An Apologetical Explanation of the

Samaritans

Who were the Samaritans, and why were they unfriendly toward the Jews?

Every nation still made gods of its own, and put them in the shrines of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they dwelt…. They also feared the Lord, and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places.  So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away….

     They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom henamed Israel.  (2 Kgs 17:28-34)

The Samaritans were descendants of the northern tribes during the years of the divided kingdom.  Through separation and cultural adaptations, they had developed different traditions, perspectives, and forms of worship than what the Jews practiced; therefore, Jews viewed the Samaritans as heretics.

Between Judea and Galilee was Samaria.  the Samaritans had intermingled with transplanted Assyrians during the time of the Assyrian occupation.  Throughout the centuries they had developed religious traditions distinct from those of the Jews, who preserved the true worship of God.  The Samaritans only accepted the first five books of Sacred Scripture, the Pentateuch, and worshiped God on Mr. Gerizim, near the present-day city of Nablus in the West Bank.

In the Gospels Jews regarded the Samaritans as unclean, and if a Jew as much as spoke with a Samaritan, he or she would have been tainted by this act.  In the Gospel of St. John, a Samaritan woman is astonished that Christ, a Jew, would even speak to her: “The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (Jn 4:9).  Yet Christ used the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a lesson on love for one’s neighbor (cf. Lk 10:30-37), and the Samaritans were among the first non-Jews to have received the Gospel with enthusiasm (cf. Acts 8:14-17).  (Cf. CCC 1315)

The city of Samaria was destroyed by Alexander the Great and John Hyrcanus.  It was rebuilt by Pompey and later given to Herod the Great, who renamed it Sebaste.  In the twelfth-century crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, a castle was built over what were believe to be he tombs of the prophets Elisha, Obadiah, and St. John the Baptist.

The Catechism addresses this question in paragraph 1315.

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