Everything about The Samaritan Pentateuch totally explained
The
Samaritan Pentateuch is the text of the
Pentateuch (the first five books of the
Bible, also called the
Torah or Law) that's used by the
Samaritans. It is written in the
Samaritan alphabet, which is derived from the
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
Textual critics compare the Samaritan Pentateuch with other versions of the Pentateuch in order to determine the text of the original Pentateuch and to trace the development of text-families. Scrolls among the
Dead Sea scrolls have been identified as proto-Samaritan Pentateuch text-type.
The Samaritans
On their return from the
Exile, the
Jews refused to allow the
Samaritans to participate in worship at
Jerusalem. The Samaritans separated themselves socially from the Jews, who in return shunned them. Denied access to Jerusalem, Samaritan worship was centred on their temple on
Mount Gerizim. This temple was razed to the ground around 100 BCE by the Jews for religious reasons. Then a system of worship was instituted by the Samaritans similar to that of the temple at Jerusalem. It was founded on the
Torah, possibly on copies that had been brought by Jewish priests that had left the Jerusalem temple for that on Mount Gerizim. Thus the
Pentateuch was preserved among the Samaritans, which they read as one book. The division into five books, however, was later adopted by the Samaritans, as it was by the
Jews, in all their priests' copies, for the sake of convenience. This was the only portion of the
Hebrew Bible (
Tanakh) that was ever accepted by the Samaritans as having divine authority.
There is a special importance in the
Abishua Scroll, which is used in the Samaritan Synagogue of
Nablus, and was allegedly penned by
Abisha, great-grandson of
Aaron, the brother of
Moses.
In 1645 a copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch was brought by a traveler to the East, and published in the
Paris Polyglot by
Jean Morin, a Jesuit-convert from Calvinism to Catholicism, who believed that the Septuagint and the Samaritan Texts were superior to the Hebrew Masoretic text.
Differences with the Masoretic Text
The form of the letters in the manuscript copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch, called the Samaritan alphabet, is different from that of the
Hebrew copies, and is probably the same as that which was in general use before the
Babylonian captivity. There are other peculiarities in the writing.
There are important differences between the Hebrew and the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch in the readings of many sentences. In about two thousand out of the six thousand instances in which the Samaritan and the Jewish texts (
Masoretic text) differ, the
Septuagint (LXX) agrees with the former. For example,
Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the LXX reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they'd dwelt in the land of
Canaan and in
Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the
Masoretic text, however, the same passage reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years."
The Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments commands to build the altar on Mt. Gerizim, which would be the site at which all sacrifices should be offered.
Scholarly evaluation of the Samaritan Pentateuch has changed due to the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, some manuscripts of which display a text that corresponds closely to that of the Samaritan Pentateuch. This shows that, apart from the clearly Samaritan references to the worship of God on Mt. Gerizim, the distinction at that date between the Samaritan and non-Samaritan versions wasn't as clear-cut as previously thought.
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