Samaritan is a word referring to people or individual nnature of the ancient region of Samaria and also to language spoken in that region.
Samaria is the name of a province referred to several times in the New Testament of the Holy Bible, situated on a hilltop between Judea and Galilee. Currently, the region is located in Palestine, between Israel and the West Bank, in the Middle East. In total, there are about 700 Samaritans living in Holon, Israel, and Nablus, West Bank.
In figurative meaning, the word samaritan means a charitable personoh, what has good heart and cares about others. This meaning has its origins in the parable of the "Good Samaritan", told by Jesus in Luke 10:30-37.
The Samaritan people do not consider themselves a Jewish people, but descendants of the ancient Israelites who inhabited the historic province of Samaria. The Samaritans were considered unclean by the Jews. From the Bible of Judaism, only the Pentateuch follows. Samaritans have their own religious doctrine: Samaritanism.
Currently, the language spoken by the Samaritans is Hebrew and Arabic. In religious cults, they rescue the ancient language spoken by their ancestors: Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic.