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  • From: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
  • To: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>, ihj AT hum.ku.dk
  • Subject: SV: [b-hebrew] Samaritans
  • Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:50:46 +0100



Dear forum,
For a very good discussion of the at times, antagonistic relationship
between Jews and Samaritans, see I.Hjelm, "Brothers fignting brothers: Jewish
and Samaritan Ethnocentrism in Tradition and History," in Th.L: Thompson
(ed.), Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition (T&T Clark: London, 2003),
197-222.

The Samaritans claim continuity with an historical united Israel as
Jews do. Their self-understanding is that they derive from the lineage of
Joseph, Ephraim and Menasseh and have an unbroken line of high priests with a
cultic continuation since the entrance into the promised land. "While Judaism
argued for the necessity of a new beginning after the Babylonian exile,
Samaritans insisted that the old tradition be maintained. . . . Put very
simply, while Jewish tradition maintains the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the
Davidic line of kingship, based on the Deuteronomistic and Chronistic
histories, Samaritan tradition maintains the sovereignty of Gerizim and its
priesthood, on the basis of the authority of Moses and the patriarchs. At the
return from the Babylonian exile, neither group would accept a compromise and
the split, which, according to Samaritan tradition had begun in the eleventh
century, when the priest Eli moved from Shechem to Shiloh to erect a temple
and a cult independent of Gerizim, became manifest.". (Hjelm, 218-220).

Of course, the traditional view of relationships between these two
ethnic and religious groups is to be held quite distinct from an historical
perspective. Here perhaps, Edom with its continuities with the Idumeans is a
far better parallel than Philistines.

Thomas,

Thomas L. Thompson
Professor, University of Copenhagen




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