Who were the Samaritans and where did they come from?

SAMARITAN WATCH: The Confusing Story of the Samaritans and the Jews: Who Split From Whom? Jewish tradition says the Samaritans descend from foreign settlers. The evidence says they are mostly what they claim to be: Israelites who never left (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

Even the scholars who stress the Assyrian upheaval accept that some Israelites stayed, so the Samaritans descend at least in part from northern Israelites. What remains in dispute is how much of the old northern kingdom survives in today's 850 Samaritans – and that, the evidence cannot settle.

Knoppers's position is the cautious one: real Israelite continuity, reduced by deportation, mixed by absorption. Nodet's is the maximal one – the Samaritans are "to this day the direct heirs of the ancient Israelites," and rabbinic Judaism is the younger tradition, formed by the reforms the Bible attributes to Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah which the Israelites of the former northern kingdom – the Samaritans' ancestors – never adopted.

This is a well-informed, detailed, survey of the evidence for and the scholarly discussion about the Samaritans. Well worth a careful read.

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