By Jim Mettenbrink
When the lawyer asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life. Jesus’ response was with a parable commonly called the Story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were the arch-enemy of the Jews. The previous article revealed that the seeds of this tension began when the Assyrians exiled Israel’s northern kingdom and repopulated the land with foreigners who intermarried with the remaining 10% of the Israelites (700 BC). They would be known as Samaritans. The Samaritans opposed the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem when the Southern kingdom (Jews) returned from Babylonian captivity. Thus the tension began (520BC; (Ezra 4-6; Nehemiah 4-6). Through the next 500 years, this tension became an armed conflict.
After it became clear that the Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon would not accept the Samaritans as brothers, the Samaritans established their center in Samaria. However, when Alexander the Great captured the city of Samaria in 332 BC, he turned it into a Greek city and settled many of his veterans there. At that time the Samaritans moved their center of worship to Shechem and built a temple on Mt. Gerizim.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BC), the Seleucid (Syria) ruler defiled the Jews temple in Jerusalem by sacrificing pigs on the altar, putting the idol of Zeus in the temple, and prohibiting circumcision (death penalty). This caused the leading priests (Maccabean family to revolt lasting several years to run the Seleucids out and restore the temple worship (165 BC) which would be marked by the annual Feast of Dedication that Jesus attended (John 10:22-23). The war continued for several more years before the Jews ran the Seleucids out of Judea.
On the other hand, the Samaritans capitulated to the Seleucids and dedicated their temple on Mt. Gerizim to the Greek god Zeus (Jupiter in Rome). In 142 BC, the Jews formed the Hasmonaean Kingdom led by the High Priest. The second ruler was John Hyrcanus I (reign – 134-104 BC). He paid heavy tribute to the Seleucids until 129 BC. Then he was imperialistic, expanding the kingdom into Samaria, destroying Samaria, the capital, capturing Shechem, and destroying the Samaritans’ temple on Mt. Gerizim. The accounts of Jesus’ three-year– ministry, announcing that He is the Messiah promised to Abraham, reveal that the tension was still festering as the story of the Good Samaritan implies. But there were more instances stated revealing this hostility and hatred between the Jews and Samaritans – Next.