Abstract

The perspective of the Old Testament on the Samaritans must take into account the dialogue-comparison with the Samaritan tradition, because this too produced a collective memory and not a precise historical reconstruction. Jews and Samaritans, in fact, while admitting a common origin (as the Pentateuch, accepted by both as an authoritative text, points out), preserve alternative visions of the division that has occurred between the two communities. Many biblical passages, in light of the interpretation given by Josephus, as well as how the New Testament presents the relationship between the two communities, have been interpreted by various scholars as a reflection of the anti-Samaritan controversy and read as attestation of the separation between the two traditions. The contribution shows that the current paradigms that illustrate the formation of the Bible and of individual texts of it, the epigraphic and archaeological documentation highlight that those references are mostly indirect and ambiguous, therefore susceptible to alternative interpretations that prove to be more plausible.