This, according to the Samaritan division of the Decalogue, was reckoned the Tenth Commandment, and, liice the others, of perpetual obligation, so that the Samaritans regarded not only the Temple at Jerusalem, but also the tabernacle atShiloh, though in Ephraim, and the wiiole Jewish priestliood after tiie settlement of tiie land, as schismatical.
Other books of the OT they do not consider canonical. Tiiey do, indeed, have a deep venera- tion for Job and the P.salms, and they read Josliua and Judges, but they are all regarded as apocry- phal.
The sj'nagogue system, whicii among tlie Jews led to the formation of the Targums, was also the means of producing an Aramaic-Samaritan Penta- teucli ('jncB' Dinn), which, however, Noldeke dates at not earlier than tiie 4th cent., though it may contain earlier elements ; and in favour of this it is to be noted tiiat in general it agrees with t6 Sa/xa- peiTiKou of Origen. It closely represents the Heb.- Sam. Pentateuch, and in language it differs bufc little from the Palestinian Aramaic.
5(30 WAMAKIA, SAMARITANS
SAMARITAN (THE GOOD)
Their later works consist of material directly connected with their religion and life as a people. They possess over a dozen volumes, mostly unpublished, which they designate Tarteel ('chanting'). These are in Hebrew mixed with Aramaic, and contain the services for the various seasons of the year, and they are probably ancient. Another dozen volumes are made up of commentaries on various portions of the Pentateuch text ; and, although these also are written in Hebrew, they are usu- ally accompanied by an Arabic translation. The best known Sahiaritan commentary is that of Markah, which was published in Europe by Heidenheim in 1896. The author probably lived in the 4th century. In addition to these they possess a few his- torical works -.—Kitab es-Satir, a history of the period from Adam to Moses ; et-Tabakh, an account of judgments which befell the Jews ; the Book of Joshua (in Arabic, but probably in parts from a Ileb. original), which closely follows the canonical Joshua, but has many apocryphal additions and eight conclud- ing chapters, bringing the historj' down to the time of Alexander Severus; Chronicle of Abul-Fath ; el-ToUdoth, a short Hebrew history from Adam till the present high priest, accompanied by an Arabic translation.
So far as MSS are concerned, the only one that, on account of its antiquity, merits our considera- tion is the jealously guarded Pentateuch roll in Nablus. It is preserved in a covering of crimson satin in a silver case engraved with a plan of the tabernacle. The roll itself is written on parch- ment much discoloured by age. The Samaritans claim that it was written by Abishua the son of Phineas, thirteen years after the settlement of the land ; but this is incredible, though they show an acrostic made by the thickening of certain letters in the roll itself as proof. Socin thinks it may belong to the 6th cent.; but other scholars with whom the present writer has discussed the ques- tion, would carry its date back even to a short time before the Christian era, so that there is a bare possibility of its having been in use when Christ passed through the streets of Shechem : like ordi- nary synagogue rolls, the MS is written in columns. These are 7 in. wide, and contain 70 to 72 lines. The writing is small, and the letters are of the oldest Samaritan type.
Samaritan books are all un-vowelled, and in their pronunciation of both Hebrew and Aramaic this people differs widely from the Jews and Syrians. The gutturals, which the Galiloeans confounded with one another, are altogether omitted by the Samaritans. The vowel system also at first sight seems to have nothing in common with the Mas- soretic pronunciation, so much so that a recent writer on the subject expresses the opinion that. ' it follows certain laws of language as yet un- knoAvn to us' (Kosenberg's Lehrhuch, p. 11). How- ever, when we come to compare the modern Samaritan pronunciation of both Hebrew and Aramaic with that of the Jews and the Syrians, we see that the former in nearly every detail bears to the latter the same relationship as the vulgar Palestinian Arabic dialects bear to the older clas- sical speech. It thus appears that, in the absence of vowels to preserve the memory of the sotmds when Arabic supplanted these languages as the colloquial, and in the absence of any formulated grammar till the year 1400, the Samaritan pro- nunciation was allowed to go through the same processes of decay as the common sister Semitic dialects on the same soil. A careful consideration of these processes enables us to produce the Samaritan as a valuable testimony to the general accuracy of the Massoretic pointing ; while, if we read the Samaritan Targum with the pointing of Onkelos, we shall attain to a very close approxi- mation to the speech of Christ with the woman of Samaria and with the people of Sychar.
5. Relationship of Christ to the Samaritans.— To understand even imperfectly the beauty and tenderness of the attitude of Jesus to this despised race, we must remember that His ministry occurred during the period when the separation of Jew and Samaritan was most absolute, and the bitterness of feeling most intense. Yet they were invariably