Cuthites

The Cuthites is a name describing a people said by the Old Testament and Josephus to be living in Samaria around 500 BC. The name comes from the Assyrian site Kutha, in line with the claim that the Samaritans were descendants of settlers placed in Israel by the Assyrians after the Assyrian invasion of 722 BC. The label "Cuthites" was a pejorative name for Samaritans in later rabbinic texts.[1]

The modern scholarly view is that Yahweh worshippers in the north of Ancient Israel outnumbered post-722 BC Assyrian settlers, with those settlers assimilating into the existing Yahwist population.[2] The "Cuthites," therefore, were not a foreign population in Israel but instead "a branch of Yahwistic Israel in the same sense as the Jews."[3]

Cuthites in Jewish literature

The Cuthites were to blame for the postponing of the 2nd temple, in the reign of Cyrus the Great. They did this after the Jewish people 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 10 tribes.

Cuth (or Cuthah) is mentioned in the Old Testament of the bible in the second Book of Kings ch.17, vs.30, 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."[4]

See also

References
  1. Pummer, Reinhard (2016). The Samaritans: A Profile. Eerdmans. p. 13. ISBN 0802867685.
  2. Pummer, Reinhard (2016). The Samaritans: A Profile. Eerdmans. p. 17. ISBN 0802867685.
  3. Pummer, Reinhard (2016). The Samaritans: A Profile. Eerdmans. p. 25. ISBN 0802867685.
  4. "2 Kings 17:30", www.kingjamesbibleonline.org


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