Where was Samaria?

Question

Where was Samaria?

Accepted Answer

Samaria was both a city and a region. The city stood on a lone hill in the central highlands, at today's Sebastia in the West Bank, about 56 km north of Jerusalem in a straight line and 11 km north-west of Shechem; the map point stands on it. King Omri “bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver” about 880 BC, built a city on it and made it the capital of the northern kingdom, and the name passed from the city to the land around it, the hill country of Ephraim and Manasseh between Judea and Galilee. In the time of Jesus Samaria was the belt of hills between Galilee, which began at the plain of Jezreel, and Judea, which began north of Bethel; its people were the Samaritans, whose holy mountain was Gerizim above Shechem. The direct road from Galilee to Jerusalem crossed it, so John says of Jesus, “he must needs go through Samaria”, and brings him “to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar”, about 11 km from the old capital. Luke has him pass “through the midst of Samaria and Galilee”, which the Russian Synodal Bible renders as between the two, along their border. Acts sends the witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria”, and Philip “went down to the city of Samaria”, which may be Herod's rebuilt Sebaste or, as the Russian Synodal Bible takes it, a city of the region. Today Israel uses the name for the northern West Bank around Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm.