RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sam Samaria
SAMARIA sa-me'ri-a, SAMARITANS.
I. The Region.
Name and History (§ 1).
Area and Roads (§2).
Shechem and Neighboring Cities
(§3). The City Samaria (§ 4). Other Inland Cities (§5). Cities of Western Samaria (§6). II. The People.
1. Origin and History. Origins (§1). Josephus' Account (§ 2). History to 66 a.d. (§ 3). Later History (§ 4).
2. Doctrine.
3. Language and Literature. Pentateuch, Targum, and Arabic
Translations (§1).
Other Early Writings (§2).
Literature on the Samaritans.
On the History of the Samaritans
(§ 1). On the Sacred or Semi-sacred Books
(§2). On Manuscripts and Other Works
(§3).
I. The Region: Samaria denotes both the central region of Palestine, between Judea and Galilee, and the capital of this district. From the time of Omri the city of Samaria became the
i. Name capital of the northern kingdom of and History. Israel, so that the city-name was extended to the entire country (e.g., I Kings xiii. 32; II Kings xvii. 24, 26, 28; Jer. xxxi. 5; Hos. vii. 1; Amos viii. 14). The people dwelling in the land of Samaria were called Samaritans (II Kings xvii. 29). A similar usage is found in the Assyrian Samerina, connoting both the city and the land. When the city received the name of Sebaste from Herod the Great in 27 B.C., Samaria was in application restricted to the district. The Arab conquest destroyed all traces of the name, except among occidentals and in learned language. The oldest form of the name, given in the Massoretic text as Shomeron, seems to have Shameran (cf . I Kings xvi. 24, and the Assyr. Samerina, the Aram. Shamerayin of Ezra iv. 10, 17, and the Gk. Samareia). Originally synonymous with the kingdom of Israel, the area of Samaria varied with the fortunes of that kingdom. In 734-733 Tiglath-pileser so limited the territory that Hoshea retained only the small district from Judah to the plain of Jezreel (cf. II Kings xv. 29, xvii. 24 sqq.; Ezra iv. 10). The rapid decline of Assyria after 640 seems to have enabled Judah to extend its power over this region (cf. II Kings xxiii. 15, 19 sqq.; II Chron. xxxiv. 6-7), which it quickly lost after the battle of Megiddo (608). The Seleucid Demetrius II. detached three districts hitherto belonging to Samaria (Apherema, Lydda, and Ramathaim) and gave them to the Hasmonean Jonathan (145 B.C.). In 128 b.c. John Hyrcanus subdued the whole of Samaria and united it with the Judean kingdom; but in 63 b.c. Pompey freed Samaria and incorporated it with the new province of Syria. " Samaria " in this case means the city and the region from Judah to the plain of Jezreel, excepting Scythopolis and Carmel. In 30 B.C. Herod received Samaria from Augustus, and after the tetrarch's death it, together with Judea and Idumea, was placed under the control of his son Archelaus. In 6 a.d. these three districts formed part of the province of Syria, though they were governed by a special procurator at Caesarea, except in 41-44, when Samaria and its vicinity were in the dominion of Agrippa. On the outbreak of the Jewish revolt, Samaria was given to Vespasian as a part of the province of Judea, and its fortunes were henceforth identical with those of Palestine.
The boundaries of Samaria to the east and west may be regarded as the Jordan and the declivities
of the mountain district respectively. During the period of the dominion of Israel the mountain
district was inhabited by the tribes
2. Area and of Ephraim and Manasseh (Josh, xvi.—
Roads. xvii.); Josh. xvii. 14-18 implies that the
tribe of Joseph spread to the southern region west of the Jordan. Josh. xvii. 16, 18 implies another advance of the tribe of Joseph, this time to the north, possibly to the southern border of tne great plain to the range of Yazid. Here lay, according to Judges i., the cities of Beth-shean, Ibleam, Taanach, Megiddo, and Dor, which later came under the sway of Israel, even though they were not actually occupied by Israelitic stocks (Josh. xvii. 11-13). According to Josh. xvii. 11, the district of Manasseh extended along the southern side of the plain of Jezreel from the Jordan (Beth-shean) to the Mediterranean (Dor), and was consequently more than thirty-six miles wide. The length of the district of Ephraim was from north to south between twenty-one and twenty-four miles and the territory embraced the richest and most fertile portions of the mountain district (Josh. xvi. 6-8, xvii. 7-10; cf. Deut. xxxiii. 13-16). The region of Ephraim, whose southern boundary has been given in the article Judea (q.v.), stretched eighteen miles from north to south, and thirty miles from the Jordan on the east to the plain of Sharon on the west. It was thus inferior to Manasseh both in area and in fertility. Apparently there was no strict line of demarcation between the districts of Manasseh and of Ephraim (Josh. xvi. 9, xvii. 8). Samaria was crossed by important highways. The continuation of the road to the coast cut through the northwest corner of Samaria from Megiddo in the direction of Lydda; and another branch of the same road reached Samaria by way of Jezreel near the present Janin, where it again divided. One of these latter roads reached the highway to Egypt at Kafr Kud, while the other ran southward to the cities of Samaria and Shechem. Shechem was at the junction of several important roads. From the south came the road from Judea (Jerusalem) by way of Bethel, from the southwest a road from Jaffa, and from the southeast a road from Jericho by way of the Wadi al-Humr and the plain of al-Mahnah. To the northwest, through the Wadi al-Sha'ir, a road led to Dor and later to Caesarea, while to the northeast ran a road to Scythopolis, which was joined in the upper portion of the Wadi Far'ah by a road from the ford of the Jordan near Adama. The southern ranges of Samaria, on the other hand, were far less accessible. The ancient center of the district was Shechem, which lay on the watershed not quite a mile east of the modern Nablus. Its pre-Israelitic inhabitants
Samaria