The Samaritans are the people of the city of Samaria, and the inhabitants of the province of which Samaria was the capital city. In this sense, it should seem that we might give the name of Samaritans to the Israelites of the ten tribes, who lived in the city and territory of Samaria. However, the sacred authors commonly apply the name of Samaritans only to those strange people whom the kings of Assyria sent from beyond the Euphrates to inhabit the kingdom of Samaria, when they took captive the Israelites that were there before. Thus we may fix the epoch of the Samaritans at the taking of Samaria by Salmaneser, in the year of the world 3283. This prince carried away captive the Israelites that he found in the country, and assigned them dwellings beyond the Euphrates, and in Assyria. He sent other inhabitants in their stead, of which the most considerable were the Cuthites, a people descended from Cush, and who are probably of the number of those whom the ancients knew by the name of Scythians.

After Salmaneser, his successor Esarhaddon was informed that the people who had been sent to Samaria were infested by lions that devoured them. This he imputed to the ignorance of the people in the manner of worshipping the god of the country. Esarhaddon therefore sent a priest of the God of Israel, that he might teach them the religion of the Hebrews. But they thought they might blend this religion with that which they had previously professed; so they continued to worship their idols as before, in conjunction with the God of Israel, not perceiving how absurd and incompatible these two religions were.

It is not known how long they continued in this state; but at the return from the captivity of Babylon, it appears they had entirely quitted the worship of their idols; and when they asked permission of the Israelites that they might labour with them at the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem, they affirmed, that from the time when Esarhaddon had brought them into this country they had always worshipped the Lord. And indeed, after the return from the captivity, the Scripture does not anywhere reproach them with idolatrous worship, though it does not dissemble either their jealousy against the Jews, or the ill offices they had done them at the court of Persia by their slanders and calumnies, or the stratagems they contrived to hinder the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem.

It does not appear that there was any temple in Samaria, in common to all these people who came thither from beyond the Euphrates, before the arrival of Alexander the Great into Judaea. Before that time, every one was left to his own discretion, and worshipped the Lord wherever he thought fit. But they presently comprehended, from the books of Moses which they had in their hands, and from the example of the Jews their neighbours, that God was to be worshipped in that place only which he had chosen; so that since they could not go to the temple of Jerusalem, which the Jews would not allow of, they betook themselves of building a temple of their own upon Mount Gerizim, near the city of Shechem, which was then their capital. Sanballat, governor of the Samaritans, therefore applied himself to Alexander, and told him he had a son-in-law, called Manasses, son of Jaddus the high priest of the Jews, who had retired to Samaria with a great number of other persons of his own nation; that he desired to build a temple in this province, where he might exercise the high priesthood; and that this undertaking would be to the advantage of the king's affairs, because in building a temple in the province of Samaria, the nation of the Jews would be divided, who are a turbulent and seditious people, and by such a division would be made weaker, and less in a condition to undertake new enterprises. Alexander readily consented to what Sanballat desired, and the Samaritans presently began building the temple of Gerizim, which from that time they have always frequented, and still frequent to this day, as the place where the Lord intended to receive the adoration of his people. It is of this mountain and of this temple that the Samaritan woman of Sychar spoke to our Saviour.

But the Samaritans did not long continue under the obedience of Alexander. They revolted from him the very next year, and Alexander drove them out of Samaria, put Macedonians in their place, and gave the province of Samaria to the Jews. This preference which Alexander gave to the Israelites contributed not a little to increase that hatred and animosity that had already obtained between these two people. When any Israelite had deserved punishment for the violation of some important point of the law, he presently took refuge in Samaria or Shechem, and embraced the method of worship according to the temple of Gerizim. When the Jews were in a prosperous condition, and affairs were favourable to them, the Samaritans did not fail to call themselves Hebrews, and pretended to be of the race of Abraham. But no sooner were the Jews fallen into discredit or persecution, than the Samaritans immediately disowned them, would have nothing in common with them, and acknowledged themselves to have been originally Phoenicians, or that they were descended from Joseph and Manasseh his son. This was their practice in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.

The Samaritans, having received the Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses, from the priest that was sent by Esarhaddon, continued to preserve it in the old Hebrew or Phoenician character, which we now call the Samaritan, to distinguish it from the modern Hebrew character, which we find in the books of the Jews. These last, after their captivity, changed their old characters, and took up those of the Chaldaic, which they had been used to at Babylon, and which they continue still to use. It is wrong, says Calmet, to give this the name of the Hebrew character, for that can be said properly to belong to the Samaritan text. The critics have taken notice of some variations between the Pentateuch of the Jews and that of the Samaritans; but these varieties of reading chiefly regard the word Gerizim, which the Samaritans seem to have purposely introduced to favour their pretensions that Mount Gerizim was the place in which the Lord was to be adored. The other various readings are of little importance.

As to their belief, it is objected to them, that they receive only the Pentateuch, and reject all the other books of Scripture, chiefly the prophets, who have more expressly declared the coming of the Messiah. They have also been ac- cused of believing God to be corporeal, and of denying the Holy Ghost, and the resurrection of the dead.

Joseph Scaliger, with the view of informing himself respecting their usages and opinions, wrote to the Samaritans of Egypt; and to the high priest of the whole sect, who resided at Neapolis in Syria. They returned two answers to Scaliger, dated in the year of the Hejira 998. These were preserved in the French king's library, translated into Latin by Father Morin, and printed in England in the collection of that father's letters, in 1682, under the title of Antiquitates Ecclesiae Orientalis.

There are still some Samaritans at Shechem, which is otherwise called Naplous; and they have priests there, who say they are of the family of Aaron. They have a high priest, who resides at Shechem, or at Gerizim, who offers sacrifices there, and who declares the feast of the passover, and all the other feasts, to all the dispersed Samaritans. Some of them are to be found at Gaza, others at Damascus, and others at Grand Cairo.