So, I see you do NOT believe in the entire Bible, just the parts you fancy. You do not fancy witches and demons, so you claim that belief in them is unnecessary. I bet you even wash your hands before eating. Jesus was not into the germ ''theory'' of disease (do we still call it a theory?) The disciples did not bother to wash their hands before dinner, as taught by the Bible and Jewish custom. ere is what the Bible says:
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
7:1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,
7:2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
7:3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;
7:4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)
7:5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
7:6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
7:7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
7:8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
7:14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
7:15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
7:21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,
7:22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
7:23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Christian groups run many hospitals, are each and every one would disagree with the Son of God about washing his hands before eating. There is MUCH that can defile your body outside if it gets into you, including bacteria, viruses, poisons and all sorts of toxic stuff. Jesus was clearly WRONG about the importance of washing one's hands.
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Samaritans were (and are: there are still about 800 left) followers of an Abrahamic religion very similar to Judaism that claim that they are the inheritors of the Hebrew faith, while the Jews who were taken away in exile to Assyria, changed the religion as a result of their exile.
So Samaritans were very similar to Jews. Certainly more so than Greeks, Romans, and Baal worshiping Philistines.
