Charles H. H. Scobie, “The Origins and Development of Samaritan Christianity,” NTS 19(4) (1973), pp. 390-414, he covers all three most probable links in the New Testament with Samaritan Christians: Stephen’s speech as recorded in Acts, the Gospel of John’s “Galilee-Samaritan” circle, and the Epistle to the Hebrews’ audience.
Regardless of whether Stephen’s speech as recorded in Acts really does go back to a historical Stephen or the account of his speech was a later Samaritan Christian work, some points can be made about the theology of at least some early Samaritan Christian from Acts 7:2-53: 1) They had a minimal interest for futurist eschatology; 2) They regarded Moses highly enough, and their Christology was non-Davidic and somewhat based on Deuteronomy 18:15-18, with Moses being the major prototype of Christ rather than David; 3) They held an interest in Jesus as the heavenly intercessor; and 4) They expressed strong opposition to the Jerusalem Temple, looking back to the Tabernacle and to the days of the past of wilderness (Scobie, “The Origins”, 400).
Connecting these points to the Gospel of John, we get surprisingly similar results, though there are differences: 1) Minimal interest in futurist eschatology and a strong emphasis on realized eschatology (which is close to the Gospel of Thomas) 2) Davidic christology is surprisingly absent, while a Mosaic christology is present throughout the Gospel, particularly evident in phrases such as “sent by God” while describing Jesus; 3) Jesus appears as the heavenly intercessor in 1 John 2:1, while in the Gospel it’s overlapped with the activity of the Paraclete; and 4) There is a strong emphasis on the “true worship of God” (“you will worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem”) and an eschatological reunion of the people of God. (Scobie, “The Origins”, 408).
Scobie indeed proposes that the Gospel of John has a Galilean/Samaritan origin which would allow connections with DSS, Mandaean literature, Odes of Solomon, light-darkness dualism, proto-Gnostic ideas, and so on.
The Epistle to the Hebrews was probably sent to a Samaritan Christian group that had more of an emphasis on Melchizedek than Moses. Pre-Christian Samaritans would have considered Melchizedek highly, given Pseudo-Eupolymus, who probably was a Hellenistic Samaritan, connects Melchizedek with Mount Gerizim. The Samaritan influence can be seen in that the epistle has less interest in the Temple and more about the Tabernacle. In addition to all of this, all four characteristics mentioned above are also found in the epistle, though sometimes in different forms.
The Samaritan hypothesis for the Gospel of John also would explain why it sounds so anti-Jewish (“the Jews” gets repeated over and over and it’s always negative). (This is the thesis of Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg in The Jewish Gospel of John: Discovering Jesus, King of All Israel)
Petri Luomanen considers Samaritans briefly in his chapter, “Ebionites and Nazarenes,”* in relation to conflicting descriptions of Ebionites in Irenaeus, Haer.1.26.2, where he writes that Ebionites interpreted the prophets “carefully” or “curiously,” and Epiphanius’ characterization that they had dropped the prophets entirely, and used only the Pentateuch.
Rather than thinking that Irenaeus’ Ebionites evolved into the Ebionites Epiphanius writes about, Luomanen believes this may indicate two different, but related, groups.
One would be derived from Samaritans evangelized by the Hellenists mentioned in Acts 8:4-7; 11:19-20. If this did result in a new group, it would likely resemble Epiphanius’ Ebionites, rejecting the Temple and Paul, and remembering Stephen (Pan. 30.1.3; 30.2.2-3), as well as preserving Samaritan Pentateuch and practices. Irenaeus’ Ebionites, on the other hand, may have been a Hebrew/Aramaic group aligned with James in Jerusalem, and held a positive view of the Temple, and a wider view of scripture.
That said, Luomanen also points to a syncretistic outlook held by Epiphanius’ Ebionites, which admitted ideas that distanced them from both Jews (and Samaritans), and Christians. Mentioned here are magical practices, and the use of the Book of Elchasai. These things indicate differences from Irenaeus’ understanding of Ebionites.
This is necessarily speculative, since there are no independent writings from either group, except citations from special gospels by Eusebius and Epiphanius. Luomanen has an interesting chapter on these in Edwards et al., “Early Christian Apocrypha”– “Jewish-Christian Gospels,” pp.95-114.
McCabe, ed., “Jewish Christianity Reconsidered” (2007), pps.90-9; 100-102.
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