The Samaritan Pentateuch

Although some of the early fathers of the Church, such as Origen and Jerome, distinctly refer to the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Talmud also alludes to it, its existence was questioned for many centuries; some even contended that it never had existed. Towards the end of the sixteenth century some correspondence took place with members of the Samaritan community, as the result of which Pietro della Valle made a journey in 1616 to the
East to search for a copy of it. For a time he was unsuccessful; the Samaritans, especially those of Nablus, the modern Shechem, considered the book too sacred to be handed over to a Gentile. Eventually he managed to secure a copy from some Samaritans in Damascus. It was brought to Europe, and was later handed over to the Library attached to the Oratory at Paris. Since that time various other copies have been obtained, and its existence is now a well-established fact.

Of the origins of the Samaritan Pentateuch various theories exist. Probably the most usual is that based on the history recorded in the book of Nehemiah, coupled with an allusion by Josephus. Nehemiah refers to a grandson of the High Priest at Jerusalem who had married a daughter of Sanballat the Horonite. Nehemiah was so indignant at such an alliance that, to use his own word, he “chased” the offender away.¹ He went down to Samaria, and, according to Josephus, took with him a roll of the Pentateuch, which formed the first portion of the Scriptures recognised by the Jews. The Samaritans also seem to have a book of Joshua, but it differs from the Hebrew of that book, and no attention need be paid to it here. Little reliance can be placed on the account given by Josephus for he makes the Sanballat of the story to be a contemporary of Alexander the Great, or his father, Philip of Macedon.²

Having regard to the known facts of the case the existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch may be accounted for on other grounds. When Sargon took the people of the Northern Kingdom into captivity, he did not depopulate the country, but left the poorer people in the country, placing in the cities colonies of other peoples to act as foils to the Israelites. The removal of the governing classes and the great reduction in the numbers of the people as the result of the long warfare, resulted in an increase in the wild beasts of the country, which the people attributed to their ignorance of the correct way to worship the God of the land. They made representations to the Assyrian king, who sent them a native priest to give them the desired information. This priest taught them “how they should fear Yahweh.”

Somewhere about the same time King Hezekiah of Judah sent to “all Israel” “from Beersheba even unto Dan,” exhorting “the remnant that had escaped out of the hand of the King of Assyria” to be true to the worship that was established in Jerusalem.⁴ His message to them had particular reference to the Passover. This incident implies some knowledge by the people of the Northern Kingdom of the principles of the Law contained in the Pentateuch. Still later Josiah “made all that were found in Israel to serve Yahweh their God.”⁵

Even after the fall of Jerusalem

“there came certain from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, to offer oblations in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem.”⁶

Taking all these things into consideration it appears that the Northern tribes never entirely forgot the religion of their fathers, and it is probable that the existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch can be accounted for without the rather unlikely story given by Josephus. It will be borne in mind that up to the times spoken of the Canon of the Prophets had not been definitely fixed, and that the only recognised section of the Scriptures was the Pentateuch.

The importance of the Samaritan Pentateuch lies in the fact that between the Jews and the Samaritans, after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, there was an intense and growing antipathy. There was no possibility of any collusion between the two people, and it may be assumed that if either party could have found fault with the other in reference to their accepted Scriptures, they would have done so. Yet they both accepted without reservation the five books of Moses. True, they charged each other with altering and falsifying the Pentateuch, but they never questioned the right of that section of the Scriptures to be received as an expression of facts and of the duties connected with their religion and the way of approach to God.

If a roll of the Samaritan Pentateuch be compared with a similar roll of the Hebrew Scriptures a great difference will be noticed. The Samaritans were an intensely conservative people. The roll of the Pentateuch which they possessed in the times of Nehemiah, or later, was written in the old form of Hebrew writing. When the Jews changed over to the comparatively square characters such as they now use, the Samaritans did not do so; they continued to write their copies of the Scriptures exactly as they did before. For the same reason the vowel pointings that characterise Hebrew writing are absent from Samaritan copies. These facts add considerably to the value of the Samaritan Pentateuch, as it preserves the contents in the form in which they were known about 2,500 years ago, unaltered in any way.

The Samaritans make great claims for the roll of the Pentateuch which they have at Nablus. It bears the words,

“I, Abisha, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the Kohen, to them be the favour of the Lord and His glory. I have written this Holy Scroll at the gate of the Tent of the Assembly on Mount Gerizim, Beth SI, in the thirteenth year of the settlement of the Children of Israel in the land of Canaan. I thank the Lord.”

No one is likely to give any credence to such a claim, but Dr. M. Gaster, who has seen the roll, says of it,

“That ancient scroll of Abisha bears all the traces of high antiquity; parts have become illegible, some of the letters have been rewritten, and it consists mainly of a mass of patches, held together by a backing.”

He assigns it to the first century, A.D.⁷ Whether that date can be justified is of little moment, the value of the Samaritan Pentateuch does not depend on the date of any copy, bat on its contents.

When the Samaritan Pentateuch was discovered in the seventeenth century it was regarded by many as much superior to the Hebrew. Since then this claim has been greatly discredited, but it still remains an extremely valuable testimony to the text of the Pentateuch generally. It has, of course, a definite bearing on the question of the Canon of the Old Testament. Although there are a very large number of differences between it and the Masoretic text, those differences are usually of very little importance, and where they are of importance it is generally in cases where it was to the interest of the Samaritans to alter the text to support their own practices, and the choice of Gerizim for the site of their temple

Others have reference to the ages of the Patriarchs, for it must be borne in mind that the Hebrew, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, do not agree on these. Sometimes its readings seem to have preserved a more correct text than the Hebrew. Thus in Exodus 12:40 the Samaritan text reads,

“The sojourning of the children of Israel and their fathers who dwelt in the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.”

This brings the statement into accord with the prediction in Genesis 15 and Paul’s allusion in the epistle to the Galatians. But the great point is that the Hebrew and the Samaritan Pentateuch both tell the same story in the same way, notwithstanding the very numerous differences that exist in the text, differences which are inseparable from documents that have been produced by hand over a period of between two and three thousand years.