Only about seven hundred souls remain today of a people that was one million strong when Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:30. Making a Samaritan the “good neighbor” was a blow to Jewish pride as Jews had spurned the sect for generations.
The sect were occupying Assyrians who had intermarried with Israelites in the 7th century BC, and adopted Mosaic law. Rejected because of their pagan roots, they were barred from helping rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem when the Jews returned from exile in Babylonia.
Eventually they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim near Nablus, and prospered. By 36 AD they had grown powerful enough to demand an end to the 18 year rule of the hated Pontius Pilate – but only after hundred had been massacred at the foot of Mount Gerizim by order of the Roman procurator.
Mount Gerizim is where most of them live today, still practicing their own unique customs. They accept only the Five Books of Moses as sacred (the first five books of the Bible), Moses as God’s only prophet, and Mount Gerizim as His sanctuary.
They read the Ten Commandments as nine to which they added a tenth of their own – the uniqueness of Mount Gerizim. At Passover all the Samaritan families gather for 40 days and nights at the top of their sacred mount where their High Priest recites the story of the Exodus to the whole community.
This page is part of the book The Holy Land of Jesus
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