Samaritans accepted the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) and imitated Israel's religion. Therefore, the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim, 48km north of Jerusalem, likely imitated in design and ceremonies the Temple of Solomon. Josephus writes that the Samaritan Temple was "a temple like that at Jerusalem".

If this can be confirmed it would suggest that Solomon's Temple really existed and is not a myth as some critics claim.


CHRONOLOGY

BCE
•    c.1000 Solomon's Temple built (I Kings 6-7; II Chronicles 3-4)

•    722 Assyria deports Ten Tribes of Israel to Mesopotamia and replaces them in Israel with foreign immigrants. (II Kings 17) The deportations are confirmed in the annals of Assyria, and by archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia. (Younger 2003)

•    586 Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple destroyed; the Jews exiled to Babylon

•    539 Persian Empire conquers the Babylonian Empire

•    537 About 42,000 Jews leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-4; 2:64)

•    516 The Temple in Jerusalem re-dedicated (Ezra 6)

•    458 More Jews return from Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezra 7)

•    445-430 Nehemiah is governor in Jerusalem and annuls all Jew-with-Gentile marriages (Nehemiah 1; 13)

•    c.430 Samaritans build their Temple on Mount Gerizim

•    334-330 Alexander the Great conquers the Persian Empire

•    305 Seleucid Empire centered in Syria established

•    201-197 Seleucid Empire conquers Palestine and begins to force Greek customs, language and worship onto Jews

•    168 Syrians ban Jewish religion, erect a statue of Jupiter in the Temple, and martyr thousands of Jews. The Samaritans side with the Syrians

•    165 Judas Maccabaeus leads the "Maccabean Revolt", takes Jerusalem, and restores Temple services

•    141 Judas' brother, Simon, makes Judea fully independent

•    135-104 John Hyrcanus (Simon's son) rules Judea, subdues the Samaritans, and destroys the Temple on Mount Gerizim (128 BCE)

•    c.20 Herod begins the enlargement and beautification of the Jerusalem Temple



The Assyrians deported the ten tribes of Israel to Mesopotamia in 722 BCE and introduced foreign settlers to repopulate Israel. One Israelite priest was sent back to teach the immigrants Israel's religion. (II Kings 17) This resulted in the new settlers worshipping both the "Lord" and foreign idols:  


These people became the Samaritans. They accepted the Pentateuch but not the rest of the Old Testament.

The oldest archaeological support for the ancient existence of the Pentateuch is two "Silver Scrolls" dated to around 600 BCE, discovered in Jerusalem in1979.
The Scrolls contain God's name "YHWH", paraphrases from four Old Testament books, and quote Numbers 6:24-27 often recited in churches: "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace."

Barkay et al (2004) confirmed the age of the Silver Scrolls using high-resolution computer-imaging.



The Samaritans were relatively unaffected in 586 BCE when the Babylonians destroyed Solomon's Temple and deported the Jews to Babylon.

In 537 BCE 42,000 Jews returned to Judea and rebuilt the foundation of Solomon's Temple. (Ezra 3)

The Samaritans offered to help:


The offer was a ruse to disrupt the work and the Jews rejected it.

The Samaritan leaders thereupon bribed Persian officials and appealed to the Persian emperor (4:4-24) and got the work delayed for twenty years.

Emperor Darius (reigned 521-486 BCE) gave permission to continue the reconstruction, and the Temple was rededicated in 516 BCE. (Ezra 6)

In 458 BCE a second group of Jews led by Ezra (Ezra 7) returned to Jerusalem. Ezra re-instituted the priesthood at the Temple and ordered Jewish men with foreign wives to divorce them. (Ezra 9-10)



In 445 BCE the King of Persia sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem to be its governor and rebuild the city wall. (Nehemiah 1-2)

Samaritans, allied with other enemies of the Jews, again tried to stop the work. (Chapter 4 & 6) But the wall was completed and a dedication ceremony followed. (12:27-43)

Nehemiah's wall is archaeologically confirmed. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar (2009) reports: "In our recent excavations in the northern part of the city of David ... we found a section of Nehemiah's wall..."

Nehemiah re-organized Temple worship, reinstituted the Sabbath, and prohibited intermarriage with Gentiles. (13:23-27) This was about 14 years after his arrival, therefore about 430 BCE.



With the Jerusalem Temple fully operational in 430 BCE and protected by the new wall around Jerusalem, this is likely the period when the Samaritans built their temple on Mount Gerizim. The Old Testament does not state this directly. But the Samaritans had similar religious services and would lose legitimacy if Jerusalem had a temple and they did not.

At this point the Bible comes into conflict with 1st century Jewish historian Josephus:-

When Nehemiah prohibited intermarriage, one marriage caused political problems — the marriage of the high priest's grandson:


Sanballat was a Samaritan leader who had tried to stop Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem's wall. (4:1-2; 6:1-2)

Josephus apparently refers to the same marriage event and says that it led to the building of the Temple on Mount Gerizim.

Josephus calls the high priest "Jaddua" rather than Eliashib and suggests the illegal husband of Sanballat's daughter was the high priest's brother, "Manasseh", rather than the grandson. By Nehemiah's prohibition on intermarriage Manasseh had to either divorce his wife or cease his priestly duties. Manasseh consulted with Sanballat who said he would build a temple on Mount Gerizim and Manasseh would be the high priest there.

Josephus writes:


The Battle of Granicum occurred in 334 BCE and therefore dates Sanballat's building the Samaritan temple to about then.

Josephus therefore places the Sanballat episode 100 years later than the Bible. The Bible and Josephus also differ on the high priest's name, and whether the high priest's brother or grandson was Sanballat's son in law.

Either the Bible or Josephus is wrong, unless there were two Sanballat's, and two high priests who faced similar illegal marriage problems, 100 years apart!

The Bible does not directly state when the Samaritans built their Temple. My suggestion that it was when the Jews finished rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple is reasonable but not conclusive.

Does archaeology shed any light?



Yitzhak Magan (2010) led excavations on Mount Gerizim for 25 years and writes: "We can now confirm that a Samaritan temple was indeed built on Mt. Gerizim..."

The Samaritan Temple itself was not found. It was destroyed in 128 BCE and most remaining ruins removed in 484 CE when a Christian church was built on the site.

However, the temple precinct, 321 x 315 feet, is still evident, bounded by the remains of walls 3 feet thick and gates in three of the walls. The gates were "six chambered", a common design in the Persian period.

Magan's team found 68 coins from the Persian period the oldest 480 BCE, and a small gold bell with clapper. The Bible mentions gold bells attached to the hem of the high priest's skirt or "ephod". (Exodus 28:33-35) They also found 400,000 bone fragments which enabled carbon-dating of various levels and proved the area had been a place of worship where animal sacrifices occurred.

 The excavations also revealed 400 inscriptions including the name of God (YHWH), names of individual priests, and inscriptions that read:
•    "for good remembrance before God in this place"
•    "Joseph offered … in this temple";
•    "House of sacrifice";
•    "that which is offered".

"House of sacrifice" is a biblical phrase for Solomon's Temple (II Chronicles 7:12); and "that which is offered" refers to animal sacrifices.

Magan concludes that Josephus' date of c.330 BCE is wrong and the coins, pottery, other artifacts, and carbon dating of animal bones indicate a century earlier:


Magan's century-earlier date gets support in the Elephantine Papyri. These are 175 Jewish documents dating from the 5th century BCE discovered in Egypt. (Wikipedia) One document is a letter to Sanballat in Samaria dated 410 to 407 BCE which is about 30 years after Sanballat's confrontation with Nehemiah. This supports the Bible's 5th century BCE date for Sanballat over Josephus' 4th century BCE date.



Around 520 BCE when Solomon's Temple was still rubble and looked "as nothing" the prophet Haggai prophesied:


The "greater splendor" was fulfilled when the restored Temple:



Jews regarded Samaritans as apostates and did not associate with them (John 4:9) because Samaritans rejected most of the Scriptures.

Jesus, however, conversed with a Samaritan woman near Mount Gerizim (John 4), thereby introduced the absence of ethnic prejudice that would characterize early Christianity. (Acts 10:34-35; 17:26) Jesus further humanized the Samaritans with his story of the "Good Samaritan". (Luke10:25-37)

The Samaritan woman said: "I know that Messiah is coming." (John 4:25-26) Christians believe that Jesus as Messiah is foretold in the Psalms, the prophetical books, and the Pentateuch. Since the Samaritans also expected a "messiah" the prophecy must be evident in the Pentateuch alone.

Jesus instructed the 12 apostles: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans." (Matthew10:5) This command applied temporarily because Jesus' ministry was restricted to Jews.

However, Jesus foretold that "the gospel" would go to all nations (Matthew 24:14; Luke 24:45-47), and Acts 8 tells of Philip, Peter and John evangelizing the Samaritans after Jesus' resurrection.



In 67 CE the Samaritans joined the Jewish revolt against Rome and were slaughtered on Mount Gerizim. Josephus writes:


This fulfilled what Jesus told the Samaritan woman: "the hour is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." (John 4:21) Fulfillment began in 67 CE for Mount Gerizim and in 70 CE for Jerusalem.

Samaritans had numbered perhaps 1 million, but war and persecution progressively reduced their numbers. Noteworthy was a bloody rebellion against Byzantine rule in 529 CE. After that Islam arrived and centuries of forced conversion followed.



In Pilgrimage to Palestine (1927) Dr Harry Fosdick (1878-1969) recalls meeting the Samaritan high priest on Mount Gerizim:


In 2016 less than 800 Samaritans remain. Some live near Mount Gerizim, others near Telaviv. They still follow the Law of Moses, kill lambs the traditional way for the Passover feast, and keep the Sabbath.



Archaeological remains of Solomon's Temple have not been found. If they exist they would lie under Islam's Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and therefore currently not accessible.  

However, in "A Lost Empire Rediscovered" (Investigator 124) I showed that the Empire of Cush or Sudan was lost to history for over 2000 years, except for its mention in the Bible. If ancient monarchs could obliterate cities and delete even empires from history, thereby making the Scriptures appear erroneous, Solomon's Temple would have been easy!

The Ten Lost Tribes and their replacement with people who became the Samaritans are archaeologically confirmed. So is Nehemiah's wall, similarities of the Samaritan Temple with Jerusalem's Temple, and the historicity of Sanballat.

Samaritan opposition to rebuilding Solomon's Temple although Haggai prophesied "greater splendor" for the new construction, which was fulfilled, refutes Samaritan religion. Furthermore, although Samaritans expected a future "messiah" their religion never produced him; but Judaism did. The predictions in Genesis that through Abraham's descendants God would "bless all the nations of the earth" never found fulfillment in the Samaritans but did through Jesus and Jesus' followers.



Barkay, G. et al The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation. Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research May, 2004, 334:41–70

Elephantine Pypyri in English, Second Edition, 2011
https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/.../069552P.front

Fosdick, H. 1927 Pilgrimage to Palestine, Macmillan

Magen, Y. A Samaritan Temple to the Lord on Mt. Gerizim, BAR, November/December, 2010, pp 26-35, 70

Mazar, E. The Wall That Nehemiah Built, BAR, March/April 2009, 24-33

Younger, Jr., K. Lawson Israelites in Exile, BAR, Nov/Dec, 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine_papyri

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Gerizim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_Pentateuch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanballat_the_Horonite.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple.htm

www.biblicalarchaeology.org/uncategorized/magens-response/