In an effort to trace the history of animosity between the Jews and Samaritans, I acknowledge the various alternatives that exist throughout primary and secondary sources. The Jews of ancient Israel did not view the Samaritans as Jewish. Due to their historical lineage and origination from Assyria during and after Israel’s captivity from 722BC and thereafter, Assyrian males intermarried with Jewish women to produce half-gentile and half-jew people. The seed and offspring of the Samaritan people became inhabitants of the Northern region of Israel known as Samaria. They became occupants of the area known by the people of Judea as the Samaritans.
Intuitively, because of genealogical baggage, it appears to me that there was never a complete unity between the people of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the Samaritans) to begin a split. They were distinct people by both bloodline and heritage separate through Old Testament and New Testament history. In addition to a commonly inherited yet partial set of tribal genetics, there were shared histories about the identity of God, the patriarchs, and various other beliefs. While there were numerous distinctions about Samaritan ideas and beliefs, they all contributed to their state of separation from the Jewish people of Judea.
The views of the Samaritans about scripture, the prophets, worship, geographical inheritance, the temple, sacrifices to God, the priesthood, and others all contributed to their separation from the Jewish people. Regional conflicts that occurred between the Seleucids and the Ptolemy dynasties of Egypt also set the conditions by which their chosen alliances came into opposition or contradiction to the interests of Judea. There weren’t just growing differences in opinion about the facts and nature of God’s relationship with His people. The was growing isolation between Judea and Samaria that formed into animosity during the New Testament period.
It appears that the Samaritans took up residence in the land of Canaan after the exile and became more than ethnic rivals. They brought with them from the North an ideology that accompanied their covenant convictions. It would appear that the separation of thought from Scripture begins at the time of Jacob and extends through David, the prophets, and so forth. I suspect their objections somewhat correlate to the claims between Esau and Jacob since they only recognize or accept the Pentateuch from their Abrahamic ancestry.
Notice also that Jesus used the phrase “a certain Samaritan” in His parable of the Good Samaritan. The “certain” is an indefinite pronoun that could also mean “just any Samaritan who was someone.” This term appears within the root Masoretic text and gets translated to KJV and NKJV, but not NASB or ESV. NLT renders “despised” Samaritan, which is nowhere from the root manuscript. My point is that Jesus spoke His parable to illustrate the necessary love of this Samaritan, who was the neighbor of the Scribe of the law who asked, “who is my neighbor?” The inference was, between Jew and Samaritan, to do likewise and that it was commanded in the law to love YHWH as the Shema proclaims. Yet also of neighbors between the North and South whether nearby, remote, or distant.
I also think it was entirely significant that Jesus revealed that He is the Messiah through a Samaritan woman. This one is probably among my favorite encounters with Jesus. He made known to the public that He is the Messiah, our Christ, through a Samaritan woman. And that is such a beautiful and telling perspective. At least in terms of why He made that choice and what it meant concerning His intentions.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” / Hellenic (Rom 1:16). The sequence of Jesus’s instructions was also significant in spreading the gospel to the Gentile world in stages. The region of Samaria and its occupants was a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile worlds where the new covenant would become known, accepted, and loved.
If one were to zero in on what the Samaritans objected to, there’s a period entitled, “The Era of Disfavor.” Where they claim the beginning of animosity was from the transfer of worship from Shechem to Shiloh. The dispute began from that point, in their view, which gave rise to growing division and opposition. The fact they believed Yahweh should be worshiped in Shechem and not Jerusalem comports with their view about the legitimacy of David and the whole narrative about the selection of the ancient city of Jebus to include the place and purpose of Mt Zion. The theology of the Samaritans to include the Memar Marqah and others, I would imagine originates from tradition prior to the 4th century. It significantly diverges from the course of Hebrew history, theology, and canon.
It intuitively seems that the Samaritans were a people of opposition while the Sadducees were themselves alienated from the common people of Judea also. Not out of resentment for wrong choices, but simply by a difference of conviction about who they were as people before Yahweh. From that flowed their perspectives about heritage, geography, the temple, and worship that inevitably and often fell into contradiction without long-lasting or meaningful reconciliation until many converted through the gospel. Numerous others migrated to Islam in the middle ages.
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