Samaritans (; ; ; ), often preferring to be called Israelite Samaritans, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of ancient Israel and Judah. They are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion that developed alongside Judaism.
The Samaritans identify as descendants of the Israelite tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and the priestly tribe of Levi. They maintain that they represent the most authentic continuation of the Mosaic covenant. In contemporary scholarship, the Samaritan community is generally understood to have emerged in Samaria from populations associated with the former northern Kingdom of Israel, alongside populations of Mesopotamian origin, with its distinctive identity taking shape during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The community developed in close but often contentious relationship with the Jewish people, who emerged primarily from the population of the southern Kingdom of Judah.
Samaritans recognize only the Samaritan Torah as sacred scripture, rejecting most of the later Jewish canon as well as rabbinic tradition, and their central theological distinction from Judaism is the belief that Mount Gerizim, not the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is God's chosen sanctuary. Their religion is centered on the hereditary high priesthood, strict observance of biblical law and festivals, and pilgrimages to Mount Gerizim, most famously the Passover sacrifice.
In classical antiquity, the Samaritans were the principal population of Samaria, but their numbers were drastically reduced following a series of failed revolts and severe Byzantine repression in the 5th and 6th centuries CE. Their numbers declined further through Christianization under the Byzantines and gradual Islamization following the Muslim conquest of Syria. By the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela estimated that only about 1,900 Samaritans remained in Palestine and Syria. Their numbers reached a record low of around 100 people during the early modern period, but their population has grown since, reaching around 900 people as of 2024; they are one of the world's smallest surviving ethnoreligious groups, concentrated mainly in Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim near Nablus (ancient Shechem) and in the neighborhood of Neve Pinchas in Holon near Tel Aviv.
Attributes
the Samaritan community numbered around 900 people, split between Israel (some 460 in Holon, mostly in the neighborhood of Neve Pinchas) and the West Bank (some 380 in Kiryat Luza). The Samaritans in Kiryat Luza speak South Levantine Arabic, while those in Holon primarily speak Modern Hebrew. For liturgical purposes, they also use Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic, both of which are written in the Samaritan script. According to Samaritan tradition, the position of the community's leading Samaritan High Priest has continued without interruption for the last 3600 years, beginning with the Hebrew prophet Aaron. Since 2013, the 133rd Samaritan High Priest has been Aabed-El ben Asher ben Matzliach.
In censuses, Israeli law classifies the Samaritans as a distinct religious community. However, Rabbinic literature rejected the Samaritans' Halakhic Jewishness because they refused to renounce their belief that Mount Gerizim was the historical holy site of the Israelites. All Samaritans in both Holon and Kiryat Luza have Israeli citizenship, but those in Kiryat Luza also hold Palestinian citizenship; the latter group are not subject to mandatory conscription.
Etymology and terminology Inscriptions from the Samaritan diaspora in Delos, dating as early as 150–50 BCE, provide the "oldest known self-designation" for Samaritans, indicating that they called themselves () in Hebrew (i.e., the literal descendants of the biblical prophet Israel, also known as Jacob, more commonly "Israelites").
In their own language, Samaritan Hebrew, the Samaritans call themselves "Israel", "", and, alternatively, "" (, 'Keepers', or 'Watchers'). They call themselves () in Arabic. The term is cognate with the Biblical Hebrew term , and both terms reflect a Semitic root , which means "to watch" or "to guard".
Historically, Samaritans were concentrated in Samaria. In Modern Hebrew, the Samaritans are called (), which means "inhabitants of Samaria". In modern English, Samaritans refer to themselves as "Israelite Samaritans".
That the meaning of their name signifies "Guardians" (or 'Keepers' or 'Watchers') "of the Law" (Samaritan Pentateuch), rather than being a toponym referring to the inhabitants of the region of Samaria, was remarked on by a number of Christian Church Fathers, including Epiphanius of Salamis in the Panarion; Jerome and Eusebius in the Chronicon; and Origen in The Commentary on Saint John's Gospel. The historian Josephus uses several terms for the Samaritans, which he appears to use interchangeably. Among them is a reference to , a designation employed to denote peoples in Media and Persia putatively sent to Samaria to replace the exiled Israelite population. These were, in fact, Hellenistic Phoenicians/Sidonians. () may refer to inhabitants of the region of Samaria, or of the city of that name, though some texts use it to refer specifically to Samaritans.
Origins
The origins of the Samaritans have long been disputed between their own tradition and that of the Jews. Ancestrally, Samaritans affirm that they descend from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in ancient Samaria. Samaritan tradition associates the split between them and the Judean-led southern Israelites to the time of the biblical priest Eli, described as a "false" high priest who usurped the priestly office from its occupant, Uzzi, and established a rival shrine at Shiloh, thereby preventing southern pilgrims from Judah and the territory of Benjamin from attending the shrine at Gerizim. Eli is also held to have created a duplicate of the Ark of the Covenant, which eventually made its way to the Judahite sanctuary in Jerusalem.
In contrast, Orthodox Jewish tradition—based on material found in the Hebrew Bible, Josephus's work, the Talmud, and other historiographic sources—dates their presence much later, to the beginning of the Babylonian captivity. In Rabbinic Judaism (e.g., in Tosefta Berakhot), Samaritans are called Cuthites or Cutheans (), referring to the ancient city of Kutha, geographically located in what is today Iraq. Josephus, in both the Wars of the Jews and the Antiquities of the Jews, writing of the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim by John Hyrcanus, also refers to the Samaritans as the Cuthaeans. In the biblical account, however, Kuthah was one of several cities from which people were brought to Samaria.
The similarities between Samaritans and Jews were such that the rabbis of the Mishnah found it impossible to draw a clear distinction between the two groups. Attempts to date when the schism among Israelites took place—which engendered the division between Samaritans and Judaeans—vary greatly, from the time of Ezra down to the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE). The emergence of a distinctive Samaritan identity, the outcome of a mutual estrangement between them and Jews, was something that developed over several centuries. Generally, a decisive rupture is believed to have taken place in the Hasmonean period.
Samaritan version The Samaritan traditions of their history are contained in the compiled by Abu'l-Fath in 1355. According to this, a civil war erupted among the Israelites when Eli, son of Yafni, the treasurer of the sons of Israel, sought to usurp the High Priesthood of Israel from the heirs of Phinehas. Gathering disciples and binding them by an oath of loyalty, he sacrificed on the stone altar without using salt, a rite which made High Priest Ozzi rebuke and disown him. Eli and his acolytes revolted and shifted to Shiloh, where he built an alternative temple and an altar, a replica of the original on Mount Gerizim. Eli's sons Hophni and Phinehas had intercourse with women and feasted on the meat of the sacrifice inside the Tabernacle. Thereafter, Israel was split into three factions: the original Mount Gerizim community of loyalists, the breakaway group under Eli, and heretics worshipping idols associated with Hophni and Phinehas. Judaism emerged later with those who followed the example of Eli.
Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of the Israelites from the time that Joshua conquered Canaan and the tribes of Israel settled the land. The reference to Mount Gerizim derives from the biblical story of Moses ordering Joshua to take the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the mountains by Shechem (Nablus) and place half of the tribes, six in number, on Mount Gerizim—the Mount of the Blessing—and the other half on Mount Ebal—the Mount of the Curse.
Biblical versions According to the Hebrew Bible, they were temporarily united under a United Monarchy, but after the death of King Solomon, the kingdom split in two, the northern Kingdom of Israel with its last capital city Samaria and the southern Kingdom of Judah with its capital Jerusalem. The Deuteronomistic history, written in Judah, portrays Israel as a sinful kingdom, divinely punished for its idolatry and iniquity, and destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 720 BCE. The tensions continued in the post-exilic period. The Books of Kings is more inclusive than Ezra–Nehemiah because the ideal is of one Israel with twelve tribes, whereas the Books of Chronicles concentrate on the Kingdom of Judah and ignore the Kingdom of Israel. Accounts of Samaritan origins in 2 Kings 17:6,24 and Chronicles, together with statements in both Ezra and Nehemiah, differ in important degrees, suppressing or highlighting narrative details according to the various intentions of their authors. The narratives in Genesis about the rivalries among the 12 sons of Jacob, and other stories of brotherly discord, are viewed by historian Diklah Zohar as describing tensions between north and south, always resolving them in a symbolically favourable way for the Kingdom of Judah rather than Israel.
The emergence of the Samaritans as an ethnic and religious community distinct from other Levant peoples appears to have occurred at some point after the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel in approximately 721 BCE. The annals of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he deported 27,290 inhabitants of the former kingdom. Jewish tradition affirms the Assyrian deportations and replacement of the previous inhabitants by forced resettlement by other peoples, but claims a different ethnic origin for the Samaritans. The Talmud mentions a people called "Cuthim" on several occasions, referring to their arrival at the hands of the Assyrians. According to 2 Kings 17:6, 24 and Josephus,Josephus, Antiquities 9.277–91 the people of Israel were removed by the king of the Assyrians (Sargon II)See the wording of 2 Kings 17 which mentions Shalmaneser in verse 3 but the "king of the Assyrians" from verse 4 onward. to Halah, to Gozan on the Khabur River and to the towns of the Medes. The king of the Assyrians then brought people from Babylon, Kutha, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim to place in Samaria. Because God sent lions among them to kill them, the king of the Assyrians sent one of the priests from Bethel to teach the new settlers about God's ordinances. The result was that the new settlers worshipped both the God of the land and the gods of the countries they came from.