Samaritanism

Samaritans are an ethno-religious community descended from the ancient Israelites of the northern Kingdom of Israel, centering their worship on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem. Their own tradition claims unbroken descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh; Jewish sources instead trace their distinct identity to population changes following the Assyrian conquest of the eighth century BCE. Modern scholarship suggests neither a wholesale population replacement nor a simple continuity, but a gradual crystallization of separate Samaritan identity during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, as the northern Israelite community developed its own priesthood, calendar, and holy site independent of Jerusalem.

The decisive rupture with Judaism deepened over centuries and turned violent around 110 BCE, when the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple atop Mount Gerizim. Samaritans accept only the Torah — in their own textual recension, the Samaritan Pentateuch, written in Paleo-Hebrew script and differing from the Jewish Masoretic text in thousands of details, most consequentially in identifying Gerizim as God's chosen sanctuary — and reject the later Prophets, Writings, and rabbinic tradition entirely. A hereditary high priesthood, currently numbering its leader as the 133rd since Aaron, oversees practices including strict Sabbath and dietary law and an annual Passover animal sacrifice performed on the mountain itself.

Centuries of pressure under successive empires reduced the community to the brink of disappearance: today roughly 900 Samaritans survive, split almost evenly between Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim in the West Bank and the city of Holon in Israel, making them one of the smallest continuously practicing religious communities in the world. Straddling the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Samaritans hold both Israeli and Palestinian citizenship in many cases and maintain relations with both communities. Scholars regard the Samaritans as a living witness to a form of Israelite religion that diverged from — rather than descended from — the Judaism that produced the Hebrew Bible's later books.

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