let us just look at one more aspect of 8th century israel before we move on to a discussion
of the babylonian period one of the fascinating chapters in some places it's just a footnote in
other places it's extremely important is the samaritan community which has a fascinating
origin story actually multiple origin stories and the intersection between the samaritans
and the mainstream jewish community are quite significant in the ancient world let's have a
look at who these people are and where they came from so the samaritans are quite an old people
they certainly stretch back into biblical times and there are still several hundred of them living
in israel today uh centered around the city of nablus in hebrew the name of that town of shechem
and especially mount grizzim which is also figured in the bible and has some extremely important
moments throughout its history where did they come from who are these samaritans so the biblical
account of their origins is described in the second book of kings chapter 17 towards the end
where there's a discussion of the exiles of the israelite nations the the ten tribes from the
northern kingdom going out to babylon we talked a little bit about that in the previous video
at the same time there was a population transfer this was a very well-known assyrian technique to
try and control their rapidly expanding empire they would take out especially the elite to the
leadership of a particular community and they would transplant another community with limited
ties with different loyalties a minority and it would break up the traditional power structures
so they brought in as described in the book of kings people from the region of babylon that's
a city babylonia is the region or the empire and a city called kuta which will be significant because
the samaritans in talmudic literature will be called kutim meaning those who come from kuta
and they settled them in the region of samaria to replace much of the local population for reasons
that we have discussed now that is basically the jewish account as described in the bible
the samaritans on the other hand have a different account there are several of them but one of the
most well known is that actually they believe they go back to the original ten tribes of israel
they were jews like all the other jews but there was a conflict over who was going to be the high
priest and ailey who figures very prominently at the beginning of the book of samuel he took
the the iron kodesh the the tabernacle with the tablets of the law in them and moved them south
to shiloh away from haraha grisem from nablus and uh created a separate uh religion altogether which
we now call judaism the original inhabitants the samaritans say they just kept moving along with
their original torah and so they don't hold with any of this foreign importation theory
they believe that they are actually the original israelites who are observing the old-time religion
and it is the rest of the population of israel who are the innovators who have perverted the
traditional religion it's fascinating and of course the the material go so far back there
are no written sources for this but nevertheless this is a very different account of their origins
not surprisingly the samaritans and the jews the uh the people living in judah
and benjamin and the people living now in the assyrian dominated northern part the northern
kingdom israel are not getting along so well there's all kinds of conflicts between them
that just expand over the centuries as we shall encounter as we go through these lectures but
we should note that the religion that the samaritans practice is very similar to judaism in
a lot of ways they have for example a torah which is uh in many ways really close to the torah that
the jews revere it also shows evidence of being closer to the greek translation of the torah
a few other interesting things like that but obviously there are massive diversions for example
the ten commandments are actually the nine commandments because uh a few of them are
combined to get a smaller count although coveting is actually increased they make coveting a little
bigger and separated out different kinds of coveting but commandment number 10 is holy
new it isn't in the jewish torah and that is the reverence for mount grisim and of course on that
holy mountain they still practice a lot of the ancient rituals that uh that jews associate with
uh heart sea on the the temple mount in jerusalem fascinating kind of differences between them also
huge difference the samaritans lack the oral torah which is so central to understanding judaism we're
going to come back to that in about four lectures or so and try to understand what is the oral torah
how does it shape the jewish approach to their religion and so on but for the time being the
samaritans have a kind of a parallel torah but without the oral torah and as you can see even
from their mode of dress holding up the safer torah there are certain similarities that uh you
know harmonies between them that harmony was not always achieved in real life we're going to talk
about the ongoing conflict with the samaritans as we move through the babylonian and the roman
period in particular but for now i'd just like to point out a couple of things first of all
in the talmud there is a long-ranging debate that seems to take a couple centuries to resolve
on the question of who are these kutim who are these people the samaritans again they're named
in the talmud tradition after the city of kuta there's a body of rabbis who feel that no they did
actually accept the torah when they came to the land of israel other rabbis pointing once again
to the book of kings uh say that their conversion was motivated by fear according to the biblical
account they were attacked by lions they weren't sure what to do about it so the uh and conversion
was a way of uh of saving themselves and so some rabbis would say that the conversion is not valid
and so there's a long debate going on there's some really interesting discussions there do you count
them for example as a quorum to say the special prayers when saying a blessing after a meal
do they count in that or not essentially do they count in a minion fascinating kind of questions
in the end the the conclusion is no the rabbis do not consider the coup team to be jews but the fact
that they have this long-running discussion is uh indicative of how close they came to that status
there's ongoing political and social tensions in particular when there is a triangular power
relationship when there is a third party like the persians or like the greeks or like the romans
who are involved and the samaritans and the jews sometimes find themselves jockeying against each
other for power within a larger context and there's some fascinating stories also according
to the talmud about the samaritans interfering with some basic jewish communications such as
lighting fires on the top of mountains as signal flares to indicate the uh the beginning of a new
month uh by the sighting of the moon in jerusalem but lighting them at different times which threw
off the communication system completely it's kind of like people you know making crank calls
or something like that or robocalls if you well maybe not exactly robocalls but you get the idea
uh one last detail which comes from the first century from the christian scriptures which gives
you an indication of how the samaritans regarded it is of course the parable of the good samaritan
in english the term good samaritan means someone who goes out of his way to help out uh there are
hospitals named after the good samaritan and so on the parable goes in the book of luke that uh
there's this guy who's like mugged and bleeding on the road and you can see here in this particular
uh picture by uh van court bende i don't know who that is but i think it's a fascinating picture
and um several other jewish figures walk past him right he's a jewish guy lying bleeding on the road
and there is a cohen who walks by and says oh i don't want to get involved and there is a levite
who walks by says no no no i don't want to get involved and it is the samaritan who steps up and
says well my gosh this man is hurt i better take care of him he picks him up takes him to an end
and so on uh the when you read that story the important note is that when the gospel is written
the samaritans were basically the enemies of the pharisees they were people that they never got
along with and the point in the book of luth is that it is the samaritan it is the person
you would least likely to help out who actually helps a stranger and the other people let him down
and so it is a good samaritan with the emphasis on the word samaritan or if you want it's a
good samaritan as opposed to all the others uh that's so surprising about the the book of luke
uh we're gonna talk a lot more about reading the christian scriptures from a jewish perspective
in a few lectures but for the time being i just want to leave it here okay we're going to come
back to the samaritans a lot as we go through the the persian and the greek and the roman period but
for now i just want to say thanks very much for watching and i hope you enjoyed this brief video