Samaritans
SAMARITANS. The Samaritans are an ethno-religious group in Palestine and in Israel. Their religious center is Mount Gerizim in the vicinity of Nablus. Half of the community lives on the mountain, half lives in Ḥolon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. In the early twenty-first century the community comprises approximately 660 members. The Samaritan religion is an outgrowth of the Israelite-Jewish religion as it existed around the beginning of the common era. It therefore has many features in common with Judaism, above all the belief in the first five books (the Pentateuch) of the Bible. As opposed to Judaism, though, the Samaritans never developed the institution of the rabbinate but are led by priests and a high priest.
Historical Significance
As a group the Samaritans have always lived in Palestine; that is, from their inception in antiquity to the present there have been Samaritans in the Holy Land. Their numbers have varied from tens or even hundreds of thousands in the early period to barely over one hundred in the nineteenth century. For this reason it has often been assumed that they preserved biblical traditions that were lost in Judaism. Although it can be shown that certain elements of Samaritanism go back to antiquity, such as the recitation of the Torah, not all their beliefs and practices necessarily continued unbroken from antiquity to modern times; each case has to be judged on its own merits.
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