Good Genes: How Science Helped the Samaritans Find Their Roots

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is pretty well-known. Even if you haven't had much exposure to the New Testament of The Bible, you probably know the gist of the story: Traveler gets the crap beat out of him by thieves, who then leave his half-dead body by the side of the road; a couple of ostensibly holy men walk by, but go out of their way to avoid even making eye-contact with the poor guy; finally, a Samaritan comes along and gets the traveler some much-needed medical attention.

The tale is meant to be ironic, as in, "Isn't it crazy that a Samaritan helped that dude when the holy men wouldn't?" Personally, though, I never really understood why the Samaritans had such a bad rap to begin with.

Turns out, the missing context of the Good Samaritan is rooted in a dispute that connects ancient ethnic animosity with 21st-century genetics.

The story starts around the 7th century BCE, when the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel. Part of that process involved swapping a chunk of the Ancient Israeli population with Assyrian citizens--the deported Israelis were sent to live in Assyria, and vice versa. But that was only a small part of population. Many more were left behind.

Meanwhile, Israel wasn't the only Hebrew state. The Kingdom of Judah, just to the south, hung around, running more-or-less independently and worshiping the Deity Currently Known as God (among others) until the 5th century--when it got itself conquered by the Babylonians, who pulled a similar citizen swap.*

Fast forward some 70 years. The exiled Judaens return to their homeland. When they get there, they find a bunch of people who claim to be descendants of those left-behind Israeli citizens who weren't taken captive by Assyria. They call themselves the Children of Israel and practice a religion that's similar to, but not exactly like, the one practiced by the Judaens themselves. Naturally, conflict ensues. The Children of Israel insist that the Judaens are worshiping God all wrong. The Judaens insist that the Children of Israel are really just Assyrians in drag and are, natch, worshiping God all wrong. Over time, the Judaens come to be known as the Jewish people, while the Children of Israel are called Samaritans. By the time the Parable of the Good Samaritan was recorded, Jews generally thought of Samaritans as untrustworthy, blasphemous and potentially evil. Thus, the irony.

As the 21st century dawned, the few Samaritans left (712 in 2007, up from a low of 146 in 1917) still claimed to be descended from the ancient Hebrew tribes. Jewish religious authorities still disagreed. And strong evidence either way was still lacking. Until 2004.

See, that tiny population (which wasn't real big on converts) led to a decent amount of inbreeding. In fact, according to research done in the late 1990s, 84% of Samaritan marriages are between cousins--making them the most highly inbred population on the planet. Unfortunately, that title comes with a propensity for genetic abnormalities, concern about which eventually led several Samaritans to turn their DNA samples over to a team of genetics researchers.

The results turned up some surprising confirmation of the Samaritans' personal origin stories. The study compared Samaritan Y-chromosome DNA (genetic information passed mostly intact from father to son) and mtDNA (ditto, but from mother to daughter) with that of several different Jewish populations from across the Middle East and Africa, as well as with a couple of non-Jewish groups from the same areas. Not only do the Samaritan Y-chromosomes seem to be closely related to Jewish Y-chromosomes, but most of the Samaritans actually carry a distinctive set of Y-chromosome mutations known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype--which is connected with men descended from the ancient Jewish priestly class.

On the other hand, Samaritan mtDNA doesn't match up to its Jewish counterparts at all, said Marcus Feldman, Ph.D.,professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and part of the research team that studied the Samaritans in 2004.

To Feldman and his colleagues, the genetic evidence suggests that modern Samaritans are descended from Hebrew men, left behind after the Assyrians conquered ancient Israel, who went on to marry non-Hebrew women. It's probably not just coincidence that Samaritan ethnicity (at least, the official social recognition of that ethnicity) is traditionally passed to a child through its father--exactly opposite from the way Jewish ethnicity has been traditionally passed down.

In that way, the evidence suggests that both the Jews and the Samaritans are right, sort of. If you believe ethnicity is something passed down from the mother, then the Samaritans probably aren't Children of Israel. But if you think ethnicity comes from the father's side (or, you know, from both parents) then the Samaritans have a good case. It's all about how you use culture to interpret the science.

*The details of this history, by the way, aren't real clear, as much of what usually gets reported as "Israel and Judah Facts" comes directly from the Bible, sans independent corroboration. But the basics of two kingdoms, conquered and dispersed are generally backed up by extra-Biblical historical records.

Image of Samaritans, circa 1899, courtesy Flickr user libraryimages.net, via CC.

• [Anonymous]

  What’s even more interesting is that genetic studies indicate that Palestinians are descended from Jews who lever left:

  http://www.globalpolitician.com/2851-palestinians

  “Palestinians, however, differ from other Arabs in some ways. As the web site for Harper’s Magazine reported, one study showed that Jews and Palestinians have common ancestry that is so recent that it is highly likely that at least some of the Palestinian blood actually descends from Jews…. Another study by New York University confirmed a remarkable similarity between Jewish and Palestinian genes.”

• [Anonymous]

  I don’t know … as a largely nonreligious Asian I never understood the irony inherent in the parable. What is there about holiness that supposedly predisposes people to help others? Isn’t that something more fundamental — i.e. a basal human instinct as opposed to some institutionalized religion?

  • [SamSam]

    That’s such a Humanist attitude… don’t you know that it is religion that is the source of all the world’s morals?

    Really, though, I think that’s the point of the parable. That regular people who love their neighbors as they love themselves are closer to getting into heaven than people who believe they are holy only because of their place in organized religion.

    Jesus, after all, was fairly anti-organized religion…

    • [Anonymous]

      About the first part: my evidence is anecdotal, not theoretical I guess. Guess I should go into applied science.

      About the 2nd part: Well right, that is the point. But the preconceived notion is that such an exchange is a) unexpected, b) implies something unusual about the guy being a Samaritan (when there are thousands of other explanations) and c) implies something unusual about the other guys not helping (when there are thousands of other explanations). Perhaps I am analyzing this as a statistician instead of a theologist. Lol.

• [Anonymous]

  The hilarious Mitchell & Webb skit about Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan immediately comes to mind.

• [davegroff]

  Pardon me if you’ve already seen this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_Uvg56U_o
  The Good Samaritan story told by British comedy group Mitchell and Webb. Hilarious.

  • [Blackwell]

    Season 1 of “That Mitchell and Webb Look” (as mentioned in comments #1 & #4) is available for streaming from Netflix.

    /threadjack off

• [dculberson]

  Very, very interesting post, Maggie! Thanks!

  I always took the tale as being more along the lines of helping someone regardless of whether they like you, not that it’s crazy that a low-down Samaritan would help someone. Meaning, even if someone hates you and would sooner leave you dead in the road than help you, it’s not right to do the same to them. Not irony but a lesson in treating others as you would like to be treated.

• [arikol]

  I think this youtube video from the british comedy show “That Mitchell and Webb look” sketch called “good Samaritan” is a most excellent disposition on the matter.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_Uvg56U_o

• [Anonymous]

  Hypothesis: The Assyrians took the old men and the women back to Assyria, where the women had to take Assyrian husbands, and therefore, “Jewishness” had to to inherited through the maternal line, while the young men remained in Palestine to provide labor – and took non-Jewish wives from the surrounding areas, and so therefore Jewishness had to be passed through the paternal line.

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    Interesting theory, but my understanding is that it was more like the Assyrians took the royalty and high-status individuals into captivity and left behind people who didn’t socially matter as much and wouldn’t easily become lightening rods for revolution.

    Ditto with the Babylonian captivity of the Judaens, actually.

• [SamSam]

  Great story, thanks! I love your posts, Maggie.

  Now can anyone prove that the Native Americans are also one of the lost tribes of Israel?

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    I’m going to assume, for the sake of my sanity, that you’re making a Mormon joke, SamSam. :)

    Genetically, it’s pretty clear that Native Americans came from Asia long before any tribes of Israel got lost.

    • [JamesPadraicR]

      I don’t think he’s making a Mormon joke, there was a theory in the 18th century that the Native Americans were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes#Native_Americans

      I’ve read that the Good Samaritan story should be read as Anti-Jewish since the holy men were supposedly temple priests and the traveler a fellow Jew, and the irony you mentioned that they couldn’t be bothered to help their own.

      One problem with that is, if they were temple priests that would mean they were Cohanim who are forbidden to come in contact with corpses. So if the traveler was unconcious and bloody, they would pass by.

      • [Anonymous]

        Which was his other point – that people were using stupid superstitions to avoid loving their fellow man.

      • [SamSam]

        @JamesPadraicR: Oh, no, sorry, it was just a lame Mormon joke…

        @Anonymous #21: right, and so, since the Samaritans have “non-Jewish” mtDNA, that would be consistent with the theory that at some point in time, there were no Jewish women in the Samaritan population.

        Once you have one generation with no women with a certain mtDNA, it won’t go back into the population (if it keeps inbreeding) because the men of that generation can’t pass it down.

        • [JamesPadraicR]

          Oh, well never mind. Obviously I didn’t get it.

• [Russell Letson]

  If @21: “Ancestory” is one of the happier typos I’ve seen lately. (And if it’s not a typo, clever you.)

• [cymk]

  Growing up, I learned the story of the good Samaritan, but at the time only understood it as one man helping another when others would not. I did not learn that the Samaritans and Jews had a mistrust or hatred of each other. Knowing that puts the story in a slightly different context, “even your enemies don’t deserve to die on the side of the road.”

  • [Courtney]

    You also have to remember that in Luke 10, Jesus was telling this parable to “an expert in the law” (a Jew, probably a Pharisee). So the fact that the Samaritan was the good guy in the story was also Jesus’s way of thumbing his nose at the Pharisees.

• [arkizzle / Moderator]

  Actually, I think it’s a divergent stereoscopic image, rather than convergent.

  So if you uncross your eyes, you’ll get a better effect.

• [MattIsWaldo]

  Thanks so much for this post Maggie. This sort of non-mainstream info is why I come to BoingBoing. That, and banana porn.

• [Moriarty]

  Well, ok, but what have the Romans ever done for us?

  • [Anonymous]

    Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

• [Anonymous]

  RE: “Children of Israel” men marrying non-”Jewish” wives: This is covered in the 10th chapter of the book of Ezra. The men who are in Jerusalem are ordered by Ezra (who recently returned from Babylonian captivity) to “put away” their gentile wives…which apparently the Samaritans did not do. Interesting how this part of biblical history is supported out by modern science….

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    That’s not terribly surprising. Ultimately, the Bible is like most ancient texts in that it contains a mixture of historical facts that can be corroborated by other sources/physical evidence, exaggerated storytelling about historical events that can’t be corroborated by (or is contradicted by) other sources/physical evidence, and religious/cultural myth. A lot of it is made up, but that doesn’t mean all of it is.

    It’s like Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan. Imagination and fiction often have a starting point or inspiration in reality. The only real difference with the Bible is that all of what it says about history is often taken at face value by the general Western public out of reflex. The key is that you really shouldn’t trust the Bible as a purely historical text any more than you’d trust, say, “The Illiad” or the “Popol Vuh”.

    The process of teasing out those lines of true fact from myth is really very interesting. Archaeology is pretty cool stuff.

• [krsmav]

  The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes from Jesus. Whatever your religion, you have to admit that Jesus was a genius.

  Jesus preached that you should love your neighbor as yourself. A lawyer says, “OK, but who’s my neighbor?” He hopes to get into a hair-splitting “lawyerly” argument — Next door and across the street are clearly neighbors. Halfway around the world is clearly not. But where do we draw the line? Two blocks away? Four? The next town? — and so on.

  Jesus tells the parable and asks, of the holy men of the traveler’s tribe and the despised Samaritan, who was the true neighbor? He thus neatly sidesteps the lawyer’s unsolvable riddle and shames him into agreeing that the Samaritan is the true neighbor. Go thou and do likewise.

• [Anonymous]

  @dculberson Regardless of whether you learned that the Samaritans were no good heathens or just “other” it is ironic that the injured man’s own people and holy men would pass him by, but a stranger/outsider would help him. But that doesn’t mean the moral of the story is “isn’t it ironic?” The irony is being used to teach us to do unto others and maybe even not to be so racist.

• [Uncle Geo]

  Whatever, I like the stereographic images. I can just cross my eyes and get the 3D effect. Hey man, pass the chips would ya.

• [Anonymous]

  There is no CC share alike license for this image.

  If it was taken in 1899 it is fully public domain, and does not need any licensing, Creative Commons or not.

  Anyone can do whatever they want with it, including selling copies of it, and they are not required to ask anyone or credit anyone.

• [Anonymous]

  Only about half the Samaritans now live in Holon; the other half are still in Samaria. I visited them a few weeks ago.

• [Daneel]

  A Samaritan? This is supposed to be a Jewish section.

• [Nadreck]

  Hmm, so you’re claiming that this particular ethnic group has been hanging around all over the area for about 9,000 years. And here we all thought that that was just Zionist propaganda.

  Too bad that, due to the recent extensive campaigns of ethnic cleansing they’re now limited to a postage stamp sized area around Jerusalem and some parts of Persia.

• [Anonymous]

  In the Jewish tradition, “Jewishness” has always been matrilineal. You can have a non-Jewish father, but if your mother is a Jew, then you are considered to be a Jew. However, if your mother is not Jewish, you are not considered a Jew, even if your father is.

  Therefore, under orthodox Judaic law, the Samaritans would not be considered Jews.

  • [Anonymous]

    Yeah, I think everyone got that.

• [Anonymous]

  For the scientists, the 2004 Shen et al. paper can be found here: (http://www.ebc.ee/EVOLUTSIOON/publications/Shen2004.pdf)
  Shen et al. 2004 Reconstruction of Patrilineages and Matrilineages of Samaritans and Other Israeli Populations From Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation. Journal of Human Mutation. 24:248-260

• [ocschwar]

  A bit of context, people. During the Maccabean War, the Samaritans sided with the Hellenized Seleucid Empire. At the time of Jesus, Jewish-Samaritan animosity was still very fresh.

  Since then, the Samaritans and Jews found common ground in the Byzantine era, and sided with Iran in her rivalry with Constantinople, which prompted the Byzantine to beat bloody hell out of the Samaritans at one point (and that is how they got to be so small in number).

  These days, there is no animosity. The Samaritans used to live near Nablus, in the West Bank. Now they live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Apparently Zionists make for more congenial neighbors.

• [avt_tor]

  Keep in mind that the land of “Samaria” is part of what is now Palestine. Jesus’s parable works on more than one level. To understand what it meant then, read it as the parable of the “Good Palestinian”, and then think about what Jesus may have been saying about modern Middle East conflict.

• [Anonymous]

  And still you ignore the story sitting in your face.

  Why assume that the Samaritans are the descendants of Hebrew men and non-Hebrew women?

  They stayed there — with their women. The Judeans moved — some with women, some without — then moved back, some with women, some without. Then they went into a diaspora around the world. Same story.

  We know that Y chromosomes are fairly well related across the diaspora — while mtDNA is not, but is related to local groups.

  So what’s the obvious explanation? That Jews are descended of via the male line from the ancient folks of Jerusalem who, over 2500 years, have had children with women of many, many ethnicities. The Samaritans are the descendants of a closely allied group — on both sides.

  Which, by standard Rabbinical law, makes Jews non-Jews — but by Samaritan and Kharite law, makes them Jews. Which the non-Rabbinical Jews are Jews by both their laws and Rabbinical law. Which is mildly ironic — particularly given the political implications of this.

  Why do folks who think they’re breaking tradition still think inside the tiny little box?

• [Naberius]

  Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Jews get kicked out of Israel (using the term loosely), come back later and claim it’s their home, people already living there disagree. But, despite seeming to not like each other all that much, they actually sort of get along and make it work without killing each other and putting each other in special camps. Or at least if they did, it eventually all got sorted out because we’re not still hearing about the Hebrew/Samaritan problem today.

  So how did they do that? And could they maybe do it again?

  • [lf]

    The names/faiths change but the story stays the same. It seems there is always one group of steady ancestory in the Levantine region, while another is always claiming ownership.

    The advent of Islam added to this history’s complexity, but rarely has the conflict “all got sorted out”. We are still hearing the Judean/Samaritan conflict, we just don’t call it that because the respective parties now think of themselves differently.

  • [Anonymous]

    Many of the people living there were already Jewish, as well as that portiono of Bedouins who identified more closely with the Jews (as descendents of Hagar–and yes, they still consider themselves that), but in truth, there were hardly any people living there at all when the Jews began returning. Aside from the Ottoman statistics, read any of the hundreds of travelers’ account of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Mark Twain’s “The Innocents Abroad” is the most accessible. The place was almost completely deserted 130 years ago, and had been for centuries. It was when the Jews began to return and started rebuilding that other migrants showed up.

• [Anonymous]

  Anonymous: wrong. Tracing Jewishness exclusively through the mother was invented in the 2nd Century CE or thereabouts. There are plenty of Jewish men who marry non-Jewish women in the Torah, and their kids are all considered Jews. So whatever the disagreement might be, it’s about worship and dogma, and NOT about matrilineal descent, which hadn’t yet been invented when the Babylonian Jews returned from exile. This is a very dishonest attempt to further distance the Samaritans from the main body of rabbinical Jews.

• [Anonymous]

  so, i know it’s a nitpicky point, but i was under the impression that mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) is passed down from the maternal egg to all offspring, male or female. so samaritan men and women who are descended from these ancient mothers would come from a similar line of mtDNA. there may be other explanations for the story taking this into account…

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    Anon #20, you’re right that mtDNA gets passed to a woman’s sons as well as her daughters. But her sons don’t pass it on. The unbroken line of mtDNA goes from mother to daughter. I was just keeping the explanation short and simple here.