Samaritans

I was watching a show about Israel. The show was talking about the Samaritans. The show mentioned that Samaritans see themselves as ancestors of the Old Testament Jews, but that Traditional Jewish scholars believe that the Samaritans were an outside group. A person on the show who is an expert said it is probably somewhere in between. I am writing this post because I read a book one time that gives an explanation for the Samaritans, which is like what the expert at the end of the show said. I just feel led to share it.

Samaritans according to a book I read: Many of the Jews were taken into Babylonian captivity. So that the cities did not fall apart the Babylonians left some Jews in Israel to operate functions of townships. Babylon did not leave enough Jews in Israel to successfully do this so they imported people from other countries to live in Israel and do work to upkeep and maintain the cities and towns in running condition. These people from other countries who now lived in Israel procreated with each other and also with the Jews living in Israel, who were not in captivity in Babylon with most of the Jewish race. By the time that the Jews were freed from Babylonian captivity the people living in Israel were all a mix of Jew along with other ethnicities bread together. The Jews who were freed from Babylonian captivity and now back in Israel were still more ethnically pure and saw the mixture of different ethnicities in the people currently living in Israel as a problem because being ethnically Jew to them was a good thing they wanted to promote in their culture. The Jews freed from Babylonian captivity wanted to make a point to show that their ethnic purity was a good thing and influence others that way, so they required that all of the people who had been living in Israel move to the city of Samaria. Thus the Samaritans.