Samaritan (comics)
Samaritan is a fictional character in the comic book series Astro City. Created by writer Kurt Busiek and artists Brent Anderson and Alex Ross, Samaritan is the premier superhero of the world, much in the vein of Superman and Captain Marvel. Despite his powers, however, the mind of the man called Samaritan is that of a weary and worn time-traveler with little time to himself and no future to return to.
Fictional character biography
In the dystopian future of the 35th century, a man is selected to go back in time to prevent a catastrophic event whose consequences ultimately ruined the future world. Launched into the timestream, he is caught up in empyrean fire, the strands of energy that make up time itself. Crash-landing near Astro City in late 1985, he spends the remainder of the year learning to master the empyrean forces which had suffused his body, and to alter it to change back to a more normal appearance (the empyrean forces had changed his hair to a bright shade of blue; he uses his powers to bleach the blue coloring away, rendering it white, and restores it when he appears as Samaritan.). Desperately working to control his powers, he barely succeeds in time to prevent the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the event he has been sent to amend. Upon placing the Challenger on the ground, he is besieged by the media, who press him for details on himself. Briefly dismissing himself as just "a Good Samaritan", he departs immediately to better figure things out.
Samaritans
The Samaritans (Samaritan Hebrew: שוֹמְרִים Samerim "Guardians/Keepers/Watchers [of the Law/Torah]", Jewish Hebrew: שומרונים Shomronim, Arabic: السامريون Sāmeriyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant, originating from the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East.
The Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Samaritans believe that their worship, which is based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, is the true religion of the ancient Israelites from before the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they see as a related but altered and amended religion, brought back by those returning from the Babylonian exile.
Ancestrally, Samaritans claim descent from the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (two sons of Joseph) as well as from the priestly tribe of Levi, who have links to ancient Samaria from the period of their entry into the land of Canaan, while some suggest that it was from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the Samaritan polity of Baba Rabba. Samaritans used to include a line of Benjamin tribe, but it went extinct during the decline period of the Samaritan demographics. The split between them and the Judeans began during the time of Eli the priest when, according to Samaritan tradition, Judeans split off from the central Israelite tradition.
Samaritan alphabet
The Samaritan alphabet is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic.
Samaritan is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which was a variety of the Phoenician alphabet in which large parts of the Hebrew Bible were originally penned. All these scripts are believed to be descendants of the Proto-Sinaitic script. That script was used by the ancient Israelites, both Jews and Samaritans. The better-known "square script" Hebrew alphabet traditionally used by Jews is a stylized version of the Aramaic alphabet which they adopted from the Persian Empire (which in turn adopted it from the Arameans). After the fall of the Persian Empire, Judaism used both scripts before settling on the Aramaic form. For a limited time thereafter, the use of paleo-Hebrew (proto-Samaritan) among Jews was retained only to write the Tetragrammaton, but soon that custom was also abandoned.
Samaritan (disambiguation)
The Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group of the eastern Mediterranean region, originating from connection with ancient Samaria.
Samaritan may also refer to:
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