Samaritans

“ The Samaritans seem really to represent one family. The people look to the hereditary priest as their father and divinely-appointed guide, and he apparently knows the history and character of every member of the community. ”

“ On the whole, I was very favorably impressed with the appearance of the Samaritan community. The men were generally handsome, tall, healthy-looking,and intelligent, but very few of them could read or write. The women are modest, and the children very pretty and thoughtful, yet full of life and activity. I am told that the Samaritans live to a great age, and generally escape the epidemics which break out occasionally in Nablûs. ”

“ From this city of Sebaste unto Jerusalem it is twelve miles. And between the hills of that country there is a well that four times in the year changes its colour; sometimes green, sometimes red, sometimes clear, and sometimes troubled; and men call that well Job. And the people of that country, [183] who are called Samaritans, were converted and baptized by the Apostles, but they hold not well their doctrine; and always they hold laws by themselves, varying from Christian men, from Saracens, Jews, and Pagans. The Samaritans believe well in one God ”

“ They meant the service in their new temple to be purely Jewish, and it seemed to them that if they let the Samaritans help in the building of the temple, it would lead to the introduction of idolatrous rites into Divine worship. Perhaps they felt, in an illogical sort of way, that the building itself would be profaned if any part of the work was done by such half-and-half Jews as were the Samaritans. No one likes to be pronounced not good enough for any work he himself proposes to do, and the Samaritans were extremely indignant at the rejection of their offer. ”

“ These Samaritans were not only degraded and despised socially, but they were also superstitious in their religious beliefs, and semi-heathen in their forms of worship. It would take generations to bring them up to a level with the Jewish Christians. ”

“ They took all as a right, and crucified the Lord of glory. But the Samaritans, in their austere scarcity of light and grace, were quicker to perceive the goodness and the law of God. So it is often in our flock. The favored become pampered, and they who have had least care have most gratitude. ”

“ The Jews, indeed, of Judæa and of Galilee hated the Samaritans with a perfect hatred, but neither hatred nor love is ever guided by reason. Our feelings always outrun our judgment, and the judgment of the Jews compelled them to recognise the Samaritans as within the bounds of circumcision, and therefore the Apostles tolerated, or at least did not except against, the preaching of the gospel to the Samaritans, and their admission by baptism into the Messianic kingdom. It is a phenomenon we often see repeated in our own experience. ”

“ I cannot tell whether this faith of the Samaritans is what one class of modern divines would call saving faith. I should imagine not. For these poor men said they knew Jesus to be the Saviour of the world; and it seems to be put forward as the characteristic of saving faith, that men should believe a Saviour for themselves who is not a Saviour for the world. ”

“ Fables and groundless traditions crowd themselves into every part of Jerusalem, and even the sites of the most memorable events are subjects of doubtful disputation; but Samaria has the charm of being now what it was nineteen centuries ago; and the Samaritans, though reduced to a very small number of families, have retained the language, the religion, the prejudices of their ancestors; and they love the Jews as little as their ancestors did. ”

“ The Samaritans.—The country inhabited by the kingdom of Israel—the north half of Palestine—was taken possession of by people sent from Babylon, Persia and other countries by the Assyrian king, and these strangers, intermarrying with the few Israelites remaining in the land, after the main body of the people had been led away into captivity, became the mixed people called Samaritans, so heartily despised by the Jews. ”

“ Don't you know his parable of the heathen? Nothing is more simple and more touching.'
'No, Jane, I do not know it.'
'‘Tis the last I heard him preach. It is called the Good Samaritan.'
'What is a Samaritan?'
'The Samaritans are an idolatrous people, beyond the farthest mountains of Judea; the high priests regard these people as excluded from the kingdom of God. Here is the parable:
'A man who was going to Jerusalem fell into the hands of robbers; they pillaged him, covered him with wounds, and went on their way leaving him half dead. ”

“ In one gospel he excludes Samaritans and Gentiles from his mission; in another he makes a Samaritan the model “neighbour”; in another he goes among the Samaritans in person. He becomes as manifold in doctrine as is Apollo or Dionysos in function. Even when he is made to lay down, as against Jewish superstition, the sane principle that victims of fatalities are not to be reckoned worse sinners than other men, a later hand appends a tag which reaffirms the very superstition impugned. ”

“ On the contrary, the law which He imposed on His disciples: ‘And into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not’ (Matt. x. 5) , this, during the days of His flesh, He imposed also on Himself. He was not sent ‘but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matt. xv. 24; Acts xiii. 46) ; and if any grace reached Samaritan or heathen, it was, so to speak, but by accident, a crumb falling from the children's table.”38 Samaria had been the portion of the tribe of Ephraim and of half the tribe of Manasses. ”

“ The Samaritans believe themselves to be children of Ephraim and Manasseh, and that their present priest is lineally descended from a branch of the tribe of Levi, and have accordingly a great pride in their descent. They observe the ceremonial law with exceeding care, and, even through the many years of persecution to which they have been subjected, they have never failed to go thrice in the year to the top of their holy mountain, repeating parts of the Law as they ascend. ”

“ To this opinion of the Samaritan woman, therefore, who imagined that God was less rightly or duly worshipped, according to the privileges of the different localities, either by the Jews in Jerusalem or by the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, the Saviour answered that he who would follow the Lord must lay aside all preference for particular places, and thus expressed Himself: “The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain shall the true worshippers worship the Father. God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” ”

“ To begin with, Justin Martyr, a Samaritan born, expressly says1 that almost all the Samaritans worshipped Simon.2 This alone might dispose of the notion that the “Simonians” dated merely from the time of Paul and Peter. It is absurd to suppose that nearly all the Samaritans, a people with old cults, could be converted within a century to a new Deity originating in one man. The cult must date further back than that. ”

“ And also then the Romans prevented the Samaritans from ascending the Mount; for they said: "Who- soever goes up on to this Mount shall be put to death ". And the Romans placed upon the sum- mit of the Mount a talisman, and this was a brazen bird,and it used to turn round with the sun howsoever it revolved, and it was so that if a Samaritan did go up, the bird would screech out: "Hebraeus," and they would know then that there was a Samaritan on the Mount, and would issue forth against him and kill him. Arid the children of Israil continued in this distress, un- till Baba Rabba arose ”

“ And when the Jews persecuted the disciples, and thrust them out of Jerusalem, Samaria readily and largely received the Word of God at their mouths. Thankful and acceptable adoration of God, exemplary brotherly love, enlightened faith, prompt renunciation of error, and acceptance of truth—these were graces which shone conspicuously in heretical and schismatic Samaritans, and won for them from the Saviour of Israel approbation, and love, and blessing. ”

“ Yet because so many of the Samaritans in the time of Christ were faithful to the measure of light they had, and kept alive in their hearts the hope of a coming Messiah, God made for them a wonderful way of escape. ”

“ The Samaritans do not know what they worship; the Jews know what they worship,—was the rebuke of Christ to a wayward and ineffective nation. Even those Athenians to whom God was the Unknown God had to erect an altar to that God. ”

“ Sooner shall the Sodomites arise out of the salt sea, and the Samaritans return out of the land of Assyria, than they enjoy their peace and prosperity again; for, to their shame be it spoken, it is a comfort to those of the ten tribes, who are dispersed and in captivity, to see those of the two tribes who had been as bad as they, or worse, in like manner dispersed and in captivity; and therefore they shall live and die, shall stand and fall, together. ”

“ But the twelve apostles were hardly yet willing to entertain kind feelings for the long-despised Samaritans.
Accordingly, when Simon Zelotes observed the Samaritan among the lepers, he sought to induce the Master to pass on into the city without even hesitating to exchange greetings with them. Said Jesus to Simon: "But what if the Samaritan loves God as well as the Jews? Should we sit in judgment on our fellow men? Who can tell? if we make these ten men whole, perhaps the Samaritan will prove more grateful even than the Jews. ”

“ They must not go into the way of the Gentiles, nor into any road out of the land of Israel, whatever temptations they might have. The Gentiles must not have the gospel brought them, till the Jews have first refused it. As to the Samaritans, who were the posterity of the mongrel people that the king of Assyria planted about Samaria, their country lay between Judea and Galilee, so that they could not avoid going into the way of the Samaritans, but they must not enter into any of their cities. ”

“ But what says the Master?
'No man can serve two masters. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.'
Let us then choose this day whom we will serve. Shall it be Christ or Satan, Jerusalem or Gerizim, God or the world?
For centuries after the time of Nehemiah, these Samaritans continued a source of annoyance to the Jews, tempting all who were disaffected and lawless to come to Gerizim, and vexing and troubling the Jews in every possible way. No one who was travelling up to the rival temple was ever made welcome in Samaria, or treated as he passed through with the slightest show of hospitality. ”

“ What Epiphanius says is that the Dositheans agree with the rest of the Samaritans in the observance of circumcision and the Sabbath, and in avoiding contact with any one because they feel that all men (that is, all gentiles) are unclean. He had already described the customs of all the Samaritans: They wash themselves and their clothes in water when they come in contact with a foreigner ”

“ But primary and universal instincts have their place, and, if scientific knowledge does not contradict them, should be trusted. It was because the Samaritans had not tampered with their natural cravings and hopes, and had not allowed their idea of the Messiah to harden into a definite conception, that they were able to welcome Jesus with a faith which He rarely met with elsewhere. ”

“ If those who look up to us for guidance—and there are very few of us but are accepted as guides by some—see us once among the Samaritans, they will take license and encouragement from us to be there frequently ”

“ Now if any deserve to be brought, on account of their opinions, before governors and kings, what others are they, save the Epicureans, who altogether deny the existence of providence? And also the Peripatetics, who say that prayers are of no avail, and sacrifices offered as to the Divinity? But some one will say that the Samaritans suffer persecution because of their religion. ”

“ The conversion of the Samaritans must be viewed as one of the divinely-appointed steps in the plan of human unification, one of the divinely-appointed actions gently leading to the final overthrow of the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile which the earlier chapters of this book trace for us. ”

“ The work he had to do among the Samaritans, the prospect he now had of doing good to many, this was meat and drink to him; it was the greatest pleasure and satisfaction imaginable. Never did a hungry man, or an epicure, expect a plentiful feast with so much desire, nor feed upon its dainties with so much delight, as our Lord Jesus expected and improved an opportunity of doing good to souls. Concerning this he saith, [1.] That it was such meat as the disciples knew not of. They did not imagine that he had any design or prospect of planting his gospel among the Samaritans ”

“ The Woman of Samaria.—In this year too, at its close, comes the interview with the woman at Jacob's well, in Samaria. It is well worth noticing that to a woman, and she a Samaritan woman, Jesus poured out truth as prodigally as he did to Nicodemus, a ruler of his own nation. The result of this interview was the adherence of a large number of Samaritans to the Master. All the above story of this first year of our Lord's public ministry we learn only from the Gospel of John, each of the other evangelists beginning his story with the Galilean ministry. ”

“ The Jews were perpetually reminding the Samaritans that they were “Cuthites,” mere “strangers from Assyria.” They loved to call them “proselytes of the lions” (2 K. xvii. 25) , and to accuse them of worshipping the idol-gods buried long age under the oak of Shechem (Gen. xxxv. 4) . To such an extent did they carry their dislike, that they cursed them publicly in their synagogues; declared their testimony was naught, and could not be received; affirmed that any who entertained a Samaritan in his house was laying up judgments for his children ”