hatred slumbered on the side of the Jews. They knew the
Samaritans only as Cuthites, or heathens from Cuth. 'The race that I
hate is no race,' says the son of Sirach. It was held that a people who
once had worshipped five gods could have no part in Jehovah. The claim
of the Samaritans that Moses had buried the Tabernacle and its vessels
on the top of Gerizim, was laughed to scorn. It was said that they had
dedicated their temple, under Antiochus Epiphanes, to the Greek Jupiter.
Their keeping the commands of Moses even more strictly than the Jews,
that it might seem they were really of Israel, was not denied; but their
heathenism, it was said, had been proved by the discovery of a brazen
dove, which they worshipped, on the top of Gerizim. It would have been
enough that they boasted of Herod as their good king, who had married a
daughter of their people; that he had been free to follow, in their
country, his Roman tastes, so hated in Judea; that they had remained
quiet, after his death, when Judea and Galilee were in uproar, and that
for their peacefulness a fourth of their taxes had been remitted and
added to the burdens of Judea. Their friendliness to the Romans was an
additional provocation. While the Jews were kept quiet only by the
sternest severity, and strove to the utmost against the introduction of
anything foreign, the Samaritans rejoiced in the new importance which
their loyalty to the empire had given them. Shechem flourished: close
by, in Caesarea, the procurator held his court: a division of cavalry, in
barracks at Sebaste--the old Samaria--had been raised in the territory.
The Roman strangers were more than welcome to while away the summer in
their umbrageous valleys.

"The illimitable hatred, rising from so many sources, found vent in the
tradition that a special curse had been uttered against the Samaritans,
by Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Joshua. It was said that these great ones
assembled the whole congregation of Israel in the Temple, and that three
hundred priests, with three hundred trumpets, and three hundred books of
the Law, and three hundred scholars of the Law, had been employed to
repeat, amidst the most solemn ceremonial, all the curses of the Law
against the Samaritans. They had been subjected to every form of
excommunication; by the incommunicable name of Jehovah; by the Tables of
the Law, and by the heavenly and earthly synagogues. The very name
became a reproach. 'We know that Thou art a Samaritan