The Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant, descended from ancient Semitic inhabitants of the region. The Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, Samaritans say that their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they say is a related but altered and amended religion, brought back by those returning from the Babylonian exile. Ancestrally, Samaritans claim descent from the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph (son of Jacob)) as well as from the priestly tribe of Levi, who have links to ancient Samaria from the period of their entry into the land of Canaan, while some suggest that it was from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the Samaritan polity of Baba Rabba. Samaritans used to include a line of Benjamin tribe, but it went extinct during the decline period of the Samaritan demographics. The split between them and their brothers; the children of Judah (the Jews) began during Eli the priest, and the culmination was during the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah when the Samaritans (then Kingdom of Israel) refused to accept Jerusalem as the elect, and remained on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans say that Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Israel. The major issue between Jews and Samaritans has always been the location of the chosen place to worship God; Jerusalem according to the Jewish faith or Mount Gerizim according to the Samaritan version. In the Talmud, a central post-exilic religious text of Judaism, the Samaritans are called Cutheans (Hebrew: כותים‎, Kutim), referring to the ancient city of Kutha, geographically located in what is today Iraq. In the biblical account, however, Cuthah was one of several cities from which people were brought to Samaria, and they worshiped Nergal. Modern genetics suggests some truth to both the claims of the Samaritans and the account in the Talmud. Once a large community of over a million in late Roman times, the Samaritans shrank to several tens of thousands in the wake of the bloody suppression of the Third Samaritan Revolt (529 AD) against the Byzantine Christian rulers and mass conversion to Islam in the Early Muslim period of Palestine. ======================== Mandaeans (Modern Mandaic: מנדעניא‎ Mandaʻnāye, Arabic: الصابئة المندائيون‎ aṣ-Ṣabi'a al-Mandā'iyūn) are an ethnoreligious group indigenous to the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia and are followers of Mandaeism, a Gnostic religion. The Mandaeans were originally native speakers of Mandaic, a Semitic language that evolved from Eastern Middle Aramaic, before many switched to colloquial Iraqi Arabic and Modern Persian. Mandaic is mainly preserved as a liturgical language. During the century's first decade the indigenous Mandaic community of Iraq, which used to number 60--70,000 persons, collapsed in the aftermath of the Iraq War of 2003; most of the community relocated to nearby Iran, Syria and Jordan, or formed diaspora communities beyond the Middle East. The other indigenous community of Iranian Mandaeans has also been dwindling as a result of religious persecution over that decade. There are several indications of the ultimate origin of the Mandaeans. Early religious concepts and terminologies recur in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and "Jordan" has been the name of every baptismal water in Mandaeism. This connection with early baptismal sects in the eastern Jordan region and the elements of Western Syrian in the Mandaean language attests to their levantine origin. The ultimate Jewish origin of the Mandaeans can still be found despite the vehement polemics against the Jews in Mandaean literature, in which Moses is a false prophet and Adonai (one of the names used in the Jewish bible) is an evil god. There are fewer indications of a relation between early Christians and Mandaeans, which make the connection more problematic. Some scholars, including Kurt Rudolph connect the early Mandaeans with the Jewish sect of the Nasoraeans. The emigration of early Mandaeans from the Jordan Valley took place the latest at the second century CE due to pressure from orthodox Jews.The migrants first went to Harran in Assyria and entered the southern provinces of Mesopotamia during the third century CE. It appears that Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, was partly influenced by the newcomers. The Mandaeans had also hostile relations with the Byzantine Church and the Babylonian Jews.

• published: 27 Jun 2014
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