Who were the Samaritans?

Bible People & HistoryIn theological review

The short answer

The Samaritans were the people of the region of Samaria, between Galilee and Judea, who worshipped the God of Israel at Mount Gerizim and accepted only the five books of Moses as Scripture. Jews and Samaritans in Jesus's day regarded each other with deep hostility rooted in centuries of history, which is why his conversation with a Samaritan woman and his parable of the good Samaritan were so provocative.

The fuller answer

The story begins in 2 Kings 17. When Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC, it deported many Israelites and settled foreign peoples around Samaria, the former northern capital. Those settlers, the chapter says, were taught to worship the Lord by an exiled Israelite priest, but kept serving their own gods alongside him. In later centuries the population of Samaria developed its own settled worship of Israel's God, centred not on Jerusalem but on Mount Gerizim near Shechem, where the Samaritans built their own temple. They kept the Torah, the five books of Moses, in their own version, and awaited a coming prophet like Moses, while rejecting the later books and the Jerusalem priesthood.

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

John 4:22 (BSB)

By the time of Jesus the hostility ran in both directions and was centuries deep. Jews returning from exile had refused Samaritan help in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, Samaritan worship on Gerizim was a rival claim to the same God, and the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus had destroyed the Gerizim temple in the second century BC. John 4 notes plainly that Jews did not associate with Samaritans, and the feeling was mutual. That background explains the shock in Jesus's two most famous Samaritan stories: he crossed the social and religious lines of his day every time he spoke of Samaria with anything but contempt, and his hearers felt the full force of it.

“The one who showed him mercy,” replied the expert in the law. Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10:37 (BSB)

In John 4 Jesus held a long theological conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well near Sychar, told her that salvation is from the Jews, and announced worship in spirit and truth that would not depend on either Gerizim or Jerusalem. Many in her town believed. In Luke 10 he made a Samaritan the hero of a parable, the neighbour who stopped, bandaged wounds and paid for care, while a priest and a Levite passed by. Luke also records a Samaritan leper as the only one of ten who returned to give thanks. Acts then shows Samaria among the first fields of mission beyond Jerusalem, receiving the word through Philip with great joy.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

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Who were the Pharisees?The Pharisees were a Jewish movement that arose in the second century BC, devoted to keeping God's law carefully in everyday life, not only in the temple. Josephus, writing outside the Gospels, describes them as the most popular party among the people and the most precise interpreters of the law; in the Gospels they clash with Jesus over Sabbath, ritual purity and their added traditions, while individual Pharisees range from secret sympathisers to Paul himself.What do Jews believe about Jesus?Jewish belief about Jesus varies by movement, but mainstream Judaism does not accept him as Messiah, Son of God or risen Lord. In the classic frame of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles, God is one and incorporeal, and the Messiah is still to come. Rashi, the great medieval commentator, read the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 as Israel itself. Christians answer from the same Tanakh, reading Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12:10 as pointing to a pierced, suffering Messiah, and they do so as an argument within a shared book.Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?Yes, in the sense that matters most for the conversation, and with a real and painful difference at the centre. Christians worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who spoke to Moses from the bush and gave Israel the covenants, the Law and the promises, and there is no other God in Christian belief and no second god for the New Testament. The difference is Jesus: Christians believe that this same God has revealed himself finally in his Son, so that knowing God and rejecting his Son cannot both be complete. Jews who do not accept Jesus worship the God of the covenant without, on the Christian account, knowing him in fullness.Who was Moses?Moses was the Hebrew prophet who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, received the Law of God at Mount Sinai, and led the people through forty years in the wilderness to the edge of the promised land. The Bible's verdict on him is unmatched for an Old Testament figure: no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.On the map: Samaria (city)Find it in the Lands of the Bible, with the verses that place it there.On the map: SycharFind it in the Lands of the Bible, with the verses that place it there.On the map: SamariaSamaria is the central hill country north of Judah, centred first on Shechem and later on the city of Samaria built by Omri. After Assyria captures it, its people are held at a distance by Judah, which is the background to Jesus passing through it.