John P. Meier, «The Historical Jesus and the Historical Samaritans: What can be Said?», Vol. 81 (2000) 202-232

Careful analysis of the Gospels shows that there is not very much hard data about the historical Jesus’ interaction with or views about the Samaritans. There is multiple attestation, found in the Lucan and Johannine traditions, that Jesus, different from typical views of his time, held a benign view of Samaritans and had positive, though passing, encounters with some Samaritans. However, there is gospel agreement, from silence or statement, that Jesus had no programmatic mission to the Samaritans. Besides the above important conclusions, this essay also makes clear the useful distinction between Samaritans and Samarians.

historical data¹⁸. Some authors suggest that, when Alexander destroyed the city of Samaria because of a revolt against his rule, large numbers of its inhabitants fled to Shechem, which was in fact rebuilt ca. 331 B.C.¹⁹. This in turn may have led to Shechem’s becoming a religious center of the emerging Samaritan religion. But we must admit that at this point we are mostly in the realm of speculation. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be drawn from all these frustrating attempts to sketch the origins of Samaritanism is that one must carefully and consistently distinguish ‘Samarians’, the inhabitants and rulers of the city and territory known as Samaria, from ‘Samaritans’, the adherents of an Israelite religious group centered around Mt. Gerizim/Shechem. If this distinction is maintained, a review of the available evidence only underlines our ignorance of the origins of the Samaritan religion prior to the Hellenistic period.

        With all this uncertainty, it is not surprising that scholars disagree on when or how the Samaritans came to build their temple on Mt. Gerizim. Some (e.g., A. Spiro, B. Reicke) place the event toward the end of the Persian period, perhaps ca. 388 B.C.²⁰. Others prefer a later date in the 4th century, soon after the beginning of the Hellenistic period inaugurated by Alexander the Great²¹. The exact site of the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim has so far eluded archaeologists, and some scholars suggest that the cult site was much more modest in size than Josephus’ remarks might lead us to expect. In this regard, it is well to remember that Samaritan traditions stress the holiness of Mt. Gerizim and the altar Moses supposedly commanded to be built there,