Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
) and the first century historian
Josephus
Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly ...
to be living in
Samaria
Samaria (; he, שֹׁמְרוֹן, translit=Šōmrōn, ar, السامرة, translit=as-Sāmirah) is the historic and biblical name used for the central region of Palestine, bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The first ...
around 500 BCE. The name comes from the Assyrian city of
Kutha
Kutha, Cuthah, Cuth or Cutha ( ar, كُوثَا, Sumerian: Gudua), modern Tell Ibrahim ( ar, تَلّ إِبْرَاهِيم), formerly known as Kutha Rabba ( ar, كُوثَىٰ رَبَّا), is an archaeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. ...
, in line with the claim that the Samaritans were descendants of settlers placed in Israel by the
Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
after the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel around 720 BCE. The label "Cuthites" was a pejorative name for Samaritans in later
rabbinic literature
Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writ ...
.
The modern scholarly view is that
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he poss ...
worshippers in the north of
Ancient Israel
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscri ...
outnumbered post-722 BCE Assyrian settlers, with those settlers assimilating into the existing Yahwist population. The "Cuthites", therefore, were not a foreign population in Israel but instead "a branch of Yahwistic Israel in the same sense as the Jews."
Cuthites in Jewish literature
The Cuthites were to blame for the postponing of the construction of the Second Temple, during the reign of Cyrus the Great. They did this after the
Jewish people
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
returned from Babylonian exile, and first agreed to help them, but after the Jews refused, they lied to king Cyrus who postponed the building process.
The Cuthites are mentioned in Josephus, ''Antiquities'' Book 11, Chapter 4, as "Cutheans", naming them as those who were brought from Media and Persia and "planted" in Samaria by the King of Assyria after he had conquered the Ten Tribes of Israel.
Cuth (or Cuthah) is mentioned in the in reference to the gods or idols made and worshiped by different tribes, which took place in the former holy places of exiled Israelites (King James Bible trans.): "And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima."
See also
* Cuthah (Kutha), archaeological site, now in Babil, Iraq
* Nergal, deity worshiped in Cuthah
*
Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin The Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin is one of the few literary works whose versions are attested in both Old Babylonian, Middle Babylonian and the Standard Babylonian of the late Neo-Babylonian period, a literary life of around 1,500 years. It seems to ...