The Samaritans, the once numerous descendants of Ephraim and Menashe, evolved from our ancient Israelite ancestral society and culture in parallel with the Judeans, the descendants of Yehuda now known worldwide as the Jewish people.
They have siphré Torah (written in the old Hebrew script), they scrupulously observe the mitswoth of the Torah as they understand them, and they have their own rich traditions of Hebrew prophecy, philosophy, and messianism.
At times we descendants of Yehuda, Ephraim, and Menashe have been natural allies and brothers in the covenant of Israel; at times we have ruthlessly fought each other in bloody civil wars that needlessly wasted countless lives and desecrated the name of the God of Israel.
Today the Samaritans live as a tiny community mostly within the state of Israel, straddling Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods in Shekhem and Holon. They serve in the same national service as their fellow (Jewish) Israelis, grow up with the same Israeli culture, and despite the differences in our traditions and even versions of history, warmly seek our mutual peace.
Nice people, really.
But here’s something else about the Samaritans:
As children of Yisrael who were never fully exiled from the land, they count the years in terms of the start of the settlement of the nation of Yisrael in the land of Kena’an. The start of Hebrew civilization in its ancestral habitat. Year in, year out, the Samaritans have never lost track of this monumental event.
And no, their calendar didn’t start 76 years ago – this year marks 3,663 years since the nation of Israel entered the land.
Three thousand
Six hundred
And
Sixty three
Years
I believe the word you’re looking for is “indigenous”…