The Keepers: An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Samaritans

by Robert T. Anderson, Terry Giles

The Keepers describes the remarkable history and survival of the Samaritans and the unique oppression and grace that have shaped their culture and religion. It is a history whose antagonists have included Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and it has contributed to arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants over the text of the Bible. The threads of the story disappear at times into Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but ultimately succeed in affirming the unique Samaritan identity. Popularly associated with phrases like “The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel” and “The Good Samaritan,” many are surprised to learn that the Samaritans have a rich history and culture that includes a contemporary chapter. This history is illuminated by stories in the Hebrew Bible and documents from Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic sources.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion

165 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2001

Reviews

[Steve Cran]

This scholarly book give an excellent but brief overview of a group of people called the Samaritan. They claim descent from ancient Israelites but they are not Jews. Their center of worship is Mount Gerizim near the town of Nablus not Jerusalem. The tribes they are supposed to descend from is Efram and Mennasseh. The Jewish works like Kings and the Talmud claim they are descended from Cuteans settled there by the Assyrian King Sargon. These settlers were plagued by lions so the Assyrians sent a king to teach them Israelite religion. In reality though when the Assyrians took over Northern Israel only the elites of the population were relocated. It was only the peasantry remained in place. Cutean were settled there and most likely mixed in with the natives.



Through out history there has been confusion of three different terms. Samarians who lived in the North, Samarians who wanted centrality taken from Jerusalem and Samaritan who believed in the Samaritan Pentateuch and worshipped on Mount Gerizim. The Jews have always had mixed feeling about Samaritans. On the one hand they are regarded highly for their maintenance of the commandments yet on the pother they are derided for racial differences and variances in their faith.



The Samaritans believe that when Joshua first entered the holy land that Gerizim was the proper place of worship it was when a priest hungry for power decide to move the tabernacle to Jerusalem. They believe they did the right thing by staying. Because of thee priests bad move the Israelites moved into an era of divine disfavor. This will be restored with the coming of the Taheb, or their word for messiah.



Samaritan History is broken down into periods. The Samaritans have their first historical breakaway from the Jews in the Persian periods when a priest called Jedoida marries the daughter of Sanballat the Persian governor in the Northern part of the Holy land. Nehemia frown on this. Later when the northerners along with the Samaritans install Andrmachus as a governor there is a violent reaction by the Greeks and the nobility go into hiding they are later found and killed in Wadi al Dahiya. The Samaritan unlike the Jews tried to oppose Alexander the Great and lost both land and power. Of course later that would bee regained when they backed the right candidate for power in a battle for Greek control. Later John Hyrcanus would destroy their temple on Gerizim. The Romans would quell a rebellion of Jews and Samaritan the Samaritan would hole up on mount Gerizim and many would die of starvation and later on massacres.



Later on during the Byzantine period they be persecuted even more than the Jews because there was a fear that they would ally themselves with Gnostics. Three great Samaritan leaders arrived during this time. The first was Baba Raba or the great gate. He made changes on the Samaritan religion and supposedly defeated a mechanical bird that would keep Israelites away from Mount Gerizim. He made many changes to the religion andd gave more power to the laity. He also revived the Hukama or council of sages. He was later banished to Constantinople. The next leader was Amram Darre. He was the writer of many poems and wrote a Samaritan liturgy called the Defter. Last was Marqah was also a poet and had many saying attributed to him.



Then comes the Islamic period. The Samaritan helped the Arabs take over Byzantine. After all they were persecuted by the Christians and forced to live as bandits. Later on though they would find that they were taxed more heavily then other people of the book. Their numbers would eventually decline

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short introduction to Samaritan history and culture takes its reason for being from a collection of materials available at Michigan State University. The authors spend a couple of chapters on this collection, which is likely of interest to a few very devoted to these studies but which was not the heart of why I turned to this work. The reason I turned to this work was that I wanted a relatively short synopsis of Samaritan history, religion, and culture--and that, in its middle chapters, was exactly what this book supplied.

The Samaritans we know in scripture are a people despised by the Jewish people. Josephus and Kings essentially tell us that they consist of people injected into the land of Israel, the northern kingdom, after the Assyrians deported the northern ten tribes. Those people took on Jewish customs, after begging for a priest from the land, and merged them with their own. That's the story from the Jewish perspective.

The story from the Samaritan perspective is quite different. In their view, they stem from a conflict over the high priesthood that occurred shortly after Phinehas's demise. Eli, the son of Yafni tried to usurp the sons of Phinehas (Ozzi being high priest at the time). Eli's group moved to Shiloh and then eventually Jerusalem. Ozzi's group stayed at Shechem and Mount Gerizim, the original holy place.

Historical records of the sect begin to show up around the time that the Jewish people return from captivity in Babylon. Ezra, in shaping the Jewish scriptures, allowed in books beyond the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and he condemned marriages between Jews and Samaritans, considering the latter essentially akin to Gentiles (though this tradition is largely an interpretation of Josephus--the biblical record does not explicitly mention the Samaritans in this context). Another thing Ezra did was promote Jerusalem as the center of worship.

It is when the Greeks take over the Promised Land that Samaritan consciousness really takes hold, and the sect enters history in its own light. Their separation from Judaism also becomes plain, as for example, the Maccabees rebel but the Samaritans do not, the latter not being considered of the same religion as the Maccabees. John Hyrcanus's attack on the group cemented their separation.

While the Jews and Samaritans did not get along during much of the early Roman period, the condition of the sect appears to have been one of general persecution throughout history, no matter which set of people were in charge. In the Christian era (after Constantine made Christianity the favored religion), Samaritans briefly had a respite in how they were treated because of Christian ideas about the "good Samaritan," but eventually they were blamed for gnosticism and persecuted by the Byzantines. When the Muslims took over, once again, there was a brief respite, until the Muslims decided that Samaritans did not qualify as "people of the book," unlike Jews and Christians, at which time they were taxed extra.

Today, Samaritans are often considered a sect of Judaism. Like followers of Judaism, they believe in circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, the biblical holy days, and the first five books of the Bible. However, they see Gerizim as the center of God's holy realm rather than Jerusalem and attach various biblical events to it just as Jews attach various biblical events to Jerusalem. They do not accept the rest of the Old Testament as scripture, and they have commentaries and other books (not considered part of their scriptures) that continue their story into Joshua's time. Their Pentateuch, while similar to the Jewish one, makes certain substitutions with regard to Gerizim as a place; it also is apparently closer to the Septuagint than to the Masoretic text. They believe in a Messiah to come, though he is seen primarily as a physical leader. They also, to this day, offer sacrifices. And the biblical holy days, finally, are on their own calendar separate from the Jewish calendar, the calculation of which only the priests know; thus Passover and the like may be celebrated at a slightly different time than it is in mainstream Judaism. They do not keep other Jewish days, such a Hanukkah or Purim.