The Samaritan Pentateuch, also called the Samaritan Torah (Samaritan Hebrew: , ), is the sacred scripture of the Samaritans. Written in the Samaritan script, it dates back to one of the ancient versions of the Torah that existed during the Second Temple period. It constitutes the entire biblical canon in Samaritanism.
Some 6,000 differences exist between the Samaritan and the Jewish Masoretic Text. Most are minor variations in the spelling of words or grammatical constructions, but others involve significant semantic changes, such as the uniquely Samaritan commandment to construct an altar on Mount Gerizim. Nearly 2,000 of these textual variations agree with the Koine Greek Septuagint, and some are shared with the Latin Vulgate. Throughout their history, Samaritans have used translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch into Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic, as well as liturgical and exegetical works based upon it.
It first became known to the Western world in 1631, proving the first example of the Samaritan alphabet and sparking an intense theological debate regarding its relative age versus the Masoretic Text. This first published copy, much later labelled as Codex B by August von Gall, became the source of most Western critical editions of the Samaritan Pentateuch until the latter half of the 20th century; today the codex is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Some Pentateuchal manuscripts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls have been identified as bearing a "pre-Samaritan" text type.The Canon Debate, McDonald & Sanders editors, 2002, chapter 6: Questions of Canon through the Dead Sea Scrolls by James C. VanderKam, page 94, citing private communication with Emanuel Tov on biblical manuscripts: Qumran scribe type c. 25%, proto-Masoretic Text c. 40%, pre-Samaritan texts c. 5%, texts close to the Hebrew model for the Septuagint c. 5% and nonaligned c. 25%.
Origin and canonical significance Samaritan traditions
Samaritans believe that God authored their Pentateuch and gave Moses the first copy along with the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments.Gaster, T.H. "Samaritans," pp. 190–97 in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Volume 4. George Arthur Buttrick, gen. ed. Nashville: Abingdon, 1962. They believe that they preserve this divinely composed text uncorrupted to the present day. Samaritans commonly refer to their Pentateuch as (, 'Truth').
Samaritans include only the Pentateuch in their biblical canon.Vanderkam 2002, p. 91. They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish Tanakh.Although a paucity of extant source material makes it impossible to be certain that the earliest Samaritans also rejected the other books of the Tanakh, the third-century church father Origen confirms that the Samaritans in his day "receive[d] the books of Moses alone." (Commentary on John 13:26) A Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's Book of Joshua exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle.
According to a view based on the biblical Book of Ezra (Ezra 4:11),( the Samaritans are the people of Samaria who parted ways with the people of Judah (the Judahites) in the Persian period. Tov 2001, pp. 82–83. The Samaritans believe that it was not them, but the Jews, who separated from the authentic stream of the Israelite tradition and law, around the time of Eli, in the 11th century BCE.
Scholarly perspective Modern scholarship connects the formation of the Samaritan community with events which followed the Babylonian captivity. One view is that the Samaritans are the people of the Kingdom of Israel who separated from the Kingdom of Judah.Tov 2001, p. 82 Another view is that the event happened somewhere around 432 BCE, when Manasseh, the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, founded a community in Samaria, as related in the Book of Nehemiah 13:28 and Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus.Antiquities XI.7.2; 8.2. Josephus, however, dates this event and the building of the temple at Shechem to the time of Alexander the Great. Others believe that the real schism between the peoples did not take place until Hasmonean times, when the Temple on Mount Gerizim was destroyed in 128 BCE by John Hyrcanus.Tov 2001, p. 83.
The script of the Samaritan Pentateuch, its close connections at many points with the Septuagint, and its even closer agreements with the present Masoretic Text, all suggest a date about 122 BCE.Buttrick 1952, p. 35. Excavation work undertaken since 1982 by Yitzhak Magen has firmly dated the temple structures on Gerizim to the middle of the 5th century BCE, built by Sanballat the Horonite, a contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah, who lived more than 100 years before the Sanballat mentioned by Josephus.Magen, Y. The Temple on Mount Gerizim. Israeli Antiquities Authority.
The adoption of the Pentateuch as the sacred text of the Samaritans before their final schism with the Judean Jewish community provides evidence that it was already widely accepted as a canonical authority in that region.
Comparison with other versions Masoretic Text
Manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are written in a different script than the one used in the Masoretic Pentateuch. The Samaritan text is written with the Samaritan alphabet, derived from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet used by the Israelite community prior to the Babylonian captivity. During the exile in Babylon, Jews adopted the Ashuri script, based on the Babylonians' Aramaic alphabet, which was developed into the modern Hebrew alphabet. Originally, all manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch consisted of unvocalized text written using only the letters of the Samaritan alphabet. Beginning in the 12th century, some manuscripts show a partial vocalization resembling the Jewish Tiberian vocalization used in Masoretic manuscripts.Brotzman 1994, pp. 64–65. More recently, manuscripts have been produced with full vocalization.Tov 2001, p. 81. "Only in recent generations have the Samaritans written a few manuscripts – only for use outside their community – with full vocalization." The Samaritan Pentateuchal text is divided into 904 paragraphs. Divisions between sections of text are marked with various combinations of lines, dots or an asterisk; a dot is used to indicate the separation between words.
The London Polyglot lists 6,000 instances where the Samaritan Pentateuch differs from the Masoretic text.Hjelm 2000, p. 77. As different printed editions of the Samaritan Pentateuch are based upon different sets of manuscripts, the precise number varies significantly from one edition to another.Purvis, J.D. "Samaritan Pentateuch," pp. 772–775 in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume. Keith Crim, gen. ed. Nashville: Abingdon, 1976. Only a minority of such differences are significant. Most are simply spelling differences, usually concerning Hebrew letters of similar appearance;Thomson 1919, pp. 289–296. the use of more matres lectionis (symbols indicating vowels) in the Samaritan Pentateuch, compared with the Masoretic; different placement of words in a sentence;Thomson 1919, pp. 296–301. and the replacement of some verbal constructions with equivalent ones.Vanderkam 2002, p. 93. A comparison between both versions shows a preference in the Samaritan version for the Hebrew preposition where the Masoretic text has .
The most notable substantial differences between both texts are those related to Mount Gerizim, the Samaritans' place of worship. The Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments count as nine commandments what others count as ten, and include as the tenth the command that an altar be built on Mount Gerizim on which all sacrifices should be offered. "But there is at least one case, Deut.27.4–7, in which the reading 'Gerizim' in the Samaritan Pentateuch, confirmed by Σ and by the Old Latin, seems to be preferable to that of the Massoretic text, which has Ebal, the other mountain standing above Nablus." The Samaritan Pentateuch contains the following paragraph, which is absent from the Jewish version:
Another important difference is in Deuteronomy 27:4. According to the Jewish text, the Israelites were told to enter the Promised Land and build an altar on Mount Ebal, while the Samaritan text says that such altar, the first built by the Israelites in the Promised Land, should be built on Mount Gerizim. A few verses afterwards, both the Jewish and the Samaritan texts contain instructions for the Israelites to perform two ceremonies upon entering the Promised Land: one of blessings, to be held on Mount Gerizim, and one of cursings, to take place on Mount Ebal. In 1946, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, which include the oldest known versions of the Torah. In Deuteronomy 27:4–7, the Dead Sea scroll fragments bring "Gerizim" instead of "Ebal", indicating that the Samaritan version was likely the original reading. A newly published Dead Sea Scroll fragment of Deuteronomy has "Gerizim" instead of "Ebal" in Deuteronomy 27:4.
Other differences between the Samaritan and the Masoretic (Jewish) texts include:
In Numbers 12:1, the Samaritan Pentateuch refers to Moses' wife as , which translates as 'the beautiful woman', while the Jewish version and the Jewish commentaries suggest that the word used was , meaning 'black woman' or 'Cushite woman'. For the Samaritans, therefore, Moses had only one wife, Zipporah, throughout his whole life, while Jewish sources generally understand that Moses had two wives, Zipporah and a second, unnamed Cushite woman.Tsedaka, Benyamim, and Sharon Sullivan, eds. The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. The Samaritan Pentateuch uses less anthropomorphic language in descriptions of God, with intermediaries performing actions that the Jewish version attributes directly to God. Where the Jewish text describes Yahweh as a "man of war" (Exodus 15:3), the Samaritan has "hero of war", a phrase applied to spiritual beings. In Numbers 23:4, the Samaritan text reads "The Angel of God found Balaam", in contrast with the Jewish text, which reads "And God met Balaam."Thomson 1919, p. 312. In Genesis 50:23, the Jewish text says that Joseph's grandchildren were born "upon the knees of Joseph", while the Samaritan text says they were born "in the days of Joseph".Vanderkam 2002, p. 94. In about 34 instances, the Samaritan Pentateuch has repetitions in one section of text that was also found in other parts of the Pentateuch. Such repetitions are also implied or presupposed in the Jewish text, but not explicitly recorded in it. For example, the Samaritan text in the Book of Exodus on multiple occasions records Moses repeating to Pharaoh exactly what God had previously instructed Moses to tell him, which makes the text look repetitious, in comparison with the Jewish text. In other occasions, the Samaritan Pentateuch has subjects, prepositions, particles, appositives, including the repetition of words and phrases within a single passage, that are absent from the Jewish text.
Septuagint and Latin Vulgate The Samaritan Torah contains frequent agreements with the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate. The Septuagint text agrees with the Samaritan version in approximately 1,900 of the 6,000 instances in which it differs from the Masoretic text. Many of these agreements reflect inconsequential grammatical details, but some are significant. For example, Exodus 12:40 in both the Samaritan and the Septuagint reads:
In the Masoretic text, the passage reads: