cheenc03a.pdf

SAMARITANS
or specifically ~>,oij from m+, properly keepers, sc. oi
the 1.8~. On the name of the place, see SAsrAnla.
The hirtory of thc Snnmritnnr, nr such, begins %here
that of the northern kinadom ceases. We read in
z K. li33 that Shalmvneser went up
ColOniBation. to Samaria, and that in the ninth yeat
of Hoshen, the king of .lssyria took Samaria, and carried
Israel away into Assria and brought men from Babylon,
and from Cuthah, and from Avia, and from Hamath
and Sephvrvaim and placed them in the cities 01
Samaria. In Ezra42 it is ,Esai~haddan, king 01
Asryrin, who brought us up hither.' Lastly in Ezra
41a they are 'the rlntionr whom the ereat and noble
Ornnppvr brought oi.er.'' The impwrntion of foreign
colonists ii thus attribntrd apparently to three several
kincr, " the last of whom bears a name not otherwise
known. To these namer yet a fourth must be added.
It is noticeable thnt in 2 K. 189J it is stated that
Shnlmanerer berieeed
u
Samaria. *and at the end of
three wars fhy (not he1 took it.' It is now known that
SH.~LMAKESE~ [~.zI.],'
who began the siege, died in
723 BC., and that it was his successor. Sargon 11.. rho
actmally took the city in 721. Perhaps the death of
Shvlmvnerer may account for the Length of the siege.
It is natural therefore to infer from the accohnts in I K.
that Sargon introduced thr (first) settlement of colonists.
aud this is drfinitriy stated to be the case in the annals
of Surgoz~.~ With regvd to the other names, most
recent critics rightly identify Ornappar with A3ur-bani-
pal. Thc accounts are further simplified if Dor-haddon
be taken as a corruption of the sake name, due to the
~imilarity of the first element in each (see Ash-n~ren).
\Te shall thus have two colonisationr, the first by
Sargon, the second by Aiur-bani-pal. As to the list of
cities from which the culonirts were drawn, Sepharvaim
rhould no doubt be the Babylonian Sippar. The
curleiform account expressly stater that Babylon, Cuthaah.
and Sippar opposed ASur~baniLpnl, and it would be
consirtent with Arryrian policy to deport the inhabitants
of those cities to the distant province of Samvia. On
the other hand, it w.ould be altosether " an unusual sten
to transfer the inhabitants of Hamath or of Avva (in
Syria: but cp Avvna) to a neighhouring district. &e
HAMATH. Sareon - nrnv indeed have brourht " colonists
from Hnmath. which he reduced in 720, ""d the
combination of the two sets of malcorrtents mqy have
led to the necessity of his reducing Samzria for the
~rcond time in 710 : but there areno giounds for such a
conjecture. It is far more consisterit with the facts to
suppose (with Winckler) that just as the Deuteronomic
redactor has combined into one the two Assyrian
kings. and inserted a long pasage to point the moral
of the story, and imparted to the whole a tone hostile to
the Samaritans, so he has combined the two colonirations
into one, and amplified his account from a K.
1Sj4 which he tool< to refer to the same events. But
this iart passage has not llecesrarily anything to do with
the colonisation of Samario. The Rabshakeh is there
citing inrrancer of towns which have fallen before
Arsjria. so thnt Hamath, Sepharvaim, and lvvah (see
AVVAH] are quite in place as being comparatively close
at hand and therefore the more likely to appeal to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem. The redactor's view was
dollbtlerr based on a confusion of Sippar (in Babylonia)
with Sephawnim (in Syria): see SEPXARVAIM. Front
the biblical and the Assyrian accounts together we thus
restore the history ai followr : Shalmaneier besieged
Samaria hut died during the siege: Sargon took the
city in 7zr. deported 27,290 of its inhabitants, and
introduced in their place (?in 715) colonists from other
conquered cities : in 710 the rountry had to be suMued
again : later Aiur-hniGpal further colonised the country.
% Wincklcr, Kdiimciff-rrztr s ,z~-, 1 5 , *,.
4257
SAMARITANS
The resulting population was called by the general
name Samaritan. How far must it be considered
Population, forelgn (ihhoyrui)r, Lk. 1718)? The
later Sanlaritnns have ulrvays claimed
very strongly to be 5xw- .>a, regnrdir~g Joseph espccially
as their ancestor (cp BI~iihiih Knbbo. § gq. an
Getl.48,s). On the other hand, the Jews deny
them any right to the name of Israel, representing
them as merely descendants of the Assyrian (Cuthzean)
colaniafr. The truth lies midway. It is now generally
admitted that the deportation under Snrgon
was not complete. A district so impotiant as
Snmaria would not have been entirely depopulated by
losing ~7,290 of its inhabitants. (When n similar fate
befel Judah, upwards of *oo,ooo went into c~ptirity.)
The number undoubtedly represents the persons of
importance (including the priests), who alone urre
likely to be dnngcrour, whilst the poorer class sere left
as before and the inhabitants of the outlying towns and
villages were probably hardly affected. This seems
indeed to be definitely stated by Sargon, though the
pnrrage is not very clear. The account in 2 K. 17 is
written from the Jewish point of uiew : but the real state
of the care comer out in the later history-eg., when
Joriah, R century nflerwarrls, put down idolatry 'in the
cities of Samaria' (z K. 23 15 ~y f ) obviously among
Ismeliter (cp 2 Ch. 346 f), and collected money for the
repair of the temple from 'Manasseh and Ephraim, and
of all the remnant of Israel' (i6. u y). There can
hardly be a doubt that in Nehemiah's time, forexample.
the population of the district of Samaria consisted of
the ( remnant of Israel ' with an admixture of foreigners.
What wan the proportion of the two elements to one
another cannot now be deternlined. Nor have we any
means of Loowing how far they were intermixed. and
how far the colonists reallv , adooled . the relieion " of the
'God of the Land.' So long as the name 'Samaritan'
man1 only the inhabitant of Samaria and the ruirounding
country, it no doubt included all the mwed population
: but when the name of the city war chan~ed the
term acquired a purely religious significance, and then
probably denoted the descendants of the 'ren~naat'
together with such of the colonirfr as had become
proselytes and internmnied with Israel. But it war
just this (perhaps slight) admixture which gave culonr
to the Jewish taunt implied by the term Cuthean.
AS to the early history of the Samaritan people, we
have little inforn,atioa. Q'e are indeed told in z K.
Sb, Hi
1725 that the country war inferfed by lions
(10s. Ant. ix. 143, 5 189, says a pestilence)
and that the inhabitants in consequence madr request
to 'the king of Ass.wiu' for a priest who war accordingly
sent to 'teach them the manner of the god of the Imd.'
Josephus says, 'some of the priests,' and it in probable
that this was the original reading of 2 K. lizr, since
the text still preserves the strange plurals 'let them go
and dwell' (ird:: ah). The idea is quite in keeping
with the coniknview of a tutelary deity whose
protection war necesrary in his own land and whose
power was connected with and restricted to it. Cp a
similar incident in the story of Naaman, 2 K. 5x7. It
is generally thought that this request could only
have been made by the foreign colonists ; but since
the 'remnant' consisted of 'the poorer sort,' the
people of the land ( ~5 cy] who in Rabbinical literature
are proverbially ignorant of the law, it is only
natural that all alike should require a teacher who
understood the technicalities of Yahwi-worship. So
'they feared Yahw&, and scned their own godl
12 K. 11j3). However, the high-places which Josiah
iuppressed need not hare beenidblairous: they nxay
have been merely unauthorised Yahwi-shrines. That
1 Cp Winckler, Alftrrt. Unf. 9,s; also EZ~A.NEH~MIAH, 'the remnant' joined with Judah in the use of the
temple at Jerusalem at this period, may be inferred from
2 Ch. 349 and also from Jer. 41s where it is mentioned