Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

        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