From CojsWiki
Ancient Israel From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple. Ed. Hershal Shanks. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1999.
Samaritans
Unfortunately, Judah’s Samaritan neighbors sought to influence the Persians to limit the
development of the renascent Jewish community. Initially, “the adversaries of Judah and
Benjamin” (that is, the rulers of Samaria) offered to assist Zerubbabel in rebuilding the
Temple of Yahweh, claiming that they too were worshipers of the Hebrew God and had
been since they were settled in the land by the Assyrians. Zerubbabel rebuffed the
Samaritans’ proffered assistance, however, and this led to their harassing the returning
Judahites through correspondence with Persian officials (Ezra 5:1–6:18). 37
The Yahwistic inhabitants of what was formerly Israel, whose help Zerubbabel rejected,
were descendants of Syrian-Mesopotamians. After the Assyrians destroyed the northern
kingdom in 722 B.C.E., they sent colonists to settle the district. These Syrian-
Mesopotamian colonists subsequently adopted the religion of the land (2 Kings 17:24–41 ). The biblical writers explain the hostility of the Samaritans, as these people came to be
known, as resulting from the petty jealousy of a people whose mixed ethnic background
and syncretistic Yahwism precluded participation in a renewed Jewish cult. It is not
difficult to see the political agenda, however, in strained relations between the peoples of
these two regions. We are told that the “people of the land discouraged the people of
Judah” throughout the reign of Cyrus (that is, from 539 to 530 B.C.E.) to the time of
Darius I, during the reign of Ahasuerus (Xerxes, 486–465 B.C.E.), and in the days of
Artaxerxes I (465–424 B.C.E.;Ezra 4:4–23).
Despite the opposition of the Samaritans, the appointment of a Davidic scion
(Zerubbabel), who was raised in Babylonia, with the support and full knowledge of the
Achaemenid leadership was a stroke of political genius. It was also consistent with
Persia’s overall policy of installing loyal representatives of the conquered indigenous
populations who could prevent insurrection and foster loyalty to the imperial throne. 38
Pairing the Davidic Zerubbabel with Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, as high priest was a
move meant to assuage local concerns and give the newly established subprovince of
Yehud (Judah) maximum freedom in invigorating its historic religion while limiting
autonomy on the political level. The relative success of such an approach is best observed
through the absence of organized opposition to Persia for at least two generations or
more. The negative aspect of this was the apparent increase in the appeal of non-Yahwist
religious practices in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. Nonetheless, recent scholarship has
attributed to the Persian period an unprecedented flurry of literary activity that surely
found its support and inspiration in the reestablished Jewish community of Palestine. 39