The post-exilic inhabitants of Samaria are, according to Jewish tradition, allegedly colonists introduced after the Assyrian conquest who have adopted a distorted form of Judaism.

Other Hebrew-speakers call them simply Shomronim (Samaritans); in the Talmud (rabbinical compendium of law, lore, and commentary), they are called Kutim, suggesting that they are rather descendants of Mesopotamian Cuthaeans, who settled in Samaria after the Assyrian conquest.

The Samaritans themselves claim to be related by blood to those Israelites of ancient Samaria who were not deported by the Assyrian conquerors of the kingdom of Israel in 722.

Claiming descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and maintaining that they have preserved the way and will of Yahweh, they call themselves Bene-Yisrael (”Children of Israel”), or Shamerim (”Observant Ones”), for their sole norm of religious observance is the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament).

The Samarians honor Moses as the only prophet.

It is likely that the Samaritans are a Judaized mixture of native north Israelites and Gentile deportees settled by the Assyrians in the erstwhile northern kingdom.

The Persian provinces of Samaria and Ammon remain under governors of the houses of Sanballat and Tobiahin in the fourth century BCE.

The Samarians, their overtures spurned by Judahites returned from the Babylonian Captivity, build their own temple in Shechem, at the base of Mount Gerizim.

The Samaritans are outside the pale of Judaism in most, though not all, respects: like the Sadducees, they refuse to recognize the validity of the Oral Law.

Like the later so-called Qumran covenanters, the monastic group with whom are associated the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritans are opposed to the Jewish priesthood and the cult of the Temple, regard Moses as a messianic figure, and forbid the revelation of esoteric doctrines to outsiders.

The break between the Sadducees and the Samaritans occurs during the conquest of Shechem by John Hyrcanus in 128, when Jewish forces destroy the temple built by the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim (built in the first place because the Jews had refused to let them participate in building the Second Temple in Jerusalem).

…Shechem, significantly increasing his regional influence.

Hyrcanus annexes the regions of present Transjordan, Samaria, Galilee, and Idumea (also known as Edom), and, in the first example of conversion imposed by the Jews in their history, forces Idumeans to convert to Judaism.

According to Josephus, "Hyrcanus...subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.”

In internal policy, however, Hyrcanus commits the grave error of quarreling with one of the two main Jewish ecclesiastical parties, the Pharisees—who follow the Law with great strictness and with whom the Maccabean movement has in origin close affinity—and siding with their opponents, the more liberal Sadducees.

The Pharisees, who had emerged as a clearly defined party during the revolt of the Maccabees, oppose Hyrcanus because of his assumption of both the royal and high-priestly titles and because of the general secularism of the court.

Unlike the priestly and aristocratic Sadducees, the Pharisees believe in resurrection and the immortality of the soul.

The Sadducees, who oppose the use of Oral Law by the Pharisees, hold only to the Pentateuch, and are affronted by the growth of Greek, or pagan, influence that had developed over the past eighty years in the Jewish kingdom.

…like Samaria, apparently has held aloof from the revolt.

The Samaritans, under a charismatic messianic figure named Julianus ben Sabar (or ben Sahir) in 529, launch a war, sometimes related as the final Samaritan revolt, to create an independent state.

The Samaritan revolt of ben Sabar is perhaps the most violent of the Samaritan revolts.

Emperor Justinian I, aided by the Ghassanid Arabs, crushes the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans die or are enslaved.

According to Procopius of Caesarea, the majority of Samaritan peasants chose to be defiant in this revolt, and "were cut to pieces".

Further, Samaria, the "world's most fertile land, was left with no one to till it."

The Samaritan faith is virtually outlawed hereafter by the Christian Roman Empire; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community will dwindle to near extinction.

The Samaritans, having been quiet for two generations, revolt during the reign of Justinian.

Local Christians in 547 massacre Samaritans and …