The Samaritans (Samaritan Hebrew: שוֹ‏מְרִים Samerim "Guardians/Keepers/Watchers [of the Law/Torah]", Jewish Hebrew: שומרונים‎ Shomronim, Arabic: السامريون‎ Sāmeriyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant, descended from ancient Semitic inhabitants of the region.The Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, Samaritans say that their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they say is a related but altered and amended religion, brought back by those returning from the Babylonian exile.Ancestrally, Samaritans claim descent from the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph) as well as from the priestly tribe of Levi, who have links to ancient Samaria from the period of their entry into the land of Canaan, while some suggest that it was from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the Samaritan polity of Baba Rabba. Samaritans used to include a line of Benjamin tribe, but it went extinct during the decline period of the Samaritan demographics. The split between them and their brothers, the children of Judah (the Jews), began during the time of Eli the priest, and the culmination was during the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah when the Samaritans (then Kingdom of Israel) refused to accept Jerusalem as the elect, and remained on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans say that Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Israel. The major issue between Jews and Samaritans has always been the location of the chosen place to worship God; Jerusalem according to the Jewish faith or Mount Gerizim according to the Samaritan version.In the Talmud, a central post-exilic religious text of Judaism, the Samaritans are called Cutheans (Hebrew: כותים‎, Kutim), referring to the ancient city of Kutha, geographically located in what is today Iraq. In the biblical account, however, Cuthah was one of several cities from which people were brought to Samaria, and they worshiped Nergal. Modern genetics suggests some truth to both the claims of the Samaritans and the account in the Talmud.Once a large community of over a million in late Roman times, the Samaritans shrank to several tens of thousands in the wake of the bloody suppression of the Third Samaritan Revolt (529 AD) against the Byzantine Christian rulers and mass conversion to Islam in the Early Muslim period of Palestine.As of January 1, 2012, the population was 751, divided between Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim and the city of Holon, just outside Tel Aviv. Most Samaritans in Israel and the West Bank today speak Hebrew and Arabic. For liturgical purposes, Samaritan Hebrew, Samaritan Aramaic, and Samaritan Arabic are used, all written in the Samaritan alphabet, a variant of the Old Hebrew alphabet, which is distinct from the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew and later Aramaic were languages in use by the Jewish and Samaritan inhabitants of Judea prior to the Roman exile.Although they are drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and considered by Rabbinical Judaism to be a branch of Jews, the Israeli Rabbinate requires Samaritans to officially go through formal Orthodox conversion in order to be recognized as Halakhic Jews in Israel. One example is Israeli TV personality Sofi Tsedaka, who formally converted to Judaism at the age of 18.