The "Samaritan" Error In The Qur'an

[فداء الرسول]

The "Samaritan" Error In The Qur'an

الشبهة السامري في القرآن

The "samaritan" error In The Qur'an

Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

1. Introduction

According to the Christian missionaries and apologists, comparisons between the Qur'anic and Biblical narrations expose serious errors within the Qur'an. The Qur'anic narrations are said to be either 'absurd' or 'historically impossible'. Take for example the story of Moses as related in the Qur'an: the Qur'an mentions a certain Haman who was associated with the Court of Pharaoh - when in reality, say the missionaries, he was a counsellor of Ahasuerus who lived 1,100 years after Pharaoh; the Qur'an mentions that Pharaoh crucified or impaled his victims upon a stake, yet crucifixion was unknown in Egypt at that time.

Relying heavily on a single (prolific) Christian orientalist, the missionaries also state that the Qur'an, according to Surah 20, says the Israelites were led astray by a "samaritan" - yet the Samaritan people did not exist until many centuries later. What evidence is presented to support these claims? Can the presuppositions of the Christian missionaries be taken seriously in the light of contemporary Samaritan scholarship? This paper proposes to examine the origin of the Samaritans as suggested by the Christian missionaries.

2. The "samaritan" Error

The "samaritan" error in the Qur'an can be traced to Judeo-Christian attitudes provided by a prima facie consideration of the Old Testament material. Even after the advent of critical biblical scholarship, it was supposed that the picture of the Samaritans as a people of mixed race and religion, as provided in II Kings 17, was for all intent and purposes an accurate one. A prime example comes from the 1898 edition of James Hastings' A Dictionary Of The Bible. In the article "Samaria, Territory Of" by C. W. Wilson, the description of the Samaritans is given as:

In 2 K 17:29 these colonists are termed 'Samaritans.' Josephus says... that they were called Cuthaeans in Hebrew, from Cuthah, the city of their origin... and he regarded the Samaritans of his day as their descendents. The Cuthaeans and others brought their national gods, an act which was believed to have brought on them the vengeance of God of the land.[1]

Descriptions of Samaritans worshipping an admixture of gods owe a great deal to later day Jewish polemics, in particular, that arising from Josephus' Antiquities as well as from the Old Testament itself. It is not surprising that the views concerning the Samaritans origins also positively influenced in a different way the anti-Islamic polemics in the West in the beginning of the 20th century CE. For example, while discussing the mention of al-Samiri in the Qur'an, Henri Lammens stated that:

"the most glaring anachronisms" is "the story of the Samaritan (sic) who is alleged to have made the Jews worship the golden calf..."[2]

That these claims have literally pullulated amongst the Christian missionaries is something of an understatement. For example, Anis Shorrosh says:

The Qur'an says the golden calf worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness was molded by a Samaritan... In fact, the term Samaritan was not used until 722 BC, several hundred years after the events recorded in Exodus.[3]

Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner, presumably quoting Shorrosh, say:

The Qur'an says that the golden calf worshipped by the Israelites at Mount Horeb was molded by a Samaritan. The term Samaritan was not coined until 722 B.C., several hundred years after the Exodus, when the idol was crafted.[4]

Similar claims have been made by Mateen Elass who says:

As-Samiri is not a proper name as the definite article before the hyphen makes clear. Most Muslim scholars understand this term to mean "the Samaritan," but this is problematic since the Samaritans were not constituted as a separate people until after the deportation of the northern tribes of Israel under the Assyrian empire, some five hundred or more years after the golden calf incident.[5]

Gleason Archer in the section "Anachronism and Historical Inaccuracies in the Koran" finds difficulty in the explanation offered by Yusuf Ali for the word al-Samiri in the Qur'an. Archer says:

Yusef Ali suggests that Samariyyu may have been an Egyptian name meaning "stranger, foreigner," or possibly a Hebrew term derived from Shomer ("watchman") - in a valiant effort to avoid the charge of anachronism. Samaritan did not come into being as a race until after the 6th century B.C., and so there could have been no Samaritan around as early as 1445 B.C.![6]

Similar claims were also made by ‘Abdallah ‘Abd al-Fadi,[7] Robert Morey,[8] Daniel Ali and Robert Spencer.[9]

Jacques Jomier, however, offers a different form of argument concerning al-Samiri in the Qur'an. He says:

At the scene of the Golden Calf, a mysterious character appears: he is called the Samaritan (al-Smir). It is hard to know what this word signifies. Some Westerners have seen a connection with the golden calves of Samaria, but this would take us several centuries beyond Moses. In the absence of other documents, one is very hesitant to subscribe such a hypothesis (cf. Qur'an 20. 85-95).[10]

According to Newman, the mention of al-Samiri in the Qur'an is the result of Muhammad's confusion of the "time periods" and transferring "Jewish teachings about Samaritans to a single person."[11]

Except for Jomier and Newman, almost all these claims can be traced back, whether directly or indirectly, to none but Tisdall – the fountainhead of all Christian polemic against the Qur'an. Confident in his ability to truthfully exegete the Qur'an, the "samaritan" issue appears to be a source of amusement for Tisdall, who notes rather derisively,

But since the city of Samaria was not built, or at least called by that name, until several hundred years after Moses' death, the anachronism is at least amusing, and would be startling in any other book than the Qur'an, in which far more stupendous ones frequently occur.[12]

It is interesting that Tisdall equated the Samaritans with the appearance of the city of Samaria to claim the anachronism. In the same vein, Christian missionaries have claimed that the Qur'an contains a historically impossible narration when it mentions the name al-Samiri which some translate as "the Samaritan" (Qur'an 20:85, 87 and 95). They claim that:

The Qur'an says that the calf worshipped by the Israelites at mount Horeb was molded by a Samaritan (Sura 20:85-87, 95-97). Yet the term 'Samaritan' was not coined until 722 B.C., which is several hundred years after the events recorded in Exodus. Thus, the Samaritan people could not have existed during the life of Moses, and therefore, could not have been responsible for molding the calf.

And furthermore:

How can a Samaritan have led the Israelites astray at the time of Moses [about 1400 B.C.] when the city of Samaria was founded by King Omri in about 870 B.C. (see 1 Kings 16:24)? But "the Samaritans" as a distinct people only emerged after the exile of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the resettlement of the area under king Sargon II in after 722 B.C. with non-Israelites which then adopt a syncretism [mixture] between the religion of the Jews and their own polytheistic background. Hence, it is historically impossible that a Samaritan could have led the Israelites into idolatry in the time of Moses. This is another time compression of at least 500, but rather 700 years.

Similar statements are repeated here, as if they singularly embody the truth, concerning the origins of Samaritans.

The problem with this claim is that the Samaritans were not known as a distinct ethno-religious group until around 722 B.C., when the term "samaritan" was coined...

The claim of the Christian missionaries concerning the origin of the Samaritans rests on the events mentioned in II Kings 17. We will begin by discussing the claims of the Christian missionaries that II Kings 17 describes the origins of Samaritans. What do the scholars of Samaritan studies say about the claim that II Kings 17 accurately describes the origins of Samaritans? This will be discussed along with the usage of the terms "samaritan" and "Samarian" in light of recent historical investigations. Finally, we will also consider recent scientific studies examining the principal characteristics of the Samaritan and Jewish genetic composition, in order to confirm if there is indeed any shared ancestry.

3. II Kings 17: The Source Of Samaritan Origins?

Before we go into the historical background of II Kings 17, a background relating to the events leading to sacking and exile of Israel in the 8th century BCE is necessary. About two centuries earlier a united Israel had reached its peak under the leadership of Saul, David and Solomon. However, after Solomon's death, a civil war broke out and the former united kingdom split into two kingdoms: Judah in the south with Jerusalem as its capital, and Israel in the north whose capital was eventually established in Samaria. The two kingdoms struggled for nearly two centuries before Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. The account in II Kings 17 implies that the Samaritans descended from peoples deported by the Assyrians from other parts of the vast empire during the mid-8th century BCE. The Assyrian ruler brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. Eventually the term "Cuthean", that is people of Cuthah, sometimes also referred collectively to denote new settlers, became the Jews' name for Samaritans and a word of contempt for these genetically and religiously impure people. This name was also adopted by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities in his polemics against the Samaritans. Thus, according to the Jewish version of history, the Samaritans are a mixed race people, being a native or inhabitant of Samaria, a distinct territory or region in central Palestine. The question now is whether there is any truth in this version of the history.

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