THE SAMARITAN HERESY

Jewish and Christian writings of the Roman period bear witness to the existence of a sizeable non-Jewish yet allegedly Israelite sect in the territory of Samaria. The centre of the religious life of this community was Mount Gerizim and the cities and villages adjacent to it, although its constituents were also to be found elsewhere in Palestine and in a diaspora in the Mediterranean world which extended as far as Rome. These ‘Samaritans’ claimed to be the descendants of the old Israelite tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Levi, and contended that they had faithfully worshipped the ancestral Hebrew God in their spiritual centre at Gerizim from the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan to that very day. Their community had had, or so they claimed, a continuous and unbroken history throughout this long period. They further maintained that the true centre of Israelite worship had always been, and always should be, at Mount Gerizim. They thus viewed the religion of the descendants of the tribe of Judah, which had Jerusalem as its spiritual centre, as an aberration of the classical Yahwistic faith. Essentially, what the Samaritan community claimed for itself was what the Jewish community claimed for itself: that it was the Israel of God constituted by the Mosaic legislation and sustained by obedience to its precepts. Ultimately, the issue which separated Samaritans and Jews was the question of the true holy place, Jerusalem or Shechem. Neither community was inclined to grant to the other any consideration which might represent acquiescence in the contention between these mutally antithetical positions.