[rmlew]

Are the Samaritans actually a foreign people in Israel?
They claim to be descended from refugees of the 10 Northern tribes. The Samaritan Torah is actually quite textually rather close to the Jewish Torah except for a few differences:
1. It is still written in Ancient Hebrew letters rather than the Aramaic Masortic Script used by my people.
2. They call Mt. Sinai "Horeb"
3. They seem to focus much more on the Samarian and Northern holy sites, as opposed to the Jewish Bible which includes both.

They also made Mt. Gerizim near Schechem the center of their religion as opposed to Mr. Moriah in Jerusalem. http://www.the-samaritans.com/

[Sam the Sham]

In the Bible, it says that the Samaritans are descended primarily from colonists whom the Assyrians transported into Israel after they destroyed Samaria. As with the Babylonians later the Assyrians did not deport every Jew from the land. Just the young, strong, useful, skilled, educated, and presumably hot. The lowest classes were left behind. These presumably mixed with the exiles the Assyrians transported in.

But as we see in the New Testament the Judeans considered them asterisk Jews.