Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of their Early Relations.
Klein, Ralph W.
Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of their Early
Relations. By Gary N. Knoppers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
ISBN: 978-01953-2954-4. xi and 316 pages. Cloth. $55.
Readers of the New Testament are familiar with the schism between
Jews and Samaritans, and now Knoppers, a professor at Pennsylvania State
University, has written an authoritative and innovative account of the
history of the relationship between these two communities.
While the population in Samaria declined after the Assyrian
destruction in the eighth century, the number of exiles from foreign
states forcibly imported was not high, and these immigrants were
gradually absorbed into the local population. Most of the indigenous
population remained in the land. Hence, the "ten lost tribes"
were never lost. Knoppers detects contrasting pictures of the
northerners in 2 Kings 17. In w. 23-34a the author describes
discontinuity with Israel from the point of view of ethnicity, but
substantial continuity in religious practice. A second account in w.
34b-40 disputes whether the residents of the former Northern Kingdom
truly worship Yahweh, but treats them ethnically as Israelites. It is
the second account that seems to be presupposed in Josiah's reform
activities in the north (2 Kgs 23:15-20). According to the books of
Chronicles, northern Israel retained its social fabric after the
Assyrian conquests, and the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah witnessed a
degree of northern support for centralization and Israelite solidarity
not seen since the time of the united monarchy.
By the mid-fifth century the Samarians had constructed a sanctuary
on Mt. Gerizim according to recent excavations. There was considerable
cultural continuity between Samaria and Judah in the Persian and
Hellenistic periods, and Knoppers concludes that there was a continuous,
albeit evolving Israelite presence in Samaria during post-monarchic
times. Scholars once detected a definitive split between Jews and
Samaritans about 400 B.C.E., but Knoppers and many others now lower that
date to the late second century B.C.E. While Nehemiah inveighs against
Sanballat and Tobiah, it is clear that they were self-professing
Yahwists. Prophetic figures in Nehemiah were uneasy with those aspects
of Nehemiah's separatist program that seemed to pit Judeans against
all others.
In 111-110 B.C.E. the Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus destroyed the
Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim. This caused a serious degradation in
Samarian-Judean relations. It was not the construction of the temple on
Mt. Gerizim, but its destruction that embittered the Samaritans against
their Jewish neighbors. The Dead Sea Scrolls have shown that a number of
variants from the Masoretic Text in the Samaritan Pentateuch result from
the Samaritans' use of an expansionist Pentateuch now also known
from Qumran. The Samaritans did make clear by a relatively few changes
in their Pentateuch that the place that Yahweh had chosen as his central
sanctuary was Mt. Gerizim, but the Judeans in turn changed Mt. Gerizim
to Mt. Ebal in Deut 27:4 as the place Moses commanded the Israelites to
erect stones containing the laws and an altar. The Pentateuch that
formerly united the two communities now came to divide them.
Even in the Roman period there were occasional contacts between
Jews and Samaritans, and there were, no doubt, a variety of stances by
Jews toward Samaritans and vice versa.
This brief summary of this book does not begin to explore the depth
of exegesis and historical judgment shown by Knoppers. He favors the use
of the term Samarians for these separated northern Israelite sisters and
brothers during most of their history, employing the term Samaritans
only after the definitive split.
Ralph W. Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
