#2
Post
by bejay » Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:05 pm
Hi Patrick,
Here is what I found in reference to your question regarding the difference between the Samaritans and other Gentiles. A little background first.
In the 6th year of Hezekiah’s reign, the King of Assyria defeated the ten-tribe kingdom and deported the Israelites to other lands and repopulated the land of Israel by bringing other national groups to inhabitant this land. (2 Kings 18:10, 11; 2 Kings 17:24) The Bible does not specifically state whether the Assyrian King took every last one of the Israelites or if he left a few on the land. The actions that King Josiah of Judah took one hundred years later when he was cleansing the land of idolatry might speak to the fact that some Israelites may have been left. (See 2 Chronicles 34:6-8) But there is no definitive evidence either way.
What may be the clincher in this case is not the nationality of the people but their religious beliefs. 2 Kings 17:25-28 tells us this: “And it came about at the start of their dwelling there that they did not fear Jehovah. Therefore, Jehovah sent lions among them, and they came to be killers among them. So, they sent word to the king of Assyria, saying: “The nations that you have taken into exile and then settled in the cities of Samaria have not known the religion of the God of the land, so that he keeps sending lions among them; and look! They are putting them to death, inasmuch as there are none knowing the religion of the God of the land.” At that the king of Assyria commanded, saying: “Have one of the priests go there whom you led into exile from there, that he may go and dwell there and teach them the religion of the God of the land.” Accordingly one of the priests whom they had lad into exile from Samaria came and began dwelling in Bethel and he came to be a teacher of them as to how they ought to fear Jehovah.””
However, this was not a ‘turning to Jehovah’ in true worship by these pagan nations because verses 29-33 show that these nations continued to worship their national gods. They only became “fearers of Jehovah” not worshippers of Him.
But they did learn something of how Jehovah had been worshipped by the Jews. When the Jews returned from Babylon and were about to rebuild the temple, these Samaritans wanted to help them because as they said: “….we search for your God and to him we are sacrificing since the days of Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria who brought us here.” (Ezra 4:1, 2) The Jews, of course, refused their offer.
Later we remember that these same Samaritans managed to stop the rebuilding work on the temple for some 17 years.
Early on, the Samaritans developed what is called the ‘Samaritan Pentateuch’ which was the composed of the first five books of the Bible, the writings of Moses. According to the book “Insight on the Scriptures”, Volume II, page 868, the Samaritan Pentateuch differed from the Hebrew writings in many ways. It says: “The Samaritan Pentateuch differs from the Masoretic text in some 6,000 instances, most of which are minor. However, some are major, as, for example, the reading of Deuteronomy 27:4, where Gerizim is substituted for Ebal, the place where the laws of Moses were to be inscribed on whitewashed stones. (De 27:8) The obvious reason for this change was to give credence to their belief that Gerizim is the holy mountain of God.”
It would appear that these Samaritans had set up a religion that paralleled the Jewish religion even to the point of building a temple on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria as opposed to the one the Jews built of Mt. Moriah. (See John 4:20, 21)
But, more importantly, this article continues: “But their acceptance of the Pentateuch, by and large, gave the Samaritans the basis for believing that a prophet greater than Moses would come. (De 18:18, 19) In the first century Samaritans were looking for the coming of Christ the Messiah, and some of them recognized him; others rejected him. (Lu 17:16-19; Jo 4:9-43; Lu 9:52-56) Later, through the preaching of the early Christians, many Samaritans gladly embraced Christianity. –Ac 8:1-17, 25; 9:31; 15:3.”
Whether these Samaritans were a mix of Jews and Gentiles, we can not say for sure. But because of their interest in imitating the Jews in their worship, even though it may have been a mixture of pagan and Jewish ideas, they were in a good position to accept Jesus because of their knowledge of the writings of Moses. The evidence shows that many of them did. (Acts 8: 1-17, 25) In this respect, they were not like the remainder of the Gentile nations who had no interest at all in the Jewish manner of worship. This could possibly explain why the message was preached to them before it was preached to the other Gentile nations.
Agape,
bejay
If so, why does Jesus appear to be making a separation between two groups of "worldly" people