The Samaritans from a Brit-Am Lost Ten Tribes Perspective.
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Samaritan Film Actress
Sophie Tzdaka
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Origins. Biblical Account Reflected in Assyrian Inscriptions
The Twelve Tribes of Israel divided into two separated Kingdoms. The majority were in the north in the Kingdom of Israel which was conquered by the Assyrians and all of its inhabitants transferred to different parts of the Assyrian domain.
After the Ten Tribes had been exiled,
Then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities (2-Kings 17:24).
Assyrian Records Echo the Biblical Account:
The Assyrians describe how they defeat the Israelites of Samaria and deported them. They then brought in other peoples to colonize the vacated area.
# The inhabitants of Samaria/Sa]merina, who agreed [and plotted] with a king [hostile to] me, not to do service and not to bring tribute [to Ashshur] and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords. I counted as spoil 27,280 people, together with their chariots, and gods, in which they trusted. I formed a unit with 200 of [their] chariots for my royal force. I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samaria/Samerina more than before. I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hands. I appointed my eunuch as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians. # (Nimrud Prisms, COS 2.118D, pp. 295-296). #
The new heathen settlers were known as "Samaritans" after the capital of the former kingdom of northern Israel, "Samaria", that the Assyrians placed them in. They are also referred to in Rabbinical Literature as "Cuthim" (singular, "Cuthi") after Cutha in Babylon were some of them had come from.
The Samaritan settlers in Samaria were soon attacked by a plague of wild lions. Bands of wild lions in those times entering settlements and attacking the inhabitants are also recorded elsewhere in the Middle East. The climate was different at that time. There was more vegetation and forestry covering. Not only lions but even herds of wild elephants were to be found in the region of Syria. The attacks by lions were consequently reported to the king of Assyria. The reason for the predations of these feline beasts against the Samaritan settlers was given as that they "Know not the manner of the God of the land" (2 Kings 17:24). It was decided to send an Israelite Priest to teach them the former religion of the area.
(2-Kings 17:25) And it was so, at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they did not fear the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them. 26 So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, "The nations whom you have removed and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the rituals of the God of the land; therefore He has sent lions among them, and indeed, they are killing them because they do not know the rituals of the God of the land." 27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, "Send there one of the priests whom you brought from there; let him go and dwell there, and let him teach them the rituals of the God of the land." 28 Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.
So they feared the LORD, and from every class they appointed for themselves priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. They feared the LORD, yet served their own gods, according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away (2 Kings 17: 32-33) .
So these nations feared the LORD, yet served their carved images; also their children and their children's children have continued doing as their fathers did, even to this day (2 Kings 17:41) ..
Israelite and Jewish Contacts with the Samaritans
Some of the Samaritans intermarried with some few of those northern Israelites whom the Assyrians had not exiled (Midrash Eliyahu Zuta 2;1). Jews from Judah also to some degree later intermixed with them. When Ezra led the return of Jewish Exiles to Judah the Samaritans approached him and offered to assist in rebuilding the Temple (Ezra 4). Ezra rejected the offer. The Samaritans then joined up with the heathens round about who did what they could to impede the Temple construction and associated Jewish resettlement in Jerusalem and its surroundings. Eventually the Samaritans were conquered by the Hasmonean-Maccabees and subjected to Jewish rule. They came under heavy Jewish influence, both Orthodox-Pharisaic and sectarian. There was a period when they were considered to be on the same level in many ways as regular Jews even though they rejected much of the Oral Traditions and explanations of Biblical Verses. It was then discovered that a group amongst them secretly still worshipped a pagan god in the shape of a dove. After that associations between Jews and Samaritans became more restricted and henceforth they were classified as being on the same level as all other non-Jewish Gentiles. They themselves upon occasion could be violently anti-Jewish. According to Josephus, when the Jews were powerful the Samaritans emphasized their "Hebraic" connections but when the Jews were persecuted they claimed to be of Phoenician (Canaanite) stock. They were once very numerous and numbered in the millions though today there are only a few hundred left. They use a form of writing derived from the old Israelite "Phoenician" (Paleo-Hebrew) script.
In the 1850s the Arabs (under Turkish rule) planned a massacre of the Samaritan community. Jewish settlers however prevailed upon the British Consul to intervene on their behalf and thus they were saved from extermination.
Influence on Early Christianity and on the Jewish Karaite Movement Early Christianity in some opinions was influenced by the Samaritans. Ernest L. Martin and others wrote on this matter. Ernest L. MARTIN, "The People That History Forgot. The Mysterious People Who Originated The World's Religions", U.S.A., 1993.
The claims of Martin are supported by the reported tendency of Samaritans to convert to Christianity with relative alacrity.
See Also: The Samaritans by Alan David Crown, 1989, p.215.
http://books.google.co.il/books/about/The_Samaritans.html
So too, the Jewish Karaite sect may have had Samaritan antecedents both through the Sadducees some of whom intermarried with Samaritans and also in Mesopotamia where the Karaites in their historical format originated.
The ideology and psychological outlook are similar.
They are based on resentment of mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
Belief in Israelite Origins and in Kinship with the British and French
In the course of time the "Samaritans" came to identify themselves as the Israelite Tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. The Samaritans still highly revere Joshua ben Nun (from the Tribe of Ephraim) and regard him as their founder.
They believed their priests were descendants of Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron brother of Moses. Batsheva BONNE, "A Genetic View of the Samaritan Isotope", Boston University, 1965, Bonne p.7.
In the past, priestly families from Judah had intermarried with them and in some matters they may have preserved genuine traditions.
Mills (1864) writes:
"There was a tradition amongst them which has yet hardly died out that large numbers of their brethren were dwelling in various parts of the world in England, France, India, and elsewhere". Bonne p.33, Ernest L. MARTIN, p.38 brings the same quotation in the name of a Dr. Mimpriss, 1865.
[It is worth noting that the Druze of Israel and Lebanon had similar traditions and also regarded themselves as having kinfolk amongst the Jews, British, French, and in India.]
We see that the Samaritans attempted to identify themselves as northern Israelites from the Tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Some few of them may indeed have been descended from the ancient Israelites and this may explain their claimed link to England and France.
See Also: Samaritans in All Parts of the Empire
At one stage the Samaritans numbered in their millions though now they have been reduced to a few hundred. There was once a Samaritan Diaspora. Some of them may have gone to Africa and intermixed with the natives thus giving rise to certain reported traditions and customs.
Encounters with Yair Davidiy
Yair Davidiy (founder of Brit-Am, Movement of the Ten Tribes) during his 18 month regular IDF Service (1975-76) spent about a month in Schechem (Nablus) and became acquainted with some of the Samaritans living near there. They have their own particular features found also amongst part of the local Arab Moslem population. Many of them have a double lobe on their ears as a result of frequent intermarriage. Apart from that, they seem fairly easy to get along with, pleasant of disposition, and moderately intelligent. Some of them have red hair. They seem basically pro-Israeli in their political outlook though a veteran more senior Druze Border Guard whom I spoke with looked on them with a strongly suspicious reservation.
Appendices:
(Appendix 1) Was the Samaritan Belief in English Kinship the Result of Christian Missionary Deceit in the 1600s? Response to H.23 by Jim Ridolfo http://rid.olfo.org/2010/03/response-to-b-10
-rhetoric-in-circulation-tracing-the-paths
-of-discourse-in-the-public-sphere/ Extracts:
in 1671, British scholar Robert Huntington visited Palestine and tricked the Samaritans into believing that he represented their "long lost brethren" from Europe. This deceit then set in motion another wave of epistles, this time addressed to their brothers in England (5). When the epistles arrived in England, they were not immediately delivered to Huntington:
The first epistle came into the hands of Thomas Marshall of Oxford, who in 1675 addressed a Hebrew epistle to the Samaritans, which informed them that the writers were of the race of Kapheth; its substance was a pious attempt to proselytize the sect for the Christian Messiah. Huntington forwarded this letter, accompanied by one from himself. (6)
Samaritan letter of response
Translated from the Samaritan by Jim Ridolfo 3.15.2010
# In the name of Y-H-V-H, our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, we begin (this letter) with the reminder of his name in our hands. May peace be upon you, my dear brother, with love close to my heart: May G-d protect you and may you have many more days! I give you notice that your letter reached us, and that there has been from us much joy, and what you said was already in our hearts. In this letter, you proposed to us questions in Arabic about the Hebrew language. This language, the Hebrew language, is known to my brothers and we believe in the Law of Moses and what it prescribes. You say, my brother, that he is among you anyone of us brothers who keep the Law of Moses, our prophet is the one thing that we do not believe, consequently we have sent to you a Torah (to your country). You are to us our brothers. #
Huntington's deceit in pretending to be one of their long lost Brethren is propagated long after his death. After the exchanges of 1675, the exchange of epistles continues with other scholars from Paris and England well into the 19th century. Because of Huntington's deceit, these 19th century epistles continued to reflect the belief that the Samaritans had long lost brothers in Paris and England. Consequently, the 150 years after Huntington's lie the Samaritans continued to address their epistles to the Samaritans of Paris, England, etc.
(Appendix 2) Wikipedia. Samaritans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan
Extracts:
Although historically they were a large community, up to more than a million in late Roman times, then gradually reduced to several tens of thousands up to a few centuries ago, their unprecedented demographic shrinkage has been a result of various historical events, including most notably the bloody repression of the Third Samaritan Revolt (529 CE) against the Byzantine Christian rulers and the mass conversion to Islam in the Early Muslim period of Palestine.[5][6] According to their tally, as of November 1, 2007, there were 712[1] Samaritans living almost exclusively in two localities, one in Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim near the city of Nablus (Shechem) in the West Bank, and the other in the Israeli city of Holon.[7] There are, however, followers of various backgrounds adhering to Samaritan traditions outside of Israel especially in the United States.
Much of the local Arabic population of Shechem is believed to be descended from Samaritans who converted to Islam.
As of November 1, 2007, there were 712[1] Samaritans half of whom reside in their modern homes at Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim, which is sacred to them, and the rest in the city of Holon, just outside Tel Aviv.[7][28] There are also four Samaritan families residing in Binyamina, Giv'at Ada, Matan and Ashdod.
Until the 1980s, most of the Samaritans resided in the Samarian town of Shechem/Nablus below Mount Gerizim. They relocated to the mountain itself near the Israeli settlement neighborhood of Har Brakha as a result of violence during the First Intifada (1987-1990). Consequently, all that is left of the Samaritan community in Shechem/Nablus itself is an abandoned synagogue. The Israeli army maintains a presence in the area.[28]
...there has been a history of genetic disease within the group due to the small gene pool. To counter this, the Samaritan community has recently agreed that men from the community may marry non-Samaritan (primarily, Israeli Jewish) women, provided that the women agree to follow Samaritan religious practices.
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