Re: Babylon
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 11:09 am
Notes from Gudme, Before the God in this Place for Good Remembrance: A Comparative Analysis of the Aramaic Votive Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim (pg. 58-59):
According to 2 Kgs 17:24-41 the king of Assyria brings in people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim to populate the cities of Samaria after the Israelites who were living there had been carried away to Assyria (v. 6). The new population in Samaria attempts to worship Yahweh. They even have one of the Israelite priests that were deported returned to them to teach them how to perform the cult of Yahweh, but the cult that emerges is a syncretistic mix of the cults of their homeland with that of Yahweh. In Ant 9.288-91, in his version of 2 Kgs 17, Josephus refers to the inhabitants of Samaria who were brought from the region of Cuthah and are called "Cutheans" in Hebrew and "Samaritans" in Greek. The Samaritans may appear to be Jewish, but according to 2 Kgs 17 and Ant 9 they are foreigners ...
Yitzhak Magen himself accepts that the reason for founding the temple of Mount Gerizim in the fifth century matches Josephus' account in Ant 11, but that Josephus simply got the date wrong and that the Sanballat in question is Sanballat the Horonite, living "at the time of Nehemiah" according to Neh 13:28. According to Magen, the temple on Mount Gerizim was modelled after the temple in Jerusalem and built by "Jewish priests who followed the grandson of Eliashib, who was married to the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite (Neh 13:28)." It should be noted, though, that Magen does not identify the inhabitants of Samaria as descendants of foreign settlers, but as "the remnant of Israel" living in Samaria.
https://books.google.com/books?id=StMCv ... gs&f=false