Samaritan Legalism

Moving on in Luke, chapter 9, verse 51, the author denotes an interesting encounter with the Samaritans. In this account, the Samaritans reject a visit from Jesus and turn away His messengers as they attempt to make provisions for that visit. Luke tells us that the people of the village reject Jesus because He is going to eventually go to Jerusalem.

This rejection wasn’t directed at Jesus personally, instead it was because the Samaritans rejected anyone who they saw as a pilgrim going to Jerusalem which they saw as a violation to the Law of Moses. Here is a little background of the Samaritans and their split from mainstream Judaism.

Around the fourth century before Christ, the Samaritans had established a temple at the base of Mount Gerizim, making this location, not Jerusalem, the focus of their spiritual values. Believing that this mountain was the location where Abraham offered Isaac to God, these people who were a fringe group in the north of Israel, made up of foreigners established by the Assyrians, having no prophetic instruction, managed to show one more time how man can establish a fortified bunker of religious legalism.

Some of the tenants of belief that the Samaritans held to included:

1. There is one God, the same God recognized by the Hebrew prophets;
2. Their view of God is the same as the Jewish biblical view of God;
3. The Torah was given by God to Moses;
4. Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the one true sanctuary chosen by Israel's God;
5. Many Samaritans believe that at the end of days, the dead will be resurrected by Taheb,
a restorer (possibly a prophet, some say Moses);
6. They possess a belief in Paradise (heaven);
7. The priests are the interpreters of the law and the keepers of tradition; unlike Judaism,
there is no distinction between the priesthood and the scholars;
8. The authority of classical Jewish rabbinical works, the Mishnah, and the Talmuds are
rejected;
9. Samaritans reject Jewish codes of law;
10. They have a significantly different version of the Ten Commandments (the sanctity of
Mt. Gerizim is covered in the tenth Samaritan commandment).

It is ironic that in Matthew 10:5, When instructing his disciples as to how they should spread the word, Jesus tells them not to visit any Samaritan city, but instead go to the 'lost sheep of Israel'. Just like the argument that the apostles had earlier, man is always seemingly trying to prove himself to be the greatest in the kingdom and for their efforts they received rejection from the very Messiah that they and their Jewish kin were waiting for.