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Post by faskew on Mar 19, 2013 8:03:40 GMT -5
I love stories about these odd little groups from the past that somehow survive being almost wiped out over the centuries. From Wikipedia: "The Samaritans have insisted that they are direct descendants of the Northern Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who survived the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BCE." Other Jews persecuted them for their beliefs, which was the point of the Good Samaritan story in the NT - that a man from a despised "inferior" group could be more moral than the dominant group. Today the story would be about someone gay or an illegal alien helping the hurt man while all the "proper" church people drove past him, thinking that he was on drugs. 8-> news.yahoo.com/european-women-marry-hope-samaritans-184501957.htmlFred Askew
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Post by raybar on Mar 19, 2013 13:57:43 GMT -5
I admire these "odd little groups" for maintaining their identities and culture for so long. But I can't help wondering what's wrong with them. (Not a very nice way to put it.) Why separate yourselves from the surrounding culture?
Perhaps that's my American perspective, coming as I do from a culture which contains people from all over the world. I love that immigrants can bring the best of their "old country" traditions here and leave all the crap behind. (Unfortunately, some seem to bring most of the crap along too.). Or maybe it's just that "modern times" hasn't gotten to them yet, being as it's only a couple hundred years since the industrial revolution began.
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Post by faskew on Mar 21, 2013 6:49:54 GMT -5
Possibly the difference is that in the US most people came from somewhere else (including the natives) and had to start over. Some of these people in the Mid-East have been sitting on the same plot of land for 10,000 years and they consider those that have only been there 9,000 years to be mere transients, who will go away and leave them alone any day now. 8->
Fred Askew
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