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This last calendar is fluid since the present year date is always changing. , thousands if not millions of years ago). When dealing with such immense spans of time, a variation of tens or even hundreds of years makes no real difference. E. calendar means fixing it according to an absolute chronology. But how do historians correlate events reported in ancient texts as, say, occurring in the fourteenth year of the reign of so-and-so with our calendrical reckoning? The process is akin to putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces either missing or broken.

Other peoples too have been identified at various times as descendants of the lost tribes, and a few immigrants to the state of Israel since 1948 have also claimed descent from the ten lost tribes. 010 Gravett Ch1 (1-40) 9/25/08 12:30 PM Page 35 The Samaritans Historians continue to debate exactly when and how the Samaritans originated. E. agree that Mount Gerizim, in the central highlands, served as both a geographical and religious focus. E. they built a temple on it. This latter act was no doubt prompted by their belief that Moses, at God’s command, instructed Joshua to build an altar on that spot.

Promised land” functions similarly, though it expresses the more specific belief that God gave this land as a divine gift to the ancient Israelites. In this textbook certain specific contexts will demand use of the terms Canaan, Palestine, or Israel. But given the particular cultural and/or political perspectives carried by each of them, the more general label Cisjordan, meaning “this side of the Jordan River,” will most often be used instead. Though still reflecting a certain standpoint—one privileging the west side of the Jordan River—specific religious, cultural, or political agendas attach themselves less obviously to it.