Jews Vs. Samaritans: Insult and Injury

Last week, we saw how the conflicts between the Jews and Samaritans began. So how did the two warring peoples treat each other, living side by side in first century Israel?
By the first century and most likely long before, both Jewish and Samaritan priests taught their people that it was sinful to have any contact with the other. Jews were to avoid the impure land of the Samaritans and Samaritans were not to speak to Jews. In addition, Samaritans and the Jews fed their mutual hatred with insult and injury.

Insult:

• Jews called the Samaritans a ‘herd’, not a nation.

• A widely used Jewish proverb stated that “a piece of bread given by a Samaritan is more unclean than swine’s flesh.”

• Sometime early in the first century, Samaritans threw human bones into the Temple in Jerusalem on the day of Passover. This heinous act, according to the Jews, defiled the sanctuary making it impossible to celebrate the most important feast of the year.

• The worst insult that a Jew could use was to call someone a Samaritan, such as in John 8:48 when the hostile Pharisees answered Jesus by saying, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and are possessed?”

Injury:

• In 128 BC, the leader of Judaea, John Hyrcanus, completely destroyed the Samaritan capital. The Samaritans rebuilt it a hundred years later and continued their blasphemous sacrifices.

• Samaritans were known to lie in wait for Jews traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem for the feast days. Sometimes these attacks escalated into death, and in at least one instance Rome intervened. As a result, Galileans (except for Jesus) used the longer route on the other side of the Jordon.

• The ruling Roman legions could hardly distinguish Jews from Samaritans, but that didn’t keep the two groups from using Rome against each other. Some Samaritan men would enlist in the Roman auxiliary troops for a chance to legally harass their Jewish neighbors. Both groups are said to have bribed Roman soldiers to persecute the other.

Keeping this long-running feud in mind, Jesus’ contact with the Samaritan woman at the well was not only surprising, it was shocking. And his parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ was not a gentle story, but a stinging insult to the Pharisees.
With what we now know about the conflict between Samaritans and Jews, how do you see these two Bible passages differently?
Next time . . .  Samaritans and Jews: The Pentateuch Vs. The Law