Prof. Mary-Joan Leith is Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and has participated in numerous archaeological excavations around the Mediterranean and the Levant. She is the author of Greek and Persian Images in Pre-Alexandrine Samaria: The Wadi Ed-Daliyeh Seal Impressions (1990); Wadi Daliyah I: The Wadi Daliyeh Seal Impressions: Discoveries in the Judean Desert 24 (Clarendon Press, 1998); Seals and Coins in Persian Period Samaria (2000); and The Virgin Mary: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2021).
Last Updated
August 13, 2025
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The book of Kings recounts how all Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrians and replaced by foreigners, and Ezra–Nehemiah rejects them as non-Israelites. Yet other biblical and Second Temple texts, along with the archaeological record, show that northern Israelites continued to live in Samaria well into the Second Temple period. Far from vanishing, the northern tribes maintained a temple and priesthood that cooperated with their southern neighbors and played a role in shaping the Pentateuch.
The book of Kings recounts how all Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrians and replaced by foreigners, and Ezra–Nehemiah rejects them as non-Israelites. Yet other biblical and Second Temple texts, along with the archaeological record, show that northern Israelites continued to live in Samaria well into the Second Temple period. Far from vanishing, the northern tribes maintained a temple and priesthood that cooperated with their southern neighbors and played a role in shaping the Pentateuch.
