who were the samaritans?

The Samaritans were an ancient Israelite community centered around the city of Samaria and especially Mount Gerizim, with their own version of the Torah and their own priestly traditions, distinct from mainstream Judaism but closely related to it. Today, a very small Samaritan community still survives in the region of Nablus (near ancient Shechem) and in Holon, Israel, preserving many of these ancient practices.

Quick Scoop

Origins and identity

• The Samaritans trace their roots to the northern Israelite tribes, especially Ephraim and Manasseh , who remained in the land after the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel around 721 BCE.

• Their own tradition presents them as true heirs of ancient Israel who never abandoned the original sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, which they see as the chosen holy place instead of Jerusalem.

What they believed

• Samaritan religion (often called Samaritanism) is built around the Samaritan Torah, a version of the first five books of Moses, which they consider the only fully binding scripture.

• They emphasize keeping the Mosaic covenant, including sacrifices and pilgrimage festivals focused on Mount Gerizim, which they regard as the true sacred mountain commanded in the Torah.

Why they clashed with Jews

• After the split between the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, religious and political rivalries deepened, especially over where God should be worshiped—Gerizim for Samaritans, Jerusalem for Jews.

• By the Second Temple period, many Jews viewed Samaritans as a mixed or compromised group—ethnically and religiously—because of population resettlements and intermarriage under Assyrian rule, which fueled mutual suspicion and hostility.

In the Bible and later history

• In the New Testament, Samaritans appear prominently in stories like the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, which rely on the tension between Jews and Samaritans to make their point.

• Historically, the Samaritan community suffered repeated revolts, persecutions, and population decline under successive empires, shrinking from perhaps hundreds of thousands in late antiquity to only a few hundred by the modern era.

The Samaritans today

• Modern Samaritans number only in the hundreds to low thousands and live mainly near Mount Gerizim (by Nablus) and in the Israeli city of Holon, maintaining their own high-priestly line and ritual calendar.

• They still practice Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim and use ancient Hebrew/Samaritan script in their manuscripts, preserving a distinctive, continuous identity linking them to the ancient community.

TL;DR: The Samaritans are a small but enduring Israelite-descended community whose faith centers on the Samaritan Torah and Mount Gerizim, historically rival to Jerusalem-centered Judaism and still alive in the region today.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.