Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

How does Philo Judaeus distinguish the Samaritans in Egypt?

It would appear Samaritans of Delos were called "Israelites", c.250-160 BC. So they may have been called (or conflated with) "Hebrews" also.

This calls into question the term 'Samaritan' -- what it meant, in different contexts, outsiders' confusion, and so on -- in the next 200 years.



A long-standing 'Samaritan' (Israelite) community in Egypt would probably be called "Jewish" by many Roman outsiders. But that wasn't always the case, even in the controversial Historia Augusta.

I am not understanding the relevance of the question.

Modern Samaritans call themselves Israelites too. Not getting the significance of this. Samaritans are called such because they 'guard' the Torah. https://www.israelite-samaritans.com/benyamim-tsedaka/

That looks like a great DnD campaign dungeon map.

Though Samaritans also interpret their name as meaning keepers (of Torah), it may be that they were earlier named after the place name of the city and region of Samaria, the origin of which name may have been earlier and different.

The Pentateuch was written with the accepted Hebrew etymology in mind. It's a core theological concept. Adam "guarding" in Eden. Cain not being his brother's "keeper." Abraham guarding the covenant. Beyond the Pentateuch may lie a lot of things. But for all intents and purposes the Pentateuch hints or suggest that the righteous "shamar." I will need more time to think about the specific implications of Shomroni

The studies of Shen[42] and Hammer et al.[13] show that the paternal genes of Yemenite Jews are very similar to that of other Jewish populations. They include Y haplogroups A3b2, E3b3a, E3b1, E3b1b, J1a, J2e, R1b10, and the lowest frequency found was Haplogroup T-M184 2/94 2.1% in one sample.

Samaritans priesthood E3b1a. Unlikely that Samaritans represent some "alien" grouping.

The Samaritans refer to themselves as שמרים. The related Jewish terminology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shomrim ... %20patrols

https://www.google.com/search?q=shomrim ... UTF-8#ip=1

The name comes from Exodus 12:42

It is a night to be observed (שמרים) for the Lord for having brought them out from the land of Egypt; this night is for the Lord , to be observed (שמרים) by all the sons of Israel throughout their generations.

Curious that the gospel has the disciples fail to keep watch at a similar time. The Samaritans never stopped observing the slaughter of Passover.