The
Samaritan Torah or
Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
or Pentateuch (the first five books of the
Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
) that is used by the Samaritans.
Scholars consult the Samaritan Pentateuch when trying to determine the meaning of text of the original Pentateuch and to trace the development of text-families. Scrolls among the
Dead Sea scrollsThe Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.The texts are of great...
have been identified as proto-Samaritan Pentateuch text-type.
Samaritan practices are based on their version of the Five Books of Moses, which is slightly different from the
JewishThe Masoretic Text is a Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible . It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study...
or
ChristianIn Christianity, the Old Testament is the collection of books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the comparable texts are known as the Septuagint, from the...
texts. Some differences are minor, such as the ages of different people mentioned in genealogy, while others are major, such as the commandment to be monogamous which appears in the Samaritan text. (cf )
Special importance is attached to the Abishua Scroll, which is used in the Samaritan synagogue of
NablusNablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 134,000...
, and the Samaritans claim was penned by Abisha, great-grandson of
AaronIn the Bible, Aaron , sometimes called Aaron the Levite , was the brother of Moses, and represented the priestly functions of his tribe, becoming the first High Priest of the Hebrews...
, the brother of
MosesMoses was, according to biblical texts, a religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew Moses was, according to biblical texts, a...
thirteen years after the entry into the land of Israel under the leadership of
JoshuaJoshua , according to the Hebrew Bible, was an Israelite leader who succeeded Moses. His story is told chiefly in the books Exodus, Numbers and Joshua. He was one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan...
, son of Nun. Modern scholars, however, have observed that the scroll appears to include scraps of work by different scribes from different centuries, with the oldest texts dating to the 12th century A.D.
Background
Samaritans claim that they are descended from the northern Israelite
kingdom of IsraelThe Kingdom of Israel ) was one of the successor states to the older United Monarchy . It existed roughly from the 930s BC until about the 720s BC, when the kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire...
. There was a political division between the southern
kingdom of JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
and northern kingdom of Israel, which took place during
DavidDavid was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Bible. He is depicted as a righteous king, although not without fault, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician and poet .The biblical chronology sets his life c.1037–970 BCE, his reign over Judah c.1007–1000 BCE,...
and
SolomonSolomon is a figure described in the Hebrew Bible as a King of Israel and later in the Qur'an, where he is described as a Prophet. The biblical accounts identify Solomon as the son of David...
kingdom. They maintain that the northern kingdom, the capital of which was
SamariaSamaria, or the Shomron is a term used for a mountainous region roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank.- Etymology :...
, never joined the kingdom of David and Solomon. Eventually the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians, and the southern by the Babylonians.
Today's Samaritans identify as the remnants of those who were not exiled from the land during the Assyrian period, and continuously practiced the ancient religion of Moses and passed it down even in the most difficult oppressed times.
Jews have never accepted this account of Samaritan origins, relying instead on the account given in II Kings 17:24-41:
24 The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns. 25 When they first lived there, they did not worship the LORD; so he sent lions among them and they killed some of the people. 26 It was reported to the king of Assyria: "The people you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires. He has sent lions among them, which are killing them off, because the people do not know what he requires."
27 Then the king of Assyria gave this order: "Have one of the priests you took captive from Samaria go back to live there and teach the people what the god of the land requires." 28 So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria came to live in Bethel and taught them how to worship the LORD.
29 Nevertheless, each national group made its own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them up in the shrines the people of Samaria had made at the high places. 30 The men from Babylon made Succoth Benoth, the men from Cuthah made Nergal, and the men from Hamath made Ashima; 31 the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire as sacrifices to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 32 They worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high places. 33 They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.
34 To this day they persist in their former practices. They neither worship the LORD nor adhere to the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands that the LORD gave the descendants of Jacob, whom he named Israel. 35 When the LORD made a covenant with the Israelites, he commanded them: "Do not worship any other gods or bow down to them, serve them or sacrifice to them. 36 But the LORD, who brought you up out of Egypt with mighty power and outstretched arm, is the one you must worship. To him you shall bow down and to him offer sacrifices. 37 You must always be careful to keep the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands he wrote for you. Do not worship other gods. 38 Do not forget the covenant I have made with you, and do not worship other gods. 39 Rather, worship the LORD your God; it is he who will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies."
40 They would not listen, however, but persisted in their former practices. 41 Even while these people were worshiping the LORD, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.
Samaritans do not accept the
oral lawAn oral law is a code of conduct in use in a given culture, religion or community application, by which a body of rules of human behaviour is transmitted by oral tradition and effectively respected, or the single rule that is orally transmitted....
of the Jews , namely the
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
. They use their own oral law, which has been practiced over the generations; and which they believe is the original practice that Moses taught the children of Israel at
Mount SinaiMount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa by the Bedouin, is the name of a mountain in Saint Katherine city, in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt...
assembly. There have been numerous conflicts between Jews and Samaritans in history.
Differences with the Masoretic text
The Samaritan Pentateuch is written in the
Samaritan alphabetThe Samaritan alphabet is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic....
, which differs from the
Hebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
, and was the form in general use before the
Babylonian captivityAlthough the term Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile typically refers to the deportation and exile of the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, in fact the exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC...
. There are other peculiarities in the writing.
It is claimed that there are significant differences between the Hebrew and the Samaritan versions 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 textThe Masoretic Text is a Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible . It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study...
) differ, the
SeptuagintThe Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
(LXX) agrees with the Samaritan. For example, in the Samaritan and the LXX reads:
- "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan
Canaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt...
and in EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
was four hundred and thirty years."
In the Masoretic text, the 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 CommandmentsThe Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, are a list of religious and moral imperatives that, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, were authored by God and given to Moses on the mountain referred to as "Mount Sinai" or "Horeb" in the form of two stone tablets...
commands them to build the altar on
Mount GerizimMount Gerizim is one of the two mountains in the immediate vicinity of the West Bank city of Nablus , and forms the southern side of the valley in which Nablus is situated,...
, which would be the site at which all sacrifices should be offered.
Wider interest in the Samaritan Pentateuch commenced in 1616, when the well-known traveler
Pietro della VallePietro della Valle was an Italian traveler in Asia.-Biography:Pietro della Valle was born in Rome from a wealthy noble family....
brought from
DamascusDamascus is the capital and largest city of Syria. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and its current population is estimated at about 1,669,000...
a copy of the text. Since then many copies have come to Europe and America. In 1645, an edited copy of the text was published in the Le Jay's (Paris)
PolyglotA polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translations...
by Jean Morin, a Jesuit-convert from
CalvinismCalvinism is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
to
CatholicismCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole...
, who believed that the
SeptuagintThe Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
and the Samaritan texts were superior to the Hebrew Masoretic text. It was republished again in Walton's Polyglot in 1657.
Scholarly evaluation of the Samaritan Pentateuch has changed after the discovery of the
Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.The texts are of great...
, 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 Mount Gerizim, the distinction at that date between the Samaritan and non-Samaritan versions was not as clear-cut as previously thought.
The first English translation of the Samaritan text is expected to be published by late 2008 by Benyamim Tsedaka, an active member of the Samaritan community.
External links