The Samaritan Pentateuch, also called the Samaritan Torah (

Samaritan Hebrew Samaritan Hebrew () is a reading tradition used liturgically by the Samaritans for reading the Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Hebrew language of the Samaritan Pentateuch. For the Samaritans, Ancient Hebrew ceased to be a spoken everyday language. It ...

: , ), is the

sacred scripture The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

of the

Samaritans Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

. Written in the

Samaritan script The Samaritan Hebrew script, or simply Samaritan script, is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic language, Sam ...

, it dates back to one of the ancient versions of the

Torah The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...

that existed during the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

. It constitutes the entire

biblical canon A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word ''canon'' comes from the Ancient Greek, Greek , meaning 'ruler, rule' or 'measu ...

Samaritanism Samaritanism (; ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Samaritan people, who originate from the Hebrews and Israelites and began to emerge as a relative ...

. Some 6,000 differences exist between the Samaritan and the Jewish

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

. 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 Mount Gerizim ( ; ; ; , or ) is one of two mountains in the immediate vicinity of the State of Palestine, Palestinian city of Nablus and the biblical city of Shechem. It forms the southern side of the valley in which Nablus is situated, the nor ...

. Nearly 2,000 of these textual variations agree with the

Koine Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, and some are shared with the

Latin Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initia ...

. Throughout their history, Samaritans have used translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch into

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

, Greek, and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, as well as

liturgical Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...

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 , became the source of most Western

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range i ...

s of the Samaritan Pentateuch until the latter half of the 20th century; today the codex is held in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

. Some Pentateuchal manuscripts discovered among the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...

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 The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () o ...

and gave

Moses In Abrahamic religions, Moses was the Hebrews, Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of slavery in the The Exodus, Exodus from ancient Egypt, Egypt. He is considered the most important Prophets in Judaism, prophet in Judaism and Samaritani ...

the first copy along with the two tablets containing the

Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (), or the Decalogue (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , ), are religious and ethical directives, structured as a covenant document, that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were given by YHWH to Moses. The text of the Ten ...

.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. They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's

Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle. According to a view based on the biblical

Book of Ezra The Book of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship as Ezra–Nehemiah. The two became separated with the first printed Mikraot Gedolot, rabbinic bib ...

(Ezra 4:11), the Samaritans are the people of

Samaria Samaria (), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (), is used as a historical and Hebrew Bible, biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is ...

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 Israelites, Israelite tradition and law, around the time of

Eli Eli most commonly refers to: * Eli (name), a given name, nickname and surname * Eli (biblical figure) Eli or ELI may also refer to: Film * ''Eli'' (2015 film), a Tamil film * ''Eli'' (2019 film), an American horror film Music * ''Eli'' (Jan ...

, in the 11th century BCE.

Scholarly perspective

Modern scholarship connects the formation of the Samaritan community with events which followed the

Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred ...

. One view is that the Samaritans are the people of the Kingdom of Israel who separated from the

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

. Another view is that the event happened somewhere around 432 BCE, when Manasseh, the son-in-law of

Sanballat the Horonite Sanballat the Horonite ( ''Sanḇallaṭ'') – or Sanballat I – was a Samaritan leader, official of the Achaemenid Empire, and contemporary of the Israelite leader Nehemiah who lived in the mid-to-late 5th century BC. He and his family are menti ...

, founded a community in Samaria, as related in the

Book of Nehemiah The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Hebrew prophet and high official at the Persian court, concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the ...

13:28 and ''

Antiquities of the Jews ''Antiquities of the Jews'' (; , ''Ioudaikē archaiologia'') is a 20-volume historiographical work, written in Greek, by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus in the 13th year of the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, which was 94 CE. It cont ...

'' by

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

. Josephus, however, dates this event and the building of the temple at

Shechem Shechem ( ; , ; ), also spelled Sichem ( ; ) and other variants, was an ancient city in the southern Levant. Mentioned as a Canaanite city in the Amarna Letters, it later appears in the Hebrew Bible as the first capital of the Kingdom of Israe ...

to the time of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

. Others believe that the real schism between the peoples did not take place until Hasmonean times, when the Temple on

was destroyed in 128 BCE by

John Hyrcanus John Hyrcanus (; ; ) was a Hasmonean (Maccabee, Maccabean) leader and Jewish High Priest of Israel of the 2nd century BCE (born 164 BCE, reigned from 134 BCE until he died in 104 BCE). In rabbinic literature he is often referred to as ''Yoḥana ...

. The script of the Samaritan Pentateuch, its close connections at many points with the

, and its even closer agreements with the present

, 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. 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 The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms ...

used by the Israelite community prior to the

. During the exile in Babylon, Jews adopted the Ashuri script, based on the Babylonians'

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...

, which was developed into the modern

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

. 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 The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud () is a system of diacritics (''niqqud'') devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to produce the Masoretic Text. The system soon beca ...

used in Masoretic manuscripts. More recently, manuscripts have been produced 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; the use of more '' matres lectionis'' (symbols indicating vowels) in the Samaritan Pentateuch, compared with the Masoretic; different placement of words in a sentence; 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 Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

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 includes 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 In the Abrahamic religions, the "Promised Land" ( ) refers to a swath of territory in the Levant that was bestowed upon Abraham and his descendants by God in Abrahamic religions, God. In the context of the Bible, these descendants are originally ...

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

were discovered, which include the oldest known versions of the

. 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

' 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 Zipporah is mentioned in the Book of Exodus as the wife of Moses, and the daughter of Jethro (biblical figure), Jethro, the priest and prince of Midian. She is the mother of Moses' two sons: Eliezer and Gershom. In the Book of Chronicles, two of ...

, throughout his whole life, while Jewish sources generally understand that Moses had two wives, Zipporah and a second, unnamed Cushite woman. * The Samaritan Pentateuch uses less

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to ...

language in descriptions of God, with intermediaries performing actions that the Jewish version attributes directly to God. Where the Jewish text describes

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

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." * In Genesis 50:23, the Jewish text says that

Joseph Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic count ...

's grandchildren were born "upon the knees of Joseph", while the Samaritan text says they were born "in the days of Joseph". * 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 The Book of Exodus (from ; ''Šəmōṯ'', 'Names'; ) is the second book of the Bible. It is the first part of the narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites, in which they leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of ...

on multiple occasions records Moses repeating to

Pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...

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

and the

. 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: Passages in the Latin Vulgate also show agreements with the Samaritan version, in contrast with the Masoretic version. For instance, in Genesis 22:2, the Samaritan Pentateuch places the binding and near-sacrifice of Isaac in the "land of Moreh" (Hebrew: ), while the Jewish Pentateuch has "land of

Moriah Moriah (Hebrew language, Hebrew: , ''Mōrīyya''; Arabic: ﻣﺮﻭﻩ, ''Marwah'') is the name given to a region in the Book of Genesis, where the binding of Isaac by Abraham is said to have taken place. Jews identify the region mentioned in G ...

" (Hebrew: ). The Samaritan "Moreh" describes the region around

and modern-day

Nablus Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...

, where

is situated, while Jews claim the land is the same as Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. The Vulgate translates this phrase as ('in the land of vision') which implies that Jerome was familiar with the reading 'Moreh', a Hebrew word whose

triliteral root The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowel ...

suggests 'vision.'

Evaluations of its relevance for textual criticism

The earliest recorded assessments of the Samaritan Pentateuch are found in

rabbinic literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by rabbis throughout Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic ...

and the writings of the early Christian

Church Fathers The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical peri ...

of the first millennium. The

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

records Eleazar ben Simeon, a Rabbinic Jew, condemning the Samaritan scribes: "You have falsified your Pentateuch... and you have not profited aught by it." Some early Christian writers found the Samaritan Pentateuch useful for

textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may rang ...

Cyril of Alexandria Cyril of Alexandria (; or ⲡⲓ̀ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲕⲓⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲥ; 376–444) was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444. He was enthroned when the city was at the height of its influence and power within the Roman Empire ...

, Procopius of Gaza, and others spoke of certain words missing from the Hebrew Text but present in the Samaritan Pentateuch.

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

writes the "Greek translation f the Biblealso differs from the Hebrew, though not so much from the Samaritan" and notes that the Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan Pentateuch in the number of years elapsed from

Noah's Flood The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is a Hebrew flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's ark. The B ...

Abraham Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...

. Christian interest in the Samaritan Pentateuch fell into neglect during the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. The publication of a manuscript of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 17th-century Europe reawakened interest in the text and fueled a controversy between

Protestants Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

and

Roman Catholics The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

over which

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

textual traditions are authoritative. Roman Catholics showed a particular interest in the study of the Samaritan Pentateuch on account of the antiquity of the text and its frequent agreements with the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate. Some Catholics including Jean Morin argue that the Samaritan Pentateuch's correspondences with the Latin Vulgate and Septuagint indicate that it represents a more authentic Hebrew text than the Masoretic. Several Protestants replied with a defense of the Masoretic text's authority and argued that the Samaritan text is a late and unreliable derivation from the Masoretic. The 18th-century Protestant scholar of Hebrew Benjamin Kennicott's analysis of the Samaritan Pentateuch stands as a notable exception to the general trend of early Protestant research on the text. He questioned the underlying assumption that the Masoretic text must be more authentic simply because it has been more widely accepted as the authoritative Hebrew version of the Pentateuch:

We see then that as the evidence of one text destroys the evidence of the other and as there is in fact the authority of versions to oppose to the authority of versions no certain argument or rather no argument at all can be drawn from hence to fix the corruption on either side.

Kennicott also states that the reading Gerizim may actually be the original reading, since that is the mountain for proclaiming blessings, and that it is very green and rich of vegetation (as opposed to Mount Ebal, which is barren and the mountain for proclaiming curses) amongst other arguments. German scholar

Wilhelm Gesenius Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 178623 October 1842) was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic. Biography Gesenius was born at Nordhausen. In 1803 he bec ...

published a study of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1815 which biblical scholars widely embraced during the next century. He argued that the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch share a common source in a family of Hebrew manuscripts which he named the "Alexandrino-Samaritanus". In contrast to the proto-Masoretic "Judean" manuscripts carefully preserved and copied in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, he regarded the Alexandrino-Samaritanus as having been carelessly handled by scribal copyists who popularized, simplified, and expanded the text. Gesenius concluded that the Samaritan text contained only four valid variants when compared to the Masoretic text. In 1915, Paul Kahle published a paper which compared passages from the Samaritan text to Pentateuchal quotations in the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

and

pseudepigrapha A pseudepigraph (also :wikt:anglicized, anglicized as "pseudepigraphon") is a false attribution, falsely attributed work, a text whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Th ...

l texts including the

Book of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by members of Ethiopian Jewish ...

, the First Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses. He concluded that the Samaritan Pentateuch preserves "many genuine old readings and an ancient form of the Pentateuch." Support for Kahle's thesis was bolstered by the discovery of biblical manuscripts among the

, which contain a text similar to the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Dead Sea Scroll texts have demonstrated that a Pentateuchal text type resembling the Samaritan Pentateuch goes back to the second century BCE and perhaps even earlier. These discoveries have demonstrated that manuscripts bearing a "pre-Samaritan" text of at least some portions of the Pentateuch such as Exodus and

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

circulated alongside other manuscripts with a "pre-Masoretic" text. One Dead Sea Scroll copy of the Book of Exodus, conventionally named 4QpaleoExod^m, shows a particularly close relation to the Samaritan Pentateuch:

The scroll shares all the major typological features with the SP, including all the major expansions of that tradition where it is extant (twelve), with the single exception of the new tenth commandment inserted in Exodus 20 from Deuteronomy 11 and 27 regarding the altar on Mount Gerizim.

Frank Moore Cross Frank Moore Cross Jr. (July 13, 1921 – October 16, 2012) was the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 '' magnum opus'' ''Ca ...

has described the origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch within the context of his local texts hypothesis. He views the Samaritan Pentateuch as having emerged from a manuscript tradition local to the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definition ...

. The Hebrew texts that form the underlying basis for the Septuagint branched out from the Israelite tradition as Israelites emigrated to Egypt and took copies of the Pentateuch with them. Cross states that the Samaritan and the Septuagint share a nearer common ancestor than either does with the Masoretic, which he suggested developed from local texts used by the Babylonian Jewish community. His explanation accounts for the Samaritan and the Septuagint sharing variants not found in the Masoretic and their differences reflecting the period of their independent development as distinct local text traditions. On the basis of archaizing and pseudo-archaic forms, Cross dates the emergence of the Samaritan Pentateuch as a uniquely Samaritan textual tradition to the post- Maccabean age.

Derivative works

Translations

The Samaritan

Targum A targum (, ''interpretation'', ''translation'', ''version''; plural: targumim) was an originally spoken translation of the Hebrew Bible (also called the ) that a professional translator ( ''mǝṯurgǝmān'') would give in the common language o ...

, composed in the Samaritan variety of Western Aramaic, is the earliest translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch. Its creation was motivated by the same need to translate the Pentateuch into the Aramaic language spoken by the community which led to the creation of Jewish Targums such as

Targum Onkelos Interlinear text of Hebrew Numbers 6.3–10 with British_Library.html" ;"title="Aramaic Targum Onkelos from the British Library">Aramaic Targum Onkelos from the British Library. Targum Onkelos (or Onqelos; , ''Targūm ’Unqəlōs'') is t ...

. Samaritans have traditionally ascribed the Targum to Nathanael, a Samaritan priest who died . The Samaritan Targum has a complex textual tradition represented by manuscripts belonging to one of three fundamental text types exhibiting substantial divergences from one another. Affinities that the oldest of these textual traditions share with the Dead Sea Scrolls and Onkelos suggest that the Targum may originate from the same school which finalized the Samaritan Pentateuch itself. Others have placed the origin of the Targum around the beginning of the third century or even later. Extant manuscripts of the Targum are "extremely difficult to use" on account of scribal errors caused by a faulty understanding of Hebrew on the part of the Targum's translators and a faulty understanding of Aramaic on the part of later copyists.

Scholia Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient a ...

Origen Origen of Alexandria (), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an Early Christianity, early Christian scholar, Asceticism#Christianity, ascetic, and Christian theology, theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Early cent ...

Hexapla ''Hexapla'' (), also called ''Origenis Hexaplorum'', is a Textual criticism, critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Ancient Greek, Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex wor ...

and the writings of some

contain references to "the Samareitikon" (), a work that is no longer extant. Despite earlier suggestions that it was merely a series of Greek scholia translated from the Samaritan Pentateuch, scholars now concur that it was a complete Greek translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch either directly translated from it or via the Samaritan Targum. It may have been composed for the use of a Greek-speaking Samaritan community residing in Egypt. With the displacement of Samaritan Aramaic by Arabic as the language of the Samaritan community in the centuries following the

Muslim conquest of the Levant The Muslim conquest of the Levant (; ), or Arab conquest of Syria, was a 634–638 CE invasion of Byzantine Syria by the Rashidun Caliphate. A part of the wider Arab–Byzantine wars, the Levant was brought under Arab Muslim rule and develope ...

, they employed several Arabic translations of the Pentateuch. The oldest was an adaptation of

Saadia Gaon Saʿadia ben Yosef Gaon (892–942) was a prominent rabbi, Geonim, gaon, Jews, Jewish philosopher, and exegesis, exegete who was active in the Abbasid Caliphate. Saadia is the first important rabbinic figure to write extensively in Judeo-Arabic ...

's mid-900s ''

Tafsir Tafsir ( ; ) refers to an exegesis, or commentary, of the Quran. An author of a ''tafsir'' is a ' (; plural: ). A Quranic ''tafsir'' attempts to provide elucidation, explanation, interpretation, context or commentary for clear understanding ...

Rasag'' or Arabic targum of the Masoretic Text. Although the text was modified to suit the Samaritan community, it still retained many unaltered Jewish readings. By the 11th or 12th century, a new Arabic translation directly based upon the Samaritan Pentateuch had appeared in

. Manuscripts containing this translation are notable for their bilingual or trilingual character; the Arabic text is accompanied by the original Samaritan Hebrew in a parallel column and sometimes the Aramaic text of the Samaritan Targum in a third. Later Arabic translations also appeared; one featured a further Samaritan revision of Saadia Gaon's translation to bring it into greater conformity with the Samaritan Pentateuch and others were based upon Arabic Pentateuchal translations used by Christians. In April 2013, a complete English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch comparing it to the Masoretic version was published.

Exegetical and liturgical texts

Several biblical commentaries and other theological texts based upon the Samaritan Pentateuch have been composed by members of the Samaritan community from the fourth century CE onwards. Samaritans also employ

texts containing catenae extracted from their Pentateuch.

Manuscripts and printed editions

Abisha Scroll

Samaritans attach special importance to the ''Abisha Scroll'' used in the Samaritan synagogue of Nablus. It consists of a continuous length of

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared Tanning (leather), untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves and goats. It has been used as a writing medium in West Asia and Europe for more than two millennia. By AD 400 ...

sewn together from the skins of rams that, according to a Samaritan tradition, were ritually sacrificed. The text is written in gold letters. Rollers tipped with ornamental knobs are attached to both ends of the parchment and the whole is kept in a cylindrical silver case when not in use. Samaritans claim it was penned by Abishua, great-grandson of

Aaron According to the Old Testament of the Bible, Aaron ( or ) was an Israelite prophet, a high priest, and the elder brother of Moses. Information about Aaron comes exclusively from religious texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament ...

(), thirteen years after the entry into the land of Israel under the leadership of

Joshua Joshua ( ), also known as Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' Literal translation, lit. 'Yahweh is salvation'), Jehoshua, or Josue, functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Book of Exodus, Exodus and ...

, son of Nun, although contemporary scholars describe it as a composite of several fragmentary scrolls each penned between the 12th and 14th centuries CE. Other manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch consist of

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

or cotton paper written upon with black ink. Numerous manuscripts of the text exist, but none written in the original Hebrew or in translation predates the

. The scroll contains a cryptogram, dubbed the ''tashqil'' by scholars, which Samaritans consider to be Abishua's ancient colophon:

I am Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the
Priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...
, unto them be accorded the grace of YHWH and His glory—I wrote this holy book at the entrance of the tabernacle on Mount Gerizim, in the year thirteen of the Israelites' possession of the Land of Canaan according to its boundaries llaround; I praise YHWH.

Western scholarship

Genesis 5 18 as published by Jean Morin in 1631 in the first publication of the Samaritan Pentateuch

Interest in the Samaritan Pentateuch was awakened in 1616 when the traveler Pietro della Valle purchased a copy of the text in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

. This manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

ian library. In 1631, an edited copy of Codex B was published in Le Jay's (Paris) Polyglot by Jean Morin.: "When the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch was revealed to the Western world early in the 17th century... [footnote: 'In 1632 the Frenchman Jean Morin published the Samaritan Pentateuch in the Parisian Biblia Polyglotta based on a manuscript that the traveler Pietro Della Valle had bought from Damascus sixteen years previously.]" It was republished in Walton's Polyglot in 1657. Subsequently, Archbishop Ussher and others procured additional copies which were brought to Europe and later, America.

Modern publications

Until the latter half of the 20th century,

s of the Samaritan Pentateuch were largely based upon Codex B. The most notable of these is ''Der Hebräische Pentateuch der Samaritaner'' (''The Hebrew Pentateuch of the Samaritans'') compiled by August von Gall and published in 1918. An extensive critical apparatus is included listing variant readings found in previously published manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch. His work is still regarded as being generally accurate despite the presence of some errors, but it neglects important manuscripts including the Abisha Scroll which had not yet been published at the time. Textual variants found in the Abisha scroll were published in 1959 by Federico Pérez CastroBrotzman 1994, p. 66
and between 1961 and 1965 by A. and R. Sadaqa in ''Jewish and Samaritan Versions of the Pentateuch – With Particular Stress on the Differences Between Both Texts''. In 1976 L.F. Giron-Blanc published Codex Add. 1846, a Samaritan Pentateuch codex dating to 1100 CE in the critical edition ''Pentateuco Hebreo-Samaritano: Génesis'' supplemented with variants found in fifteen previously unpublished manuscripts. Certain recently published critical editions of Pentateuchal books take Samaritan variants into account, including D.L. Phillips' edition of Exodus. The Arabic translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch has been edited and published at the beginning of the 21st century. Several publications containing the text of the Samaritan Targum have appeared. In 1875, the German scholar Adolf Brüll published his (''The Samaritan Targum to the Pentateuch''). More recently a two volume set edited by Abraham Tal appeared featuring the first critical edition based upon all extant manuscripts containing the Targumic text.

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * Buttrick, George Arthur and board, eds. (1952). ''The Interpreter's Bible'', Vol. 1. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press. * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bibliography

* 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. * Shoulson, Mark E, compiler 2008. ''The Torah: Jewish and Samaritan versions compared'' (Hebrew). Evertype. / . * Schorch, Stefan (June 3, 2004). ''Die Vokale des Gesetzes: Die samaritanische Lesetradition als Textzeugin der Tora (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft)'' (German ed., Walter de Gruyter). / * A.C. Hwiid, Specimen ineditae versionis Arabico-Samaritanae, Pentateuchi e codice manuscripto Bibliothecae Barberinae (Rome, 1780). * A.S. Halkin, “The Scholia to Numbers and Deuteronomy in the Samaritan Arabic Pentateuch,” Jewish Quarterly Review 34 n.s. (1943–44): 41–59. * T.G.J. Juynboll, “Commentatio de versione Arabico-Samaritana, et de scholiis, quae codicibus Parisiensibus n. 2 et 4 adscripta sunt,” Orientalia 2 (1846), pp. 113–157.

External links

Jewish Encyclopedia: Samaritans: Samaritan Version of the Pentateuch

Samaritan Pentateuch Add.1846
nbsp;– digitised version of the earliest complete manuscript of the Samaritan Pentateuch on

Cambridge Digital Library The Cambridge Digital Library is a project operated by the Cambridge University Library designed to make items from the unique and distinctive collections of Cambridge University Library available online. The project was initially funded by a dona ...

{{Authority control 2nd-century BC books Torah Biblical criticism Early versions of the Bible Ancient Jewish literature Jewish prayer and ritual texts Samaritan texts Texts attributed to Moses Ancient Hebrew texts