In the time of Jesus, the gospels report that there was a lot of contempt between Jews and Samaritans, to the point that Jesus used the Samaritans many times as an example to teach many of his most important parables, and this in the sacred scriptures had its explanation. The origin of the Samaritans, the Bible tells us, sinks into the depths of history.
The Second Book of Kings tells the beginning of the Samaritan people after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrian empire.
The Bible relates that Hoshea was the last King of Israel, and that, being a vassal of Shalmaneser, he rebelled against him, which caused the invasion of the Assyrian empire, an empire famous for its cruelty. Shalmaneser, after imprisoning Hoshea, besieged the capital of the Kingdom of Samaria for several years and when he achieved his conquest, he deported all the Israelites who lived in the country to Assyria; and in this way ten of the twelve tribes of Israel disappeared, only the tribes that lived in the Kingdom of Judah survived. And the disappearance of the Kingdom of Israel from history had its logic, of the two Kingdoms that emerged after the death of Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah, the Kingdom of Israel was the kingdom most affected by idolatry and the corruption of its customs.
Shalmaneser tells the Bible, after the deportation of the Israelites he brought people from Babylon and Mesopotamia to settle in the country. But God punished the newcomers, so the King of Assyria looked for priests among the deportees to teach the new inhabitants of the country the religion of the Israelites. And so the Samaritans worshiped their gods but also the God of Israel.
To finish the story, this is how the Bible tells what the relationship of the Samaritans was like with the God of Israel:
"They worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high places. So they feared the LORD but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.
To this day they persist in their former practices. They neither worship the LORD nor adhere to the decrees and regulations, the laws and commands that the LORD gave the descendants of Jacob, whom he named Israel" 2 Kings 17:32-34.
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