The Samaritans Research Paper

Imagine being avoided by a whole nation just because of who your parents, grandparents, and ancestors were, and because of where you worshipped. The Samaritans were a people group that lived in Samaria and were half Jewish and half Assyrian. The Jewish people rejected the Samaritans because they intermarried with many different people groups and worshipped on Mt. Gerizim. The Samaritans had Assyrian ancestry, believed differently from the Jews, and hated the Jews, and all of this can be found in the Bible. The Samaritans were half Jewish and half Assyrian. But why did the Jewish people intermarry with the Assyrians? Well, when the kingdom divided Samaria became the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam, Israel’s first king, changed

The Samaritans only held the Pentateuch as the Law of God and discarded all the books of poem and history. Their temple was located on Mount Gerizim. So they did not worship at the temple in Jerusalem on Mount Zion which the Jews considered the only holy place. In some ways the Samaritans were stricter about the Mosaic laws than the Jews. The Samaritans believed in the same thing as the Jews when it came to final judgement, rewards, punishments, circumcision, the Sabbath, dietary laws, and the ceremonial and judicial laws. But they did study their own version of the Torah, rejected Talmud, did not wear yarmulkes, celebrate Hanukah, or observe the Shabbat fiercely. The differences in religion is mostly why the Jews and Samaritans do not get

How did this come into play? Were the Samaritans not half Jew? Well even though the Samaritans were half Jews, the Jews still considered the Samaritans as pagans because of the idol worship Jeroboam brought into Israel. The hate initially started when the Jews returned from exile to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and the priests declared the temple in Jerusalem the only holy sanctuary of God. But the Samaritans disagreed after having built their own temple on Mount Gerizim where many miracles had happened. This first big disagreement intensified the ideological disputes between the two nations. The Jews hated the Samaritans mostly because of