Editing Samaritans (section)

=== Byzantine period ===
{{further|Samaritan Revolts}}

According to Samaritan sources, [[List of Byzantine emperors|Eastern Roman emperor]] [[Zeno (emperor)|Zeno]] (who ruled 474–491 and whom the sources call "Zait the King of Edom") persecuted the Samaritans. The emperor went to Neapolis (Shechem), gathered the elders and asked them to convert to Christianity; when they refused, Zeno had many Samaritans killed and re-built the synagogue as a church. Zeno then took for himself Mount Gerizim and built several edifices, among them a tomb for his recently deceased son, on which he put a cross so that the Samaritans, worshiping God, would prostrate in front of the tomb. By 484 the Samaritans revolted. The rebels attacked Neapolis, burning five churches built on Samaritan holy places and cutting the finger of bishop Terebinthus who was officiating at the ceremony of [[Pentecost]]. They elected [[Justa (rebel)|Justa]] (or Justasa/Justasus) as their king and moved to [[Caesarea Maritima|Caesarea]], where a noteworthy Samaritan community lived. Here several Christians were killed, and the church of St. Sebastian was destroyed. Justa celebrated the victory with games in the circus. According to the [[Chronicon Paschale]], the ''dux Palaestinae'' Asclepiades, whose troops were reinforced by the Caesarea-based Arcadiani of Rheges, defeated Justa, killed him, and sent his head to Zeno.{{sfn|Pummer|2002|p=367}} According to [[Procopius]], Terebinthus went to Zeno to ask for revenge; the emperor personally went to Samaria to quell the rebellion.<ref>Procopius, ''Buildings'', 5.7.</ref>
[[File:Khirbat-Samara-synagogue-119.jpg|thumb|Ruins of a 4th-century Samaritan synagogue likely abandoned after the [[Samaritan revolts|Samaritan Revolts]], [[Khirbet Samara]]]]
Some modern historians believe that the order of the facts preserved by Samaritan sources should be inverted, with the persecution of Zeno as a consequence of the rebellion rather than its cause, and should have happened after 484, around 489. Zeno rebuilt the church of St. Procopius in Neapolis, and the Samaritans were banned from Mount Gerizim, on whose top a signaling tower was built to alert in case of civil unrest.{{sfn|Crown|1989|pp=72–73}}

According to an anonymous biography of Mesopotamian monk [[Barsauma (died 456)|Barsauma]], whose pilgrimage to the region in the early 5th century was accompanied by clashes with locals and the forced conversion of non-Christians, Barsauma managed to convert Samaritans by conducting demonstrations of healing.<ref>Nau, "Re´sume´", ROC 9 (1914), 114–15.</ref> Jacob, an ascetic healer living in a cave near Porphyrion, [[Mount Carmel]] in the 6th century CE, attracted admirers including Samaritans who later converted to Christianity.<ref>Vita Jacobi, text and trans. in Pummer, 326–31</ref>{{sfn|Sivan|2008|p=172}} Under growing government pressure, many Samaritans who refused to convert to Christianity in the 6th century may have preferred [[paganism]] and even [[Manichaeism|Manicheism]].<ref>Procopius, ''Anecdota''. 11.26</ref>

Under a charismatic, [[Messiah#Messianic figure|messianic figure]] named [[Julianus ben Sabar]] (or ben Sahir), the Samaritans launched a war to create their own independent state in 529. With the help of the [[Ghassanids]], Emperor [[Justinian I]] crushed the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. The Samaritan faith, which had previously enjoyed the status of ''[[religio licita]]'', was virtually outlawed thereafter by the Christian [[Byzantine Empire]]; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community dwindled to tens of thousands.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Siebeck |first1=Mohr |title=Companion to Samaritan Studies |pages=70–71}}</ref>

The Byzantine response to the revolts, described by the archaeologist [[Claudine Dauphin]] as an act of [[ethnic cleansing]], decimated five successive generations of the Samaritan population, destroyed their religious center, stripped their rights, and left them politically insignificant.<ref name=":04">{{Cite book |last=Dauphin |first=Claudine |url=https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Jews-and-Judaism-in-Late-Antiquity/Hezser/p/book/9781138241220 |title=The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity |publisher=Routledge |year=2024 |editor-last=Hezser |editor-first=Catherine |pages=42–43 |chapter=Changes in the Infrastructure and Population of Byzantine Palestine}}</ref> Nevertheless''',''' the Samaritan population in Samaria did survive. During a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 570 CE, an anonymous Christian pilgrim from [[Piacenza]] travelled through Samaria and recorded the following: "From there we went up past a number of places belonging to Samaria and Judaea to the city of Sebaste, the resting-place of the Prophet Elisha. There were several Samaritan cities and villages on our way down through the plains, and wherever we passed along the streets they burned away our footprints with straw, whether we were Christians or Jews, they have such a horror of both".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wilkinson |first=John |title=Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades |publisher=Ariel Publishing House |year=1977 |isbn=0-85668-078-8 |pages=81}}</ref> The same pilgrim also mentions a place called ''Castra Samaritanorum'' near [[Tel Shikmona|Shikmona]].{{sfn|Ehrlich|2022|p=47}}

According to Menachem Mor, the decline of the Samaritan population between the 5th and 6th centuries was mostly due to the ongoing Christianization of Palestine's inhabitants, rather than the uprisings against the Byzantines. Mor argues that a large number of Samaritans in the cities and towns converted to Christianity, some under pressure and some of their own free will. He claims that both Samaritan and Christian sources preferred to conceal this phenomenon. The Samaritans preferred to attribute their numerical decrease on their resistance to coerced conversion, while the Christians were not willing to admit that the Samaritans were coerced into accepting Christianity and instead preferred to claim that many Samaritans were killed because of their rebellious nature.<ref
 name="Mor2003">{{Cite book |last=Mor |first=Menachem |title=משומרון לשכם: העדה השומרונית בעת העתיקה |publisher=מרכז זלמן שזר לתולדות ישראל |year=2003 |isbn=965-227-182-9 |location=Jerusalem, Israel |pages=223–224 |language=he |trans-title=From Samaria to Shechem: The Samaritan Community in Antiquity |chapter=מרידות השומרונים |trans-chapter=The Samaritan Revolts}}</ref> A change in the local population's identity throughout the Byzantine period is not indicated by the archeological findings.<ref name=":2" />[[File:Mosaic from Samaritan synagogue.jpg|thumb|Mosaic from Samaritan synagogue ([[Israel Museum]])]]