Samaritan History

The similarities the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) shares with the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), as well as many similarities with the Septuagint (LXX), challenge the longstanding view that the Samaritan Pentateuch is a later, borrowed, and altered form of the Masoretic Text (MT). The historical devaluation of the Samaritan Pentateuch requires reevaluation, based upon the contextual cohesiveness of the Samaritan Pentateuch, agreement with the most ancient texts of the DSS and LXX, and the uninterrupted and non-dispersed oral transmission of the Ancient Israelite Samaritans.

The destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and the Babylonian exile that followed, could have spelled the end of Israelite identity. But the return of exiles, first under Zerubbabel, and again under Ezra and Nehemiah a generation later, resurrected Isra-elite identity and opened a new chapter in the history of Israel.

He appears once in the New Testament, mentioned only in passing in the Acts of the Apostles; only a few verses in the canon, but for the primitive Church, there is a whole corpus about Simon Magus, its most formidable antagonist, an enemy of such colossal proportions that he deserved to be called "the father of all heresies." His only mention in the Bible occurs at the beginning of the second volume of Luke the Evangelist where he had a minor confrontation with Saint Peter which nonetheless had a happy ending.