt the cult of the God of Israel under duress, at the same time continuing their native, idolatrous practices. Thus, according to this account, there develops in Beth-el an adulterated Israelite cult, not unlike the one which was prevalent in the northern kingdom in former days. A second text, Ezra iv 1-5, depicts the community in Samaria about two centuries later, during the early decades of the Persian period. To the returned Judaean exiles who are rebuilding the Temple of the God of Israel in Jerusalem, the residents of Samaria present themselves as observant worshippers of the God of Israel, whom they have been serving ever since their arrival in the land in the days of Esarhaddon.' But they are summarily rebuffed in their request to participate in the Temple project, the reason for this re- jection left unspecified.

5 The unit 2 Kgs xvii 34-40 is a separate paragraph unrelated to the preceding one; its subject is the continued waywardness of the in Assyrian exile and not the idolatry of the new Samarians. This view was set out in full by the present writer in "Israel in Exile-The View of a Josianic Historian", JBL 97 (1978), pp. 40-4. 6 Though 2 Kgs xvii 3 mentions Shalmaneser, in the remainder of the paragraph, xvii 4-6, "the king of Assyria" is the subject. Extra-biblical sources confirm that Samaria fell to in the winter of 722 (A. K. Grayson, Assyrianand BabylonianChronicles [Locust Valley, N.Y., 1975], p. 73, lines 27-8). But analysis of the Assyrian documentation requires identifying "the king of Assyria" as Sargon II who was the first to exile and then to repopulate Samaria (H. Tadmor, "The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A Chronological-Historical Study", JCS 12 [1958], pp. 33-40). 7 The historical inscriptions of Esarhaddon do not refer to his bringing new ex- iles to Samaria, though he did campaign extensively in the west. Perhaps the transfer took place during the campaign to Egypt in 671 when punitive measures were meted out against those western vassals who had allied themselves with the Egyptian Tirhaqa; for the fragmentary Assyrian evidence, see D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Recordsof Assyria and Babylonia2 (Chicago, 1927), par. 584-5. A further biblical intimation of such action during Esarhaddon's reign has been found in Isa. vii 8, in which the future shattering of Samaria as a people is set sixty-five years hence. Calculated from the days of the Syro-Ephraimite war, this would fall during Esarhaddon's western campaigns. S. D. Luzzatto, Il ProfetaIsaia, volgariz- zato e commentato(Padova, 1867), ad loc. surveys the early calendrical reckonings based on this verse; cf. more recently, O. Kaiser, Das Buch des ProphetenJesaja. Kapitel 1-12 (5th edn, Göttingen, 1981), E. tr. 1-12 (2nd edn, London, 1983), ad loc.