Who Were the Samaritans?

This image is courtesy of 'whodisan215' on flickr.com

It has come to my attention that there is a certain amount of confusion about who the Samaritans were (or are). We know about the Samaritans mostly because of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). Some people are also aware that the woman at the well was a Samaritan (John 4:7-30). Probably even fewer are aware of the story of the ten lepers, at least one of which was a Samaritan (Luke 17:12-19).
The real question is, who were the Samaritans? Bible scholars generally point to 2 Kings 17:22-34. This tells of a time when God was displeased with Israel and Judah, and so allowed them to be conquered by Assyria, and led away as captives, but the Assyrians moved other people into the city of Samaria (capital of Israel), but lions came in and terrorized them. The Assyrians, being somewhat superstitious, decided that the God of Israel had protected the Israelites from the lions, but, for whatever reason, the gods of the people currently living in Samaria could not (it didn’t even occur to them that maybe they were false gods and couldn’t protect against anything). So, they got some of the Israelites to teach these new inhabitants the ways of the God of Israel, so that the lions would quit eating them. These people continued to worship and sacrifice to their own gods, but, for whatever reason, God apparently decided that was okay, and redirected the lions. To be honest, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me: if the lions were eating them because they weren’t Jews, making a show of Jewish faith, while still holding to their other religion, why would God protect them? Maybe because at least they acknowledged Him as ‘a’ God, and that, by showing them a portion of His power (which was still way more than the power of any of their gods), then maybe they would someday come to the realization that He was the one true God. Keep in mind that 2 Kings does not refer to these people as ‘Samaritans.’
Now the modern day Samaritans, the descendents of those mentioned in the Bible, say that, in ancient times, there was a dispute amongst the priests in the temple, and that one priest, named Eli, usurped the High Priest position, and that the followers of the true High Priest became outcasts from Israeli society, while the majority of Israel followed Eli. In other words, the Samaritans are the true Israel, while the rest of the people that call themselves Israel have been led astray. Because God was not displeased with them, they were not carried away by the Assyrians, and were left in Samaria. The Samaritans believe in the Law of Moses, and follow it. They do not believe that the rest of the Tanakh is divinely inspired, however.
The bottom line is, we have two groups of people with relatively minor differences in what they believe, that manage to tolerate each other, but not accept each other as being their own kind. When Jesus walked the earth, they did not associate with each other at all, as evidenced by the statements made by the Samaritan woman at the well. Whether that was because the Samaritans were not true Jews, as a matter of genealogy (the Samaritans of that day did not worship any other gods), or whether it was because the Samaritans actually practiced a purer form of Judaism, really doesn’t matter. Jesus made it pretty clear by the way He talked about Samaritans in parables, the way He talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, the way that He healed Samaritan lepers—even though He said that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24)—that He did not consider them to be ‘filthy half-breeds.’ They were simply souls that needed Him, just like the rest of us (maybe I shouldn’t say ‘just like’ the rest of us, because he didn’t call them dogs, the way he did other people who were not ‘of Israel’). (By the way, if it bothers you to be called a dog, let me point out Ecclesiastes 9:4.)