Posted on 09/20/2010 7:14:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
According to Dr. Walid Atrash and Mr. Ya'aqov Harel, directors of the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority, "The discovery of another Samaritan synagogue in the agricultural hinterland south of Bet She'an supplements our existing knowledge about the Samaritan population in this period. It seems that the structures uncovered there were built at the end of the fifth century CE and they continued to exist until the eve of the Muslim conquest in 634 CE, when the Samaritans abandoned the complex. The synagogue that is currently being revealed played an important part in the lives of the farmers who inhabited the surrounding region, and it served as a center of the spiritual, religious and social life there. In the Byzantine period (fourth century CE) Bet She'an became an important Samaritan center under the leadership of Baba Rabbah, at which time the Samaritans were granted national sovereignty and were free to decide their own destiny. This was the case until the end of the reign of Emperor Justinian, when the Samaritans revolted against the government. The rebellion was put down and the Samaritans ceased to exist as a nation".
(Excerpt) Read more at artdaily.org ...
A mosaic inside the remains of a Samaritan synagogue, built some 1,500 years ago, which has reently been uncovered in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean, in the Jordan Valley. The remians show the synagogue and a farmstead that operated in the Late Byzantine period and the mosaic reads, 'this is the temple.' EPA/ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY.
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There, fixed it for you.
Why does it need fixing?
"BC" and "AD" have been used for the past two millennia. Should we embrace "political correctness" by replacing them with "BCE" and "CE," favored by Communists, atheists, and Christophobes? I should think not.
Totally agree.
Only two millenia? The Hebrew dating system is much older than that. And since the story is about a synagogue in Israel maybe they should have dated the structure between 4259 and 4395.
You mean before the Christian Era and the Christian Era?
I think it should be dated according to its relationship to the day that Buddha sat under the Bunyan Tree.
Actually, all dating should be from July 10, 1940 and known as BWB and AWB.
I modestly leave it to you to figure out the reason for dating everything from this miraculous event.
Gee, Wild Bill, I haven't a clue as to that event.
;’)
Sorry I missed your birthday. ;’)
Hey, no problem. Remember it’s never too late to send an expensive present to make up.
Oh, I will, I’ll send it via United Procrastination Service.
However, I do have a problem with "common era," an expression I first saw in a history book published in Communist East Germany.
To get back to the actual subject, the Samaritans, i know that the Jewish position is that the Samaritans are the descendants of foreigners brought in by the Assyrians to repopulate Samaria (Israel) after the Assyrian conquest. The Samaritans themselves believe they are the descendants of the original population of Samaria. At the time of Christ the Samaritans made up most of the people of the territory of the former northern kingdom. As we know from the New Testament the Jews did not associate with the Samaritans, and they were not exiled from the Holy Land by the Romans after the two Jewish Revolts. It appears that, in general, the Samaritans were less successful than the Christians in resisting conversion to Islam after the Muslim conquest. Now there are only about 700 of them left.
So what do you think about their origin?
What a coincidence. You and my family use the same delivery service.
The synagogue is a phenomenon of rabbinical Judaism, which gestated during the Babylonian exile when there was no access to the Temple, and not many centuries later became more systematized after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple.
The old Samarians were exiled by the Assyrians when they uprooted the Ten Lost Tribes; they had been a polyglot bunch, perhaps a little more cosmopolitan than the Hebrews affiliated with the twelve (and a half) tribes (Twelve and a Half might make a good TV show name), intermarried with and converted from other groups who came to stay.
I don’t doubt that, if it were available, there would be a trail of nuclear DNA connecting the Samaritans with the Samarians, and both with the Tribes. The Assyrians nearly completely depopulated the old kingdom, missing some of them during the roundup, and they probably assimilated into the two remaining tribes and/or the surrounding groups or immigrants crowding in. The Samarians were the ancestors of the Samaritans, but of course with some additional leavening.
http://www.livius.org/saa-san/samaria/samaritans.htm
This is interesting, the Samaritans accept the Pentateuch (a version of their own), and revere Mt Gerizim rather than Mt Zion; their variant views were a political creation from the time when the kingdom was divided.
When the Jews returned from Babylonian Exile (and a great many didn’t want to go back) they were clearing the burned and broken masonry and whatnot from the site of the Temple, and found intact a book of Scripture that had been lost and miraculously survived the fire.
The Levites have left a trail throughout the modern world, the kohen genes, which survived the Assyrian exile, a trail that leads through the area north of the Black Sea and the Ashkenazy Jews (most modern Jews, IOW), the Pushtun in Afghanistan, among the Lemba in Africa, and not sure about this, but probably the kohen community of Tunisia, which went into exile near the then-boom-town of Carthage (when it was fairly new). The Islamofascists have actually tried to kill them off with car bombs and whatnot.
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