“They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and meat and drink, and oil, unto them of Sidon and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus, king of Persia. Now in the second year of their coming into the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the Lord.… And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, king of Israel” (_Ezra_ iii. 8, 10). In this, the Book of Ezra describes an event which Josephus places in the time of Darius, and which shows that in the narrow zeal of the sacerdotal aristocracy, the pride of race had as large a share as religious intolerance. We remember that after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, populations from Media and Chaldea, principally Kutheans, had been established by Esarhaddon in the land of Samaria, so as to replace the Israelites transported over the Euphrates. According to the Book of Kings, these strange colonists adopted the God of their new country. They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations out of which they had been brought to Samaria. The descendants of these colonists having mingled themselves more and more with the remains of the former Israelite population, the custom of strange worship diminished. The reform of Josiah spread itself over the land, and in the Book of Jeremiah we read that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the people of Shiloh, Shechem, and Samaria came and wept over the ruins of the temple. Thus, in spite of their strange origin, the Samaritans had the same religion as the Jews, and although the Book of Ezra calls them the enemies of Judah and Benjamin, the step they took with regard to the emigrants of Babylon showed the most brotherly dispositions.