Samaria Attractions Shomron

After a series of short-lived rulers the fifth king of the northern kingdom, Omri (882-871 B.C.), founded a new capital "and called the name of the city which he built after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria" (1 Kings 16,24). Omri and his son Ahab, who also did much building at Hazor and Megiddo, erected palaces and temples within a ring of walls. Under the influence of Ahab's wife Jezebel, who came from Sidon, the worship of Baal and Astarte, together with the refined culture of the Phoenicians, came to Israel. These developments were bitterly opposed by the prophet Elijah, who brought down the judgment of God on the pagan priests on Mount Carmel.

In 732 B.C. the kingdom of Israel fell under Persian control, and the authority of its last kings (Pekahiah, Pekah and Hoshea) was restricted to the capital and its immediate surroundings. With the conquest of Samaria by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser in 722 B.C. and the taking of the acropolis by Sargon II in the following year the kingdom ceased to exist. Many members of the upper classes were deported and replaced by "men from Babylon and from Cuthah" (2 Kings 17,24), and thereafter intermarriage between the incomers and the remaining Jews produced the people known as Samaritans.

Subsequently Samaria was used as a military base by Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. At the end of the fourth century it was occupied by Macedonians and was Hellenised. When the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I took the town in 107 B.C. he had all non-Jews put to death. Herod brought new splendor to Samaria, in which he married the Hasmonean princess Mariamne in 38 B.C. He rebuilt the town and renamed it Sebaste in honor of Augustus (in Greek Sebastos). Here too he had his wife Mariamne and her two sons put to death. Sebaste's prosperity was short-lived. Jewish rebels set fire to the temple of Augustus, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 69, Vespasian razed the fortress to the ground. The foundation of Neapolis (Nablus) by Vespasian's son Titus in 72 set the seal on Sebaste's downfall.

The three disciples - Philip, Peter and John - who came to Samaria between A.D. 30 and 35 saw the town when it was still at the height of its splendor. Here they encountered Simon the sorcerer, who offered them money for the power to give the Holy Ghost (Acts 8,4-24). (Hence the term simony, the buying or selling of spiritual or church benefits).

Around 200 the Emperor Septimius Severus tried, unsuccessfully, to give new life to the town. Later a Christian community grew up in the town under their bishop, and when in the fifth century relics of St John the Baptist were found here (though he had not been beheaded here but in Machaerus on the east bank of the Jordan) pilgrims began to come to the town. The cult of the saint's relics has continued down the centuries, and they are still revered in the mosque in the village of Sebastiya, which perpetuates the name of ancient Sebaste.