Who are the Samaritans? Who are the Samaritans and why are they good? Brothers of Samaria

In ancient times, in the period 887-859 BC. e., in the northern part of Judea the state of Samaria was located and flourished. It can be assumed that a Samaritan is a resident of a given country. But the word "Samaritan" also has another meaning. In the American dictionary it is interpreted as “a person who selflessly helps others.” In English, this expression has been used since the 17th century, the reason for this was biblical parables.

The Story of the Samaritan

One of the parables tells that Jesus Christ, even during his life on earth, called on people to work with him, saving their neighbors. He claimed that such people would subsequently inherit his heavenly home. One of the priests, wanting to test Jesus, asked: “How can we deserve eternal life and who is our neighbor?” In response to his question, Jesus told a parable.

The traveler, traveling from Jerusalem, met with robbers who robbed him, beat him and left him half-dead to die on the road. The clergyman who happened to be nearby walked past him indifferently. A Levite walking by did the same. A third passer-by, seeing a man lying on the ground beaten by robbers, approached him.

He was the Good Samaritan. He washed the wounds of the victim with wine and oil and bandaged them. He put him on the donkey, covered him with his cloak, and took him to the hotel. A passer-by left him there in the care of his owner.

This man paid for both accommodation and care for the patient. At the end of the story, Jesus asked: “Which of the three do you think was your neighbor?” The clergyman replied that the neighbor, of course, was the third passerby. Jesus advised him to do as the Samaritan did.

"Love thy neighbour…"

The priest and the Levite, who did not help the victim, considered themselves righteous. In fact, they looked down on poor and unfortunate people and did not consider them neighbors. There was no love for people in their hearts. And the biblical commandment says: “Love your neighbor as yourself, and do to him as you would have them do to you.”

The described incident shows that the Samaritan is the embodiment of goodness and love for man. He was not afraid that the robbers might return and brutally deal with him. He behaved with dignity. And, as best I could, I helped the victim. Unfortunately, in our lives there are many cases when we pass by a person who needs emergency help. Often mistaken for a drunk lying on the sidewalk: he may be having a heart attack. Medicine taken in time can save his life.

Don't pass by

Callousness and indifference allow you to pass by a person who needs help and support. What is happening around us today indicates that many do not read the Bible. That’s why they don’t imagine who he is - the Good Samaritan, the parable about whom Jesus told.

Followers of Christ in Orthodoxy and representatives of other religions call humanity to peace and goodness. They claim, based on the Bible, that a person who does good will have eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. Everyone understands these words in their own way and treats them differently. But the call to do good embedded in them is a driving factor in social development. There are many legends, true stories and parables on this topic. Samaritan is a character from one of them.

Witnesses to history

Currently, in Israel, on the territory of the former Samaria, there are ruins reminiscent of the splendor and wealth of the city where the Good Samaritan lived. Numerous pilgrims and tourists who visited are reminded of the biblical commandment: “He who does good to others himself becomes spiritually richer and stronger.” A Samaritan is a kind, sympathetic person. His heart is filled with love and mercy. He provides selfless help to people in need.

For most people who have superficially studied the Holy Scriptures, the Samaritans are the people from the parable of Jesus. They are kind, sympathetic people, judging by the plot of the short story described in the Bible.

Perhaps the majority believes that these people have remained only in parables. But no. Samaritans exist in modern times - they live among us and in their own separate little world. But what they are, where they live, what values they preach, remains a mystery to the bulk.

Controversial history

From time immemorial, those who are called the lawyers and scribes of Israel promoted the version (and considered it the only correct one) about the Assyrian origin of the Samaritans. Allegedly, in the 700s BC, when King Sargon defeated the then Samaria, he deported the indigenous population deep into his lands - the sons of Israel up to the tenth generation, and instead populated the city and outskirts with pagan tribes, the descendants of which are the modern Samaritans .

The Samaritans fundamentally disagree with this interpretation of history, which is still heard from the mouths of the rabbis. This, as they say, is a complete distortion of historical facts, which they have been arguing with for many centuries.

The Samaritans have always considered themselves real Jews, and the etymology of “shomrim” has been and continues to be deciphered as “guardian” and insist that it is they, a small but very proud people, who are the guardians of the true Jewish traditions and the real, correct, pristine Torah.

Are Samaritans and Jews one people?

This issue has always caused some disagreement between the Samaritans and the Jews. The former considered and continue to consider themselves true Jews, while the latter cannot accept this point of view.

Faith became as always. Not even faith as such, but some differences in the observance of religious rituals. If the Samaritans are supporters of the authentic Jewish heritage, that is, they reject biblical teaching, consider Moses the only prophet, and Mount Gerizim as a sacred place, then even those Jews who are generally considered orthodox are not so categorical in religion.

Throughout their history, the Samaritans live as a rather isolated community, believing that they are the true Jews, but other Jews do not recognize them. These peoples (or people?) share neither more nor less - six thousand discrepancies in the Torah - Samaritan and canonized. And it has been like this for as long as they can remember.

Religion does not interfere with kindness

Almost from childhood, any Christian is familiar with the parable of the Samaritan, who, despite hostility, helped an Israeli in trouble.

It is significant that it sounded from the lips of Jesus, the Messiah, recognized by the entire Christian world and by the Israelis too, but unrecognized by the Samaritans. Why did Jesus make the Samaritan the positive hero of the story? Is it only from the desire to reconcile the eternal religious duelists - the Samaritans and the Jews? Is it only for the edification of all others who must love the enemy, and nothing else?

Or maybe this was the simplest illustration of the simplest truth, which most of us, always at war with someone or something, cannot comprehend: belonging to any religion does not at all prevent us from performing human actions.

Each of us is a Good Samaritan at heart. It is not religion that matters, but she is a soul, if you give her such an opportunity.

Where do Samaritans live and who do they marry?

Now there are very few Samaritans - about 1,500 people, but at the beginning of the last century the number of these people turned out to be so small (only a few dozen) that they had to urgently take measures and slightly open their very closed community to strangers. Or rather, a foreigner.

The first Samaritan wife “from outside” was a Siberian woman named Maria. Now the Samaritan guys have expanded the geography of their search for spouses and are actively exploring the expanses of the CIS. Two Ukrainians, two Russians and four Azerbaijanis have already become wives of the Samaritans.

But since Samaritans are, first of all, about observing traditions, the first requirement for girls is to undergo conversion (conversion ceremony). Only after this can you marry a Samaritan.

Despite all the measures taken, the people remain small in number to this day; they are included by UNESCO in the special Red Book of ethnic groups that are in danger of extinction.

Modern Samaritans live in one of the prestigious quarters of the city of Holon, and several families still live in the village of Kiryat Luza, in close proximity to their sacred Mount of Blessings.

Story

The Samaritans consider themselves descendants of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel, more precisely, the tribe of Joseph, divided into the tribes of Ephraim (Ephraim) and Manasseh (Menashe). The name of the people and the designation of the entire territory - Samaria - comes from the name of the last capital of the Kingdom of Israel, founded by King Omri (Omri) and destroyed by Assyria. According to Jewish tradition, the Samaritans are descendants of the Gutians (Josephus has the Huthians), who were resettled by Assyria to the territory of the former Kingdom of Israel, and soon adopted Judaism from their neighbors the Jews.

Strong cultural differences between the Jews of the north and south of Canaan have existed since ancient times, but after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, a final separation between Jews and Samaritans occurred, accompanied by mutual enmity. Perhaps the gospel image of the “Good Samaritan” acquired additional colors against the background of this centuries-old enmity.

Samaritan Sophie Tzdaka is a famous Israeli actress (mainly a performer of children's and "fairytale" roles) and singer, and a former beauty queen of Israel.

Until recently, Samaritans only married within the community. In connection with the problems that arose because of this, the community leaders allowed marriage to Jewish and Karaite women who had undergone the conversion procedure, and then to Christian women.

In the Palestinian Legislative Council of the first convocation (-), the Samaritans were assigned one deputy mandate in the Nablus district. Salum Ishaq al-Samiri was elected deputy from the Samaritan minority.

Samaritans in Islam

The Samaritans are mentioned in the Quran in the story of Musa (Moses) and the Golden Calf. Samaritans are literally “inhabitants of Samaria,” one of the tribes of the children of Israel. A Samaritan is a man from this tribe. He confused the people of Musa by making a calf that made strange sounds when the wind entered it. The Samaritan tempted the people to worship this calf, and they obeyed him. Returning to his people, Musa exposed their intrigues and expelled them.

This is how it is described in the Qur'an:

20:85 Allah said to Musa: “We tested your people after you left them (to Mount Sinai). And they were led astray by a Samaritan, who misled them (by colluding with Iblis).

20:87 They (the people of Israel) responded apologetically: “We broke our promise to you against our will. But we were loaded down with the people's heavy jewelry. We thought that these decorations would bring us bad luck, so we decided to throw them away. The Samaritan lit a fire in the pit and we threw them into it. The Samaritan himself did the same.”

20:88. To deceive the people, the Samaritan made a calf out of molten gold, which made a moo like a cow's when the wind entered it. The Samaritan called them to worship this calf, and they obeyed him. He and his followers said: “This is your god and the god of Musa.” The Samaritan forgot that by looking at the calf and thinking rationally, it is easy to understand that the calf cannot be a god.

20:90. Harun was with his people when this temptation began. Until Musa returns, peace be upon him! - Harun said to them: “O my people! You are being tempted by the Samaritan (along with Shaitan) with this calf. Indeed, verily, your Lord is Allah the Merciful, and there is no other god besides Him. So follow me in what I advise you and renounce this error.”

20:95. Musa - peace be upon him! - asked the Samaritan: “What prompted you to do something that is considered a great sin?”

20:96. The Samaritan said to Musa: “I have mastered the art (of magic) and the dexterity of the craft, inaccessible to the sons of Israel. I made for them the image of a calf making a lowing sound - that’s how my soul seduced me.”

20:97. Musa said to the Samaritan: “Get out of our community and get away from us. Your punishment in this world is to always be in error. People will be disgusted with you and shun you so as not to have any relationship with you, and none of them will come close or touch you. And don't get close to anyone. And your punishment in the Hereafter, from which you cannot escape, will come at its appointed time.” Reproaching him and his god, Musa said: “Look what we will do to your god, whom you worship and with whom you tempted people. We will burn it and scatter its ashes into the sea.”

After his miraculous rescue, Musa went to the mountain, leaving his people to speak with his Lord. Then the Samaritan led the people of Musa astray by enticing them to worship a calf made of pure cast gold and which made a lowing sound when air passed through it. Musa was angry with his people for what they had done in his absence. It goes on to say what befell the Samaritan - he will be in error, and people will shun and dislike him.

Commentators on the Qur'an, based on this Qur'anic story, have expressed the opinion that since then the Samaritans have always been misled and disliked by people - and still are. However, other commentators argue that this punishment applied only to one specific Samaritan - the maker of the golden calf.

Literature

L. H. Wilsker. Samaritan language. Moscow: Main editorial office of oriental languages of the Nauka publishing house, 1974.

Notes

Links

Samaritans- article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia

Ethnic groups in Israel
Jews	Ashkenazi Sephardi Mizrahi Falasha Bnei Menashe Samaritans
Muslims	Arabs Bedouins Circassians Gypsies Turks Druze
Christians	Armenians Arabs Gypsies
Rest	Chinese Africans Karaites

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Samaritans” are in other dictionaries:

Residents of the area of the same name as the city of Samaria in Palestine and a religious community that departed in the 6th century. BC e. from the Jewish community in Jerusalem. They live in Nablus and Holon; number approx. 400 people. The Samaritans are descendants of Babylonian colonists... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Samaritans- National volunteer organization in the UK. Providing assistance in crisis situations. Brief explanatory psychological and psychiatric dictionary. Ed. igisheva. 2008 ... Great psychological encyclopedia

Samaritans- (self-name shammarim “guardians”), adherents of the Judaic sect. The Samaritans consider themselves descendants of the Hebrew tribes of Ephraim and Menashe, who remained in Samaria after the Assyrian conquest in 722 BC. e. The Jews view them as descendants... Encyclopedia "Peoples and Religions of the World"

Ian; pl. The descendants of the ancient Jewish population of the Kingdom of Israel, constituting an ethnic group in Palestine, united in a religious community (goes back to the name of the religious and ethnic sect that departed from Judaism in the 6th century BC). ◁… … encyclopedic Dictionary

SAMARITANS, SAMARITANS Residents of Samaria; mixing of the Israelites with the pagans, whom the later Jews despised. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910 ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Samaritans- (Shomronim) The last Assyrian kings, in order to prevent rebellions in the captured countries, expelled the indigenous population (mainly the upper strata) and settled the exiles in other captured countries or in the metropolis of Assyria. This is what they did with... Encyclopedia of Judaism

Ethnic group and religious sect. They live in Nablus (Jordan) and Holon (Israel). Number of people: about 400 people. S. descendants of settlers from Assyria who mixed with the population of the Kingdom of Israel, conquered in 722-721 BC. e. Assyria. From … Great Soviet Encyclopedia

A “Good Samaritan” is a person who is ready, without hesitation, to rush to the aid of anyone - even a stranger... who are the Samaritans and why is a Samaritan a “good”?

First of all, the Samaritans - more precisely, the Shomorinim - are a very real people that exist to this day. True, there are not many of them - less than a thousand people, and they live in only two places - in one of the quarters of the city of Holon in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and the village of Kiryat Luza on the West Bank.

This people got its name from Samaria, a historical region in Israel. This is a hilly area with an excellent climate favorable to viticulture and the cultivation of olive trees, which is what local residents have been doing since ancient times, and the central city of Samaria (with the same name) at the turn of the 9th-8th centuries BC. was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.

Yes, Jews and Samaritans are related peoples, the Samaritans trace the history of their people to the sons of Joseph - Ephraim and Manasseh. True, the Jews denied this in ancient times - the cultural, and later also religious, differences were too great. This may be due to the fact that after the conquest of Samaria by the Assyrian king in 722 BC. The Samaritans often became related to other peoples who inhabited Mesopotamia. This version of the history of the Samaritans seems more convincing than the one held by the Jews: supposedly the Samaritans are the descendants of the Gutians, a warlike people resettled by the Assyrian king to the territory of the captured Kingdom of Israel and adopted the religion of the Jews... however, there may be some truth in this version.

The Samaritans professed Judaism, but their main temple was not Jerusalem, but built on Mount Gerizim. As sacred books, they revered the Torah and the Book of Joshua - but in versions that differed from the canonical Jewish ones. This is how a powerful “watershed” arose between peoples with a common origin - this was not the first or last time in the history of mankind, and - as usually happens - the closer the people are initially, the stronger the mutual hostility between them can turn out to be. By the time of the New Testament events, everything was clear - the Gospel of John testifies that the Israelites had no dealings with the Samaritans (to such an extent that the Samaritan woman, who met the Savior at the well, did not even want to give Him water).

Considering the situation, it becomes clear why the Savior made the Samaritan the hero of the parable about the merciful man who took care of the injured stranger - after all, He was asked the question of who should be considered a neighbor. The fact that you need to treat your fellow tribesmen well was obvious to the people of the Old Testament era, but the requirement to transfer such an attitude to all people was truly a “spiritual revolution”, which even we now cannot fully accept. The image of a Samaritan saving a Jew was perhaps as vivid for that era as the image of a Soviet soldier saving a German girl is for us.

But if the Good Samaritan is still a generalized image from a parable, the Samaritan wife mentioned in the New Testament is a very real, concrete person. It was the Savior who met her at the well, it was he who promised her an eternal source of living water. At the time of her meeting with the Savior, this lady did not even remotely resemble a saint - she not only shared the national prejudices of her people, but also had five cohabitants... even among modern people, not everyone would agree to deal with such a woman - and the Savior addresses her with the words about the "Spirit of Truth". And this woman - seemingly so far from piety - recognizes Christ, the Messiah in Him (not all educated men of that time had enough spiritual strength for this).

Sacred tradition has preserved the name of this woman - her name was Photinia. Many years later - in 66 - she, along with two sons and four sisters, were put to a terrible death for the Christian faith. Photinia of Samaria patronizes women named Svetlana.

Today, Samaritans live rather secluded lives - for a long time they did not marry anyone other than their fellow tribesmen, but given their small numbers, this eventually began to create the danger of consanguineous marriages, and now Samaritan men are allowed to marry Jewish and even Christian women.

Perhaps the most famous representative of this people in the modern world is Sophie Tzdaka, who for some time bore the title of Beauty Queen of Israel. This actress is little known in our country, but the Israeli public knows her well from films and performances for children.

Who were the Samaritans and why did they become enemies of the Jews?

In the Bible, the Samaritans (Samaritans) are the people of Samaria, the territory of the former kingdom of Israel after its destruction by the Assyrian king Sargon II (in 721 BC). The biblical chronicler tells the following about the origin of the Samaritans. Having driven most of the surviving Israelites to Assyria, Sargon II settled (in 721–710) in their place colonists from Babylon, Kuta, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim captured by the Assyrians. Because the settlers initially did not honor the Jewish God, the Almighty sent lions to attack them. The Samaritans notified the Assyrian king about this misfortune, citing their ignorance of the laws of the God of the land on which they now live as the cause. Then the Assyrian king ordered a priest from the captive Israelites to be sent to the Samaritans so that he could teach the settlers the laws of the Jewish God. Having accepted the new religion, the Samaritans continued to worship their old gods. They subsequently began to appoint priests from among themselves. After the capture of Babylon in 648 BC by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, the Dinei, Afarsafhei, Tarpelei, Aparsi, Arekhyans, Babylonians, Susanans, Dagi, Elamites “and other peoples” were also resettled in Samaria. Such a multitude of foreign nationalities were able to get along with each other and even form an integral national-religious community, such as the Samaritans, largely because quite a lot of Jews remained on the territory of the former kingdom of Israel, under whose influence the settlers largely fell and with whom in the end eventually assimilated. When in 536 BC the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity and began building a new temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans “came... to Zerubbabel and to the heads of the generations, and said to them: We also will build with you, because we, like you, we resort to your God and offer sacrifices to him.” The Jews rejected the help offered with all their hearts, which aroused the bitterness and hatred of the Samaritans. “And the people of that land began to weaken the hands of the people of Judah and hinder them from building; and they bribed advisers against them in order to destroy their enterprise.” Three centuries later, the Samaritans helped the Syrians suppress a Jewish revolt led by Judas Maccabee. Hostility between Jews and Samaritans continued into the period described in the New Testament. Instructing the apostles, Jesus told them: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter the city of the Samaritans” (Matthew 10:5). When Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for water, she responded in surprise: “How can you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? for Jews do not communicate with Samaritans.” As a decisive argument in a dispute with Jesus, his opponents tell him: “Are we not telling the truth that You are a Samaritan and that You have a demon?” Subsequently, Jesus changed his attitude towards the Samaritans, and many of them became Christians.