The Samaritans, the earliest Jewish sect; their history, theology, and literature . re of Shechem as a hostile city. But it re-mains now, apart from external politics, to investigate theactual spiritual relations between the Jews and the Samari-tans in the three or four centuries respectively before andafter the beginning of the Christian era. For this studythe Samaritan literature is almost absolutely worthless sofar as direct references are concerned, for none of it exceptthe Samaritan edition of the Pentateuch can be dated withcertainty earlier than the IVth Century A. C. We aretherefore th
The Samaritans, the earliest Jewish sect; their history, theology, and literature . re of Shechem as a hostile city. But it re-mains now, apart from external politics, to investigate theactual spiritual relations between the Jews and the Samari-tans in the three or four centuries respectively before andafter the beginning of the Christian era. For this studythe Samaritan literature is almost absolutely worthless sofar as direct references are concerned, for none of it exceptthe Samaritan edition of the Pentateuch can be dated withcertainty earlier than the IVth Century A. C. We aretherefore thrown back upon the Judaistic literature exclu-sively, the examination of which will show what the Jews,the enemies themselves being judges, thought in thatperiod concerning the Samaritans. There appear to be but two references to that sect in theearly non-canonical literature of the Jews.^ The one isEcclns. 50, 25f: With two races is my soul vexed; andthe third is no nation: with the dwellers of Seir and 1 For reference to certain Hellenistic literature, see Chap. XIV, § 5. 154. ?J paoo< IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 155 Philistia, and with the foolish race that sojourns in She-chem. It is to be noticed that the tone of the writer isone of contempt towards the Samaritans. The identicalcontemptuous attitude appears in the apocryphal Testamentof Levi, c. 7: From this day will Shechem be called theCity of Fools (TroAt? aawirMv).^ This epithet of fool asapplied to the northern sectarian is further witnessed toin the New Testament. In Jn. 8, 48 the Jews are repre-sented as saying to Jesus: Do we not well say, Thouart a Samaritan and hast a devil ? In what sense wasJesus called a Samaritan? The answer has not been satis-factorily given. Commentators variously hold that the epi-thet refers to Jesus heresy, to his not being a genuine sonof Abraham (cf. v. 39ff), or to his hostility to the the context leads much rather to the inference that Samaritan means here fool. This comes out
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