Haifa, Oct. 25.—In my last letter I gave some account of the ancient
literature of the Samaritans, which is still extant and in their
possession. The people themselves, however, are such an interesting
ethnological fragment of a remote past that there are many points
connected with their origin and history which are worthy of
consideration, the more especially as they bear upon a problem which
has, of late years, exercised a singular species of fascination over a
certain class of minds. I refer to the so-called “lost” ten tribes. It
may be a disappointment to the Anglo-Israelites to suggest that they are
more likely to be found in the neighbourhood of the country they were
carried from than in England; but, under the circumstances, it is
certainly a more rational and less strained hypothesis, as I think may
be clearly shown by a reference to existing traditions, facts, and
records.
It would appear from the recently discovered cuneiform tablets which are
now under the investigation of Assyrian scholars, that, while they
substantially afford a remarkable confirmation of Biblical history,
there are certain discrepancies in regard to the capture of Samaria and
the carrying away of the Israelites into captivity, which make it
somewhat difficult to determine the exact date and nature of that event.
The complete recovery of the records of Shalmaneser (IV.), who no doubt
did besiege Samaria, will clear this up, and throw light upon the
records of his successor, Sargon, who seems to have succeeded to the
throne about the time of the capture of the city, after a three years'
siege, and who in that case would be the monarch who actually carried
off the Israelites. If this were so, then, according to the date of his
accession, the captivity must have occurred before the invitation which
Hezekiah sent out through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh inviting
Israelites to the Passover at Jerusalem, where we are informed that
large numbers attended it (2 Chron. xxx. 18); and it would put beyond a
doubt, what is in fact most probable, that Sargon, in carrying away the
Israelites captive, did exactly what Nebuchadnezzar also did not long
afterwards, when he carried off the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and
left a large population of the poorer classes behind, who were not worth
taking.
Indeed, when one comes to consider the population which we know to have
inhabited Samaria and Galilee at this time, it seems incredible that any
conqueror would have burdened himself with a host which must have
numbered at the lowest estimate over a million souls and probably a
great many more; and this conjecture is borne out by the fact that we
read, in Jeremiah xli. 5, that a deputation of fourscore Israelites came
to Jerusalem after its destruction, or more than a hundred years after
the captivity of the Israelites. That the Israelites thus left
intermarried with the colonists sent from Assyria on the adoption by
these latter of the Jewish religion, under the instruction of a priest
sent for the purpose, is extremely probable. The Samaritans themselves,
however, deny all intermixture with the colonists, and maintain they are
pure-blooded Israelites; and in confirmation of this we may mention
their marked Jewish type of countenance, their possession of an ancient
text of the books of Moses, and their observance of the Jewish Passover
according to the most ancient forms of that rite.
The Samaritan account of their origin and composition is, as may be
supposed, diametrically opposed to that contained in the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah. They assert that at the time when the two tribes returned
from the captivity a large number of the ten tribes also returned to
Samaria under Sanballat, called by Nehemiah a Horonite, but the
Samaritans call him a Levite. The Samaritan account goes on to state
that while the two tribes under Zerubbabel repaired to Jerusalem, the
rest of the congregation, three hundred thousand in all, besides youth,
women, children, and strangers, were led to Gerizim, where they
established the Temple. Then came the quarrels between the Jews at
Jerusalem and the Israelites at Samaria about the building of the
Temple; and the accounts contained in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and
the Samaritan records are not very discordant. Making allowance always
for the fact that the Biblical books do not admit that the Samaritans
were Israelites at all, though they admit that Sanballat's son was
married to the daughter of Eliashib, the Jewish high-priest, while this
latter is stated to have allied himself with Tobiah, who was a Samaritan
priest. This caused great displeasure to Nehemiah, and increased the
schism, but it goes, too, far to confirm the supposition that Sanballat
and Tobiah were Israelites.
The Samaritans are, indeed, in the peculiarities of their doctrine,
almost identical with the original Jewish party—the Karaite and
Sadducean sects. They are even called Sadducees in Jewish writings, and
their denial of the resurrection was, like that of the Sadducees, based
on the declaration that nothing was to be found in the law of Moses on
the subject. Again, their version of the law is closely similar to that
of the Septuagint, which was a translation authorized by a Sadducean
high-priest from a text differing from that finally established by the
Pharisees. It is often supposed that the Samaritans borrowed their
doctrine from the Sadducees, but it seems more rational to admit that
they were a sect originally identical, because originally Israelite. The
animosity of Josephus, who was a Pharisee; the fierce denunciation of
the Talmud, written by Pharisees; the destruction of the Gerizim temple
by Hyrcanus, also a Pharisee—all combine to indicate that the Jewish
hatred had nothing to do with any foreign origin of the race, but was
rather roused by the religious differences of a people whom they knew to
be their own kith and kin.
If we adopt this theory the fate of the ten tribes is no longer a
mystery. As we know that before the captivity they were addicted to
strange gods and strange marriages, it is not improbable that a large
proportion lost their tribal identity while in captivity by
intermarrying with the people by whom they were surrounded, and became
merged with them. It is also probable that a certain number, according
to the Samaritan chronicle three hundred thousand (but it need not be so
large a number), returned from their captivity at the time when the two
tribes received permission from Cyrus to return. It is also likely that
others who still retained their religion did not return, and are the
ancestors of certain Hebrew nomads still wandering in the desert. The
Jews from Yemen, for instance, assert that they are of the tribe of Dan,
while there are Jewish shepherds in Mesopotamia whose ancestry seems not
distinctly traceable to the two tribes.
The fact that those who returned to Palestine have dwindled numerically
to so small a number is no reason why they should not have been at one
time a considerable nation, as indeed we know they were from their
subsequent history. They made serious revolts against the Romans in the
time of Pilate, and again during the reigns of Vespasian and Severus,
but under Hadrian they assisted the Romans against the Pharisees. In the
sixth century they attacked the Christians and put the Bishop of Nablous
(or, as it was then called, Neapolis) to death, being at that time
spread over Egypt and the whole of Palestine, except the hills of Judea.
Clinging to the unity of God, they hold Moses to be the one messenger of
God, and Gerizim to be the earth's centre, as it is the shrine of their
faith. In this they are supported by the fact that while blessings and
curses are invoked on the two Samaritan mountains in the books of Moses,
there is no mention in those books of Jerusalem.
They also believe in a state of future retribution, and of angels and
devils as ministers of God in the unseen world. They look for a Messiah
who is to be of the sons of Joseph, and they hold that he is now on
earth, though not yet declared. His name is to begin with the letter M.
His titles are Taheb, “the restorer,” and El-Mahdi, “the guide.” Under
his direction the congregation will repair to Gerizim. Under the famous
twelve stones they will find the ten commandments, and under the stone
of Bethel the golden vessels of the Temple and the manna. After one
hundred and ten years the Prophet, who is considered inferior to Moses,
is to die, and be buried beside Joseph, whose tomb they show in the
valley. Soon after, on the conclusion of seven thousand years from its
creation, the world is to come to an end.
The Samaritans keep the Feast of the Passover on Gerizim, near the ruins
of the ancient temple; here they pitch their tents, and at sunset they
slay sheep and bake them for several hours in a huge oven in the ground,
which is lined with stone. The men are girded with ropes, with staves in
their hands and shoes on their feet, as though prepared for a journey.
They generally eat standing or walking. After the women have eaten, the
scraps are burned and a bonfire kindled and fed with the fat. The rest
of the night is spent in prayer, and the following day in rejoicing.
Besides this, the Feast of Tabernacles is also held on the mountain,
where they construct arbors of arbutus branches. The Feasts of Pentecost
and of Purim and the Day of Atonement are also observed.
The mountain is very barren, rising abruptly to a height of one thousand
feet above the valley in which the town is situated. The ruins which are
to be found upon it are described in the guide-books, so I shall only
allude to what is new in regard to them. Considerable excavation was
carried out here by Captain Anderson under the auspices of the Palestine
Exploration Fund, and plans made of what remains of the Fortress of
Justinian, which is one of the most valuable monuments of Byzantine art
in Palestine, and of the church said to have been built by Zeno. The
twelve stones, traditionally said to have come from the Jordan, were
also excavated, and found to be large, unhewn masses of rock placed upon
two other courses of stone rudely dressed and not squared. Some paved
platforms were also laid bare. These, together with the twelve stones,
may possibly have formed part of the temple built by Sanballat on
Gerizim. Curiously enough, there is a sacred rock here, with a cave
under it, not very unlike the rock and cave over which the Mosque of
Omar is built in the Haram at Jerusalem, and with the same traditions
attached to them. There is also a large ruin on Mount Ebal, enclosing an
area ninety-two feet square, with walls twenty feet thick; but the
excavations which were made here were attended with no result, and
conjecture is at fault as to what it may have been.
Perhaps the most interesting spots at Nablous are Jacob's well and
Joseph's tomb, but this from the point of view purely of association.
Where sites which can be identified with any certainty are so rare,
these two spots stand out preeminently as places about which there is a
unanimity of agreement and force of tradition which go far to confirm
their authenticity. They are venerated by the members of every religious
community in Palestine. Here also we may look with almost positive
certainty upon the position taken up by the Israelites when they stood
“half over against Gerizim” and “half over against Ebal,” to listen to
the reading of the law. Great pains have also been taken to discover the
position of “the great stone” which Joshua “set up under an oak that was
by the sanctuary of the Lord” when he made his covenant with the people
in Shechem immediately before his death, and not altogether without
success. The exactitude with which the tombs of Joshua, Eleazar, and
Phinehas are described in the sacred record enables us to regard the
ancient sepulchres which are still pointed out as theirs with far less
skepticism than usually accompanies our notice of such memorials of the
dead.
Altogether, the extreme antiquity of Shechem as a site, and the
important events of which it was the scene in the earliest period of
Jewish history, invest it with an interest denied to every other
locality in Palestine, excepting Jerusalem itself, while the well of
Jacob must ever be memorable—if, as was most likely, it was the spot
where Christ met the woman of Samaria—for perhaps the most remarkable of
all his utterances. When we remember the religious fanaticism which
characterized both Jew and Samaritan, and the bigoted prejudice which
envenomed the inveterate hatred they felt for each other, and which
turned principally upon the rival claims for sanctity of Jerusalem and
Gerizim, it seems almost incredible that a Jew could have been found,
and he a carpenter, gifted with such lofty courage and such high
spiritual intuition that he should dare to say: “Woman, believe me, the
hour cometh when ye shall neither on this mountain, nor at Jerusalem,
worship the Father. They that worship him must worship him in spirit and
in truth.”