Samaritans (Samaria)

Samaritans were the mixed population that settled the territory of the former northern kingdom after the Assyrians deported most of Israel's population in 722 BC and resettled the land with people from Babylon, Cuthah, and other conquered regions. Over time these settlers blended Yahweh worship with their own traditions, and by the postexilic period the returning Jews rejected their claim to a share in rebuilding the Jerusalem temple, a rift that hardened into the open hostility reflected in Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and the parable of the good Samaritan. The Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, and archaeological excavation there has uncovered its remains along with a large fortified precinct; a small Samaritan community, numbering several hundred, still lives near Mount Gerizim and in Holon, Israel, preserving its own version of the Pentateuch.