Most readers of the New Testament have at least heard of Samaritans without perhaps knowing much about them. Some may have formed a generally negative opinion of them without really knowing why.  It is time to clear up the mystery. In this multi-part post, we will trace out the history of the Samaritans – who they were, where they came from, and how they fit into the culturally diverse region known to Jesus. Then we will review all the references to the Samaritans in the NT and come to a better historical understanding of the stories that feature them.

Paul never mentions the Samaritans. Nor does any New Testament letter or Revelation. We only find Samaritans specifically mentioned in the Gospels and Acts.

The Gospel of Matthew is the only Gospel to make an unequivocally negative statement about the Samaritans. Jesus warns his followers not to “go on a road that leads to Gentile regions and do not enter any Samaritan town” (Matt 10:5 NET), seemingly including Samaritans among non-Israelites. But Matthew was written by conservative Jewish believers and seems to have held on to age-old biases shared by many Jews (Meier, 219-20).  The Gospel of John and Luke-Acts, on the other hand, give a different impression. John and Luke were the latest of the four Gospels to be written. They, as well as Acts, seem positively disposed to Samaritans. Could it be that a recent influx to the Jesus movement of Samaritan believers caused these later authors to incorporate favorable stories of the Samaritans? Each author supplies a foundational narrative explaining how belief in Jesus came to the Samaritan people. But who were the Samaritans? How did they get such a negative reputation? And why might they have been disposed toward belief in Jesus?

Who Were the Samaritans?

      a. Tribal Secession (Tenth Century BCE)

To answer those questions we must travel back to the tenth century BCE (Before the Common Era = BC). It was at that time that King David ruled over the twelve tribes of Israel/Jacob (1 Sam 16:1-13). Jews eventually looked back on David’s reign as the quintessential golden age.

David’s son Solomon (1 Kgs 1:32-40) inherited his father’s kingdom as did his son, Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:21; 2 Chr. 12:13). Neither of these two Davidic heirs earned the respect of the ten northern tribes as had David. Under Rehoboam, in the late tenth century BCE, ten of the twelve tribes seceded (1 Kgs. 12:1-20). Their territories constituted the northernmost portions of David’s kingdom, so they are collectively referred to as the northern kingdom of Israel. The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, became the kingdom of Judah. Judah continued to be ruled by Davidids while the northern tribes chose for their king Jeroboam, a former royal administrator for Solomon. Despite the political schism, relations between the two kingdoms remained strong and mutually supportive for a long while.

b. The Origin of Samaria (Ninth Century BCE)

The Kingdom of Israel began its own royal dynasty with the kingship of Omri (ca. 885-874 BCE) (1 Kgs 16:15-22). According to the Hebrew (Jewish) Bible, he purchased a hill from an otherwise anonymous landholder named Shemer upon which he built his capital city, Samaria (Shomeron). The northern tribes now had their own city to compete with Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. Unfortunately, Omri’s son Ahab, if not Omri himself, established an “altar to Baal” in Samaria (1 Kgs 16:32). Elsewhere in the northern kingdom, Yahwist centers of worship developed at Bethel and Dan. Baalism would be purged from the land by King Jehu, who began his own dynasty (ca. 842-814 BCE; cf. 2 Kgs 10:18-27).

 c. Turmoil for the Ten Tribes (Eighth Century BCE)

The neighboring Assyrian Empire attacked and conquered the northern tribes in the eighth century BCE. Assyrian colonization involved the removal of the indigenous people of newly acquired territories and the importation of foreigners to take their place.  They believed that this would help quell any lingering rebellious notions.

This period of forced migration was intentionally mischaracterized by Judean (Jewish) writers. Both 2 Kings 17:2-41, as well as the first-century CE Jewish historian Josephus, wrote as if all the Israelites were dispersed and the entire region infiltrated by pagans (Meier, 207-8).  But this was not the case. A closer reading of the source material, coupled with archaeological excavations,  demonstrates that most Israelites remained in the region (Meier, 209).  Assyria seems to have instituted a policy similar to that of the later Babylonians in which they limited forced emigration to the “courts, the elite, and the intelligentsia” (Levine & Witherington, 285),  groups better positioned to be able to rally the people and sponsor rebellion against their conquerors (Dietrich, 259; Meier, 209).  In tandem with the movement of peoples, the Assyrians rebuilt the city of Samaria establishing it as the capital of the new Assyrian province they also chose to call Samaria (Pummer [a], 1182).

Coupled with the disinformation that all Israelites were removed from the land, was the equally false claim that pagan idol worship replaced Yahwism (2 Kgs 17:7-23). In fact, the worship of YHWH not only continued but increased (Pummer [b], 23).  Many of the immigrant pagans converted to Yahwism (Pummer [b], 23)  even though Second Kings characterizes the influx of foreigners as responsible for creating a syncretistic faith in which Yahwism was mixed with paganism (2 Kgs 17:41). This may have happened in some cases but was by no means the dominant form of worship in the region. Yahwists greatly outnumbered pagans (Pummer [b], 23).  Many newly arrived polytheists tended to cluster in urban centers while Yahwist Samaritans remained rural (Meier, 209).  Some intermarriages probably took place as well but most of these would have been between Israelites and foreign proselytes, that is, converts to Yahwism, not between Israelites and unconverted pagans.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus continued disparaging Samaritans in his twenty-volume work, The Antiquities of the Jews.  He called the Samaritans “Cutheans,” a name derived from one of the imported settler groups during the Assyrian conquest, as if they were all pagans and syncretists, combining Yahwism with paganism, even down to his own time (Ant. 9.277-91).  This, of course, was not true. We must be careful when describing the various groups occupying the district of Samaria after the Assyrian conquest. “Samarians” were inhabitants of the province or region of Samaria. “Samaritans” were those Samarians who remained or became Yahwists. It is the latter that continued to claim descent from the original Israelite tribes.

In our next post, we will continue with the history of the Samaritans beginning with the conquest of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and its effect on relations with the Samaritans. Later, the Greeks, then the Romans, will cause massive disruption throughout the land.

Sources used in this post:

John P. Meier, “The Historical Jesus and the Historical Samaritans: What can be Said?” Biblica 81.2 (2000).

Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Walter Dietrich, “1 and 2 Kings,” Oxford Bible Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

[a] Reinhard Pummer, “Samaria,” The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

[b] Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans (New York: T&T Clark, 2023).