What do Samaritans and Jews have in Common? Recent Trends in Samaritan Studies

Abstract

Apart from the later period of the Hasmonaean kingdom, Samaritans and Jews were always separate peoples who had either Gerizim or Jerusalem as their main cult place. While Jewish perspectives on Samaritan origin and history still prevail in recent research, future research will have to broaden the perspective and take into consideration Samaritan claims for authenticity in respect to origin, belief and traditions. These claims have recently been substantiated by excavations on Mount Gerizim, which have unearthed structures of a major Persian Period cult place that may date as early as the sixth century BCE. These finds, as well as finds of about 400 inscriptions and 13,000 coins, have just begun to be published. The present article presents the most recent development in research on Samaritan history and literature, in order to offer a base for the necessary rewriting of both Samaritan and Jewish history.

Samaritans, Biblical Studies, and Ancient Judaism: Recent Trends

“…Many scholars shy away from reliance on these late texts for reconstructing the pre-Islamic history of the Samaritans (Hjelm 2004b: 184), although Etienne Nodet advocates this position using the Samaritan chronicles (e.g., Nodet 2011), Hagith Sivan has cautiously drawn on them in her history of late antique Palestine (Sivan 2008) and others have attempted by a source-critical approach to bring the later texts to bear on much earlier material (Duchemin 2012; Stenhouse 2012). Although the Kitab al-Tarīkh , Samaritan Book of Joshua , and other chronicles certainly preserve a significant amount of material earlier than the compilation of their manuscripts, isolating those traditions does not easily account for the continuous composition of Samaritan chronicles (Hjelm 2004a: 31, 2004b: 187-88).…”

“…One particularly important archaeological discovery still under discussion is a corpus of almost 400 Aramaic dedicatory inscriptions from Persian- and Hellenistic-period Gerizim, again uncovered and catalogued during Magen’s excavations (Magen, Misgav, and Tsefania 2004). Hjelm signalled the potential importance of these inscriptions (Hjelm 2004a: 19), but they have since been analysed in more depth (Dušek 2012; Gudme 2012, 2013). These inscriptions more than quadrupled our archive of relevant inscriptions from the period.…”

“…The shift to digital humanities and museum exhibits perhaps illustrates that few new ancient sources have emerged to illuminate ancient Samaritan history since Hjelm’s 2004 article, as her own more recent overview of Samaritan literature demonstrates (Hjelm 2016b). Within the parameters set by those sources, however, much has shifted.…”

“…For a survey of trends prior to 2004, I direct the reader to Ingrid Hjelm’s comprehensive article in this journal (Hjelm 2004a). Nevertheless, scholars have done significant work since then.…”

The Bad Samaritans: The Elijah Motif in Luke 9.51-56

“…See esp. the helpful summary by Hjelm (2004). Despite their shared history, traditions and beliefs, Hjelm aptly describes the Jews and Samaritans as ‘two peoples, who for most periods of their early histories, lived as separate religio- and geo-political entities’ (p. 46).…”