[Since the writing of the foregoing article, Geffcken’s tract, entitled Komposition und Entsteh- ungszett der Oracula Sibyllina, has appeared, to which the student is referred for the latest view of the subject. ] J. RENDEL HARRIS.
SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH.—i. HisTorIcaL CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SAMARITANS AND THE PENTATEUCH.—The Samaritans are a mixed race, sprung from the remnants of the ten tribes which lost their independence in B.C. 722, and from the foreign colonists who were settled by the Assyrian kings in Central Palestine. Hence the question arises whether the Pentateuch was already known to the subjects of the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes. It might be supposed that this question must be answered in the negative, for the single reason that the Jahweh cultus introduced by Jeroboam I. (1 K 12%) deviated to so large an extent from the Law. This argument, however, is not absolutely decisive, for even the kingdom of Judah, e.g. under Ahaz (2 K 16°) and Manasseh (21%), witnessed frequent and serious departures from the legitimate religion. But there is at least one valid ground for the conclusion that the Pentateuch was first accepted by the Samaritans after the Exile. Why was their request to be allowed to take part in the building of the second temple (Ezr 4) refused by the heads of the Jerusalem community (v.3)? Very probably because the Jews were aware that the Samaritans did not as yet possess the Law- book. It is hard to suppose that, otherwise, they would have been met with this refusal. Further, one who, like the present writer, regards the modern criticism of the Pentateuch as essentially correct, has a second decisive reason for adopting the above view. Or does the very existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch present an obstacle to the
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conclusion at which most representatives of modern Pentateuchal criticism have arrived, namely, that the sources of the Pentateuch were united by Ezra into the one stream which we see in our Penta- teuch? At the present day there is scarcely any longer a single writer who would claim that the Samaritan Pentateuch supplies any argument against the critical position. No such claim is made, for instance, by C. F. Keil in his Linleitung m d. AT, 1873, § 204, or by Ed. Rupprecht in Des Rétsels Losung, 1. i. (1896) p. 196f., or by the Roman Catholic Fr. Kaulen in his Hinleitung in die Heilige Schrift, 1892, § 194.
How long after Ezra’s time it was when the Samaritans accepted the Pentateuch is uncertain. They may have already done so at the time that Nehemiah, upon the occasion of his second visit to Jerusalem (B.C, 433), expelled the son of Joiada, the high priest, who had married a daughter of the Samaritan prince Sanballat (Neh 138). For there was hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans even at a much later period, although the latter had adopted the Law. But the view that appears to be most probable is that the above-mentioned son of the high priest induced the Samaritans both to accept the Pentateuch and to build a temple of their own upon Mt. Gerizim. It is well known that Josephus (Ané. XI. viii. 2) relates how Man- asseh, son of the high priest ’Iaddois, and son-in-law of the Samaritan prince ZavaBadddrns, fled to the Samaritans in the time of the Persian king Darius Codomannus. But here, in all probability, we have simply a chronological error, for later writers were weak in their knowledge of the chronology of the post-exilic period. For instance, in To 182 the
‘years 701-681 are compressed into mevrijxovra or TecoapdKovra nuépat (Fritzsche, Libri apocryphi, pp. 110, 113), and in Seder ‘olam rabba 30 it is said that the rule of the Persians after the building of the second temple lasted only 34 years (see, further, art. by the present writer in Lxpos. Times, x. [1899] p. 257). Nor are there wanting in the post- Biblical tradition indications pointing to the fact that it was near the time of Ezra that the Samari- tans accepted the Pentateuch. For instance, in Bab. Talm. (Sanhed. 216) we read: ‘The Torah was originally revealed in the Hebrew character and in the holy [7.e. Hebrew] language, the second time in the Assyrian character and in the Aramaic language, and Israel chose the Assyrian character and the holy language, whereas it gave over the Hebrew character and the Aramaic language to the iédra.’* This second revelation of the Law which is here presupposed, has in view the activity which, according to other passages of the tradition, Ezra displayed with reference to the Pentateuch. For instance, in Bab. Talm. (Swkkda 20a) it is said : ‘The Torah was forgotten by the Israelites until Ezra came from Babylon and restored it’ (other passages are translated in Kénig’s Hinleit. in d. AT, p.241f.). Nor is there anything inexplicable in the circumstance that the Samaritans, about the year B.C. 433, accepted no part of the OT but the Pentateuch, for even the Jews exalted the Torah above the other parts of the OT. The Mishna enacts in Megilla iii. 1: ‘If one sells books (i.e. parts of the OT other than the Pentateuch), he may take a Torah in exchange; but if one sells a Torah he may not take other books in exchange’ (many further testimonies to this later apprecia- tion of the Torah above the rest of the OT will be found in Kénig’s Hinleit. p. 455 f.).