Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-11-07
THE OLDEST AND SMALLEST
SECT IN THE WORLD.


REV. JOHN F. HURST, in Harper's Magazine.
There is to be found in the heart O
the small city of Nablus, in North Pal
estine, little religious community
now numbering about one hundred an,
fifty souls-which has defied the ravage
of war and poverty and oppression near
ly three thousand years. Unlike th,
Vaudois, these Samaritans have had N
friendly system of mountain buttressei
to defend them through the centuries
and still more unlike the long-lived Sa
voyed Protestants, they have been right
in the pathway along which the devas
tating armies have marched back and
forth, from the time of Sargon to Napo.
leon. But they have lived on. and theiI
unity has never been broken. They
have clung to little Nablus and to theiI
sacred Mount Gerizum, as the very cac-
tus roots to the granite sides of the SON.
bre Ebal that confronts them across
their little enchanted valley.
The feeling with which the present
Samaritans regard the Mohammedans
is of that intense bitterness which they
have always manifested toward the
Jews. And why not? Does not the
Samaritan date his faith from Abraham,
or rather from Adam? And has he not
right to call that an infant religion
which has been in existence for only the
trifle of twelve centuries? Is not the
Koran one of your new catchpenny ro-
maDces, while that mysterious copy of
the Pentateuch, made of sacred lamb
skins, which the Samaritans have been
reading and kissing through these many
ages, is the Oldest copy in existence,
written down by Aaron's own grandson,
and the veritable original of all the Pen
tateuchs in the world?
As the population of Nablus is just
about 12,000, the little Samaritan COM
munity is almost absorbed by the sur
rounding Mohammedan mass. Save to
a careful observer, the very existence
and presence of the Samaritans as a dis
tinct element of citizenship in Nablus
would not be noticed. The Samaritans
wear turban, much like that of their
true Moslem neighbors, but between the
history and theology of the two classes
there is not single point of positive re-
-.
The Samaritan synagogue is small
building in the centre of Nablus, half
obscured by the surrounding dwellings.
1 passed through arched and Uttered
streets to little court, in the middle of
which was little plot of grass, relieved
by three trees, two of which were lemon.
L here found little Samaritan school,
and at the sight of a stranger the chill
dren sprang from the floor where they
were sitting, kissed my hand, and beg
ged for backsheesh. The teacher was
youth of about fourteen, the son of
Amram the high-priest. 1 was greatly
at faiiing to find Amram
but in the end this circumstance
aided me in my chief object, for the
young man was willing, for good fee,
to show me the ancient Pentateuch.-
His father might have been deaf to all
entreaties.
The claim of the Samaritans to have
copy of the Pentateuch older than the
Jewish is supported by their own un-
broken tradition, and by the opinion of
some learned men of the present time in
Christian countries. But the weight of
evidence is against it-among
which may be mentioned grammatical
late CLOSES in the text, in
sertions of foreign passages. alterations,
Samaritanisms, and changes in support
of Samaritan doctrine.
The peculiar views of Amram may be
said to represent very fairly the theolo-
gy of his dying community. The world,
he claimed, is about seven thousand
years old. For fifty-fve years men will
go on increasing in wickedness, after
which there will come a time of great
peace and purity. Then there will come
On new period of consummate wicked
ness, which will last three hundred years.
This time will be consummated by the
total destruction of the world. After
this the general judgment will take
place, when the righteous will go to live
with God and the wicked with Satan
There are some people who have clean
hearts, or at least are accepted as clean,
though none are absolutely pure.