Mount Gerizim, the Samaritan Torah and Passover

Samaritans hold that theirs is the Israelite religion in its original form, and that the division came when Eli established a rival sanctuary at Shiloh, abandoning the true one at Mount Gerizim. On that account the Jews are the schismatics. Reinhard Pummer's study sets out the Samaritan position, the Jewish counter account, and what the archaeological and textual evidence actually supports.

The Samaritan canon is the Torah alone, in a version differing from the Masoretic text at some thousands of points, most of them minor and a small number theologically decisive, above all the reading that establishes Gerizim rather than Jerusalem as the chosen place. It is written in the Samaritan script, a direct descendant of the older Hebrew letters that Jewish scribes replaced with the square Aramaic form.

Practice follows the Torah closely and without the rabbinic tradition. The Passover sacrifice is still performed on Mount Gerizim, with lambs slaughtered and roasted at the site on the eve of the festival, which makes it the only continuing animal sacrifice in the Abrahamic religions. The calendar is calculated by the priestly line, the sabbath is kept strictly, and purity rules concerning menstruation and childbirth are observed in a form Jews abandoned with the Temple.