NOTES for Ezd2 5:69-70
Judging by the events described in Second Ezra, relations between the repatriates who returned from Babylon to Judea and the local inhabitants were far from simple. This may seem strange: in essence the issue concerns one and the same people, one smaller part of which had once been deported to Babylon, while the other larger part remained in Judea.
The inhabitants who remained in Judea mixed with inhabitants of other regions of the Babylonian Empire whom the conquerors resettled in Judea, but linguistically and culturally they remained Jews. Their faith was semi-pagan: they worshiped not only Yahweh, but also other gods, partly local and partly imported from the places where they had lived before. Yet the Jews of the pre-exilic era differed little from them in this respect; they were finally freed from paganism only in Babylon.
In the Jewish community of Babylon during the exile, a new religion in essence took shape: Judaism. During the exile the Jews living in Babylon received the Torah, consisting of six books, since the Torah in such a format had not existed before the exile, the Synagogue, new hymnography, and, most importantly, a new mentality: the mentality of an ethno-confessional community, a tightly united but fairly closed community, with a new, specific religiosity completely unfamiliar and incomprehensible to those who had remained in Judea. And now this community was by no means eager to accept into its ranks the semi-pagans living in Judea, utterly alien to them in every respect, though they had common ethnic roots with them.
Against this background the answer of Zerubbabel and Jeshua becomes very understandable, just as the reaction of the local inhabitants proves quite understandable and expected: they understood perfectly that if these people, whom they perceived as newcomers, became masters in Judea, and things were heading that way, there would be no place left for them in such a new Judea. And naturally they tried to do everything so that the Temple would never be restored.
Thus ethno-confessional closedness and religious self-satisfaction disrupted peace in Judea between two parts of what was essentially one people, creating problems for both sides for long centuries. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans, descendants of the inhabitants who remained in Judea during the Babylonian period, continued until A.D. 70, the end of the Second Temple era.