The Middle East, 837 to 826 BCE: Internal Strife and Cultural Refinement

Jehu's long reign is a period of extreme oscillations in the north, capped by the catastrophic defeat of Israel and the destruction of its army by Hazael of Aram-Damascus in about 815 BCE.

Jehu's son and coregent Jehoahaz succeeds him.

Jehohaz becomes sole ruler of Israel at the death of his father King Jehu in 815.

Israel's next king, Jeroboam II, although little mentioned by the Deuteronomic historian, appears to be a major monarch, reestablishing the northern kingdom's ancient boundaries and fostering a period of economic prosperity.

The northern Hebrew tribes had refused to recognize Solomon's successor Rehoboam following the death of the former in 925 or 926 BCE.

The north subsequently broke away under the rule of the House of Omri.

The northern kingdom of Israel, more populous than the southern kingdom of Judah, possessing more fertile land, and closer to the trading centers of the time, flourishes until the Assyrians completely destroy it and send its ten tribes sent into permanent exile between 740 and 721 BCE.

The prophet Hosea, who lives in the northern kingdom of Israel between 755 and 725, is married to an unfaithful wife and uses this personal tragedy, described in the first part of The Book of Hosea, as a parable of the relationship between God and Israel.

In the second part (chaps. 4-14), Hosea develops the theme of unfaithfulness, rebuking corrupt leaders and priests and chastising the Israelites for their superstition and idolatry.

He is the first biblical writer to employ the imagery of marriage as an illustration of the relationship between God and his people.

Making Israel a vassal state, Tiglath-Pileser deports its population to Assyria.

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.