A MINHA HEMEROTECA VIDEO

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Magalhães Luís
To quote from Bowman [John Bowman, The Importance of Samaritan Researches."Annual of the Leeds University Oriental Society 1 (1958-59): 43-54]

“…the Samaritans are important as living witnesses to ancient traditions and practice. They are our only link with the old Zadokite priesthood of Jerusalem. Their sacrifices, their stress on levitical purity, their calendar, all may be survivals of the early post-Exilic period …”

I would stress the word “may” in Bowman’s statement. »» http://www.adath-shalom.ca/samaritan_origin.htm

Magalhães Luís
http://www.adath-shalom.ca/samaritan_origin.htm

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Magalhães Luís
Problems in Samaritan Studies
Quality and Quantity of Researchers
a) Quality and Quantity of Researchers
From its inception, Samaritan Studies have been crippled by the small number of qualified researchers willing to dedicate a major portion of their professional careers to Samaritan history, culture, languages, literature etc. In part, this is probably due to a combination of limited interest within the academic community, the difficulty of mastering the necessary languages (see below) and the fact that there are clearly no literary masterpieces in the Samaritan literary corpus. On the other hand, scholars of modest capabilities, may find attractive, being a “big fish in a small pond”.
This field has been blessed by a few first-class scholars (such as Ben-Hayyim, Cowley, Crown, Macuch, Montgomery, Pummer, Purvis, Tal) more mediocre scholars and some a good deal worse than that. Unfortunately, some of the poorer scholars have published the most, and in English the most accessible of languages. Poor scholarship, often picked up in secondary literature, is a serious problem since, in such a slow developing field a book can remain in current use for many decades and thus poor scholarship can mislead almost ad infinitum.
At present, the greatest need is for: (a) an English translation of Ben Hayyim's Tibat Marqe: A Collection of Samaritan Midrashim, (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1988 (Hebrew); and, (b) a critical edition and translation of the Defter - the core Samaritan liturgy.

b) The Language problem
To work seriously in Samaritan Studies it is necessary to master the following languages: Samaritan Biblical Hebrew, Samaritan Aramaic, Samaritan Arabic, Samaritan Modern Literary Hebrew (a derivative of Biblical Hebrew), English, German, French and Modern Hebrew often written in a rather difficult style and sometimes even Russian. To this level of linguistic competence must be added all the skills and competences necessary to do something useful with the material after you have read it. It is hardly to be wondered at that few scholars measure up.
What can be done to ease this burden?
First of all, the need for competencies in Biblical Hebrew, Samaritan Aramaic, Samaritan Arabic, and Samaritan Modern Literary Hebrew can be reduced, for many types of work, by providing careful English translations of critical editions of the major Samaritan texts.
Secondly, the field could standardize on publishing in English. From the beginning of Samaritan Studies English has been the major modern language of publication. It is now the “New Latin” – a language that any scholar in any field, can be expected to be able to read fluently. This will be hard to swallow for Israelis, as well as German and French speakers. However, it is the path taken in most fields of study in the world and a clear necessity if Samaritan Studies is to prosper as it should.
I will give just two clear, and important, examples of mediocre scholarship pushing out outstanding scholarship because the former was published in English while the outstanding scholarship was published in a difficult Modern Hebrew
- Macdonald’s edition of Memar Marqah with English translation (John Macdonald, ed. and trans., Memar Marqah: the Teaching of Marqah. 2 vols. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 84. Berlin, 1963) in preference to Ben-Hayyim’s (Z. Ben-Hayyim, Tibat Marqe (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1988)
- Gaster’s edition of Al-Asatir (The Samaritan Book of the Secrets of Moses, 1927) in preference to Ben-Hayyim’s ("Sefer Asatir," Aramaic text and modern Hebrew translation by J. Ben-Hayyim. Tarbitz 14 (1943): 104-114, 123-125; Tarbitz 15 (1944): 79-86) see Encyclopaedia Judaica vol. 2 cols. 510-511

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Magalhães Luís
nnex 1

Some Thoughts of the Differing Fates of Samaritans and Jews

The Samaritan mindset, like that of the Sadducees seems to have been conservative. They rejected the Hebrew Bible beyond Deuteronomy and have preserved no literature of their own prior to the 4th century CE. Centuries later than main stream Judaism, they accepted the synagogue, the substitution of prayer for the sacrificial service other than Passover and belief in the resurrection of the dead. Main stream Samaritanism aborted the development of a rabbinate despite early developments in that direction[38]. Thus priestly leadership, founded on a monopoly of the interpretation of Torah, has continued to the present day. The Samaritans have been so tied to their holy mountain that they could not escape plagues, wars, frequent Christian and Muslim persecutions and other calamities when they visited the area[39]. Their Diaspora communities were bled continuously to help build up the declining population at Shechem-Nablus. One wonders whether such a priest-temple centred worship could hold the allegiance of those far away who could always convert or informally join the Jewish, Christian or Muslim communities.

By contrast, Rabbinic Judaism has periodically, in the past, been willing to “reinvent” itself. Its “canonization” process has, if unacknowledged, effectively continued to the present (e.g. Acceptance as normative of the Hebrew Bible beyond Deuteronomy, the Mishnah, Gemara, Rashi, Maimonides, Shulkhan Arukh, Zohar etc. etc.)

Rabbinic Judaism has developed in the Oral Law a method of changing to meet new circumstances while maintaining Deuteronomy’s theo-centricity.

Through the development of the Oral Law, yeshivot, prayer and the synagogue, Judaism became fully portable. Perhaps, the Temple sacrifices were not renewed after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem because Judaism had already found it to be an anachronism from the removal of which the Jews benefited.

Annex 2
Samaritans in the New Testament

The following are the New Testaments texts mentioning the Samaritans with a few comments of my own. I will take the texts as they stand fully realizing that they may not, in fact, closely to what Jesus may have said[40].

1. John, chapter 4:3-22

3: he left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
4: He had to pass through Samaria.
5: So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6: Jacob's well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7: There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
8: For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9: The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10: Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
11: The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?
12: Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?"
13: Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again,
14: but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15: The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."
16: Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
17: The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, `I have no husband';
18: for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly."
19: The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20: Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
21: Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22: You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

This story exhibits the Jewish view of the Samaritans: i.e.

Their vessels are ritually impure (a very Pharisaic concern!)
They are unchaste – she has had 5 husbands and a lover
Cultic-religious differences i.e. they worship on the wrong mountain and they worship in ignorance (vs. 22)

The story also illustrates the Samaritan claim to be the true Israel (“our father Jacob” in vs. 12). It should be noted that Jesus rejects this claim in vs. 22.

From a Christian point of view, the story’s point is that, if even the corrupt Samaritans recognize Jesus as a prophet how much more should the Jews!

2. Luke, chapter 17:11-18

11: On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
12: And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance
13: and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
14: When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed.
15: Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice;
16: and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.
17: Then said Jesus, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?
18: Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

Here the Samaritan is classed as a foreigner. From a Christian polemical point of view, once again, this illustrates the point that if even the Samaritan is grateful how much more should be the Jews the true Israel. The point of the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:20-37) is analogous, although the story contains other elements.

3. Matthew, chapter 10:1 and vss. 5-7

1: And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity….
5: These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,
6: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
7: And preach as you go, saying, `The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'

Jesus is once again classing the Samaritans with the gentiles.

4. John, chapter 8:48-49

48: The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"
49: Jesus answered, "I have not a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.

Perhaps, here the appellation of “Samaritan” was taken by Jesus as being the equivalent of insane or, perhaps, Jesus considered the accusation to be such a low blow that he wouldn’t stoop to answer it.

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Ireton, Sean: The Samaritans - A Jewish Sect in Israel - AnthroBase

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Magalhães Luís
From (from Ha'aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999)
YHWH and his Consort
How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together with the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: YHWH and his Asherath. At two sites, Kuntilet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention 'YHWH and his Asherah', 'YHWH Shomron and his Asherah', 'YHWH Teman and his Asherah'. The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, YHWH and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name. These inscriptions, from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility that monotheism, as a state religion, is actually an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. Ze'ev Herzog

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Magalhães Luís
Dado adicional: "Thus the Ammonites and Moabites were descendants (through incest!) of Lot, Abraham’s nephew; the North Arabians were descendants of Abraham through Hagar while the South Arabians and Midianites were descendants of Abraham through Keturah; the Edomites were descendants of Isaac through Esau as were the Amalekites. We can thus envisage the genealogy arising in a situation in which the authors saw Israel’s relationship to surrounding nations, in descending order of closeness as: (a) Edomites and Amalekites - family but murderous; (b) North and South Arabians and Midianites; (c) Moabites, Ammonites (and Arameans)."

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Magalhães Luís
Bibliografia adicional: Samaritans and Jews. The Origin of Samaritanism Reconsidered by R. J. Coggins, Oxford Hendrickson Publishers, 2002.

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Magalhães Luís
"Many and great are the services which I have rendered you in the course of the war, with the help of God, when I was in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, and when I came with the Jews to Leontopolis in the nome of Heliopolis and to other places where our nation is settled; and I found that most of them have temples, contrary to what is proper, and that for this reason they are ill-disposed toward one another, as is also the case with the Egyptians because of the multitude of their temples and their varying opinions about the forms of worship; and I have found a most suitable place in the fortress called after Bubastis-of-the-Fields, which abounds in various kinds of trees and is full of sacred animals, wherefore I beg you to permit me to cleanse this temple, which belongs to no one and is in ruins, and to build a shrine to the Most High God in the likeness of that at Jerusalem and with the same dimensions, on behalf of you and your wife and children, in order that the Jewish inhabitants of Egypt may be able to come together there in mutual harmony and serve your interests. For this indeed is what the prophet Isaiah foretold, "There shall be an altar in Egypt to the Lord God," and many other such things did he prophesy concerning this place" (Josephus, Ant. 13.65–68).
»» "WHEN Masada was thus taken, the general left a garrison in the fortress to keep it, and he himself went away to Cesarea; for there were now no enemies left in the country. Caesar gave orders to Lupus to demolish that Jewish temple which was in the region called Onion, and was in Egypt, which was built and had its denomination from the occasion following: Onias, the son of Simon, one of the Jewish high priests fled from Antiochus the king of Syria, when he made war with the Jews, and came to Alexandria. Onias built a fortress and a temple, not like to that at Jerusalem, but such as resembled a tower. He built it of large stones to the height of sixty cubits; he made the structure of the altar in imitation of that in our own country, and in like manner adorned with gifts. The king also gave him a large country for a revenue in money, that both the priests might have a plentiful provision made for them, and that God might have great abundance of what things were necessary for his worship. There had been also a certain ancient prediction made by a prophet whose name was Isaiah, about six hundred years before, that this temple should be built by a man that was a Jew in Egypt. And this is the history of the building of that temple.
And now Lupus, the governor of Alexandria, upon the receipt of Caesar's letter, came to the temple, and carried out of it some of the donations dedicated thereto, and shut up the temple itself. When he had shut up the gates, he made it entirely inaccessible, insomuch that there remained no longer the least footsteps of any Divine worship that had been in that place. Now the duration of the time from the building of this temple till it was shut up again was three hundred and forty-three years." (Jewish Wars, Book 7, Chapter 10 http://wesley.nnu.edu/josephus/war-7.htm)

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Magalhães Luís
Importante: Samaritan sects | See "Sects and Movements by J Fossum both in The Samaritans", Alan D. Crown. »» The Dosethian sect showed a number of parallels to the Pharisees. However, in Judaism the Pharisees eliminated the conservative Sadducees; in Samaritanism the conservative priestly establishment swallowed up the Dosethians. In the 8th century CE the Karaites split off from Rabbinic Judaism largely rejecting rabbinic tradition and mainly taking a literal approach to interpreting the Hebrew Bible. This led to many parallels with the Samaritans and a considerable use by the Samaritans of karaite literature and even acceptance of some Karaite halakhic views.

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Magalhães Luís
The Samaritans accept registry as a Jew ("Shomroni Yehudi") despite regarding themselves as descendants of the tribes of Israel, in distinction from the tribe of Judah. The term "Jew" does not relate exclusively to the descendants of Judah, but in general to the Children of the People of Israel. Also the Karaites today, call themselves, "Yehudim Karaim" (Karaite Jews), and some of them are formally registered in this way. The Ethopian Jews are regarded by the rabbinical authorities as the descendants of the tribe of Dan, and are called "Yehudei Etiopia" (Ethopian Jews), but since their integration with mainstream Judaism, are acknowledged and registered as Jews, with no indication of their origin. (Korinaldi 2001: 2)

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Magalhães Luís
Vou mencionar agora o erudito Marqah. »Vide a seguinte citação» "Marqah was a Samaritan scholar living in the fourth century CE. He is the probable author of the Targum a mostly literal translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Palestinian Aramaic. Marqah is responsible for the second most important Samaritan writings after the Torah itself - Memar Marqah. MacDonald dates the work and its author to the late third or early fourth century CE (MacDonald 1964: 42). (Partly because of the inclusion of contemporaneous Greek vocabulary.)

The proximity to the dominant Christianity of the late Roman and Byzantine era in Israel and the Samaritan diaspora allowed for New Testament influence on the status of Moses. The development of the doctrine of Moses by Marqah can be seen as a reaction to Christian comparisons of Jesus Christ and Moses (MacDonald 1964: 189).

This Samaritan system of belief in Moses clearly parallels New Testament teachings in the belief of Christ (MacDonald 1964: 150):

'He who believes in Moses believes in his Lord' (Memar IV: 7);
'You believe in God, believe also in me (Christ)' (John 14:1)." - http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/I/Ireton_S_01.htm

Ireton, Sean: The Samaritans - A Jewish Sect in Israel - AnthroBase

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Magalhães Luís
"For much if not all of the 11th to 15th centuries CE the Samaritans, and the Karaites in Cairo, fell under the religious and civil jurisdiction of the Jewish Nagid or Rayyis al Yahud. This Rayyis or Ra'is was appointed from among the Rabbinite Jews by the Muslim caliphate. According to Goitein the role corresponded to that of the Christian patriarchs. No differentiation was made by the Muslim authorities between the Jewish sects and Samaritanism. Unlike the Karaites, who in Egypt were generally well integrated with the Rabbinites and often intermarried with them, the Samaritans did not recognise the Jewish religious authorities (Goitein 1967). Goitein also notes that on occasion poorer members of the Samaritan community would apostate to Rabbinite Judaism.

Uniquely in these days of globalisation the Samaritans prove the exception to Hobsbawm's observation: 'never was the word "community" used more indiscriminately and emptily than in the decades when communities in the sociological sense became hard to find in real life' (Hobsbawm 1994: 428).

Perhaps more than any other 'ethnie' the Samaritans are a bounded group. This boundedness is loosening (in some respects) as shall be seen in chapter 2. Endogamy is and still is blighting the community leading to a disproportionate number of deaf mutes and cripples. In response to this and the current imbalance between the number of marriageable males and females, exogamy has become commonplace. Most young Israeli Samaritan men marry Jewish women who are then brought into the faith.

Despite this loosening, self-identity for Samaritans as individuals seems to be subsumed to their self-identity as a community. Although they interact with and are part of the modern, globalised world they are still inherently members of a bounded group. Samaritans have what Hobsbawm considers the modern man and woman are striving for - a group 'to which they can belong, certainly and forever in a world in which all else is moving and shifting, in which nothing else is certain' (Hobsbawm 1996: 40).

Now Samaritans live 'only in Holon and Mount Gerizim, but we can travel all over the world'. Despite the general ignorance of the Jewish Israeli populace there has been reconciliation between the two faiths. This is partly as a result of the patronage of Ben Tzvi and also of sympathetic Israeli scholastic interest. (Especially since the mid twentieth century CE and the legacy of Professor Ben Hayyim.)" -http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/I/Ireton_S_01.htm

Ireton, Sean: The Samaritans - A Jewish Sect in Israel - AnthroBase

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Magalhães Luís
Dado fundamental: "I would argue that the tactical management of Samaritan boundaries and in turn their ethnoreligious distinctiveness is not a recent development but a continuing centuries-old process. Initially a boundary was established between the Samaritans and returnees from Babylon. The origin of the snub to the Samaritans may be mythical, but their subsequent refusal to accept Jewish additions to the biblical canon has helped preserve differentials.

Conversely, influence from the more distant Christianity and Islam has allowed the Samaritans to adapt to a changing environment. A clear example of this can be seen in the New Testament-influenced veneration of Moses." - http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/I/Ireton_S_01.htm

Magalhães Luís
http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/I/Ireton_S_01.htm

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Magalhães Luís
"[Also we can found] striking similarities between Muslim and Samaritan prayer postures and blessings [can be] observed."

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Ireton, Sean: The Samaritans - A Jewish Sect in Israel - AnthroBase

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Magalhães Luís
"Samaritans in the New Testament

The following are the New Testaments texts mentioning the Samaritans with a few comments of my own. I will take the texts as they stand fully realizing that they may not, in fact, closely to what Jesus may have said[40].

1. John, chapter 4:3-22

3: he left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
4: He had to pass through Samaria.
5: So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6: Jacob's well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7: There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
8: For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9: The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10: Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
11: The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?
12: Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?"
13: Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again,
14: but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15: The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."
16: Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
17: The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, `I have no husband';
18: for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly."
19: The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20: Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
21: Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22: You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

This story exhibits the Jewish view of the Samaritans: i.e.

Their vessels are ritually impure (a very Pharisaic concern!)
They are unchaste – she has had 5 husbands and a lover
Cultic-religious differences i.e. they worship on the wrong mountain and they worship in ignorance (vs. 22)

The story also illustrates the Samaritan claim to be the true Israel (“our father Jacob” in vs. 12). It should be noted that Jesus rejects this claim in vs. 22.

From a Christian point of view, the story’s point is that, if even the corrupt Samaritans recognize Jesus as a prophet how much more should the Jews!

2. Luke, chapter 17:11-18

11: On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
12: And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance
13: and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
14: When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed.
15: Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice;
16: and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.
17: Then said Jesus, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?
18: Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

Here the Samaritan is classed as a foreigner. From a Christian polemical point of view, once again, this illustrates the point that if even the Samaritan is grateful how much more should be the Jews the true Israel. The point of the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:20-37) is analogous, although the story contains other elements.

3. Matthew, chapter 10:1 and vss. 5-7

1: And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity….
5: These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,
6: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
7: And preach as you go, saying, `The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'

Jesus is once again classing the Samaritans with the gentiles.

4. John, chapter 8:48-49

48: The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"
49: Jesus answered, "I have not a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.

Perhaps, here the appellation of “Samaritan” was taken by Jesus as being the equivalent of insane or, perhaps, Jesus considered the accusation to be such a low blow that he wouldn’t stoop to answer it." - http://www.adath-shalom.ca/samaritan_origin.htm