Inhabitants of Samaria, a general name for the region north of biblical Judah or Judaea. When Samaria was conquered (along with the rest of the old Northern Kingdom of Israel) by the Assyrians in 722 b.c.e., the Assyrian king exiled the Israelite inhabitants of Samaria’s cities and repopulated the area with a conglomeration of different nations (2 Kings 17:24–31). They are said to have recognized only Mount Gerizim as the sacred center rather than Jerusalem. Relations between the Jews—that is, the inhabitants of Judah—and the Samaritans in the Second Temple period were often strained, and most Jews apparently regarded them as foreigners, although both groups worshiped the God of Israel and shared the Pentateuch as sacred Scripture (though the Samaritan Pentateuch differs somewhat from the traditional Hebrew text). In addition to the material preserved in the Samaritan Targum, ancient Samaritan traditions of biblical interpretation are to be found in abundance in Tibat Marqa; some scholars have suggested that Theodotion, (Pseudo)-Eupolemus, and the author of the Aramaic Levi Document were Samaritans rather than Jews, but these attributions remain speculative and strong counter-arguments have been advanced to each of them. Samaritan communities exist to the present.