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Engaged with previous scholarship and bringing to bear new material and literary evidence, this book offers a new understanding of the history, identity, and relationship of early Samaritans and Jews. While the focus has traditionally been on the "ten lost tribes" and on long-held antagonisms between Jews and Samaritans, close examination of a wider array of literary evidence (including biblical texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls) and new material evidence (archaeological excavations, ancient inscriptions, papyri, coins) reveals important continuities and convergences between Judeans and Samaritans in the ancient world.
List of contents
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- 1. Samaritans, Jews, and the Contested Legacy of Classical Israel
- 2. The Fall of the Northern Kingdom and the Ten Lost Tribes: A Reevaluation
- 3. God and Country: The Revival of Israelite Religion in Postexilic Samaria
- 4. The Fall of the Northern Kingdom as a New Beginning in Northern Israelite- Southern Israelite Relations
- 5. A Distinction without a Difference? Samarian and Judean Cultures during the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
- 6. Ethnicity, Communal Identity, and Imperial Authority: Contextualizing the Conflicts between Samaria and Judah in Ezra-Nehemiah
- 7. The Torah and "the Place[s] for Yhwh's Name": Samarian-Judean Relations in Hellenistic and Maccabean Times
- 8. An Absolute Breach?
- Bibliography
About the author
The late Gary Knoppers was the O'Brien Professor of Theology at University of Notre Dame. Recent publications include a two-volume commentary on I Chronicles in the Anchor Bible series (2004), a co-edited volume (with Bernard Levinson) on The Pentateuch as Torah (2007), and a co-edited volume (with Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming) on Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period (2011)
Summary
Winner of the R.B.Y. Scott Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies
Even in antiquity, writers were intrigued by the origins of the people called Samaritans, living in the region of ancient Samaria (near modern Nablus). The Samaritans practiced a religion almost identical to Judaism and shared a common set of scriptures. Yet the Samaritans and Jews had little to do with each other. In a famous New Testament passage about an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman, the author writes, "Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans."
The Samaritans claimed to be descendants of the northern tribes of Joseph. Classical Jewish writers said, however, that they were either of foreign origin or the product of intermarriages between the few remaining northern Israelites and polytheistic foreign settlers. Some modern scholars have accepted one or the other of these ancient theories. Others have avidly debated the time and context in which the two groups split apart.
Covering over a thousand years of history, this book makes an important contribution to the fields of Jewish studies, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, Samaritan studies, and early Christian history by challenging the oppositional paradigm that has traditionally characterized the historical relations between Jews and Samaritans.
Additional text
A new picture of the history of the Hebrew people comes out of this book, opening the way to new opportunities for researching the periods both preceding and following the one which has been treated.
