Why the jews dislike the samaritans

When the Samaritans wanted to join in rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, their assistance was rejected. You will find this in the Book of Ezra, Chapter Four. With the rejection came political hostility and opposition.

The Samaritans tried to undermine the Jews with their Persian rulers and slowed the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple. Nehemiah tells us Nehemiah that a grandson of the high priest, Eliashib, had married a daughter of Sanballat, the governor of the province of Samaria. For defiling the priesthood by marrying a non-Jewish woman, Nehemiah drove Eliashib from Jerusalem—though Sanballat was a worshiper of Yahweh.

According to the historian Josephus, Sanballat then had a temple built on Mount Garizim in which his son-in-law Eliashib could function. Apparently this is when the full break between Jews and Samaritans took place. In our own era which has witnessed the vandalism of synagogues and the burning of black churches, we should be able to understand the anger and hate such acts would incite.

The fact that there was such dislike and hostility between Jews and Samaritans is what gives the use of the Samaritan in the Parable of the Good Samaritan Luke such force! It is with those centuries of opposition and incidents behind their peoples that we can understand the surprise of the Samaritan woman John when Jesus rises above the social and religious restrictions not just of a man talking to a woman, but also of a Jew talking to a Samaritan.

You can find more about the story of the rift between Jews and Samaritans in the various biblical dictionaries and commentaries, and scattered through the historical and prophetical books of the Old Testament. So what happens while the Judeans are in exile? People migrate. Jerusalem is a wreck, to be sure, but there are lots of useful parts lying around.

When the Judeans in Babylon are finally liberated by the Persians in B. The contest for control between Judea and Samaria is back on. Some scholars say Samaritans were probably Israelites from Samaria who spread out over the territory while the Judeans were gone. They recognized only the five books of Moses—Genesis through Deuteronomy—as their scripture. Returnees from Babylon had composed books of history and collected prophecies to add to their holy books.

Judean leaders tried to resolve the conflict. The priest Ezra thought there could be reconciliation between these two societies. But the governor Zerubbabel took a racist approach: Their blood is impure. The communities separate. Samaritans centralize in the northern area of Shechem. As Greek control of the land succeeds Persian, then Egyptian, and finally Roman, the region of Samaria becomes increasingly Hellenized; that is, more like the empire. Judeans resist outside influences at all cost.

By the first century C. How daring, then, for Jesus to tell a story about a good Samaritan! To share an extended conversation with a Samaritan woman he meets at a well, then to welcome her whole community as they seek an encounter with him. Citizens of Judea had spent centuries walling Samaritans out of their society with laws and mistreatment. A thousand years of bickering and division, perhaps, is enough.

We hate our enemies for a lot of reasons: politics, history, religion, blood, strangeness, a sense of grievance, an inherited disapproval. Hate begins somewhere. So does acceptance. These intermarried with those who were brought in, so that the Samaritans were no longer a pure Jewish race. Seventy years later, when the Jews returned, the Samaritans came to help rebuild Jerusalem. The Jews called them "half-breeds" and sent them home.

The Samaritans built their own temple which the Jews considered pagan. The feud grew, and by the time of Christ, the Jews hated the Samaritans so much they crossed the Jordan river rather than travel through Samaria.

But, John says Jesus had to go through Samaria. Because he had a divine appointment with a woman there who later said she believed when the Messiah came he would teach her about God verse Later, to shame the Jews for their prejudice, Jesus made the main character in one of his parables a Good Samaritan Luke 10 ; and the 1 leper of 10 in Luke 17 who returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan.

On a side note, the scribes later became so wealthy they hired servants to copy the scrolls. They became the lawyers who interpreted the Laws of Moses and gave Jesus much opposition.