The Untold Story of the Samaritans, Jews, & Jesus
Introduction:
No one has been so systematically persecuted over the last 3000 years as the Samaritans. About the only one that spoke kindly of them was Jesus, who did so repeatedly, as strongly as he could, and was even accused of being one of them.
They claim to be the lost tribes of Israel that split with the current Jews 3000 years ago, with an older more genuine Written Law. Turns out, they're probably right. It's the biggest coverup in all biblical scholarship, and probably explains the censorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades by the Jews and Christians as they deteriorated. The further you go back in time, such as to the Dead Sea Scrolls, or LXX, the more it is like the Samaritan version, and less like the current official Masoretic Jewish version, or Christian version. Some of the DSS are Samaritan. And there's one scroll, in possession of the few remaining Samaritans, the Nablus Roll, that may be even older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And recently, genetic evidence has shown up that not only did the Samaritans split with the current Jews around 800BCE, (with the destruction of Israel being in 722 BCE), but that genetically at least with that same common Cohen Y-Chromosome gene, they are noticably more Jewish than the Jews.
The Jewish/Christian and Samaritan Versions of their History
Sometime around 1000BCE, the Hebrews split in two, with Israel in the north, and Judea in the south, with very bitter hatred on both sides. The kind of bitter rivalry and sheer hatred only seen in civil wars. In 722BCE, the Assyrians conquer Israel and carry off some of them to Assyria. Everyone agrees on that. But then the paths diverge.
The Samaritans say the original home of the Ark, and the center of Hebrew religion was Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, that the Temple of Solomon was just a copy of their more important version at the mountain. As for David and Solomon being important, history takes the side of the Samaritans, with some even claiming they didn't exist, because of the shortage of evidence. One wonders what would show up on Mt. Gerizim if 1% of the effort had been made digging there. (For what it's worth, the three Muslim Hadiths that describe where the Ark is hidden say in general that it's near or on a mountain in the northern Israel/southern Syria-Lebanon area. That's definitely where the Samaritans would hide it. They wanted it bad, said it was stolen from them, and they were there when it disappeared.)
The Jews and Christians have virtually always claimed that few of the original Israelis remained, and those that did remain, converted to paganism, and that the Assyrians imported lots of Assyrians to replace them. The Samaritans say the Assyrians left some alive, and they survived and kept their more accurate version of the religion. The Assyrians records support the Samaritan version, by dragging away only 27,000, a tiny percentage. Did some Assyrians repopulate there? No doubt some.
In 586BCE, Babylon conqured Judea, and the Jews were sent into captivity in Babylon. Putting aside how many of those Judean Jews also remained, Cyrus the Great, who really was, set them free in 539BCE, and they returned to Judea. The Jewish story is told by those that returned from Babylon, and they claim the Samaritans weren't genetically Jewish, and got their ideas about the Written Law from them. The Samaritans say they soldiered on, keeping the Law as good Hebrews all along.
The Jews that returned from Babylon and the Samaritans were bitter enemies, with seething hatred and wars up to and after the time of Jesus. The New Testament talks about the blind hatred of the Samaritans, with Jesus always saying the most complimentary things about the Samaritans possible, usually at the expense of the Jews. Worth noting, that Israel included Galilee, and what was to become the little town of Nazareth. At the time of Jesus, the Jews had control of that part of old Israel, but Samaria and the Samaritans were closer to Galilee than Jerusalem. Not that Christians took his lead. The Samaritans had a rather different story of most of the Old Testament, and refused to convert to Christianity, so Justinian, the Christian Emperor, slaughtered almost all of them. With the Muslim conquest, many of the survivors converted to Islam. By 1900, only about 150 remained, and now it's about 700. They are finally accepted as Jews, serve in the Israeli army, and live mostly in Israel, near their reveared mountain. Genetically very inbred, with strict intermarrying laws, they don't seem to have a bright future.
Here is a neutral and Jewish version of the history, and more...
http://www.bible-history.com/Samaritans/index.html
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S
Modern Evidence of Samaritan and Jewish Genetics:
A sensitive subject, the Jewish Encyclopedia says...
"For example, the Samaritans are the tallest people in Syria...Both the facial and upper facial indexes of the Samaritans are far greater than those of any other group...in thickness of lips they again head the list...The length of second finger is greatest in the Samaritans....
the Samaritans are by no means an exclusively brunette type. As seen by the presence of blue eyes and light hair or beards in a considerable percentage of the individuals examined, there is, on the contrary, a distinct blond type noticeable in the group.
The general type of physiognomy of the Samaritans is distinctly Jewish, the nose markedly so...
...The Samaritans have thus preserved the ancient type in its purity; and they are to-day the sole, though degenerate, representatives of the ancient Hebrews."
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S
Recent analysis of the Y-Chromosome genetics shows that the Samaritans split from the Jews around 800BCE, just like they said all along. They were right and everyone else was wrong. No only that, but in three of the four remaining groups, an amazing 100.00% have the ancient Cohen gene, making them far more Jewish than the Jews, and apparantly all the decendents of priests...
"The Samaritan community, which numbered more than a million in late Roman times and only 146 in 1917, numbers today about 640 people representing four large families....Principal component analysis suggests a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in
the paternally-inherited Jewish high priesthood (Cohanim) at the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel...
...the Samaritan and Jewish Y-chromosomes have a much greater affinity than do those of the Samaritans and their longtime geographical neighbors, the Palestinians. However, this is not the case for the mtDNA haplotypes...distances of Samaritans to Jews and Palestinians for mtDNA are about the same...the low mitochondrial haplotype
diversity suggests that the rate of maternal gene flow into the Samaritan community has not been very high...
...This six-microsatellite haplotype, together with its one-mutation neighbors, form a cluster that is found at frequencies of 69.4 and 61.4% in Ashkenazi and Sephardic Cohanim, while its frequency in the general Jewish population is about 14%...To our surprise, all non-Cohen [one of the four remaining groups is called Cohen] Samaritan Y-chromosomes belonged to the Cohen modal cluster...
we speculate that the Samaritan M304 Y-chromosome lineages present a subgroup of the original Jewish Cohanim priesthood that did not go into exile when the Assyrians ...conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BC, but married Assyrian and female exiles relocated from other conquered lands"...
Ok, so the Samaritans were right, and the Jews, Christians, Historians and Biblical Scholars were wrong. What else were they wrong about? Perhaps they are wrong that a group of Hebrew priests that kept their genetics intact without a single solitary non Hebrew male for 3,400 years, didn't keep their original Written Law intact too...
Continued in following post...
Which Written Law is Older and More Genuine?:
Jesus and the Samaritans:
Conclusions:
Introduction:
No one has been so systematically persecuted over the last 3000 years as the Samaritans. About the only one that spoke kindly of them was Jesus, who did so repeatedly, as strongly as he could, and was even accused of being one of them.
They claim to be the lost tribes of Israel that split with the current Jews 3000 years ago, with an older more genuine Written Law. Turns out, they're probably right. It's the biggest coverup in all biblical scholarship, and probably explains the censorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades by the Jews and Christians as they deteriorated. The further you go back in time, such as to the Dead Sea Scrolls, or LXX, the more it is like the Samaritan version, and less like the current official Masoretic Jewish version, or Christian version. Some of the DSS are Samaritan. And there's one scroll, in possession of the few remaining Samaritans, the Nablus Roll, that may be even older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And recently, genetic evidence has shown up that not only did the Samaritans split with the current Jews around 800BCE, (with the destruction of Israel being in 722 BCE), but that genetically at least with that same common Cohen Y-Chromosome gene, they are noticably more Jewish than the Jews.
The Jewish/Christian and Samaritan Versions of their History
Sometime around 1000BCE, the Hebrews split in two, with Israel in the north, and Judea in the south, with very bitter hatred on both sides. The kind of bitter rivalry and sheer hatred only seen in civil wars. In 722BCE, the Assyrians conquer Israel and carry off some of them to Assyria. Everyone agrees on that. But then the paths diverge.
The Samaritans say the original home of the Ark, and the center of Hebrew religion was Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, that the Temple of Solomon was just a copy of their more important version at the mountain. As for David and Solomon being important, history takes the side of the Samaritans, with some even claiming they didn't exist, because of the shortage of evidence. One wonders what would show up on Mt. Gerizim if 1% of the effort had been made digging there. (For what it's worth, the three Muslim Hadiths that describe where the Ark is hidden say in general that it's near or on a mountain in the northern Israel/southern Syria-Lebanon area. That's definitely where the Samaritans would hide it. They wanted it bad, said it was stolen from them, and they were there when it disappeared.)
The Jews and Christians have virtually always claimed that few of the original Israelis remained, and those that did remain, converted to paganism, and that the Assyrians imported lots of Assyrians to replace them. The Samaritans say the Assyrians left some alive, and they survived and kept their more accurate version of the religion. The Assyrians records support the Samaritan version, by dragging away only 27,000, a tiny percentage. Did some Assyrians repopulate there? No doubt some.
In 586BCE, Babylon conqured Judea, and the Jews were sent into captivity in Babylon. Putting aside how many of those Judean Jews also remained, Cyrus the Great, who really was, set them free in 539BCE, and they returned to Judea. The Jewish story is told by those that returned from Babylon, and they claim the Samaritans weren't genetically Jewish, and got their ideas about the Written Law from them. The Samaritans say they soldiered on, keeping the Law as good Hebrews all along.
The Jews that returned from Babylon and the Samaritans were bitter enemies, with seething hatred and wars up to and after the time of Jesus. The New Testament talks about the blind hatred of the Samaritans, with Jesus always saying the most complimentary things about the Samaritans possible, usually at the expense of the Jews. Worth noting, that Israel included Galilee, and what was to become the little town of Nazareth. At the time of Jesus, the Jews had control of that part of old Israel, but Samaria and the Samaritans were closer to Galilee than Jerusalem. Not that Christians took his lead. The Samaritans had a rather different story of most of the Old Testament, and refused to convert to Christianity, so Justinian, the Christian Emperor, slaughtered almost all of them. With the Muslim conquest, many of the survivors converted to Islam. By 1900, only about 150 remained, and now it's about 700. They are finally accepted as Jews, serve in the Israeli army, and live mostly in Israel, near their reveared mountain. Genetically very inbred, with strict intermarrying laws, they don't seem to have a bright future.
Here is a neutral and Jewish version of the history, and more...
http://www.bible-history.com/Samaritans/index.html
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S
Modern Evidence of Samaritan and Jewish Genetics:
A sensitive subject, the Jewish Encyclopedia says...
"For example, the Samaritans are the tallest people in Syria...Both the facial and upper facial indexes of the Samaritans are far greater than those of any other group...in thickness of lips they again head the list...The length of second finger is greatest in the Samaritans....
the Samaritans are by no means an exclusively brunette type. As seen by the presence of blue eyes and light hair or beards in a considerable percentage of the individuals examined, there is, on the contrary, a distinct blond type noticeable in the group.
The general type of physiognomy of the Samaritans is distinctly Jewish, the nose markedly so...
...The Samaritans have thus preserved the ancient type in its purity; and they are to-day the sole, though degenerate, representatives of the ancient Hebrews."
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S
Recent analysis of the Y-Chromosome genetics shows that the Samaritans split from the Jews around 800BCE, just like they said all along. They were right and everyone else was wrong. No only that, but in three of the four remaining groups, an amazing 100.00% have the ancient Cohen gene, making them far more Jewish than the Jews, and apparantly all the decendents of priests...
"The Samaritan community, which numbered more than a million in late Roman times and only 146 in 1917, numbers today about 640 people representing four large families....Principal component analysis suggests a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in
the paternally-inherited Jewish high priesthood (Cohanim) at the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel...
...the Samaritan and Jewish Y-chromosomes have a much greater affinity than do those of the Samaritans and their longtime geographical neighbors, the Palestinians. However, this is not the case for the mtDNA haplotypes...distances of Samaritans to Jews and Palestinians for mtDNA are about the same...the low mitochondrial haplotype
diversity suggests that the rate of maternal gene flow into the Samaritan community has not been very high...
...This six-microsatellite haplotype, together with its one-mutation neighbors, form a cluster that is found at frequencies of 69.4 and 61.4% in Ashkenazi and Sephardic Cohanim, while its frequency in the general Jewish population is about 14%...To our surprise, all non-Cohen [one of the four remaining groups is called Cohen] Samaritan Y-chromosomes belonged to the Cohen modal cluster...
we speculate that the Samaritan M304 Y-chromosome lineages present a subgroup of the original Jewish Cohanim priesthood that did not go into exile when the Assyrians ...conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BC, but married Assyrian and female exiles relocated from other conquered lands"...
Ok, so the Samaritans were right, and the Jews, Christians, Historians and Biblical Scholars were wrong. What else were they wrong about? Perhaps they are wrong that a group of Hebrew priests that kept their genetics intact without a single solitary non Hebrew male for 3,400 years, didn't keep their original Written Law intact too...
Continued in following post...
Which Written Law is Older and More Genuine?:
Jesus and the Samaritans:
Conclusions:
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, while the Samaritan version has המלך instead (“the king who redeemed me”
