Why did people hate the ancient samaritans?

Answer 1

Generally, the ancient samaritans were hated by the Jews and the Greeks. To the Jews, Greeks were "Gentiles", meaning that they were not Jews. Therefore, they were polytheistic (they believed in more than one god) and unclean. To marry a Gentile would be a heinous crime in the Jewish community. Samaritans were generally Jews and Greeks that were intermarried. Once this was found out, both individuals (the Jew and the Greek) would be cast out of their own communities, forcing Samaritans to build their own towns and cities. To sum it up, a Jew would be hated for marrying a Gentile for the above-listed reasons, and Greeks would also be hated for marrying out of their polytheistic religion.

Answer 2

Samaritans (today as well as in Biblical times) have a different version of the Torah from the one passed down in the Jewish community. The Samaritan Torah differs from the Jewish version in a number of places, although most of the differences are small, easy to view as typos. (Since both documents are passed down through scribal traditions, should we call them scribos? The big difference is that the Samaritan Torah designates Mount Gezarim (outside what is now Nablus) as the place for sacrifices. To this day, Samaritans continue to make sacrifices on that mountain. The other big difference is that the Samaritans reject all of the Hebrew Bible after the Torah, the 5 books of Moses. The Samaritans' own explanation of their origin is plausible, that they are descended from the Northern Kingdom (what Jews and Christians call the lost tribes) who were not exiled by the Assyrians or the Babylonians and have continued the religion of their forefathers from pre-exilic times to the present. This theory is plausible, but the traditional Jewish explanation denies their legitimacy. In post-temple Biblical times, there were enough Samaritans in Samaria that friction with the Jewish community was a serious problem. Today, they are such a small minority that friction is largely a thing of the past. Both Arabs and Jews in Israel and Palestine generally tolerate the Samaritans and avoid interfering with their ancient traditions.