At a still later period, the name carried more of a religious, rather than a racial or political, connotation. “Samaritan” referred to one who belonged to the religious sect that flourished in the vicinity of ancient Shechem and Samaria and who held to certain tenets distinctly different from Judaism.​—Joh 4:9.

The erection of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, perhaps in the fourth century B.C.E., in competition to the one in Jerusalem is considered by some to mark the final separation of the Jews and Samaritans, although some think the severance in relations came more than a century later. When Jesus began his ministry, the breach between the two had not been healed, although the Gerizim temple had been destroyed about a century and a half earlier. (Joh 4:9)