Religion: The Samaritans

And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

—Exodus 13:3

Across the world this week Jehovah's people gathered, family by family, in huts and houses, slum flats and luxury apartments, to celebrate their Lord's great act of deliverance—the Passover. It was the 3,271st anniversary, according to Jewish reckoning, of that dark night when the Lord moved through Egypt, striking down the firstborn, "from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon . . . and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." But each house of the children of Israel was marked, as the Lord had commanded Moses, with the blood of a lamb so that the Lord could pass over his people and spare them.

Jews are commemorating Passover with chanted prayers and symbolic foods—the bitter herbs, the salt, the unleavened bread. But on one high mountain, near Jerusalem, another people keep their Passover just as the Lord commanded Moses in the Book of Exodus, with the blood of lambs "without blemish" which are eaten in haste, loins girded for the sudden flight. These are the Samaritans.

Rejecters Rejected. To Sunday-school boys, Samaritan is a name synonymous with "good." But to the Jews of Jesus' day, Samaritans were a despised people. In the 8th century B.C. the Samaritan kingdom was called Israel. When the Assyrians "swept down like a wolf on the fold," they carried off most of the Israelites, leaving behind a destitute few who eventually intermarried with the invaders. Two centuries later, the Persian Cyrus freed the Jews of Jerusalem and returned them to their homeland; the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple, but were coldly rebuffed.

The Samaritans retaliated by rejecting the Jews. They proclaimed themselves the true remnant of Israel. The Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem was not the true temple; the correct site, they said, was on Mount Gerizim, where Abraham took Isaac for sacrifice. There the Samaritans set up their own temple and held that there had been no prophet since Moses and no law save that in the Pentateuch.

Persecuted by the Jews and Romans alike, the Samaritans dwindled again to a tiny community. Today they number barely 350: about 200 near the Jordanian town of Nablus (Biblical Shechem), and another 130 across the border in the Israeli town of Haik.

Eat It in Haste. This week, as they have for the past six years, the Israeli Samaritans will journey to join their brethren for Passover on Mount Gerizim. Bearing gifts of clothes, toys and fruit, the 130 men, women and children will cross the border at Jerusalem's Mandelbaum Gate, climb aboard buses for the 70-minute ride to the sacred mountain on which they must remain during the whole seven days of Passover, in accordance with Jordanian security regulations.