Samaritan pentateuch (Hastings' Dictionary)

Four principal sug- gestions have been made to account for these peculiarities, (a) May not the features in which the Samaritan and the Greek Pentateuch agree with one another, and differ from the Jewish-Hebrew Pentateuch, be traceable directly to certain views and aims of later scribism? This is not only possible, but is even positively favoured by the circumstance that the relation of the Samaritan and the Greek to the Jewish Pentateuch is a mixture of agreement and difference.

Let us look at two examples. The later scribes held that 07% in Gn 220f- is not the nomen appellativum, ‘man,’ but the proper name‘ Adam.’ This common opinion, however, found expression in various ways. The Hebrew-Jewish Massoretes pronounced, in 220 317.21 Je. adam, t.e. without the article, because this was possible in these three passages without alteration of the teat, which in the other two passages (225 320) would have had to be altered to get rid of the article.

The Greek Jew likewise retains the article in 225 (6 *Adé) and drops it only in 320, But the Samaritan in both these passages has introduced the anarthrous word D1X (adam) into the text. Again, the view that the 430 years of Ex 1240 included Israel’s sojourn in Canaan and Egypt, finds expression in different ways in the Samaritan and in the LXX. (6) Is it more likely that the readings wherein the Samaritan and the LXX agree in differing from the MT were found in older Hebrew codices? (Abr.

Geiger, Urschrift u. Uebersetzungen, p. 99f.; de Wette-Schrader, Hinleit. p. 98; Vatke, Hinleit. p. 109). There are traces, of course, of Jewish-Hebrew MSS whose text deviates in some points from the MT. For instance, the tract Séphérim (vi. 4) relates that ‘Three books were found in the forecourt (77193): in one was found written yim eleven times, and in two x°n eleven times, and the two were declared to be right, and the one was left out of account.

’ That is to say, 2 manuscript was discovered in the forecourt of the temple in which the personal pronoun of the 38rd pers. sing. was ex- pressed by §)71 not only in the well-known 195 passages, but also in the other eleven passages of the Pentateuch, where that pro- noun occurs. Yet this is but a weak support for the view that at one time a Jewish-Hebrew MS of the Pentateuch contained the peculiarities wherein the Samaritan and the LXX differ from the MT.

Or may it be supposed that a Jewish-Hebrew MS of this kind took its rise amongst the Hellenistic Jews in Egypt? (Riehm, Hinlett. ii. 446). At all events, the accounts we have of the origin of the LXX know nothing of Egyptian MSS of the Heb. Pentateuch which formed the basis of the Greek trans- lation. (c) Or are we to hold that the Samaritan Pentateuch was A auently corrected from the Greek? (Ed. Bohl, Die alttest. Citate im NT, p. 171).

This view cannot be set down as absolutely impossible, but it raises new and difficult questions. Was there once a Greek Pentateuch, which was simply copied by the Samaritans? There is no evidence for this, nor is it likely. On the other hand, if the present text of the LXX was used by the Samaritans for correcting their Pentateuch, why did they adopt only a portion of the peculiarities of the LXX?

(ad) The same difficulties arise if we assume that it was a Samaritan-Hebrew codex (Eichhorn, Hinleit, ii. 641f.) or a Samaritan-Greek codex (Kohn, Samaritanische Studien, p. 38 ff.) that was translated at Alexandria. For, in the first place, tradi- tion knows nothing of this. Secondly, it is not in the least likely that as early as the 3rd cent. B.c.

, when the so-called Septuagint version of the Pentateuch originated, so many Samaritans adopted the Greek Lio bare 5 that a Greek translation of the Pentateuch would have been executed for their use. It is true there are 48 Greek passages which are marked by Origen as +8 Lapapurixndy (Field, Origenits Hexaplorum que supersunt, p. lxxxii ff.) It is also certain that these passages are relics of a complete Greek translation of the Pentateuch (Kohn, ‘Das Samareitikon’ in Monatsschrift f. Gesch.

wu. Wissensch. d. Juwdenthums, 1894, pp. 1-7, 49-67), which was prepared for the use of Samaritans living in Greek-speaking countries. For we are told that Symmachus put forward his Greek translation in opposition to a Greek translation which was current among the Samaritans (Epiphanius, de Ponderibus et Mensuris, c. 16). But there is not the slightest probability that this Greek translation was older than the LXX.

When all these considerations are taken inte account, the first of the views enumerated above remains the most probable, namely, that the greater part of the differences which show themselves be- tween the MT and the Samaritan Pentateuch, grew up through the influence of later currents of thought, just as is the case with the majority of the differences between the MT and the LXX.

We see the influence of later hermeneutics and theology continuing to work in another form which the Pentateuch assumed among the Samaritans, and which must not be confused with the Samaritan 72 RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Pentateuch hitherto spoken of. When the W. Aramaic dialect had inundated also Central Pales- tine, the Samaritan-Hebrew Pentateuch was trans- lated into this new country dialect of the Samari- tans.

Thus originated the Samaritan Pentateuch- Targum, which, according to the tradition of the Samaritans, dates from the Ist cent. B.c., and is attributed to a priest, Nathanael, but which is more correctly derived, with Kautzsch (PRE? xiii. p. 350), from the 2nd cent. A.D. This translation was first printed in the Paris (1645) and London (1657) Poly glotts, and the text given there was Daecriben: in the square character by Briill (Das Samaritanische Targum, 1873-75).

After fresh comparison with many MSS, it was published by H. Petermann under the very misleading title Pentateuchus Samaritanus (1872-91). The Oxford Fragments of a Samaritan Targum, published by Nutt in 1874, have also been used by Petermann in restoring the text of Leviticus and Numbers, as well as the St. Petersburg Fragments published b Kohn in 1876, which are made use of in the 5t part, which embraces Deuteronomy. ‘But there are more variants than appear in Petermann- Vollers,’ says P.

Kahle in iis Textkritische und lexicalische Bemerkungen zum samaritan. Penta- teuchtargum (1898), pp. 8, 11, etc. On the char- acter of this Targum the reader may now compare, above all, the thoroughgoing article of Kohn in ZDMG, 1893, pp. 626-97. Kahle (/.c. p. 8) remarks that in the Targum ‘the Hebrew-Samaritan text is rendered slavishly, word for word.’ Yet the transcendentalizing of the Divine and the glorifi- cation of Moses show themselves in a still higher degree here than in the Sam.

Pentateuch itself. fter the Mohammedan conquest of Palestine (A.D. 637), when Arabic was becoming more and more the medium of intercourse employed by the Samaritans, Abu Said in the 11th cent. translated the Pentateuch into Arabic. (The books of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus in this translation have been edited by A. Kuenen, 1851-54).

The so-called Barberini Triglott, a MS which was deposited in the Barberini Library at Rome, exhibits in three columns theSamaritan-Hebrewtext, theSamaritan- Aramaic, and the Samaritan-Arabic versions. Ep. KOnIa,