Samaritanism 

Samaritanism is an Abrahamic and monotheistic ethnic religion comprised of the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Samaritan people who originated from the Hebrews and Israelites and began to emerge as a relatively distinct group after the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the Iron Age. Central to the faith is the Samaritan Pentateuch, which Samaritans believe is the original and unmodified version of the Torah. Samaritan belief also holds that the Israelites' original holy site was Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, and that Jerusalem only attained importance under Israelite dissenters who had followed Eli to the city of Shiloh. The Israelites who remained at Mount Gerizim would become known as the Samaritans of the Kingdom of Israel, whereas the Israelites who left would become the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah. Mount Gerizim is revered by Samaritans as the location where Abraham bound his son Isaac to offer as a sacrifice to God, in contrast to the Jewish belief that this event occurred upon Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Though Samaritans became increasingly culturally distint from the Jews to the south, they were originally closely intertwined with them. Samaritanism likely did not emerge as a distinct tradition until the Hasmonean and Roman era, by which point Yahwism had coalesced into Second Temple Judaism. The temple on Mount Gerizim, the central place of worship in Samaritanism, was built in the 5th century BCE as one of many Yahwistic temples in Samaria. However, this temple precinct experienced a centuries-long period of large-scale construction beginning around the 4th century BCE, which indicates that its status as the pre-eminent place of worship among Samaritans was being established. Theological divergence between Judaism and Samaritanism is attested as early as the 2nd century BCE, indicating that the Samaritan Pentateuch had already begun to take shape. The Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus destroyed the Mount Gerizim temple and brought Samaria under his control around 120 BCE, which led to a longlasting sense of mutual hostility between the Jews and Samaritans. The Samaritans likely sought to consciously distance themselves from their Judean brethren, and both peoples began to regard the Samaritan faith as a religion distinct from Judaism. In time, the relationship between Jews and Samaritans only further deteriorated. By the era of Jesus, Samaritans and Jews deeply disparaged one another, evident in biblical passages like Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well. In addition to differences of opinion over where God should be worshipped, Jewish and Samaritan eschatology varies. Samaritans hold that he apocalypse, the day of vengeance, will be when a figure called the Taheb (the Samaritan equivalent of the Jewish Messiah) from the tribe of Joseph will come, be a prophet like Moses for forty years and bring about a return of all the Israelites. Afterwards, the dead will be resurrected. The Taheb will then discover the tent of Moses' Tabernacle on Mount Gerizim and will be buried next to Joseph when he dies. During Sukkot (aka the Festival of Booths, a harvest festival and commemoration of the Exodus), Samaritan sukkah are built inside houses, as opposed to the outdoor setting that are traditional among Jews. Samaritan historian Benyamim Tsedaka traces the indoor-sukkah tradition to persecution of Samaritans during the Byzantine Empire.