High Priest of Samaritans Dies

Mazliach Ben Pinhas Ben Yitshak Shlomo, High Priest of the Samaritans, has died at the age of 74.
The venerable head of that fastdwindling sect, which for 20 centuries has clung to the site of its destroyed temple on Mount Garizim, near Nablus, is to be succeeded by a younger member of the Samaritan priesthood. Until some 300 years ago, the Samaritan priests claimed direct descent from Aaron, but the priestly line was transferred to families descending from the Levites when the line of the High Priests became extinct in the seventeenth century.
One of the most treasured possessions of the Samaritans is an Old Testament scroll, written in Phoenician characters used prior to the Babylonian captivity of the sixth century R.C. Modern Biblical scholars, however, while attaching great importance to the document, assign its date to times ranging from the earliest Christian period to the twelfth or thirteenth century A.D.