THE 
TECHNOLOGIST. 
—_90—— 
MARCH, 1867. 
——0—— 
THE SAMARITANS AND THE SAMARITAN 
PENTA TPEUCH. 
BY THE REV. PROFESSOR MARKS. 
*AMARIA, the capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes, 
which renounced allegiance to the Davidical dynasty 
soon after the accession of Rehoboam, originally formed 
part of the territory of Ephraim. Not far from it stood 
Sichem—now called Wablous, a corruption of Neapolis— 
where the bones of Joseph, brought by Moses out of Egypt, 
were interred, and where Joshua convoked a national 
assembly of the tribes to receive his dying admonition. 
After Samaria had enjoyed an existence, as the capital 
of the rival kingdom, for about two centuries, it was taken 
and partially destroyed by Shalmanessar, King of Assyria ; 
and with the fall of the capital, the kingdom of the ten 
tribes passed away, never to survive. 
The Biblical historians mention Samaria in terms so 
vague and indefinite as to perplex ordinary readers. It is 
applied alike to the capital, the surrounding district, and 
the entire territory of the ten tribes. Scarcely less loose 
and indeterminate is the use of the proper name Sama- 
ritan. It may either mean the inhabitants of the city of 
Samaria, or of the whole kingdom, the hybrid people, 
whom Ezra calls “the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin,’ 
or the “ Samaritans,” as described by the writers of the New 
Testament. 
It has long been a moot point whether the “ Samaritans,” 
as they appear on the canvas of history, in the age of Ezra, 
are to be regarded as a people wholly of foreign extraction, 
or as a mixed race, containing an appreciable element of 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. I. 
