Samaritans

“Hebrew are mostly followers of the Jewish religion of Judaism. However, some Hebrews are non-Jewish.”

Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews of the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria). Jews are from the southern Kingdom of Judah. Samaritans are the only non-Jewish group widely accepted to be Hebrews. They regard Mount Gerizim, not Mount Zion, as the holy site where God chose to place His name.

Samaritans claim to be descendants of the tribe of Joseph, and thus descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh. Their priests are from the house of Levi, descendants of Aaron. When Israel entered Palestine, Joshua established the center of his administration at Shechem, in the valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal.

In the 12th century, the Jewish explorer and writer Benjamin of Tudela estimated that only around 1,900 Samaritans remained in Palestine and Syria. As of 2024, the Samaritan community numbers around 900 people, split between Israel (some 460 in Holon) and the West Bank (some 380 in Kiryat Luza).

Samaritans only accept the 'five books of Moses' (Torah), and not the 'books of the Prophets' (Old Testament) or later texts. They call themselves the 'Shemarim' (guardians) of the Torah known and revered as the Pentateuch,

Modern genetic studies (2004) suggest that Samaritans' lineages trace back to a common ancestor with Jews in the paternally-inherited Jewish high priesthood (Cohanim) temporally proximate to the period of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel, and are probably descendants of the historical Israelite population. Samaritan law differs from Halakha (Rabbinic Jewish law or Talmudic literature) and other Jewish movements.

There are some 6,000 differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Jewish Pentateuch text; and, according to one estimate, 1,900 points of agreement between it and the Greek LXX version. Several passages in the New Testament would also appear to echo a Torah textual tradition not dissimilar to that conserved in the Samaritan text.

Samaritans preserve a form of the proto-Hebraic script, conserve the institution of a High Priesthood, and the practice of slaughtering and eating lambs on Passover eve. They celebrate Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, but use a different mode from that employed in Judaism in order to determine the dates annually.

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Food for thought!