Later notices of the actual existence of the Samaritan Penta- teuch are found in the Talmud (cf. Zach. Frankel, Ueber den
*The view of L. Blau, expressed in his programme ‘Zur Einleitung in die heil. Schrift,’ 1894, p. 74, that the term idiires here does not refer to the Samaritans, will not hold its ground.
Hinjluss der palistinischen Hauegese auf die alexandr. Hermen- eutik, p, 243), in Origen (whose Heaapla reads on the margin of Nul3l & zai wire tx rod rav Somoperray EBpuizot wereBaro ev), and in Jerome (Prologus galeatus : ‘Samaritani Pentateuchum totidem literis scriptitant, figuris tantum et apicibus discrep- antes’). But about the year a.p. 1600 not even a scholar like Scaliger (De emendatione temporwm, lib. 7) was aware whether there were copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch in existence in the East. At last, in the year 1616 Piedro della Valle purchased a complete manuscript of this Pentateuch from the Samaritans at Damascus, Between the years 1620 and 1630 Ussher collected in the East six copies of it. Since then many codices of this work have been collated; cf. de Rossi, Variae lectiones VT, 1784-88, vol. i. p. CLVf.; Rosen, ZDMG, 1864, p. 582ff.; Abr. Harkavy, Katalog der Samaritan. Pentatewchcodices im St. Petersburg, 1874. The Samaritan Pentateuch was first printed, under the superintendence of Joh. Morinus, in the Paris Poly- glott (1645). A second impression appeared in the London Polyglott (1657). It was published, transcribed in the square character, by Blayney at Oxford in 1790. Its peculiarities are also set forth in a separate column of Kennicott’s Vetus Test. heb. cum variis lectionibus (Oxonii, 1776-80), and in H. Peter- mann’s extremely interesting work, Versuch einer hebrdischen Formeniehre nach der Aussprache der heutigen Samaritaner, 1868, pp. 219-326. In the latter will be found also a transcrip- tion of the whole of the Book of Genesis, as Amram, the then high priest of the Samaritan community at Nablis, dictated it to Petermann (pp. 161-218).
ii. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SAMARITAN- HEBREW AND THE JEWISH-HEBREW PENTA- TEUCH.—(a) The character of the MSS, and the method of dividing the text.—The Samaritan manu- scripts, like the majority of the Jewish ones, are of parchment or paper; the Samaritans like- wise preferred the roll form for use in Divine worship. The Samaritan MSS want the vowel signs and the accents, which are employed in the Jewish Pentateuch. In lieu of these they exhibit the following signs: a point separates each word from the next; two points, similar to the colon in modern languages, mark off smaller and larger paragraphs (Sohn, Zur Sprache, Litt., u. Dogmatik d. Samaritaner, p. 1f.). The whole Pentateuch is divided by the Samaritans into sections which they call ssp (kazgin). Of these they reckon in the Pentateuch 966 (Hupfeld, ZDMG, 1867, p. 20), while the Jews are accustomed to count in the Torah 379 close and 290 open parashas (cf. Konig, Hinleit. p. 463). ve
(6) Linguistic differences. The vowel letters are much more frequently employed in the Samaritan than in the MT. Even shéwd is many times indi- cated by) or *: for instance, nvnx, a form which the MT first exhibits in 2 Ch 84, is written by the Samaritan in Dt 28%, or nw 1 is read for wa in Dt 34, The orthography which the MT favours, especially in the earlier parts of the OT, agrees still oftener with that found on the Jewish coins. But the Samaritan Pentateuch thus reflects the latest stage of development reached by Hebrew orthography within the OT, and in a great many instances goes even beyond this. In the matter of pronouns, the unusual forms are regularly changed into the usual ones, For instance, 7, which in the Pentateuch (Gn 2” ete.) stands for the later x7 195 times, and which is altered in the MT only in the margin, is replaced by »°7 in the Samaritan in the text. The form %373, which is permitted in the MT, is changed in the Samaritan into 13nx (Gn 42", Ex 16%, Nu 32%), As to the conjugation of verbs, the lightened form of the imperfect, the so-called jussive, is almost always changed into the ordinary form: 2%» (Gn 32!) is replaced by 2 (read by the high priest Amram as wyeshév) ; sv (41°) by anv (yere’t) ; ssi (312° 41°) by aN) (wéere’2). —In the declension of nowns, the endings in -6 and -, which, in spite of J. Barth (ZDMG, 1899, p. 598), are to be considered relies of the old case-endings, are almost uniformly dropped: inn appears as n’n in Gn 1™ (32 of Nu 238 243-15 ig left unaltered) ; ‘a3 as n2a (genwwat) in Gn 31; and anDy as DN in Ex 15%, In the construction of nouns, many of the marks are obliterated which point to a nomen generis being of common gender: ¢.g. 7Y3 ‘young
70 SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH
SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH
maiden’ (Gn 2414: 16. 28. 55. 57 343.12, Tt 2915-29 [except v.1*]), which the Massoretes altered only in the margin, is changed into my3 (ndra) in the text of the Samaritan (cf. Gesenius, de Pentateuchi Sam- aritant origine, ete. p. 28 ff.). The solitary occur- rence of » which the present writer (Lehrgeb. ii. 293) has been able to discover before the article in the Pentateuch is A\yap of Gn 6%, and this dis- appears in the Syn 3p (min a dph) of the Samaritan. —In the lexical sphere, the following differences are worthy of note: 75° ‘beget’ is replaced by the form that became usual in later times, 757, in Gn 108 and 22%, The verb na3, which is used in Ex 21°. 29. 31.32.36 of the ‘pushing’ of an ox, is re- placed by the more familiar verb 427 ‘strike.’— Differences of a syntactical or stylistic kind are the following: the sentence 1p a3w ayo jabs (MT of Gn 17" ‘shall a child be born to one who is a hundred years old?’ LXX ei r@ éxarovraere? yevi)- gerat vids;) is in perfect agreement with the Hebrew linguistic usage as this appears in Gn 438 etc. But the Samaritan has missed this construc- tion, and substituted the easier alben maat shena uléd (vox), ‘shall I at the age of a hundred years beget a child?’ In the MT of Gn 7? the formula jngx) wy appears alongside of the synonymous pair of words 72p8 73) (v.°). This variety of expression disappears in the Samaritan, which uses the latter formula in both verses. The asyndetic yy (Gn 1”), Ds (318), odin (64), ovr (v.%), are changed into syn etc., and greater clearness is thus obtained.— Under the same heading may be ranged certain phenomena of diction, due to the Aramaic dialect, which afterwards became naturalized among the Samaritans. For instance, we find pw for prs (Gn 84), mnai for ona (72%), spy for apn ‘wine’ (Dt 32"). The gutturals are thus very frequently interchanged, because to the Samaritan copyist, accustomed to the Aramaic dialect, they had lost their distinctive phonetic values. To the same cause are due such forms as that of the pronoun ‘ny (Gn 121-18 2447. 60) and x nx (315), or of ‘npny (for npns Gn 18"), the infinitive mx (for raid 916) ete. (cf. Gesenius, /.c. p. 53 ff.).