What especially makes Samaritans stand apart is that they still practice animal sacrifice on Mt. Gerizim for Passover. This means that they still have priests, unlike Jews who may be named Cohen or Levi, but are not actual priests literally speaking.       Read more

The history between Jews and Samaritans has always been fraught with difficulty, and sometimes hatred and attempts at ethnic cleansing.  Modern Jews are aware of this history, to some degree, and here is a modern painting which tells a bit of the story, and the attempts at shalom between them. How difficult was the history, and why is the Samaritan woman so cautious in meeting Jesus in John 4? Well consider this…. In short the Hasmoneans tried to do away... Read more

Lest we think that the Samaritans were unknown in the first century outside of the Holy Land, dedicatory inscriptions have been found about them as far away as in Thessaloniki in Greece or on the religious island of Delos, indicating some of them lived abroad. The focus of Samaritan religion is indeed the Torah, and Torah scrolls have always been all important.   Read more

The Hebrew of the Samaritans varies in form, just as the content of their Torah varies from the Masoretic text as well.  Here’s a comparison of the alphabets… The Samaritan letters are more cursive in form.  Here is an inscription on stone of the ten commandments.  Basically they are the same as in our OT except one of them mentions Mt. Gerizim.     Read more

With such a small community in Nablus and Tel Aviv, celebrations of some of Jewish festivals tend to be small, and in house, and not just the Passover celebration, which actually begins up on Mt. Gerizim with the actual sacrifice of the lambs.   Here we see the way they celebrate Sukkot— the harvest festival. Above is a replica of what you see below. The one above in the museum doesn’t involve real fruit. Yes, what they are doing is hanging... Read more

Another excellent exhibit in the Museum of the Bible that was premiered last Fall is an exhibit on the Samaritans— yes those Samaritans who are still living in the Holy Land today, still practicing their Jewish religion, still sacrificing on Mt. Gerizim at Nablus, and much more.  Let’s see what we can learn. The reason characters in this political cartoon (not a Sunday school lesson) is explained as follows: We are of course all familiar with Jesus’ parable in Luke’s... Read more

In the late Fall of last year I was asked to come and give a lecture at the Museum of the Bible about Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, from a historical and archaeological point of view.  The Franciscan friars from Bethlehem were coming for the launch of the Bells of Bethlehem exhibit at the Museum— and bringing the ancient medieval bells with them!   They had been buried for centuries along with original organ pipes at some point in the... Read more

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