Samaritans include only the Pentateuch in their biblical canon. Samaritans commonly refer to their Pentateuch as (Qushta, Aramaic for “Truth”).
They believe that they preserve this divinely composed text uncorrupted to the present day. Samaritans believe that God authored their Pentateuch and gave Moses the first copy, along with the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments. Niche from a Samaritan’s house in Damascus, Syria. Quotations from the Torah in Samaritan script. Wide agreement now exists among textual critics that the Samaritan Pentateuch represents an authentic ancient textual tradition of the Torah.
Some Pentateuchal manuscripts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls have been identified as bearing a “pre-Samaritan” text type. 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. 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. Throughout their history, Samaritans have made use of translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch into Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic, as well as liturgical and exegetical works based upon it. Nearly two thousand of these textual variations agree with the Koine (“common”) Greek Septuagint and some are shared with the Latin Vulgate. 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. Some six thousand differences exist between the Samaritan and the Jewish Masoretic Text. Samaritan High Priest and Abisha Scroll, 1905 The relative pronoun (אֲשֶׁר asher) , “who,” can apply to the “sons of Israel” instead of the “dwelling.” LXX SP adds “and the land of Canaan” after “Egypt.” LXX “And the dwelling of the sons of Israel which they dwelt in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan, was four hundred and thirty years.” SP “in the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt.” The sons of Israel “set out from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month.” (Ex 12:37 Nu 33:3, 5) SP LXX and Josephus show us that the four hundred and thirty years should be counted from the time Abraham came into the land of Canaan until the time the sons of Israel set out of Egypt. MT “Who had dwelt.” The Hebrew verb (יָשְׁבוּ) is plural. One variation of interest appears in Exodus 12:40, where the Samaritan Pentateuch corresponds to the Septuagint.Įxodus 12:40 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)Ĥ0 And the time of dwelling of the sons of Israel, who had dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. Of about 6,000 differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew texts, by far the majority are unimportant.
Few of the extant manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are older than the thirteenth century C.E. they produced the Samaritan Pentateuch, not really a translation of the original Hebrew Pentateuch, but a transliteration of its text into Samaritan characters, mixed with Samaritan idioms. 17:22-33) In time they came to be called “Samaritans.” They accepted the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures and in about the fourth century B.C.E. Īfter the deportation of inhabitants of Samaria and the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel by Assyria in the middle of the 8th century B.C.E., pagans from other territories of the Assyrian Empire were settled there by Assyria. It dates back to one of the ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible that existed during the Second Temple period and constitutes the entire biblical canon in Samaritanism. The Samaritan Torah ( Samaritan Hebrew: Tōrāʾ Shamaeriym Hebrew: תוֹרה שַמֶרִים), also called the Samaritan Pentateuch, is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans.