Samaritans
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Samaritans. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a mixed people, which inhabited the region between Judea and Galilee, and formed a sect among the Jews. They consisted partly of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh left in Samaria by the King of Assyria when he had carried their brethren away captive, and partly of Assyrian colonists. On the return of the Jews from captivity they declined to mix with the Samaritans, though united with them in religion. The latter attempted to prevent the Jews from building the temple at Jerusalem, and failing in this, they built a temple on Mount Gerizim exclusively for their own worship. A few of the race still exist scattered in Egypt, at Damascus, and at Gaza. They adhere strictly to the Mosaic law, but are regarded by the Jews as heretics, as they accept only the Pentateuch, of which they have a special version of their own. They believe in the existence of angels, in a resurrection and future retribution, and expect the coming of a Messiah, in whom they look only for a prophet. In the synagogue the Aramaic Samaritan dialect is used, but they generally speak Arabic. O-Cyc They avoid any connections with other sects and marry only among their own nation.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a colony of Babylonians planted in Palestine by Sargon 722 B. C. The country of Samaria lay north of Judea and south of Galilee. The colonists brought with them some Babylonian religious ideas akin to those held by the Israelites whose home they were sent to possess. The men of Judah sent missionaries among them. The Samaritans never fused with the Jews, however. Christ speaks of the women of Samaria as though they were foreigners. They founded a sanctuary of their own on Mount Gerizim. Shechem, now the Turkish town of Nabulus at the foot of the mountain, was their first town. A few Samaritans, possibly half a hundred families, still linger in a quarter of the old city of Shechem. They hold to the idea of one and one only true God. They still make three pilgrimages a year to Mount Gerizim to celebrate the principal festivals of their religion. They hold to the five books of Moses, but reject the rest of the Bible.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat the Samaritans as a vanishing remnant, Aiton's putting them at perhaps fifty families in Turkish Nabulus in 1910. They came nearer to extinction than either writer knew, falling to roughly 150 people around 1920, but the community has since grown to about 800 or 900, living in two centres: Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim above Nablus, now in the West Bank, and Holon near Tel Aviv. Modern scholarship has also largely dropped the biblical account that Collier's and Aiton's both repeat, that they were Assyrian or Babylonian colonists planted after 722 BC; textual and genetic work points instead to descent from northern Israelites, with the final break from Judaism coming centuries later. Excavation on Mount Gerizim from the 1980s uncovered the temple precinct the entries mention, and the Samaritan Pentateuch gained new standing once the Dead Sea Scrolls turned up Hebrew texts sharing some of its readings.
Written for this edition, 2026.