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THE SAMARITANS
a
THE SAMARITANS
THEIR TESTIMONY TO
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
Being the Alexander Robertson Lectures, delivered
before the University of Glasgow in 191 6
BY
Rev. J. E. H. THOMSON, D.D.
AUTHOR OF " BOOKS WHICH INFLUENCED THE LORD
AND HIS APOSTLES"
}
OLIVER AND BOYD
EDINBURGH: TWEEDDALE COURT
LONDON: 33 PATERNOSTER ROW, E. C
1919
TO MY FRIEND
Rev. JAMES ROBERTSON, D.D., LL.D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES
GLASGOW UNIVERSITY
TO WHOSE SUGGESTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT
MY STUDY OF THIS AND COGNATE
SUBJECTS OWES SO MUCH.
0 2
PREFACE
The present volume contains the substance -of a course of
lectures delivered in the spring of 19 16, before the University
of Glasgow, on the Alexander Robertson Foundation. There
has been no attempt to retain the lecture form, as much
more was required for an adequate discussion of the subject
than could be compressed into the compass of six lectures.
Besides there were many sides of the questions at issue,
which did not lend themselves to treatment in the form of
an address. The writer would take the opportunity to thank
anew the Divinity Faculty for suggesting to the Senate of
Glasgow University his nomination to the above lecture-
ship, and the University Court for his appointment to it.
Under the conditions of the lectureship the present work
ought to have been published in the spring of the year
following; but on economic and other grounds connected
with the War, the University kindly permitted delay in the
hope that matters would improve. So far, however, from
things improving by the signing of the armistice and the
practical ending of the War, they have become worse. As
the prospect of any improvement in the conditions of book-
publication appeared to be rather remote, and for the writer
time was passing, it seemed better to risk the disadvantage
of issuing a book on a Biblical subject, at a time like the
present, when the English-speaking public are obsessed by
the Great War and its consequences, than wait any longer.
At the best, even in normal circumstances, a book like
the present interests only a very limited public. Not many
even among Biblical students, know much about the
Samaritans or the relation in which their rites and cere-
monies stand to those of the Jews ; and of these, very few
manifest any wish to increase their knowledge. Conse-
viii PREFACE
quently it is with considerable diffidence that the writer
approaches the public with a treatise on this subject. A
little consideration shows that notwithstanding the neglect
under which it has suffered, it has an important bearing on
questions in regard to the criticism of the Old Testament.
The writer's excuse for intervening is that the present
work represents the results of independent study pursued
somewhat intermittently for nearly thirty years, and in
circumstances more favourable to acquiring information than
are possessed by many. A somewhat lengthened residence
in Palestine, repeated visits to Nablus, and presence at the-
celebration of the Samaritan Passover, vitalised to the
writer ideas derived by him from other sources. Further,
personal inspection of a considerable number of Samaritan
MSS., including codices of the Torah, was kindly permitted
him by the authorities of the British Museum ; the Bodleian
Library, Oxford ; the University Library, and the Libraries
of Trinity College and Westminster College, Cambridge.
Through the kindness of the custodians of the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris, he was also enabled to examine the leading
codices possessed by them, including that brought to Europe
by Pietro della Valle in 1616. One thing which this last
privilege revealed to the writer was the very decided
difference which subsists between the form of Samaritan
characters in type, and those most common in manuscript
The difference of the shape these letters assume in Walton's
Polyglot — derived from the Paris Polyglot — from the true
form is considerable ; out of sight worse, and further from
the original is that adopted in Germany from Gesenius
downward to Petermann's Grammar. In Nicholls' Grammar
the alphabetic forms are better as nearer Walton's. Con-
fusions of letters easily explicable by the MS. type of
character are utterly incomprehensible to one who only
knows the conventional form adopted at Gotha and Leipzig.
One unfortunate result of the independent way in which
he has carried on his study of this subject is that the writer
finds himself, in his conclusions, in opposition on the one
side to traditional orthodoxy, and on the other to the still
more uncompromising orthodoxy of the dominant critical
school. The supercilious contempt with which the latter
PREFACE ix
regard every opinion that has not been "made in Germany" is
scarcely creditable to British scholarship. Especially is this
so in regard to the present subject, as most of the recent
German writers on Samaritan subjects have been Jews, in
whom the passage of twenty centuries and more has not
dulled the edge of their animosity, nor lifted at all the veil
of their prejudices.
For assistance in correcting proof, the writer would
return thanks to the Rev. Dr James Robertson, Professor
emeritus of Oriental Languages, Glasgow University ; Rev.
Dr James Kennedy, Librarian, New College, Edinburgh ;
Dr John Hutchison, Rector emeritus, Glasgow High School;
Rev. Dr Charles Jerdan, Greenock, Senior Clerk, U.F.C.
General Assembly. He has further to thank the Rev.
W. B. R. Wilson, Dollar, for compiling an index, and
E. Russell, Esq., for general suggestions. The writer would
also acknowledge the kindness of Professor W. B. Stevenson
in bringing to his notice not a few facts and authorities,
which might otherwise have escaped him ; to Professor
A. R. S. Kennedy for assistance in books; and to Dr Cowley,
Oxford, for kind answers to inquiries in regard to matters,
authoritative information on which was not open to the
writer. He would express his gratitude to Dr Rendel Harris
and to his friend the Rev. J. C. Nicol, M.A., Eccles, for
information as to the Samaritan codices in the Rylands
Library, Manchester. The kindness of the librarians of the
Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and of New College,
Edinburgh, must not be forgotten. Above all he would
tender his thanks to his wife for her assistance in preparing
the manuscript for the Press.
In regard to books, the writer would acknowledge his
indebtedness to Dr Montgomery's Samaritans, especially
to the copious list of literature appended ; to various articles
of Dr Cowley, and to Dr Mill's Modern Samaritans.
In transliterating Hebrew words, Dr Davidson (Hebrew
Grammar) has been followed, with this exception that tz
is used for ^ tzade instead of c.
'
PAGE.
I
25
57
83
"5
143
173
203
CONTENTS
CHAR.
y\^ The Home and the People \
II.^The History of the Samaritans
\\\y Mosaism in Northern Israel .
iv.^prophetism in northern israel
V/The Ritual of Samaritan Worship **
VI. Samaritan View of Sacred History . *
VII. The Theology of the Samaritans y.
VIII. The Evolution of the Samaritan Script
IX. /The Language and Literature of the Samaritans 236
X. Comparison of the Samaritan Pentateuch with
THE MASSORETIC ..... 275
XL The Relation of the Samaritan Recension of .
the Pentateuch to the Septuagint . .319
XII. The Bearing of the Foregoing Argument on
Pentateuchal Criticism .... 352
Appendices :—
Catalogue of Manuscripts (Codices), complete and fairly
complete, of the Samaritan Torah in Europe and America 387
Description of the Nablus Roll ..... 396
The Relation of the Minoan Alphabet to the Semitic . . 404
Naville's Theory of the Original Language of the Old
Testament ....... 412
Index ......... 425
THE SAMARITANS : THEIR TESTIMONY
TO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
CHAPTER I
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE
The testimony of any person or persons as to the social
habits of any nation, still more as to their religious
observances, will be valuable in so far as it can be shown
that by their prolonged residence in the country of that
people they are in a position to possess first-hand knowledge.
As, however, it is in regard to religion that men are most
reticent, even residence in a country would not be enough
to guarantee adequate knowledge. If proof were given of
participation in the same religious rites as those of the
people in question, that would be a warrant for further
confidence. In primitive days, religion was connected with
race; the religious observances even of one family differed
from those of another, and the ritual of each was carefully
concealed from all others. To prove that those on whose
testimony reliance is placed are of the same race and
practised the same rites as those concerning which informa-
tion is desired, is to make assurance doubly sure. Hence
in the present chapter we shall consider first the home of
the Samaritans, whose testimony to the religion of Israel
we would evoke, and next the race to which they belonged.
There is this additional suitability in the above order that
unlike most peoples whose country is generally named from
them, as England the land of the English, the Samaritans
are named from their country ; they are the people of
Samaria. Their religious rites and observances they claim
to be theirs in virtue of their race.
A
2 THE SAMARITANS
The Home of the Samaritans.
As the Samaritans claim to be descended from the tribes
that followed Ephraim when they rebelled against the rule
of the Davidic family, the whole of the territory of these
Northern tribes has to be regarded as their home! The~
name Samaria, however, was first applied only to the city
erected by Omri for the capital of his kingdom. According
to the Scripture narrative (i Kings xyi,_24) the city was
named after the original owner of the hill on which it was
built ; as his name wag ^hpmpr it was called .^hnmprnr^ oj
probably originally Shamrain (Burney, Kings, 204) ; this,
hellenised, became.ftamaria. Its situation on the top of a
bold headland is at once one of great beauty, and what was
of greater importance in the capital of a kingdom, of great
military strength as against the primitive artillery of the
ninth century B.C. The military wisdom of the choice was
proved by the fact that though several times besieged by
the Syrians it was never captured by them, and by the
further fact that only after it was besieged three years did it
surrender to Sargon. With its special advantages it is not
to be wondered at that it remained the capital of the
Northern Kingdom even after the dynasty of its founder
had been overthrown. In course of time the name was
extended to the whole territory of which it was the capital.
This is specially the usage of the prophets. In a similar
way, Babylon (Babel) is not always the city, it is occasionally
the province, e.g., Dan. iii. 1. _tSamaria in this wider sense,
as including the whole territory of the Northern tribes,
extended from the slopes o£ Hfirmon and the Lebanon on
the north, the transjordanic lands of Reuben, Gad, and the
half tribe of Manasseh on the east, and south to a line that
appears to have varied, passing slightly south of Bethel, the
boundary of the kingdom of Judah. It may be doubted
whether, even in the palmy days of Jeroboam II., the
territory embraced "the entering in of Hamath," the
ambitious limit of the land claimed by Solomon (1 Kings
viii. 65).
The provinces east of Jordan were held by a very
uncertain tenure. The Stone of Mesha of Moab tells of the
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 3
claims he made on the territories of Reuben and Gad ; and
the narratives in Kings relating the contests concerning the
possession of Ramoth-Gilead which Israel had to maintain
against the Aramaean kingdom in Damascus show how
precarious a hold the King of Israel had on what was
beyond Jordan. The fact that even after Ahab had inflicted
on Benhadad of Damascus more than one crushing defeat
(i Kings xx.) Ramoth-Gilead is still in the hands of Syria,
implies that Bashan, which lay north of it and nearer
Damascus, also was left in the possession of Syria. Although
Elijah is a Gileadite yet his activity is mainly restricted to
the west of Jordan. The kingdom of Jeroboam II. may
have included the east of Jordan ; but if so his successors
soon lost it. The advance of Assyria tended to cut short
the coasts of Israel. The Ninevite Empire appears to
have absorbed Bashan, Gilead, and the rest of the eastern
territories in the reign of Tiglath Pileser (i Chr. v. 26).
The northern province of Galilee, physically resembling
the east of Jordan in the fact that it is intersected with
numerous ravines, very deep and precipitous, was like
it frequently assailed by invaders. The Aramaeans of
Damascus did not attempt so much to hold it in permanent
possession as they did Gilead, but they seem to have made
frequent raids. In the troublous times which succeeded the
death of Jeroboam II., Tiglath-Pileser first reduced the
Israelites to the condition of tributaries, and then carried
away all the principal inhabitants of the northern portions
of Galilee, Abel-Maacah, Ijon, Hazor, and the rest. It is to
be presumed that inhabitants from other portions of the
Assyrian Empire were brought partly to fill up the blank
left by the removal of so many of the inhabitants and loss
of others by the ravages of war, and partly to act as a
garrison against those who were left in the land. Although
the deportation of inhabitants only from the northern portion
of Galilee is recorded, it would seem that at this time the
whole province of Galilee passed from under the rule of the
monarchs of Samaria.
To the south was Judah. whirh. haH never hpf>n yn^
the rule, q/ the kin^s of Samaria. As has been said, the
boundary between these two kingdoms, Ephraim and Judah,
4 THE SAMARITANS
was somewhat indefinite as to the precise line, but the
difference in the characteristics of the two territories is
marked to the traveller. Judah is in the main a mass of
round, barren, stony hills. Though without the frequent
and marked wadies which characterise Galilee, still there
are some ; and the deepest of these go down towards the
Salt Sea. It is mainly pastoral, though even for sheep and
goats at the present time the pasturage is by no means
rich or abundant. The early notes of its history all impress
on the reader that the " hill country of Judea " was for the
pasturing of sheep. David was a shepherd ; his quarrel-
with Nabal took place when that worthy was shearing sheep ;
and Absalom invites his father and brothers to his sheep-
" shearing, when he has determined to take vengeance on
Amnon. At a far later date there were shepherds watching
by their flocks at night.
In course of time, the name Samaria became restricted to
the portion of Palestine between the plain of Esdraelon and
the land of Judah. Politically it appears to have formed
\* a separate province under the kings of Assyria. When
Sargon, who succeeded Shalmaneser, finished the siege which
his predecessor had begun, he set a governor over the land ;
there is at least a possibility that Hezekiah was the unnamed
viceroy. At first like Ahaz his father he was the faithful
vassal of Assyria. The summons he sends to all Israel to
come to the Passover implies the existence of no authority
that could interfere ; therefore it would seem that Hoshea
had already been deposed and Samaria taken.
The contrast between the middle province and those to
the north and south is very marked. From the sea, across
the plain of Sharon, the hills of Samaria rise terrace upon
terrace till they culminate in the twin, ^heights of Ebaland
GeCBJg The aspect of this western front is like that of"
Palestinian hillsides generally, somewhat sterile, but within
this girdle of hills it is very different. To the traveller
riding through the district of Samaria, following most likely
a bridle-path along the front of low hills, there open out at
every turn views or glimpses of rich holms that only need
cultivation to laugh with abundant crops. Even as it is,
with all the misgovernment of the Turk, villages are frequent,
THE HOxME AND THE PEOPLE 5
surrounded by cultivated fields and orchards of almond,
citron, and orange trees. Besides, there is in every fold of
the hillside the ubiquitous olive. A feature of the province
is the number of small plains that are shallow lakes in
January, in February dry up, and in May are bearing crops.
There is to the east the wide plain of Mokhna and to the
west down to the sea that of Sharon. In regard to the
latter, it is doubtful to what extent the seacoast was assigned
to Ephraim. Even in the days of the dynasty of Omri which,
judged by the statements of Mesha, on his stela, was very
powerful, the Philistines possessed the plain, for to appeal to
the God of Ekron is to pass beyond Israel (2 Kings i. 6).
It is in Ezion-geber on the Red Sea that Ahaziah joins with
Jehoshaphat in building ships, not at Joppa or Akka on the
Mediterranean (1 Kings xxii. 48; 2 Chron. xx. 36). The
characteristics of the province itself which strike the traveller
as in contrast with those of the south and the north, are the
want of the rolling sterile hills of Judea, and of the frequent,
deep, and precipitous gorges of Galilee ; it is, in the language
of Isaiah, full of " fat valleys " with numerous vineyards and
many winefats.
Not only was the central portion of Palestine the most
beautiful and most fertile, it had much, perhaps most of
historic interest attaching to it. Especially was this the
case in regard to the central valley of Shechem in which the
remnant of the nation is still to be found. In Shechem it
was that Abraham first encamped, and there was he
privileged to receive his first revelation of God. His next
place of encampment was still within the central province ;
he placed his tent on " a mountain between Bethel and Hai "
(Gen. xii. 8). When Jacob came back to Canaan from
Padan-Aram, he purchased " a parcel of a field from the
children of Hamor where he had spread his tent" (Gen.
xxxiii. 19). There too, Joshua, when he was old, called
together all the elders of Israel, their heads and their judges
to present themselves before God to renew their covenant
with the Lord (Josh. xxiv. 1). There at an earlier period
had Joshua fulfilled the command of Moses, and had built
on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, and " wrote there a
copy of the law of Moses, in the presence of the children of
6 THE SAMARITANS
Israel." There, too, he placed the elders of one half of the
tribes of Israel on the slope of Mount vGerizin\, and the
other half on the slope of Mount Ebal, the one to recite the
blessings, the other the curses written in Deuteronomy. At
the mouth of the valley where it opens out into the plain of
Mokhna is, according to a well-supported tradition, the tomb
of Joseph. In the valley itself occurred the bloody episode
of the slaughter of the sons of Gideon. From .the slope of
[m. Jotham declaimed his parable. /Here, too, in
Shechenpit was that Rehoboam met the tribes of Israel, and
y his insolence lost the kingdom to the House of David.J In'
this province, to the south-west, is Timnath-Serah where
Joshua was buried. To the north in the territory of
Manasseh is Ophrah of the Abiezrites, where was the
threshing-floor of Gideon. In Mount Ephraim "between
Ramah and Bethel " rose the palm-tree under which Deborah
sat and judged Israel. Toward the south of Mount Ephraim
was the Ramah where Samuel was born, and where in after
years he dwelt. Nearly within sight of the valley of Shechem
was Shiloh, where so long stood the central shrine of the Holy
People, in which Eli ministered.
To one looking from the mountains of Galilee across the
plain of Esdraelon, the two mountains Ebal and Gerizim
stand out prominent, and form the centre of the view which
has Tabor Carmel and Gilboa for a foreground. Ebal,
although the nearer and the higher, does not quite hide
Gerizim from view. These peaks have equal prominence
from the east of Jordan. It is no wonder that Moses singled
out these mountains as those on which the law was to be
engraved and on which the altar was to be built. It is no
wonder that he selected the valley between these mountains
as the place where the tribes were to recite the solemn
curses and blessings. These mountains were in the very
centre of the Promised Land ; what place more suitable could
oe found in which Israel should renew their covenant with
JHWH? If Deuteronomy was forged, the forger must
have been endowed with a transcendent dramatic instinct
to enable him to view the Land of Promise from a point,
physical and moral, which would appeal to the Hebrew
Lawgiver, looking at it from the east of Jordan, however
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 7
little it might appeal to a Jew of Jerusalem. This is all
the more remarkable that not till long afterwards was the
artistic necessity of local colour recognised in literature.
Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle, and gives
Bohemia a seacoast. It is difficult to imagine a Jerusalem
Jew of the seventh century B.C. able to place himself so
completely in the position of Moses.
Such was the home of the Samaritan people when it was
flourishing, such their home when the name bamaria was
restricted to the middle province of Palestine. Now it is
further restricted. Little more than a century ago the
Samaritan nation had several communities in Egypt and
Syria, but now only in the valley of Shechem — only in a
small quarter of the city of Nablus are any Samaritans to be
found. It is true the valley of Shechem was the very heart
of Samaria, indeed"" of the whole land of Israel. Extremity
-"~~a"fter~extremity has been lopped off, only in a single valve
of the heart the life's blood remains.
The valley of Nablus is one of the most beautiful places
in Palestine. It runs nearly east and west, strictly speaking
from nearly south-east to nearly north-west, between Ebal
on the north and Gerizim on the south. To the traveller
coming from the north, after he has passed Sebastiyeh on
his right hand, there opens shortly to his left the broad
glen of Shechem. It is a sea of verdure, not the pale verdure
of the grass of the field, but the full rich green of the fig-tree
and the pomegranate. It consists of numerous orchards and
gardens, overshadowed with fruit-trees — citrons, oranges, and
apricots. According to the season the traveller, as he
passes along, sees peeping out from its dark green polished
leaves the bright insistent red of the pomegranate flower,
or earlier the white blossoms of the almond. The green of
the mass of verdure is carried up the slopes of the mountains
that bound the valley, by olive-yards and vineyards. Mainly
on the slopes of Mount Gerizim is this seen, though Mount
Ebal is not so sterile as some have imagined it to be. Above
the belt of olives and vines rise the twin mountains, the
highest in Central Palestine. If the traveller withdraws his
eyes from the heights, and gazes along the tops of those green
fruit-trees, he will note the minarets of the five mosques
8 THE SAMARITANS
of the city, rising white out of the mass of dark green-
ery. Four of these mosques were originally Christian
churches ; one is claimed by the Samaritans as having been
their principal synagogue. To one approaching Nablus
from the south the view is somewhat different. The track
leads round the base of Mount Gerizim to the left, and leaves
Joseph's tomb and Jacob's well to the right ; it then passes
westward through a mile or two of broad fertile fields. In
front rise the green orchards, from which spring the minarets
before spoken of. Nearer the city are heaps of ashes, the
refuse of soap manufacture, the principal industry of the
place. This valley owes its fertility and beauty to the
moisture of the winter snows and rains which, stored up in
the bosom of the two guardian mountains, is shed forth in
springs and streams that flow out unstinted during the
drought of the hottest summer. Heat and moisture are
the twin sources of fertility.
The modern city of Nablus is one of the most important
in Palestine; its population is probably from twenty to
twenty-five thousand. Like most Eastern cities there is a
broad street, called the Suq or market, which traverses the
city from east to west. The greater portion of this is
vaulted, and is lighted by openings in the roof which are
glazed. The length of the city is estimated by Guerin to be
about three-quarters of a mile ; its breadth he reckons to
be rather less than a third of a mile at its broadest. It is
divided into quarters, as are so many cities in the East.
These are traversed by streets leading off the Suq, which
are narrow and crooked, full of dust and garbage in summer,
and mud and garbage in winter. The largest of these
quarters is the Haret Jasmineh. It is close beside the foot
of Mount Gerizim, and the traveller, entering Nablus from
the north, comes into it first. A lane leaves the Suq to the
right and leads up to the Haret es Samireh — the Samaritan
quarter. It is not strictly speaking a quarter of the city, it
is too small ; it is merely a group of mean houses that cluster
about the small dark synagogue, the last remaining shrine
of the sons of Ephraim. This group of houses is the Ghetto
of the small remnant of the Ten Tribes.
From this quarter a bridle-path leads up to the top of
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 9
Mount Gerizim. Very soon the path has crossed the belt
of orchards and vineyards, and thereafter it skirts them for
about two hours, riding at muleteer's pace. When the vine-
yards are left the pathway becomes more rocky and the
hillside is bare, covered only with grass and a few small
bushes. A short pull brings the rider and his steed to
the top of the mountain. The pathway ends at one of
the higher portions of the plateau that forms the top of
the mountain. From there it dips down to where there
appear the green mounds that mark the ruins of ancient
buildings. Most of the ruins in Palestine, at least of any
antiquity, except on the seacoast, are represented by green
mounds ; perhaps the friable nature of the stone of which
they have been built explains this. At the opposite end of
the platform, toward the south-east, the ground rises again ;
on the highest point of this there is erected a wely, the
tomb of a Mohammedan saint, Sheikh Ghanem. Like other
buildings of this class it is domed and white. It overlooks
the plain of Mokhna ; visitors are recommended to view the
plain from its window.
The slight depression in this platform represents the
home of the Samaritan religion. Those green mounds,
from which here and there appear traces of carved stones, the
Samaritans claim to be the remains of their ancient temple.
This claim can only be admitted with modifications. There
have been numerous successive buildings erected one on the
top of the other. There might be an ancient Canaanite High
Place here. It is not improbable, although there appears
no notice of it in Scripture, that an Israelite High Place
would replace that of the Canaanites. Superimposed upon
these in all likelihood was the temple erected by Sanballat.
It was destroyed by John Hyrcanus (120 B.C.) and its
rubbish added to the general heap. As the language
of the Samaritan woman in her conversation with our
Lord seems to imply that worship was at that time
carried on in the sacred mountain, it is not improbable that
Herod rebuilt the temple for the Samaritans when they
were put under his rule. It may certainly be regarded as
against this, that Josephus, when he relates the slaughter
inflicted by Cerealis on the Samaritans, does not say
10 THE SAMARITANS
anything of edifices having been destroyed by him. The
Samaritans themselves credit Adrinus (Hadrian) with the
destruction of their temple. He erected a temple to Jupiter
on Mount Gerizim, as in Jerusalem he erected a temple to
Venus. A coin of the period of the Antonines, struck in
Flavia Neapolis (Nablus), represents on the reverse a
temple with pillared portico on Mount Gerizim ; a stairway
is shown going from the foot of the mountain to the top.
A century later a coin of Volusianus shows the same design.
It has been assumed that this was a heathen temple, but
according to Josephus the temple in Jerusalem, as rebuilt
by Herod, had porticos with pillars; if one may judge by
other Herodian remains these pillars would be after Roman
models. It might quite well be that Hadrian repaired the
Herodian temple on Mount Gerizim and rededicated it to
Jupiter.
Dr William Thomson in The Land and the Book gives a
plan of the ruins to be traced on the top of Gerizim, copied
from that in the Pal. Explor. Quart. Statement, 1873, P- 66, the
work of Sir Charles Warren : in a subsequent page there
is a view of some of the structures. Guerin {Description de
la Palestine: Samarie, xxv., pp. 424-445) has a careful
description, accompanied by measurements, of the structures
as he saw them in 1870. The most striking is the platform
composed of large blocks of stone, called from their number
thenasher bdlata, "the twelve stones." At first sight they
appear to be native rock, part of the mountain ; but half a
century ago Lieutenant Anderson proved by excavation
that they were not part of the rock but had been placed in
their present position. They are huge undressed blocks of
limestone. The Samaritans -» assert that these were the
twelve stones wnicn Joshua commanded the children of
Israel to take up out of the midst of Jordan and carry to
the place where they lodged. The probability is that these
stones were originally laid there to form a platform for the
altar which preceded the erection of the temple by Sanballat.
These stones were twelve^" accorHing tr> the number of the_
tribes of Israel." Then tradition took the matter in hand
and identified them with the stones taken out of Jordan.
It is to be noted that there is evidence here that the
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 11
Samaritans /cnew something of the contents of the book of
Joshua. JJnis platform, according to Sir Charles Warren's
r, isto the west of the mountain.
Immediately to the east is a ruined structure which
Guerin calls qalah, " the castle." It is a large four-sided
enclosure of 79 metres by 64J metres (861 yards by 70), thus
approximately a square. At each of the corners there are
the remains of four square towers with one in the middle
of the south wall. Sir Charles Warren's plan is presumably
drawn accurately to scale. According to it the size of this
structure differs considerably from the measurements of
M. Guerin. Warren's figures are 200 feet by 150, that is
to say, 67 yards by 50, so very much smaller. Round this
platform, between the towers, Warren notes that he observed
the remains of chambers. This may have marked off the
hardm area of the Samaritan temple. It is, however, so
much smaller than that at Jerusalem that one hesitates to
affirm this confidently. In the centre of this enclosure there
is figured by Sir Charles Warren the plan of an octagonal
structure. This is described by M. Guerin. The walls are
only to be traced by the irregularities of the ground. It
has been built, he says, of cut stones regularly and
throughout polished. It was doubtless covered over by a
dome. There had been an apse to the east, and five side
chapels, one directly south, the rest in the intermediate
directions S.W., N.W., N.E., and S.E. The doorway was
to the south. According to Warren's plan there were eight
pillars supporting the dome. The diameter of this structure
within, if the chapels and the apse be neglected is, according
to Guerin, 23 metres (25] yards), and each side of the
polygon, 9 metres (n yards). In this case Sir Charles
Warren's figures agree with those of M. Guerin. When,
however, Guerin says the depth of the recess of the apse is
equal to the length of one of the sides of the polygon, the
difference between the authorities is considerable; instead of
the 9 metres of Guerin, Warren has 20 feet, little more than
6 metres. The measures given in the Memoirs do not quite
accord with either. Procopius describes a church erected
by the Emperor Zeno on Mount Gerizim, and dedicated to
the Virgin Mary, which seems to agree with this. M. Guerin
12 THE SAMARITANS
deduces that the structure which rose upon this plan had a
domed roof, a deduction that is confirmed by Sir Charles
Warren's plan which, as we have said above, shows eight
pillars. There is an obvious resemblance in this on the one
side to the Mosque of Omar, the Qubbet es-Sakhra, and on
the other to Saint Sophia. In Sir Charles Warren's article
it is said that the floor had been partly of marble and
partly of tiles. As we have indicated, there is a tendency
to regard it as certain, that this church was erected on
the site of the Samaritan temple. This, however, is not
the Samaritan tradition. About 240 feet distant from the
enclosure surrounding the Church of Zeno, according to the
map of the Palestine Exploration Fund, is a site much
more sacred to the Samaritans. It is like the rock that is
seen in the Mosque of Omar, a platform of native rock of
irregular shape and surface ; at its southern end is a
depression, presumably for the reception of the blood of
sacrificial victims. This may have been an altar in
Canaanite times, and the human bones found in the pit near
at hand may have been those of human victims. The
Samaritan tradition is that it was over this, rock that their
temple was buijt. This Sakhra or Holy Stone is the place,
of all the sites on this sacred hill, which is most sacred ; no
member of the Samaritan community approaches it but
barefoot. It would be loss of time to describe the stone on
which Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, and the Seven
Steps by which Adam descended when he was driven out
of Paradise; for here, according to Samaritan tradition,
was the Garden of Eden.
Quite to the west of these structures is the portion of the
sacred plateau which the Samaritans have purchased for the
celebration of their Passover. They had been excluded from
the top of Mount Gerizim for about forty years by the Turks,
but through the intervention of the British Consul the right
of visiting the sacred sites was restored to them. It ought
to be noted that M. Guerin credits Louis Philippe with this
interference on behalf of the Samaritans. Dr _ Montgomery
{Samaritans, p. 141 ), gives a very different account of the rela-
tion of the Orleanist sovereign to the persecuted remnant in
Nablus. They appealed to him, but their appeal for State
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 13
reasons remained unanswered. They were at all events, by
whose influence so ever, allowed to purchase a portion of the top
of the sacred hill, in order to consecrate it for the Passover
celebration. In this plot they dug a trench and a pit which they
lined with stones, so that, though filled up in the interval
between the periods of observance, they could easily be re-
opened. In a communication to the Palestine Exploration
Quarterly (1903 p. 91) the Rev. Roland G. Stafford gives an
account of the Passover observances dictated in Arabic by the
Samaritan High Priest, which includes a rough diagram.
There is in it no attempt at drawing to scale, or even at
approximation to accuracy in the representation of the topo-
graphical relation of the sites. The pit is represented by a
square, in which is inserted the statement that this " furnace "
was " taken from the time of Abraham " (Gen. xv. 17) ; in other
words this pit was " the smoking furnace and burning lamp "
which Abraham saw when God made a covenant with him
after the slaughter of the kings. It is not of importance to
Samaritan tradition that this was a vision furnace, or that
the vision in which it was seen occurred in Hebron.
No description of the home of the Samaritans would be
complete without some account of the characteristics and
appearance of Mount Ebal. It rises to the north of the
valley of Nablus and attains a height of over 3000 feet. It is
rather more rugged and difficult of ascent than is Mount
Gerizim. Although the vineyards and olive-yards do not rise
up the side of Mount Ebal so high as they do up the
side of Mount Gerizim, still Ebal is not the desolate
mountain, in comparison with Gerizim, that it has pleased
the imagination of some travellers to describe it. Certainly
the rocks are more in evidence, and riding up is more
precarious on account of the liability of the horses to slip
on the flat exposed surfaces of limestone. There are traces
that in earlier days cultivation by terraces was carried up
much higher. When the top is reached there are remains
of pretty extensive ruins, evidently supposed by native
tradition to be those of a fortress, as they are called qalah,
" the castle." Guerin describes this structure as built of blocks
of stone, very roughly cut ; he gives the measurements of
the irregular square as thirty-two paces a side; this,
14 THE SAMARITANS
reckoning a pace at 2§ feet, would make the size about
80 feet square. Near by are other ruins supposed, at
least by the natives, to be those of a church, as they call
the heap khurbet keneiseh, " ruined church." The view from
the top is superb. Away to the north rises to the right, the
great mass of Hermon which even in midsummer justifies the
name by which it is sometimes called, Jebel et-Telj, "the
Mountain of Snow " ; to the left, peering over the nearer
peaks of the Lebanon, overlooking the sea, is visible the
white top of Jebel Sannin. To the west is the plain of
Sharon, and beyond it the Great Sea of the Hebrews sparkles
in the sunlight. Away over Jordan rising above the rest of
the mountains of Gilead is Jebel Osha, which some regard
as the true Nebo from which Moses saw the Promised Land,
and south over the Dead Sea are seen the mountains of
Moab ; while nearer hand the towers are visible that crown
Mount Olivet.
Such then is the home of the Samaritans that survive
from the Ten Tribes, despite the persecutions they have
endured at the hands of every power which has borne rule
over Palestine. Here have they dwelt alongside of the Jews,
according to their own account since Joshua conquered the
land ; even on the Jewish account, since some seven centuries
before Christ. Parallel with them they have obeyed the
same law, observed the same customs, and celebrated the
same festivals. As credible witnesses of the nature of the
religion of the Jews they have every local advantage.
_- The Samaritan People.
As we have already seen, that while local identity is an
important element in regard to testimony as to religion,
identity of race is yet more important. The Samaritans
themselves claim to be, like the Jews, the descendants of
Ahraham and of Jacob. The Tews,, in this followed by the
Christians, regard the tribes which inhabited the north of
Palestine as having been deported totally, and therefore to
be sought anywhere but in the land given to their fathers.
Few things have more occupied the imaginations of those
peoples who possess the Scriptures of the Old Testament,
whether Jews or Christians, than the fate of what are called
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 15
"The Lost Ten Tribes." In the most diverse quarters have
they been discovered. The Talmudic accounts are vague geo-
graphically ; somewhere away to the east is all that is asserted.
Very different in this respect are the views of the Christians
who have occupied themselves with this question. Some find
them in the Jews who are resident in China. Others think
the Afghans to be the true descendants of the ten lost tribes.
Not a few have been ready to recognise them in the much
persecuted Nestorians of Mesopotamia. Most extraordinary
of all is the notion that these lost tribes have reappeared in
the Anglo-Saxon race. On views like these, of course the
claims of the modern Samaritans to Israelite descent are not
worthy of a moment's consideration. These ideas are derived
from the seventeenth chapter of 2nd Kings, and in accord-
ance with it, the Samaritans are regarded as the offspring of
the mixed multitude of heathens, the colonists who, sent by
the Assyrian monarchs, assumed, from the fear of lions, a
certain reverence for JHWH, but at the same time continued
the worship of their own gods. This is the view of the Jews
of the present day. Earlier also in the Talmud the
Samaritans are always spoken of as D'Ttta " Cuthaeans," since
Cuthah was one of the places from which the colonists had
been brought by the Assyrians.
It cannot be denied that at first sight the statements in
2 Kings xvii. seem to warrant this interpretation, but closer
study of the narrative leads to the conclusion that certain
modifications of the common view are needful. The common
view implies that the whole population was removed, but in
the narrative the statement is general and to be regarded
as more sweeping than accurate. If all the prominent
people — all that meant the nation in the eyes of the people
of Israel themselves or in the eyes of neighbouring nations —
were deported, that would satisfy the representations of the
book of Kings. It is to be noted that the repeated state-
ment that JHWH "removed Israel out of His sight" points
rather to the deprivation of spiritual privileges than to
physical removal to another land. It is certainly said that
"Israel was carried away out of their own land"; but it is
not said that all Israel was so deported : the removal, as we
have said, of all the prominent persons, the heads of families,
16 THE SAMARITANS
the priests, the prophets, would satisfy this statement. On
the other hand when Hezekiah celebrated his great Passover
(2 Chron. xxx. 1 ff.) he " wrote letters also to-JEphraim and
Manasseh that they should come to the House of the Lord at
Jerusalem," a fact to which we have already adverted in another
connection. He further made a proclamation "throughout
all Israel from Beersheba even unto Dan that they should
come to keep the Passover . . . saying, ' Ye children of
Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Israel, and He will return to the remnant of you that
have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.' " What
was the date of this Passover ? At first sight it would seem
to be in the first year of Hezekiah's reign in Jerusalem. But
by careful comparison of dates it would appear that his reign
is computed according to two different reckonings. Parallel
with this is the fact that while Sargon appointed a deputy over
the kingdom of Israel, the name of the deputy is not given in
Sargon's inscription. If Hezekiah were this deputy, then the
apparent confusion of regnal years would be explained, and
also the tone which he employs in writing to the inhabitants
of the Israelite territory " from Beersheba even unto Dan."
Hezekiah reckoned occasionally the years of his reign from
his entrance upon his rule over all Israel.1 It was quite
natural that he should solemnise his accession to a new
dignity by celebrating ^JPassover^to which all Israel were
summoned. Thus this Passover is to be dated in thf> gjyth
or seventh year of his reign in Jerusalem. It is clear from
"this summons that the " remnant that had escaped from the
hands of the King of Assyria " was very considerable. In
the account of the Passover kept by Josiah, more than three-
quarters of a century later, given in 2 Chron. xxxv. 17, it is
said, " The children of Israel that were present (marg. " found,"
han-nimtzc? hn) kept the Passover at that time " ; in the
next verse the Chronicler speaks of "all Judah and Israel
that were present " — a phrase which shows that he had the
distinction between Judah and Israel before his mind. In
perfect accordance with this is the testimony of Josephus
1 The writer would acknowledge his indebtedness to Rev. R. B. Pattie,
B.D., Glasgow, for the explanation here given of the apparent dis-
crepancies of the chronological notes of Hezekiah's reign.
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 17
{Ant. X. iv. 5) : <; After these things Josiah went also to all
the Israelites who had escaped captivity and slavery under
the Assyrians, and persuaded them to desist from their
impious practices." From his statements elsewhere it is
clear that Josephus would be under no temptation to justify
the claims of the Samaritans to Israelite descent ; hence his
admission in this instance of the existence of a considerable
Israelite remnant is of all the greater value.
Further, when we consider the object the Assyrians had
in view in these deportations, the total removal of the people
of one province to another becomes the more unlikely.
Their object was to prevent rebellion against their rule on
the part of any of the conquered peoples that manifested a
tendency to revolt. To deport totally the population of one
region to another, would not necessarily lessen the
probability of rebellion to an)' serious extent ; it would
merely change its geographical theatre. >f!\Ioreover when
the methods of Mphnrh^rlnezzar are considered (and his
empire was in all essentials a continuation of that of Assyria),
the view above indicated is confirmed. When he carried
J udah into captivity he left the poor of the people "which
had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave them vineyards
and fields at the same time," and put them under the hand
of Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam (2 Kings xxv. 22 ff. ; Jer.
xxxix. 10; xl. 5).| The probability is that the practice of
Nebuchadnezzar was one which he had inherited from the
kings of Assyria before him. Yet another thing ; those who
believe that the total population of Israel was deported
to the regions beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, must
forget the difficulties of transportation in the days of Sargon.
The population of Palestine must still have been very great,
even after the fullest weight is given to the devastating
effects of Assyrian methods of " frightfulness," and the
lessening of the population in consequence. Menahem had
in his dominions sixty thousand " might}' men of wealth" —
a number that implies a general population of possibly
two millions. Though the kingdom of Hoshea was less
than that of Menahem by the loss of Galilee, still the
population left in the land could not be less than half
a million. A horde of captives of that size passing through
B
18 THE SAMARITANS
Coele-Syria to Carchemish, and from thence down the
Euphrates, would lay the whole country bare, and would
empty of provisions the magazines of every store-city on
its route. The consequence of this would be that the armies
of Assyria would be unable to pass that way for some years
to come.
j We have further the direct evidence of Sargon's own
/inscriptions — contemporary documents, records of the events
/made when they happened. A monarch would be little
/likely to minimise his own exploits when he had them
/ recorded on the walls of his own palace. In his account of
j the conquest of the land of Israel and capture of Samaria,
Sargon does not claim to have carried away all the
inhabitants of the land — he asserts only that he took 27,280
of them. The population of the province of Samaria must
have been vastly greater than that. If the numbers of the
armies which the kings of Israel are recorded to have
assembled are to be taken as not historic, yet the account
of the tribute exacted by Tiglath-Pileser (Pul) has every
appearance of being so, and the method Menahem took to
raise the amount has every look of probability. As above we
saw what population that involved — approximately twenty
times the number Sargon says he carried away. We are
not, however, reduced to arriving at a decision by deductions
like those above. It is clear that Sargon carried away only
a portion of the inhabitants, for he adds, " I changed the
government of the country and set over it a lieutenant of
my own " ; instead of a subject king like Hoshea, there was
now to be an Assyrian viceroy, We-have- seen— that-it- -is
not impossible t.hat Jiezekiah \yas_thaX_yiceroy. ^Sargon
continues, " The tribute of the former king I imposed upon
them." The Ninevite king would not appoint a viceroy
over empty fields, or expect them to pay him a tribute.
We have already said that it was the intention of the
Assyrians to remove from any province, the loyalty of
which they suspected, all notables — every one who could
prove a centre of rebellion, or a strength to it when it had
begun. This was a plan that was admirably fitted to secure
the end at which they aimed. When these persons arrived
at their new abode they would find themselves surrounded
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 19
by people whose language they did not understand, with
whose customs they were unfamiliar, whose religion it might
be they despised. Men in such circumstances, however
great their ability or their hatred of the rule of Assyria,
would be impotent for political disturbance. If those who
had been the natural leaders of the nation into the bounds
of which they had been introduced had been sent to replace
them in the land whence they had come, then in both
countries there would be leaders without followers, and
followers without leaders. In the account of the captives
that Nebuchadnezzar took with Jehoiachin (2 Kings xxiv.
14) we have the classes of persons who were liable to
deportation, " the princes and all the mighty men of valour
... all the craftsmen, all the smiths." All metal workers,
and generally all who could help in producing munitions of
war, all scribes whose knowledge of the art of writing might
be put to political uses — all the priests and the prophets, all
who could give a religious sanction to rebellion would be
carried away.
We learn from the scenes portrayed on the Ninevite
marbles that the captives were not debarred from conveying
much of their property with them to their new abode.
Consequently when they arrived at the new country assigned
to them they would have much of the influence over their
new neighbours that wealth always has over the poor, who
alone would be left in the region to which they had come.
Education and habit of command would tell despite the
differences of language and religion, and the difficulties in
the way of intercourse which these entailed. The influence
of the colonists on the residuary inhabitants would be
concurrent with the influence the residents would have on
the colonists. The difficulty of language would be lessened
in the case of South-Western Asia by the widely diffused use
of Aramaic. This would tend to displace the native tongue,
and profoundly modify it even in those cases when it did
not drive it out. In religion the views of heathenism as
to the local restrictions of divinities — gods who were gods of
the hills and not of the valleys — would tend to make the
religious views and practices of the otherwise despised
remnant potent. Customs would also tend to assimilate.
20/ THE SAMARITANS
After all things are considered, when the residual popula,-
tion left in the land after the devastating campaigns of^the
"~ Assyrians is put at its lowest probable Figure, and on the
Other hand the number of the intruded colonists reckoned
at the highest, still the mass of the inhabitants would be
Israelites. There would also be the small remnant of the
Canaanites who still survived. From an imperfect inscription
of Sargon (Schrader, Keilinsch. i. 268) it would seem that
shortly after the deportation of such captive Israelites as he
did remove, he sent colonists to occupy their places. The
statement these colonists make, asreconjed in, F.7,ra jv £
shows that they regarded Esarhaddon as the monarch
responsible for their presence in Palestine. But in verse 10 of
the same chapter they claim to have been brought thither
by " the great and noble Asnapper," who is in all probability
to be identified with Asshur-bani-pal. From this it may be
deduced that the colonists were sent into Palestine by relays.
This would tend to make the influence of the Israelite
remnant more powerful ; the small number of scattered
colonists would readily fall under the influence of their more
numerous neighbours, so that by the time that the next band
arrived the leavening with Jahveism had proceeded a good
way. Thus it was said that the earlier English colonists
in Ireland became in subsequent generations Hibernis
Hiberniores. Moreover, the different relays did not in all
likelihood come from the same places as their predecessors ;
thus they would be separated from them by as great barriers
of language, custom, and religion as from the original inhabi-
tants. When on the weakening of the Assyrian Empire
Tosiah assumed dominion over Northern Palestine^Jiis treat-
ment of the priests of the High Places implies that he
regarded the mass of the inhabitants as Israelites over whom
in virtue of his Davidic descent he could claim to be king,
and whose worship at the High Places he could treat — indeed
was bound to treat — as heretical ; and this according to the
ideas of those days was equivalent to being treasonable.
Josiah's reformation seems to have had a deep effect on the
Northern Israelites. After Ishmael the son of Nethaniah
had slain Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, it is recorded that
" Fourscore men came from Shechem, from Shiloh, and
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 21
from Samaria with offerings and incense in their hands to
bring to the House of the Lord " (Jer. xli. 5) with all the
signs of mourning, as it was only to the ruins of the Jerusalem
temple that they could bring their offerings. These
Ephraimites had accepted Josiah's reformation and had
acknowledged the Solomonic shrine as their qiblah, and
regarded even its ruined site as sacred so far as important
sacrifices were concerned. These worshippers came to
Mizpahlong after the Assyrian colonists had been established.
It is necessary for a little to consider from whence these
coloriis.ts were. hronp^ht. Some it is recorded were brought
from Rahj.-|r>n Historically, it is intrinsically very probable
that citizens from Babylon would be deported to Palestine.
As the sacred capital of the Assyrian Empire, as much older
than Nineveh, the pride of the Babylonians was offended by
the precedence over them taken by the more recent city in
virtue of its being the Imperial residence. Incited to
rebellion by Merodach-Baladan, and assisted in it by him,
the Babylonians were in a state of chronic unrest. Senna-
cherib, after numerous campaigns and victories over the
Babylonians, interspersed with efforts at conciliation,
determined to destroy the city wholly ; which destruction he
set about systematically and thoroughly. This would be
accompanied doubtless by extensive deportations. These
in all likelihood had begun in the reign of Sargon, during
which the intervention of Merodach-Baladan and his
Chaldaeans began. Esarhaddon rebuilt Babylon and assumed
the title of King of Babylon. Cuthah is identified by Dr
Pinches as Kutu, a place in the neighbourhood of Babylon,
devoted to the worship of Nergal. It would naturally follow
the lead of Babylon and share in its vicissitudes. There is
greater difficulty in the identification of Ava. From the
names of the deities they worshipped, Conder would localise
the Avites at Accad and therefore nearer Nineveh. It is
scarcely possible that the Hamath of this passage can be
the Hamath of Northern Syria; communication between
it and Palestine was too easy for the purposes of the
Assyrian deportation being carried out. Hamath, however,
is a common Aramaic name ; probably it is in Mesopotamia
that the Hamath of this passage is to be sought. There is
22 THE SAMARITANS
some discussion as to the locality of Sepharvaim ; a number
of commentators maintain that it is Sibrain in Syria, but
the same political objections, that must be urged against
Hamath of Syria, apply to Sibrain. The probability therefore
is that the old identification of Sepharvaim with Sippara is
after all correct. Tt would thun rcr™ that the body of the
rnlnnigt^ w^i-p- Smites frr»m the region of Mesopotamia.
What has been said as to the inhabitants of Central Palestine
applies also to the deportations of Tiglath-Pileser from
Galilee, their place probably being supplied by colonists
from the same quarters.1
It may be thought that it is antagonistic to the view
above maintained that although the Israelite inhabitants of
the Northern Kingdom were greatly reduced in numbers by
the ravages of the Assyrians (those early apostles of " fright-
fulness") in war, they still were the predominant element in
the population, that the colonists appeal to Esarhaddon to
be taught " the manner of the God of the Land," and the
consequent mission of the priests to teach the knowledge they
professed to desire. This, however, does not in reality dis-
prove our assumption. Laying aside the possibility that this
appeal was a covert petition to be reponed in their own land — -
it must always be remembered that in every heathen religion
ritual was all important. That a sacrifice should be acceptable
to the deity to whom it was offered, it was imperative that in
offering it the right gestures be used in the right order ;
the correct titles given to the divinity when addressing him ;
the proper terms of dedication used ; probably these were
couched in archaic language. Every one of these elements
was regarded as of the utmost importance. These the
colonists would not be sure, that the simple peasantry could
1 What has been said above exhibits the absurdity of the view
maintained by Dr Paul Haupt that our Lord was not a Jew but of
Aryan descent. He thinks that the deportations of Tiglath-Pileser were
total, which they were not ; that the colonists sent to replace those
carried away were Aryans, of which there is no proof ; the assertion of
Dr Paul Haupt is scarcely evidence as to what happened twenty-five
centuries ago. He assumes that, when Simon the Maccabee removed
back to Judea such Jews as had settled in Galilee, he left none of
Israelite descent. Of course Haupt maintains against Matthew and
Luke that Christ was born in Nazareth not Bethlehem.
THE HOME AND THE PEOPLE 23
know. Only the priests of JHWH would be the custodiers
of such knowledge. As we have seen, priests and prophets
would be among those deported, as they would be specially
liable, among a fanatic race like the Israelites, to be leaders
of revolt. In answer to the appeal of the colonists, a priest,
or more probably priests were sent, and one of them made
his abode in Bethel. As this was one of the principal
schismatic shrines established by Jeroboam, it may be
assumed that the worship taught was that of the High
Places denounced by the prophets.
The teaching of these priests seems to have been suc-
cessful, if one may judge from the prominence given to the
destruction of High Places, and the slaughter of the priests
of them, in the account of Josiah's reformation and of the
extending of it to the territory of Israel. "TWhen the inhabi-
tants of Northern Palestine again come into notice, Zerubbabel
had commenced rebuilding the temple at Jerusalem ; the
Samaritans then claim to be allowed to share in the work as
having been themselves worshippers of JHWH from the days
of Esarhaddon. The wish to participate in the restoration of
the Jerusalem temple implies that the colonists had been
won over to adopt the views as to the superior sanctity of the
gfop'"'" «->n lYf^jj^jZiom implied in the prophetic reformation
begun by H^zekiah, and by Losiah. resumed and extended to
Israel. It may seem to contradict the predominance of the
Israelite element that these correspondents of Zerubbabel
claim to have been brought into the land of Israel by
Esarhaddon. But the colonists, as we have seen above, from
their wealth, education, and habits of command, would
probably occupy a position of influence not altogether
unlike that of the Norman nobles in England in the days
of King John, who, although as to numbers very much the
minority in England, yet claimed to be the spokesmen of the
people whole. Their reference to Esarhaddon might be
intended to meet objections based on the alien origin of
these colonists; even they have been worshipping JHWH
for more than a century and a half, as they did not belong
to the races excluded from the House of JHWH for ever,
they might claim to be received as proselytes ; the case of
the Israelites by descent was beyond discussion. It is to
24 THE SAMARITANS
be observed that their claim to be genuine worshippers of
JHWH is not denied to them by Zerubbabel and Joshua
the High Priest, only they assert that to the Jews and
Benjamites alone had been entrusted, by the Persian king,
the work of rebuilding the temple.
As the relatively small infusion of Norman blood into
England did not seriously alter the predominantly Teutonic
character of the people, so the coming of the Assyrian colonists
Hid little to dilute the Israelite blood ot tne inhabitants ot
Northern Palestine. Hence whatever claim identity of race
may put forward to be heard as to religious practices or tenets
of any people, the Samaritans can make that claim as to the
religion of Israel.
It is a matter of minor importance in regard to our
argument, but still it is worthy of note that the personal
appearance of the Samaritans suits our contention. They are,
as a community, tall and fine looking. Their features represent
the finest type of Israelite. In this view I am supported by
several other observers. On this question, see Montgomery,
p. 26.
CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS
If the history of the Samaritans showed that they were in
constant friendship with the Jews, and that in all religious
matters they followed their lead submissively ; if in short
Samaritanism was merely a pale reflection, perhaps a little
distorted, of Judaism, then the evidence of the Samaritans
would not have the same value. If further they showed an
easy facility in taking on the characteristics of those with
whom they came in contact, ready to alter or modify their
religious practices at the bidding of any predominant power,
there would be a further lessening of the value of their
testimony. If on the other hand there was a mutual
jealousy and suspicion between the Jews and Samaritans,
if each was willing to impute to the other the worst practices
in conduct and the most erroneous doctrines in regard to
creed, if each endeavoured to take the political attitude that
would be most embarrassing to the other, in such circum-
stances it is difficult to imagine any slavish following on
either side. So far from being ready to adopt the opinions
of those who had secured the Imperial power in South-
western Asia, the Samaritans have been consistently
persecuted by each of these in turn ; that there was an excep-
tion during the time of the Seleucid supremacy we know
only on the suspect evidence of Josephus. The religious
independence of the Samaritans, alike in regard to the Jews s
and in regard to their Gentile neighbours, is the thesis we
hope to prove by the study of their history, of the
persecutions they endured, and the vicissitudes they
underwent.
V" The history of the Samaritan people might be said to
>'» 25
26 THE SAMARITANS
. a begin with the revolt of the Northern tribes from the rule of
the House of David under the leadership of Jeroboam. This
was, however, only the final expression of a cleavage dating
much further back in the history of Israel. It had been seen
in the struggles for supremacy between David and the House
of Saul, and in the ease with which Sheba the son of Bichri,
on the very morrow of the overthrow of Absalom, secured a
s/ following./ In the yet earlier days of the Judges, Judah
and Simeon kept themselves aloof from the Northern and
more advanced tribes. When Deborah and Barak delivered
Israel from the yoke of the Canaanite oppressors, the
Southern tribes did nothing ; what is more striking, they do
not seem to have been expected to render any assistance.
While the divisions of Reuben are commented on, and the
Reubenites are taunted with their continuance by the sheep-
folds, and contemptuous reference is made to the excuses
advanced by Gilead, Dan, and Asher to cover their inaction,
and Meroz is bitterly cursed, nothing is said of the absence
of Judah and Simeon from the army of Barak. In the
history of the period of the Judges, the Southern tribes have
nothing of the prominence in the narrative that is given to
Ephraim. /when Eli was judge there seem, from the
prominence of Shiloh as the national shrine, to be signs of
a tendency towards national unity. This was deepened
under Samuel, until it found its final expression in the
- national selection of Saul as king. \ Toward the latter years
of the reign of Saul the tribe of Judah seems to have
transferred its allegiance to David. On the death of Saul
the difference between the North and South became open
war. ^ Later the Northern tribes accepted David as their
king/ The union of Israel achieved by his father, Solomon
endeavoured to consolidate by the erection of the temple
at Jerusalem. The ease with which the arrogant folly of
Rehoboam broke it up, shows that the process of unification
had not gone very deep nor been very thorough.
The original difference between the two sections of the
people, due to the predominantly pastoral character of the
tribe of Judah, in contrast with the widely spread agriculture
of Ephraim and Manasseh, and the tribes that possessed
the pre-eminently fertile plain of Jezreel, was accentuated
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 27
during Solomon's reign, and after it, by a religious difference.
In the South, on account of the presence in their territory of
the temple — the splendid national shrine — the priesthood
occupied a position of influence which the priests of the
Northern High Places, even those of Bethel or of Dan,
never had. On the other hand, the prophets in the Northern ^
Kingdom had a political power which they had not in the
South. Through their schools, the prophets could arrange
concerted action all over the country. It would seem that
these prophetic guilds carried organisation so far as to have
a sanhedrin of elders for themselves (2 Kings vi. 32). There l^
was, however, nothing of this in the South, the Mouse of David
reigned with priestly and prophetic sanction, and moreover
had the prestige due to age and to the memory of the glory
of David and the splendour of Solomon. In the North the
violent changes by which dynasty succeeded dynasty,
allowed none of them to become rooted in the traditions of
the people, and there the kingly office never had the position
to balance the influence of the prophets. All this tended \s*
to produce a radical difference between the two branches of
the Israelite nation. In the North the religion was essentially
prophetism, while the ritual and consequently the priesthood
occupied a strictly subordinate position. In the South the
king was a sacrosanct person, he was the Lord's anointed,
and the prophets affected the course of national politics not
directly but as advisers of the king or princes. The High
Priest, as presiding over the splendid shrine on Mount Zion,
had a position second only to the king. In the North there
was no such dignitary ; and further the king in Samaria had
none of the sanctity of the Lord's anointed. There was
no influence in the religious field to balance that of the
prophets. Under Hezekiah and Josiah, when the Northern
Kingdom had fallen, there certainly was an assimilation of
the religious position of the Northern Kingdom to that of
Judah. The High Places of Samaria were destroyed, their
altars desecrated, and their priests slain, and all the remnant
of Israel acknowledged the temple on Mount Zion as the
national hearth. This assimilation was but short-lived ;
with the death of Josiah after the battle of Megiddo, all
this came to an end. The sovereigns that followed in the
28 THE SAMARITANS
Southern Kingdom had little religious character and even
less influence by which to maintain this assimilation, even
if they had been in sympathy with it.
/ ^C After the death of Josiah till the arrival of Zerubbabel
and of Joshua the High Priest in Palestine, during the
reign of Darius Hystaspis, we know nothing of Samaria or
of the Samaritans. These two had come from Babylon
authorised by Darius to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
As we have already seen, the Samaritans approached
the Jews with an offer to assist them in their wofk-ri5u"t
Zerubbabel rejected the offered help. /The leaders of the
Northern Israelites identify themselves with the Assyrian
colonists. The rejection of the proffered assistance by
Zerubbabel was directly at variance with Josiah's compre-
hensive invitation to the inhabitants of Northern Palestine
to join in celebrating the Passover, and was a continuance
of the feud in which Ephraim envied Judah and Judah
^ vexed Ephraim. [This treatment roused the wrath of the
Samaritans, and they informed the Persian local governors
that the Jews intended to rebel. Certainly Zerubbabel's
Davidic descent, taken in connection with some of the
statements of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, made
the accusation at least plausible. After something like
/ three-quarters of a century, first Ezra arrived at Jerusalem
and then Nehemiah. At this point of time the ^amaH^"^
were under the governorship of a countryman nf rh,fir own.
Sanballat the Horonite, that is a native, of Tlerh-HoronL
— Hisniaille is Assyrian and means " San (the Moon god)
revivifies." This fact does not prove him not to be a
genuine Israelite, any more than does the fact that
Zerubbabel was also known by the Assyrian or Babylonian
name Sheshbazzar, disproves his claim to Davidic descent.
By the time that Ezra and Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem
the feelings occasioned by Zerubbabel's refusal of the help of
the Samaritans appear largely to have evaporated. The
relations between the inhabitants of Judea and those dwell-
ing in the territories of the Ten Tribes are of the friendliest
description. There had been numerous intermarriages, a
proof that the claim to Israelite descent was tacitly allowed.
The fact that Eliashib had prepared a chamber for Tobiah
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 29
in the temple, showed that Tobiah had claimed to be an
Israelite and to have the right to worship at the central
shrine, and that the High Priest had allowed both those
claims. It is hardly possible that the term " Ammonite "
applied to Tobiah was other than a nickname — a worshipper
of Moloch would be little likely to desire to be called by a
name which means "JHWH is Good." Such nicknames
have been common in all ages ; thus Ludovico Sforza, Duke
of Milan, in the end of the fifteenth century was called " II
Moro," not because he was a Moor but because of his dark
complexion. One may be permitted to doubt how far the
excessive zeal of Ezra and Nehemiah was in accordance with
the Divine plan, and how far it was due to the narrow
legalist position which degenerated, some centuries later,
into Pharisaism.
These marriages, into which so many of the leading Jews )/
had entered, were declared by Ezra to be illegal. He
apparently grounded this decision on the warning in Exod.
xxxiv. 16, ^addicssLd Lu Lilt! Israelites, in prospect of entering
Canaan, against taking the daughters of the land to their
sons to wife, lest they should lead them to become idolaters.
Those with whom these marriages had been contracted were
neither Canaanites nor idolaters. <This narrow interpretation »/
of the Mosaic warning led to the religious schism which,
perpetuated to the present day, has separated the Jews from
the Samaritans. One instance of these intermarriages
deserves special attention. In the book of Nehemiah
(xiii. 28) we are told that " one of the sons of Joiada, the
son of Eliashib the High Priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat
the Horonite " ; Nehemiah adds, " therefore I chased him
from me." Josephus {Ant. XI. vii. 2; viii. 2) says that a
nephew of this man whom Nehemiah chased from his
presence, a hundred years later, married the daughter of
gr,"K,llliit) *h~ dormer of Samaria: this nephew Josephus
ralk Managgpfr and his wife Nicaso. From the Assouan
papyri there is, to a certain extent, a confirmation of the
Biblical narrative, as they contain an appeal for assistance
against their Egyptian oppressors addressed to the " sons of
Sanballat," who occupy a position of influence in Samaria.
This was in the reign of Darius Nothus. Josephus further
30 THE SAMARITANS
relates that the elders of Jerusalem, indignant that a brother
of the High Priest should marry a foreigner, " commanded
Manasseh either to divorce his wife or not approach the^.
■ aiiar^7 we adds, "mere was now a great disturbance in
Jerusalem, because many of the priests and Levites were
entangled in these marriages." It seems an improbability,
which amounts almost to an impossibility, that after the
solemn public repudiation of such marriages only a century
before, the practice should so soon become general again.
Josephus makes Taddus (Jaddual — the brother of this
Manasseh — contemporary with Alexander the Great, the
" nepEew~of a man who was of marriageable age more than a
hundred years before. This is not absolutely impossible, but
from the fact that the High Priesthood followed the line of
primogeniture, it is extremely improbable. Had Josephus
been careful of chronology his statements would have
deserved greater attention. He, however, is vague and
inaccurate to an extraordinary degree. According to him,
Nehemiah is the cup-bearer not to Artaxerxes but to his
father Xerxes. By Xerxes, Nehemiah is sent to Jerusalem
in the twenty-fifth year of his reign ; but Xerxes was
assassinated in his twentieth regnal year. Moreover
Josephus drops a whole century of history, making Darius
Codomannus the successor of Artaxerxes Longimanus. The
chronology of the Talmud, in this instance, is preferable to
that of Josephus ; it makes, not Jaddua, but Simeon hatz-
Tzaddiq the contemporary of Alexander the Great, and the
interview with the conqueror, which Josephus describes as
taking place with Jaddua, the Talmud assigns to Simeon
(Yoma, 6ga). As the grandson nf Fi1iQC*"'K "'hnm N^h^minh
drove from his presence is not named, the name Manasseh,
which Josephus gives to his hypothetical nephew, may jjfi.
assumed for the sake of convenience to designate the son-in-
law of Sanballat. It seems not improbable that the consent
which Josephus says he got from Darius Codomannus to
build a temple on Mount Gerizim, he actually got from
Qarius Nothus. The Israelites of Upper Egypt, when they
appeal to the " sons of Sanballat," do so as to co-religionists ;
hence the worship of JHWH must have been established in
Samaria. Assuming that this was the case, then the worship
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 31
set up by Manasseh would be in complete agreement with
that in Jerusalem ; Mount Gerizim would repeat exactly the
ritual of Mount Zion.1
When the Hellenic Empire succeeded that of Persia there
was comparatively little change in the political status of the
subject peoples. Under the Greeks as under the Persians
they occupied a position of semi-independence. It is true
that many cities became hellenised and adopted Greek
constitutions, and also that the Diadochi (the successors of
Alexander) had a liking for founding cities to which they
gave their own names; these cities also were Greek. All
this tended to spread the denationalising and hellenising
influence of the Greek domination. This gradually sapped
the independence of the subject peoples. At first Samaria
seems to have fallen less under Hellenic influence than did
Judea. There is a story told by Quintus Curtius (iv. 8) that
while Alexander was in Egypt the Samaritans rebelled and
burned alive Andromachus, the governor he had appointed
over Coele-Syria. He hurried from Egypt and inflicted
condign punishment on those guilty. As there is no trace
of this in Josephus, although it was an occurrence which he
would have delighted to record, as it reflected discredit on
the Samaritans, and showed them as out of favour with the
Macedonian conqueror, one may venture to doubt the truth
of the statement. An assertion of Eusebius, as some inter-
pret it, would indicate that Alexander's vengeance went
further than could be deduced from what Curtius says ; his
statement in his Chronicle, as in the Armenian version, is,
" Demetrius, King of Asia, called Poliorcetes, took the city
of the Samaritans which Perdiccas had built;" this implies
that the city h?d been wholly destroyed by Alexander. The
whole transaction is thus liable to doubt.
There is more evidence of the relation of the Samaritans
to the Jews in the similarity of the treatment meted out to
them by Ptolemaeus Soter. Josephus relates that when he
1 That Josephus is practically without any historical value in regard
to the history of the Jews under the later Persian Empire, we shall have
occasion to show later, Chap. IV., pp. in, 1 12. References in Rabbinic
sources are not of much greater value. According to them, Darius
and Cyrus were generals of Belshazzar, and Darius the Persian was the
son of Esther.
32 THE SAMARITANS
had taken Jerusalem he removed to Egypt not only Jewish
but Samaritan captives and settled them there {Ant. XII. i. i).
The notices of the Samaritans during the reigns of the earlier
Diadochi are connected with military operations, and as the
city of Samaria lay out of the line of march ordinarily
followed by the Macedonian armies, they are rare. It
became of more military importance in the time of Antiochus
the Great. Polybius relates that after having captured
Rabbath-Ammon and left a garrison in it, he sent Hippo-
lochus with five thousand men to occupy positions about
Samaria, " that they might take measures for the protection
of all who acknowledged his authority " ; this occurred in the
first Syrian campaign of Antiochus (Polyb. v. 71). In a
fragment from a subsequent book it is related of his second
Palestinian campaign that, having overcome Scopas, Antio-
chus recovered Samaria and certain cities on the east of
Jordan (Polyb. xvi. 39, quoted in Josephus' Ant. XII. iii. 3).
From this it is obvious that Samaria, no more than Judea,
was a factor of any importance in the struggle between the
Lagids and the Seleucids for the supremacy in South-Western
Asia ; notwithstanding that the lengthened sieges it had
endured during the earlier periods of its history might have
led to the city being appreciated as a place of strength.
From all this nothing can be learned of the actual condition
of the Samaritan people or their relation to the Jews in the
matter of religion.
The removal of Samaritans to Egypt by Ptolemaeus
Lagi, along with the captives of the Jews, gave an oppor-
tunity for their rivalry being carried into the diaspora of
both peoples. When by the order of Ptolemaeus Phila-
delphus the Septuagint translation was executed, there was,
so far as Jewish tradition goes, no mention of the Samaritans.
There seems, from statements in the Fathers, however, to
have been a translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch referred
to by them as the Samariticon.
The principal occurrence in the controversy in Egypt
between the Jews and the Samaritans is the dispute alleged
to have been held between representatives of the two sections
of Israel before Ptolemaeus Philometer, as recounted
respectively by Josephus and Abu'l Fath. According to
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 33
the former historian the Jewish representative, Andronicus
the son of Meshullam, argued the Jewish case so convincingly
that the Samaritans were never heard but were put to death
out of hand. The account given by Abu'l Fath of course
represents the discussion having a totally different conclusion ;
according to the Samaritan authority the discussion took
place on the occasion of the proposed translation of the Law
into Greek.
With the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes, and the
ambitious projects he formed for the conquest of Egypt,
Palestine assumed a new prominence. This was increased
by the efforts of Epiphanes to coerce the Jews into abandoning
their faith. Our principal authority for the history of the
Samaritans at this time is necessarily Josephus. His evidence
is always to be taken with a reservation as his bias against
the Samaritans is unconcealed. This appears very markedly
in his account of the position taken up by the Samaritans
during the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes.
Josephus declares it to be the general policy of the Samaritans
to assert themselves Israelites whenever the Jews were in
favour with the Imperial power, whatever it was, to which
both races happened at the time to be subject ; but that
whenever the Jews were out of favour, the Samaritans denied
that they had any connection with them, but were the
descendants of the Assyrian colonists. According to Josephus
(Ant. XII. v. 5), when the Antiochian persecution began
the Samaritans sent an epistle to Antiochus in which they
addressed him as " God manifest " and claimed to be
Sidonians, "the Sidonians living in Shechem." It is to be
noted that in his account of the Samaritan negotiations with
Alexander, Josephus says that they declared themselves " to
be Hebrews, who were called ' the Sidonians of Shechem.' "
It is possible they made the same addition to the claim to
be Sidonians in this epistle. They explained their observ-
ance of certain Jewish rites, such as the keeping of the
Sabbath, and the special sacrifices which they offered on
Mount Gerizim, by plagues which had befallen their fore-
fathers. They made the assertion that the temple on Mount
Gerizim had not been dedicated, and that the deity to whom
it was erected was unnamed. It is somewhat confirmatory of
C
34 THE SAMARITANS
the authenticity of this letter that its contents do not quite
agree with the account given of the general Samaritan
statements by Josephus. He asserts that the Samaritans
claimed to be descendants of the Medes and the Persians,
while in the epistle a different origin is claimed — that they
are Sidonians. The assertion that the deity to whom their
temple had been erected was unnamed, may be a reference
to the incommunicable name of JHWH. Their further
request to be allowed to call it the Temple of Zeus
Hellenius may mean an identification of Zeus, the supreme
God of the Greeks, with JHWH. This was quite in accordance
with Hellenic modes of thought, as may be seen in Herodotus,
who identifies the various members of the Egyptian Pantheon
with the different deities of Olympus. The title given to
Zeus — Hellenius, " the Grecian," implies some such philo-
sophical identification. The temptation was great to escape
by any subterfuge from the savage persecution which the
Jews were enduring at the hands of Epiphanes. They
probably continued their ritual observances according to the
Law ; only when speaking to Greeks these sacrifices were
declared to be offered to Zeus, while among themselves they
acknowledged them as offered to JHWH.
As a result of their politic action, the Samaritans were
undisturbed during the Maccabaean struggle. While the
Samaritans took no active part in the conflict, they seem
to have harassed the Jewish inhabitants of Galilee at the
instigation of the Seleucid rulers. Apollonius when he went
"to fight against Israel" " drew a great host out of Samaria,"
if we may credit I Maccabees iii. 10. When the Jews
had, under the Hasmoneans achieved independence, they at
first respected the neutrality of the Samaritans.1 With the
1 Indeed one passage (2 Maccabees xv. 1) represents the
Samaritans as standing to Judas in a relation of at least benevolent
neutrality — " Nicanor hearing that Judas and his company were in the
strong places about Samaria " (places under Samaria), etc. Judas could
not have occupied these places without at least the connivance of the
Samaritans. Certainly historical accuracy is not a strong point with
this author, still this representation intimates that the occupation of
places in the Samaritan province with the consent of the inhabitants
was not inconceivable. The Samaritans were thus not at enmity with
the Jews at that time.
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 35
accession of John Hyrcanus this policy was changed; when
the death of Antiochus Sidetes set him free from fear of
interference from the side of Syria, fired by ambition he
invaded Samaria and burned the temple on Mount Gerizim,
which as stated above had been rededicatcd. Josephus, when
he refers to this event in the introduction to the Wars, says
that Hyrcanus, besides capturing Sikima (Shechem) and
Garizin (Gerizim), subdued "the race of the Cuthaeans"; a
statement that would imply that at all events for a time
Samaria was incorporated with the kingdom of Hyrcanus.
To what extent they conformed to the Southern ritual cannot
be known ; even when they had no temple of their own, they
do not seem to have worshipped in the temple in Jerusalem.
Probably this state of matters continued during the reign of
Alexander Jannasus and his widow — civil incorporation with
Judca but religious independence. It is a singular fact
that notwithstanding the fierce invasion of Hyrcanus, the
Samaritan annals do not hold him up to execration, but
declare that he renounced his Judaism and became a
Samaritan.
The position taken up by Galilee and its inhabitants
in regard to the Jews and their religious revolt against
Epiphanes is somewhat enigmatical. Judging by the policy
pursued by the Sargonid kings of Assyria, the deportation
of the inhabitants of Galilee attributed to Tiglath-Pileser
would only extend to the more prominent personages ; the
majority of the people who were left would be Israelites.
The part they played in the Maccabaean War was strictly-
subordinate. After Judas had conquered army after army
and general after general of Antiochus, only then do the
Galila:ans manifest their sympathy with the Jews by inform-
ing Judas of the machinations and intended hostility of
those of Tyre and Sidon and of the " foreigners resident
in Galilee," hoi allogeneis Galilaias. Hostilities had begun
before Simon, with three thousand picked men, arrived on
the scene and put the enemies of Israel to flight and
released the Jews, who had been made captives (Jos., Ant.
XII. viii. i, 2). Thereafter Galilee formed part of the
dominion of the Asmonasans first, and then of the Herodians.
This maintained their political union with Jerusalem, to
36 THE SAMARITANS
which also it would seem their religious allegiance had
already been given.
The historical background of this has probably to be
i raced back to Assyrian times. After Tiglath-Pileser's
leportation of the leading inhabitants and the intrusion
f colonists from other parts of the Assyrian Empire,
alilee would be placed under a separate governor. This
ust have been continued under the Persians, as Sanballat
as {Tovernor only of Samaria ; a state of matters which
emained unaltered under the Greek domination, alike of
he Lagids and the Seleucids. As Josiah had assumed
he rule over all Israel when the Assyrian Empire fell
nto decrepitude, by destroying the local High Places and
requiring the people to offer sacrifice in the temple at
Jerusalem, he united them religiously with Judea. Jews
came as colonists, attracted not only by the fertility of the
province but also by the fact that in Galilee, as they would
not be in Samaria, they would be surrounded by their
co-religionists. This process continued under the Herodians.
Joseph, the putative father of our Lord, is an example of
this. In the Roman War against the Jews under Vespasian,
Galilee is regarded as so much a stronghold of Judaism
that it is assailed first by the Roman Generalissimo. Every
town became a fortress and only surrendered after a pro-
longed siege.
As the province -of_ Galilee was under a separate rule
from Judea^the Israelites resident in it might readily escape
the fury of Antiochus. When the temple had been
desecrated by " the abomination of desolation " being set up,
the only worship open to the Israelites was that of the
synagogue ; consequently their rites could easily be concealed.
They would have no motive to obtrude their faith on their
Greek rulers, and so lead them to persecute. This may
explain at once the Judaism of the Israelites of Galilee
and their escape from persecution.
The fact that they had those who were Jews by religion
not only to the south of them in Judea but also to the north
in Galilee, makes the resolution of the Samaritans to main-
tain their religious independence all the more marked.
It is more difficult to settle what was the precise relation
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS :57
of the Samaritans to Judea in the troublous times which
followed. The quarrel between the two brothers, John
Hyrcanus II., and Aristobulus, brought in the Romans, who
would appear to have removed Samaria from under the
dominion of the Jewish High Priest (Jos.,.-!;//. XIV. iv. 4;
Wars, I. vii. 7). The sympathies of the Samaritans seem
to have been more with the Romans than with the Jews,
as is seen by the fact that when Alexander the son of
Aristobulus escaped from the custody in Rome to which
Pompey had consigned him, and having invaded Palestine and
seized the government had commenced to slay such Romans
as fell into his hands; the rest betook themselves to Mount
Gerizim where they were besieged by Alexander. The
Romans clearly thought that they had more chance of safety
among the Samaritans than among the Jews. Their resist-
ance was successful as Gabinius raised the siege by defeating
Alexander. During this period the Samaritans were both
politically and religiously separate from Judea (Jos., Ant.
XIV. vi. 2).
Uncler Herod, Samaria was once more united politically
to Judea. The efforts he put forth to ingratiate himself
prove that they did not relish being subject to any authority
which had its seat in Jerusalem. To lead them to appreciate
his rule and take kindly to it, Herod built a forum in Samaria,
the remains of which are still standing, also a street of
columns, the shafts of many of which still testify to the fact.
He changed the name of the city to Sebaste, in honour of
Augustus, in order to retain the favour of the ruler of the
world. To curry favour further with Augustus, and at the
same time please the Samaritans, he built a temple to the
Emperor in Samaria. It is not impossible that Herod also
rebuilt the temple on Mount Gerizim which had been burned
by Hyrcanus. Although this is not recorded by Josephus, a
reason may be found for his silence in his special hatred of
the Samaritans^ jis the religious opponents of_Isracl There
are several indications in the Gospels that in the days of our
Lord the temple on Mount Gerizim was standing. When
Herod's dominions were divided at his death, Archelaus
received Samaria along with Judea. On the deposition of
Archelaus, when Judea became a Roman province. Samaria
38 THE SAMARITANS
still remained united with it in all matters of civil government.
In regard to religion and worship the Samaritans always
kej-rf themselves apart from the jews. The relation in whicn
the two peoples stood to each other may be seen in the
conversation which our Lord had with the Samaritan
woman. Her assertion, however, that the Jews have no
dealings with the Samaritans, is not to be taken to the foot
of the letter. In the tract Masseketh Kuthim} in which are
collected the various Talmudic dicta concerning the
" Cuthaeans," it may be seen that they are regarded as closer
to the Israelites than the Gentiles. There are singular and
somewhat contradictory restrictions in commercial transac-
tions ; while the Jews might not sell to Samaritans sheep
for shearing, they might sell them if the sheep were to be
slaughtered. One instance of restriction is due to the
different way in which even in relatively ancient times the
Samaritans reckoned the date of the celebration of the
" Feast of Unleavened Bread." " We may not buy bread
from a Samaritan baker at the end of Passover, until after
three bakings." This period would need to be considerably
increased now, as the date of the Samaritan Passover may
be a month after that of the Jews. In religious matters the
Jews acknowledged the Samaritans in some relations ; though
the Jews would not receive Sin-Offerings or Guilt-Offerings
from the Samaritans, they might accept Vows and Freewill-
Offerings from them. More remarkable is the fact that the
Jews held that a Samaritan might legitimately circumcise a
Jewish child. This tract maintains the embargo which Ezra
laid upon marriages with the Samaritans. A singular
evidence of the difference put between the Samaritans and
the Gentiles is quoted by Montgomery from Aboda Zara {The
Samaritans, y T9£^) " An Israelite who has his hair cut by a
Gentile must look in a mirror, but if by a Samaritan he need
not look in a mirror," lest the Gentile barber should cut his
throat, a thing he could trust the Samaritan not to do. In
civil matters while the Jews and Samaritans were united
under the same Roman governor they each had a separate
" Sanhedrin." The Romans wisely permitted to the races sub-
1 It has been translated by Dr Montgomery with illustrations from
other parts of the Talmud {The Samaritans, pp. 197-203).
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 39
ject to them a very considerable amount of self-government.
It is likely, that as the Jewish High Priest presided over the
Jewish Sanhedrin, so the High Priest of the Samaritans
presided over their Sanhedrin. When Pilate slew a large
number of Samaritans, who, seduced by the promises of a
fanatic prophet to show them the long concealed sacred
vessels assembled in arms in the village of Tirathana, with a
view to ascending Mount Gerizim, the Samaritan Sanhedrin
made a successful appeal to Rome against him, and occa-
sioned his recall from the government of Palestine.
The political attitude of the Samaritans during the
principate of Nero, when the Jewish revolt against the
Romans began, is difficult to understand. Florus and the
other Roman governors who, by Josephus's account, goaded
the Jews into rebellion, appear on the whole to have been
favourable to the Samaritans. Certainly under Felix they
seem to have been restless and quarrelsome (Tac, Ann. xii.
54), though it would seem that the governor was in part
instigator. \When the Jews actually rebelled against the
Romans, the Samaritans do not appear to have acted at
all in concert with them.y On the other hand they do not
seem to have manifestea any hostility towards them, when
by doing so they might have hampered the Jews and so
rendered valuable assistance to the Romans, who would
not have been slow to reward it. Yet while Vespasian
was engaged in the conquest of Galilee, they assumed what
Vespasian regarded as a threatening attitude, so much so
that he sent Cerealis against them. They had assembled
in great numbers on Mount Gerizim, but they were in
want of water and had not provided themselves with food ;
yet when Cerealis, after a blockade of some length, advanced
up the mountain and offered them terms they would not
submit. The whole transaction has the appearance of being
a hideous blunder. The fact that they had not seen to
it that their cisterns were full, and that they had not a
sufficiency of provisions, seems to disprove any hostile
purpose. It would probably be some irregular religious
gathering. Whatever the real meaning of their assembly,
the end was tragic. When they would not listen to his
overtures, Cerealis attacked them and slew eleven thousand
40 THE SAMARITANS
and six hundred. It might be that they could not make
Cerealis understand their object, and that he, acting on
the maxim that seems to have guided the Romans in their
dealings with those they called barbarians, " When in doubt
kill," slew all he found on Mount Gerizim (Jos., Wars, III.
vii. 32). He seems to have destroyed Shechem in the course
of his operations, as Vespasian afterwards rebuilt it and
called it after his own name Flavia Neapolis, from which is
derived the modern name Nablus. In the days of Justin
Martyr, who was born there, it appears to have become
a purely Gentile city. After the massacre which they
sustained at the hands of Cerealis, the Samaritans do not
seem to have again come under the suspicion of the Romans
during the course of the Jewish War. So far as may be
deduced from the action of Vespasian in regard to the
rebuilding of Shechem, the Samaritans appear to have been
left at peace during the subsequent reign of the Flavian
dynasty.
For the later history of the Samaritans under the Roman
domination, the student has no longer the guidance of
Tacitus or Josephus, however unreliable they may in some
respects be, the one from ignorance, the other from national
prejudice. After the assassination of Domitian, with which
the Twelve Ccesars of Suetonius ends, the history of the
Roman Empire has come down to us mainly in the short
rhetorical biographies of the emperors, to be found in
the Augustan Histories, and in the curt narratives of
Dion Cassius — shortened in the case of the books relating
to this period into the meagre epitomes of Xiphilinus.
Illustrious as were the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, from the unsatis-
factory nature of the authorities which alone survive
to us, little authentic is known of the history of the
Empire during their rule. During this period, which
Gibbon deems to have been a specially happy one for the
inhabitants of the Roman Empire, although there are but
the most cursory notices of the Samaritans, it may be
assumed that they shared in the prosperity around them.
Although the Samaritans could scarcely fail to be affected
by the war occasioned by the claim of Bar-Cochba to be
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 41
Messiah, it yet can hardly have been to the extent repre-
sented by the Samaritan annals as will be exhibited in
a subsequent chapter. Among the remains of buildings
which may be traced on the top of Mount Gerizim, there
are indications, as suggested in Chapter I., of a circular
temple probably of the age of Hadrian, who had a favour
for that shape. As it would be erected to some deity of
the Olympian Pantheon, this would excite the fanaticism
of the Samaritans, unless the deity were Zeus, and they
like their ancestors in days of Antiochus, by identifying
Zeus with JHWH contrived to adjust themselves to their
circumstances. At the same time it must be noted that
the Samaritan Joshua tells of a terrible persecution which
the Samaritans endured at the hands of Adrinus (Hadrian).
During the rule of the Antonines, when so many splendid
synagogues were raised by the Jews, it is probable that
the Samaritans were left at peace. The persecutions which
Abu'l Fath records as befalling the Samaritans during the
reign of Commodus are by no means improbable. Lampridius
in his life of him represents Heliogabalus introducing into
the temple of the God whose name he bore, Samaritanorum
religiones. As a Syrian he knew enough for his compre-
hensive syncretism to embrace within its compass not only
the Jews and Christians but also the Samaritans.
There seems, however, no doubt that the Romans
differentiated between the Jews and the Samaritans to the
disadvantage of the latter ; while the Jews were permitted
to perform the rite of circumcision, in the case of the
Samaritans the rite was brought under the sweep of an
old edict against mutilation, i.e., castration, and so forbidden
to them under severe penalties. The evidence of Origen
{Contra Celsum, ii. 13) indicates that it was mainly because
of the rite of circumcision that the Samaritans were perse-
cuted ; the rite was permitted to the Jews but not to them.
The fact that they sustained so many persecutions on
account of the various rites of their religion proves their
zeal, and further evidences the strenuous hold they retained
on their faith.
With the Christianisation of the Empire which followed
the conversion of Constantine, a change for the worse came
42 THE SAMARITANS
over the affairs of the Samaritans. In the persecutions
which they had endured at the hands of Imperial Rome,
there was alv/ays a political element, but the bitterer element
of religious fanaticism was now added. The Church, which
had so long been persecuted, now assumed the role of
persecutor. Constantine himself did not persecute, possibly
as his own conversion had been largely the result of political
expediency, he had not the fanatic rage against those who
differed from him, which filled the hearts of the bishops
who had tasted the pains of persecution. He had seen
the evil wrought by the persecutions of Diocletian, and was
not likely to renew them. His son Constantius, who is
called by Abu'l Fath Tahus, renewed the edict against
circumcision. To this period would Dr Montgomery assign
the episode of Garmun and Baba Rabba, although from
the confused state of the chronology of the Samaritan annals
it may be placed either a little earlier or a little later.
The story as told in the Samaritan book of Joshua is as
follows: When the eldest son of Nathanael, the High Priest,
was born, he knew it was specially incumbent on him to
have his son circumcised on the eighth day. It was then
the Samaritan custom to perform the ceremony before the
community assembled in the synagogue, but it was illegal
by Imperial law to do so, and the penalty was death.
Nathanael determined that the child should be carried to
a cave, and that there before a select company he should
be circumcised. In order not to attract attention, Nathanael
sent a maid-servant with the infant in a basket to the cave.
Garmun, whom Abu'l Fath calls " prefect," met the girl
and said to her, " Do what thou intendest and fear not."
She informed Nathanael, and when he heard he was afraid,
but said, " Let us commit the matter to God." When the
girl was returning, again Garmun met her and said : " Bring
him up in peace, my girl." Nathanael, afraid of what the
prefect would do, went to offer him a bribe. Garmun,
however, would only take three pence, and he took these
for the singular reason, lest he should be thought to be
forming a plot against the High Priest. Dr Montgomery
thinks that this Garmun was not a prefect but a bishop,
Germanus, who, as Bishop of Neapolis, took part in several
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 43
of the many Church councils of the reign of Constantius.
The story indicates how the decree against circumcision
was rendered ineffective through the connivance of those
who, though government servants, did not believe in persecu-
tion. It also shows how constant the Samaritans were to
their faith.
From the Church Fathers there is evidence in regard to
the doctrinal position of the Samaritans. Although his
testimony is not always satisfactory as not always accurate,
Epiphanius testifies to the existence of the Samaritans as
a sect, and gives some of the doctrines which he assumed
that they taught. He mentions several heretical sects that
sprang from them. Later Jerome notes the habits of the
Samaritans in regard to several matters, as for instance
that they, like the Jews, shun contact with Christians (in
Esaiam Ixv. 3) ; he regards them as schismatics for their
reverence of Gerizim in preference to Jerusalem (in Esaiam
ix. 2). He draws conclusions from the form of the letter
" tau " as written by them (in Ezechielem ix. 4). As
Jerome was for many years resident in Palestine, and as
a Biblical scholar was curious to learn everything that had
any bearing on Scripture, his testimony as to the Samaritans
and their tenets is of peculiar value. He says nothing
of the Samaritans being persecuted in his day for their
religion, or forbidden the rite of circumcision. It would
seem that at that time the decrees against them had
been allowed to fall into desuetude ; or perhaps they were
held over the heads of the Samaritans in terror em in order
that the magistrates might exact bakhshish. Still, in
that case, some reference might have been expected to the
fact that they were under the ban of the Empire, if things
were so.
With the permanent division of the Roman Empire into
Eastern and Western, and still more when the Empire of
the West fell, matters assumed a yet worse aspect for the
Samaritans. While the Empire was still nominally Roman,
) it really had become Byzantine. Under the new regime
the Samaritans were subjected to a grinding but irregular
^ persecution. These irritating acts of oppression, without
seriously weakening them, excited riots which at times became
44 THE SAMARITANS
important enough to be designated rebellions. While under
Theodosius the Great the claim to exemption from the pay-
ment of certain duties was allowed to the Samaritans and
the Jews, and in general the scales of justice were held even
in any contests between the Samaritans and their Christian
neighbours, the reign of the second Theodosius saw the
imposition of new and galling disabilities. Under the
Theodosian Code the rights of testamentary disposition
are in the case of the Jews and Samaritans limited, much
as it was with the Roman Catholics in Ireland a couple
of centuries ago ; they were not allowed to disinherit a
child who had become a Christian, while the penalty of
death was incurred by any Samaritan who induced a
Christian to become a Samaritan. In order to limit the
sect the more effectively, the Samaritans were not permitted
to build new synagogues or even rebuild old ones. Along
with Jews, pagans, and heretics, the Samaritans were deprived
of the right to hold civic appointments.
These harassing regulations were not consistently applied ;
under one governor they would be as a dead letter, while
under his successor only abundant bakhshish saved the
community from suffering their utmost rigour. As was
natural such treatment produced, as we have said, frequent
riots. Quarrels arose on other accounts also ; Joseph, whose
tomb is near Nablus, was a saint not only of the Samaritans
and the Jews but also of the Christians. In their mania
for getting sacred remains for their churches, the Christians
wished to remove the bones of the Patriarch. The
Samaritans resisted this sacrilege ; if we are to believe
Abu'l Fath, they were helped in their efforts by miraculous
portents. Towards the end of the fifth century of our era,
in the reign of Zeno, the Samaritans rose in rebellion, and
after massacring many of the Christian community, set up
as king a certain robber named Justasa. At first they
were so far successful that they captured Caesarea, and
after the massacre of the Christian community there,
celebrated a triumph. They were, however, soon overthrown
by the Imperial forces. As a punishment for their rebellion
the Samaritans were deprived of access to Mount Gerizim,
and a church to the Virgin Mary replaced the temple.
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 45
They were forced to submit. This attempt at rebellion is
recorded with variations in the Samaritan annals. Abu'l
Fath assigns as a reason for this rebellion the intention
of the Christians to carry away the bones of Eleazar and
Phinehas the High Priests.
During the reign of Anastasius, the successor of Zeno,
untaught by experience, the Samaritans made another up-
rising. In it, led by a woman, they seized Mount Gerizim —
which as above noted had been fortified against them —
slew the garrison, and took possession of the church which
had displaced the temple. Procopius the historian, who
narrates these occurrences, was Governor of Palestine at the
time. He quickly suppressed the uprising ; the leaders
were put to death.
The sovereign who was at first the most oppressive
to the Samaritans was Justinian. The edict he issued in
A.D. 527, de Hereticis et Manichceis et Saniaritis, was only a
republication of earlier legislation against them, an indication
that the penalties were not inflicted in strictness. Under
Justinian the cruelly unjust law was administered with
all severity. In two years these oppressive enactments
produced a very serious uprising of the Samaritans. The
account of this rebellion is given by Procopius. It spread
through the whole territory of Samaria from Scythopolis
to Caesarea, but had its centre in the hill country. The
rebels seem to have wreaked vengeance on the Christians
for the wrongs done to them by the legislation of Justinian.
As they had done in the earlier rebellion in the reign of
Zeno, the Samaritans set up a sovereign for themselves,
whom they do not seem to have designated by the theocratic
title of King, but more ambitiously named him Emperor.
Like Justasa of the days of Zeno, this emperor, whose
name was Julian, was a bandit. This rebellion ran a course
very similar to that of the earlier rebellion which it resembled
in so many other respects. In the beginning it had success,
and emphasised that success by a triumph accompanied
with games. This triumph was celebrated not in Samaria
but in Neapolis. As in the earlier case, the opening victories
were followed by overwhelming defeat, and the pseudo-
emperor was beheaded. Later Justinian became more
46 THE SAMARITANS
clement to the remnant of the Samaritan people. A con-
siderable number of them had to assume a profession of
Christianity ; Procopius says, in his chronique scandaleuse,
The Secret History, that the majority did so. Some of
these converts of fear bribed the governors to allow them
to carry on their old hereditary rites. Notwithstanding
the transitory clemency of Justinian, the Samaritans again
revolted, and in Caesarea attacked and killed many of the
Christians and burned their churches. The extreme of
oppression was reached in the reign of Justin II.; the
rescripts of that reign practically wholly outlaw them ; marry
of the Samaritans fled to Persia. Singularly enough, although
the Samaritans took refuge in Persia when Khosrou Purviz,
the Persian King, conquered Palestine, the Samaritan
chronicles tell that he crucified many of the Samaritans.
Dr Montgomery argues that while the Persian conqueror
was assisted by the Jews, he was opposed by the Samaritans.
They appear to have welcomed Arqali (Heraclius) when
he restored Palestine to the Empire.
/Vrhe present date is a suitable one at which to pause and
review the past history. Since the time when the colonists
were sent by Esarhaddon — and they seem to have been the
majority of them — to the date of the conquest of Palestine
by "the sons of Ishmael," there is a space of thirteen
centuries ; nearly the same period separates the present
time from that event. Two characteristics are to be noted ;
in the first place continued opposition of the Jews to the
Samaritans, amply reciprocated by the Samaritans ; next —
from the beginning of our era to the end of the Roman rule
in Palestine — the Samaritans have endured persecutions of
ever-increasing severity, in which they were differentiated
to their disfavour, from the Jews : the two features of
Samaritan history are their pertinacious adherence to the
faith they had inherited, and their independence of the Jews.
After Heraclius had regained Palestine, if not with the
assistance of the Samaritans at least with their concurrence,
he did nothing to preserve it to the Empire. The truth is
that in consequence of the corrupt administration of his
predecessors, the Empire was utterly exhausted, so that his
splendid campaigns against Persia, far from strengthening
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 47
the Byzantine Roman Empire, really exhausted it only
the more. At this point when the Persian Empire was
exhausted with defeat and that of Byzantium equally
exhausted by victories, a whirlwind from the desert smote
both empires.
Away on the further side of Arabia from Palestine or
Persia, in Mecca and Medina, had sprung up a new religion.
Mohammed had proclaimed himself a prophet, and after
various vicissitudes had first fled to Medina then from thence
conquered Mecca. The conquest of Arabia followed. The
death of Mohammed did not quench the zeal of his adherents ;
they passed the limits of Arabia and assailed Persia on the
one side and the Empire of Byzantium on the other. After
several campaigns lasting over a decade, during which external
assault was helped by internal division and treachery, Persia
was completely conquered and Yezgered compelled to flee the
country. The date of the final battle was A. II. 22. While
the struggle was going on to the cast the Moslems advanced
to the conquest of Palestine. The conflict was waged with
varying fortunes, but at length all Syria submitted to the
Arabs. The Samaritans welcomed the advent of the
Saracens ; they had no reason to desire a continuance of
the oppressive rule of Constantinople. In consequence they
were treated with a certain amount of favour by the con-
querors. M. Lammens {Calif at de Yasid Ier, chap, xxiii.)
says, on the authority of Baladhuri, that the reason of the
favour shown them was that they had acted as guides to the
Moslem armies, especially in the east of Jordan. Indeed
M. Lammens thinks that they assisted them in arms, but
that it became a point of honour with the Arabs to deny
that the followers of the Prophet accepted any assistance from
unbelievers. Yet the exceptional privileges which they
received from Abu Obeida, that their land should be free
of every impost but the capitation, seems to imply special
services rendered to deserve them. This was in the Khalifate
of Omar. At the same time earlier they, along with all the
inhabitants, had suffered from the raid of Amru ibn el 'Asi.
When the idea of plunder gave way to the thought of perma-
nent conquest, the inhabitants were no longer indiscriminately
plundered, but were regarded as subjects ; and then it was
48 THE SAMARITANS
that the services of the Samaritans were rewarded with
special treatment.
This favour lasted during the rule of the Ommeyads.
With the reign of the Abbasides more fanatical ideas pre-
vailed. The persecutions that resulted from the efforts at
forcible conversion seem to have left deeper traces in the
memories of the Samaritans than have the earlier acts of
favour. Montgomery {Samaritans, p. 27 ff.) gives an
account drawn from Samaritan sources, especially the
supplements to Abu'l Fath, of the different disasters that
befell the Samaritans under Moslem rule. While the
Abbasides, fanatically orthodox as they were, treated with
savagery all who refused to accept Islam, the Samaritans
were not discriminated against; although they were not
received into the position of quasi favour occupied by the
Jews. On the death of Harun er Raschid, the khalifate
was shared by his two sons Mamun and Amin, who soon
quarrelled and declared war on each other. The opportunity
afforded by this was seized by a pretender who claimed to
be descended both from AH and Mo'awiyah ; he overran
Syria and secured possession of Damascus. He appears to
have set himself specially against the Samaritans ; three of
their cities were destroyed by his orders. As an evidence
of the change in the spirit of the Mohammedans from the
time of the Ommeyads, a Moslem governor of Nablus was
killed by his co-religionists for favouring the Samaritans.
As a consequence the land was filled with corpses, and crimes
passed unpunished. Matters reached a climax when the
Khalif Mutawakkil prohibited the Samaritans from performing
the rites of their religion. Thus, whether the legitimate
rule of the khalifs had the authority or rebels had usurped
the power, whether the orthodox Moslems were in the
ascendant or heretical sects, the Samaritans were equally
oppressed and persecuted. Some of them fled away to other
lands ; the Samaritans assert that these fugitives came to
the West, to Britain. Although with the fear of death
before them some abjured the faith, others rather submitted
to death. Dr Montgomery sums up the history of the
period as " an almost unintermittent picture of the mis-
fortunes of the miserable sect, persecuted by both orthodox
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 49
and heretical parties of Islam," and harried by the wars that
swept over the debatable land of Palestine.
When the Crusaders, in their zeal to regain the places
sacred to Christendom, swept in wave after wave from
Europe into Asia, and at length set up the Latin Kingdom
of Jerusalem, the Samaritans were again brought in contact
with Christianity. Singularly enough the Samaritan annals
do not give any account of their relation to the kings of
Jerusalem. On the other hand the chronicles of the
Crusades are completely barren of references to the
Samaritans. Yet they must have come in contact with
them. The Crusaders were great builders and erected many
churches. In Sebastiyeh, the ancient Samaria, they erected
a church to John the Baptist ; it is now a mosque. Four out
of the five mosques in Nablus were originally Christian
churches. They suffered in the campaigns which Saladin
carried on against the Christians ; after the battle of Hattin
Nablus was wasted. Sultan Baibars in his ruthless war
against the Christians in Palestine made the Samaritans
suffer also. They were devastated also by the invasions of
the Kharezmians and the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
More interesting and fruitful are the notices of the
Samaritans to be found in the travels of the pilgrims, Jewish
and Christian, during this period. The most interesting of
these is the narrative of the Spanish Jew, Benjamin of
Tudela, who travelled through Italy, Asia Minor, and
Palestine about the middle of the twelfth century. His
account of the Samaritans may be quoted : " Nablus the
ancient Shechem in Mount Ephraim ... is situated in the
valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. It is the
abode of about one thousand Cuthaeans x who observe the
Mosaic Law only, and are called Samaritans. They have
priests, descendants of Aaron, the priest of blessed memory,
whom they call Aaronim. These do not intermarry with
any but priestly families ; but they are priests only of their
1 The more common reading is "one hundred," but this is an
impossible number, as Benjamin speaks of them claiming to be of the
tribe of Ephraim and to have priests of the seed of Aaron. A mere
handful of this size would not have a separate priesthood. More, the
representations of other travellers suit the larger number.
D
50 THE SAMARITANS
own law, and offer sacrifices and burnt-offerings in their
synagogue on Mount Gerizim. They do this in accordance
with the words of Scripture, ' Thou shalt put the blessing
on Mount Gerizim,' and they pretend that this is the Holy
Temple. On Passover and holidays they offer burnt-
offerings on the altar, which they have erected on Mount
Gerizim from the stones put up by the children of Israel
after they had crossed the Jordan. They pretend to be of
the tribe of Ephraim, and are in possession of the tomb of
Joseph, the righteous, the son of our father Jacob, upon
whom be peace, as is proved by the following passage of
Scripture, ' The bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel
brought up with them from Egypt, they buried in Shechem.'
The Samaritans do not possess the three letters He, Heth,
and Ain ; they have not the He of the name of our father
Abraham, so they have no glory ; the Heth of our father
Isaac, in consequence of which they are devoid of piety ;
the Ain of our father Jacob, so they want humility.1 Instead
of these letters they always put an Aleph by which you
may know that they are not of Jewish origin, because in
their knowledge of the Law of Moses they are deficient in
three letters. This sect carefully avoid being defiled by
touching bones, corpses, or those killed by accident, or
graves ; and they change their garments whenever they
visit their synagogue, upon which occasion also they wash
their body and put on other clothes. These are their daily
habits."
The admission which Benjamin here makes, that the
Samaritans observe the Mosaic Law, and that their priests
are the children of Aaron, are points to be noted in this
passage ; it seems to be an abandonment to a great extent
of the position of orthodox Judaism that these Samaritans,
who alleged themselves Israelites, were really Cuthaeans, a
view to which he afterwards returns. It is singular to find
Benjamin asserting that the Samaritans " offer sacrifices
1 These letters occur each in the names referred to. He n in
Abraham DJVOK and hod"X\7\ ; "glory" begins with n. Heth n occurs
t t ;
in Isaac pHV and is the first letter of /tesediun "piety." Ain jj occurs
in Jacob a'pjp and it is the first letter of anava iTDy " humility."
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 51
and burnt-offerings in their synagogue on Mount Gerizim " ;
this certainly contradicts the Samaritan tradition which
declares that the cessation of sacrifices dates from the return
of the Samaritans from Harran — a mythical event it may
be observed, but regarded as contemporary with the Jewish
return from Babylon. In dating the cessation of sacrifice thus
early, Samaritan tradition is clearly wrong, as at all events to
the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim by Hyrcanus,
sacrifices must have been offered. Even after that event
our Lord tells the Samaritan leper to show himself to the
priests (Luke xvii. 14), a command that would imply the
offering of the cleansing sacrifices ordained by the Law.
Still, as the Samaritan theologian Marqah, who was much
earlier than Benjamin of Tudela, implies that no longer were
sacrifices offered, this would indicate that the traveller had
been led into a mistake by a too absolute credence of the
statements of his dragoman. There is another confusion in
regard to the " twelve stones " ; they are still shown but not
as an altar. They are situated, as has been stated above,
near the foundations of a building which is alleged by some
to have been the ancient Samaritan temple. It must be
presumed that Benjamin of Tudela did not climb to the
top of Mount Gerizim to verify what were alleged to be
facts, but was satisfied to accept as true what was told him.
About a century after the visit of Benjamin of Tudela,
Moses ben Nachman came to Palestine. When in Acco he
found a Jewish coin of the Maccabaean period, the inscrip-
tion on which he was unable to read, it was read to him
by some Cuthaeans resident there. This is evidence of a
Samaritan community being in Acco, and also that in the
days of Nachmanides the Samaritans had a script similar to
that found in the extant copies of the Law of the tenth
century.
Toward the middle of the fourteenth century the
veracious traveller, Sir John Mandeville, in the course of his
journey to the Holy Land, paid a visit to Nablus, or as he
calls it Shechem, or Neapolis, and says that it is ten miles
from Jerusalem. The distance is approximately forty Roman
miles as the crow flies ; it may have been that he used a
German mile. He makes the same assertion as does
52 THE SAMARITANS
Benjamin of Tudela as to the Samaritans offering sacrifice
on Mount Gerizim. It would appear that he had some
intercourse with the Samaritans, as he is correct as to their
theology, at a time when errors on this were common. He
says, " They say that there is only one God, who created all
things and judges all things." He seems to have been
unaware of the limited extent of the Samaritan Bible ; he
says, " They hold the Bible according to the letter, and use
the Psalter as the Jews do." He refers to their claim to be
the genuine Israelites. " They say that they are the right
sons of God ; they say that they be the best belovecf of
God, and that to them belongs the heritage which God
promised to His beloved children." Probably neither Sir
John nor his interpreter had any sufficient initial knowledge
of the Samaritans when he visited Nablus and began his
inquiries, and in consequence neither knew what questions
to put, nor understood properly the answers given him to
those he did ask. He mentions the red head-dress they
were required to wear, but seems to regard it as a matter
of choice. He is by no means conspicuous for accuracy, as
may be gauged by the fact that he credits Rehoboam with
setting up the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. Though
as to the Samaritans his evidence is fairly accurate, yet on
the question of the sacrifices on Mount Gerizim it may not
be pressed.
About three hundred years after Sir John Mandeville's
visit to Palestine, came Pietro della Valle to travel in the
East. He was a Roman nobleman, and member of the
literary and scientific society of Rome, the Umoristi. A
disappointment in love led him to become a pilgrim. He
visited Constantinople on his way to the Holy Land and
stayed there thirteen months. The French Ambassador,
M. de Sanci, in his desire to possess a copy of the Samaritan
Pentateuch, directed the attention of Della Valle to the
Samaritan people, and he visited their communities in Cairo,
Gaza, Nablus, and Damascus. The narrative of his travels
is written in an easy, interesting style. He gives an account
of the various Samaritan communities which he had seen,
especially of that in Nablus. He speaks of them as
" Samaritan Jews whom the other Jews regard as heretics."
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 53
He refers to their rebellion in the days of the Emperor
Zeno, and how they had cut the throats of the Christians,
and what vengeance the emperor exacted. He must have
had some Jewish informant, as he speaks of the Samaritans
as Cuthaeans. He devotes some time to the Biblical
account of their origin, evidently from memory, for although
it is generally correct it is not invariably so. From the fact
that they had inherited errors, he declares "that they did
not wish to read the other Biblical books, besides the book
of the Law, that is to say, the five books of Moses. . . . The
other books of Holy Scripture, which have been collected
since, as the Prophets and the others, they do not receive
and do not reckon them as canonical." He declares that
" the priests of the race of Aaron" did not intermarry with
the rest of the Samaritan community. This was the case
not only in Xablus but also in Cairo. " When they met
together," he says, " they sacrificed and performed all the
ceremonies which were performed anciently in the Jerusalem
temple, but according to the manner of the Samaritans."
It is to be observed that Delia Yalle, like Benjamin of
Tudela and Sir John Mandeville, asserts that the Samaritans
offered sacrifices. His description of the dwellings of the
Samaritans of Damascus is as follows : " They were houses
outside the city, in gardens, splendid inside with gilding,
but of little appearance outside;" this suggests a class of
people desirous of being inconspicuous, a persecuted people,
whose safety lay in being unnoticed.
Near the end of the seventeenth century, in the earlier
part of which Pietro della Yalle had visited Shechem,
an English traveller, Henry Maundrel, starting from Aleppo,
reached Xablus, or as he calls it Xaplosa, on the 24th of
March 1697. He says that the Samaritans have upon
Mount Gerizim " a small temple or place of worship, to
which they still are wont to repair at certain seasons for
the performance of the rites of their religion." What these
rites were he did not ascertain. He informs his readers
that the Jews asserted that the Samaritans worshipped
a calf, but that he thinks " has more of spite than truth
in it." He had a prolonged conversation with the Samaritan
High Priest who, as is the wont of the Samaritans, accused
54 THE SAMARITANS
the Jews of falsifying the text of the Pentateuch in putting
Ebal for Gerizim as the mountain on which the Law was
to be written, alleging the fact that Ebal was the mountain
of cursing and Gerizim that of blessing, that therefore it
would be more suitable that on the mountain of blessing
the Law should be preserved ; the priest referred also to
the superior fertility of Mount Gerizim, a superiority which
did not impress the traveller as very striking. Maundrel
consulted the High Priest as to the precise force of the
words in the Pentateuch translated " quails " and " man-
V^ drakes," and got answers which seem to have satisfied him.
J In our rapid review of the history of the Samaritan
people we have evidence from Scripture, from Josephus
the Jewish historian, from Samaritan annals, from secular
historians and from travellers, Christian and Jewish, which
proves their continuous existence, at all events from the
arrival of the Assyrian colonists in Palestine down to the
present day. Even then if we had to do merely with
descendants of those who received their knowledge of the
Hebrew religion from the priests sent by Esarhaddon,
their beliefs and practices would bear the impress of the
faith and practice of a much earlier day. All the while
there is evidence that there was an opposition, a rivalry
between them and the Jews so great as to preclude any
serious amount of borrowing by the Samaritans from that
source. If the Samaritan claims be admitted, that they
are the genuine children of Israel, and as has been shown
the balance of evidence favours the view that despite the
negligible admixture of foreign blood, the present Samaritans
are the descendants of those who under Joshua conquered
the land ; thus their ritual really represents an uninterrupted
tradition from primitive times. According to the traditional
view of the origin of the Pentateuch, they have been in
possession of the Mosaic Law for above three thousand
years ; according to the prevailing critical view, they have
been concurring spectators of all the changes it has passed
through since the return under Zerubbabel of the Jewish
exiles, save what may have taken place in Babylon. There
has been no break in the succession. After the fall of the
Northern Kingdom the inhabitants of the territories of the
THE HISTORY OF THE SAMARITANS 55
Ephraimite tribes continued their observance of theceremonies
of the Mosaic Law. They have circumcised their children
even when obedience to the Mosaic precept meant rendering
themselves obnoxious to the penalty of death ; year after
year they have celebrated the Passover on Mount Gerizim
when they might ; in their own houses when they were
forbidden access to the sacred site. Throughout their long
history they have been witnesses for the religion of Israel,
and in many cases witnesses that have sealed their testimony
with their blood.
In some respects the Samaritans are better witnesses /s
than the Jews, and their testimony has more evidential
value. The line of their tradition has not been broken
by banishment from their own land, as that of the Jews
has been since the overthrow of Bar-Cochba's rebellion. '
For a considerable while after that event the Jews were
excluded from Jerusalem altogether. From this fact, where
their method of observance in regard to any ceremony differs
from that of the Jews, there is a prima facie probability in
favour of that of the Samaritans. Noticeably is this the
case in regard to the Passover and the rite of circumcision.
If Benjamin of Tudela is to be believed, supported as he
is by Sir John Mandeville and Pietro della Valle, against
the express testimony of the Samaritans themselves, then
they were offering sacrifices and burnt offerings till the
seventeenth century of our era ; maintaining thus the
Levitical Law in its entirety. It must be noted that as
to the date when bloody sacrifices ceased, Samaritan tradition
is distinctly wrong ; they did not cease in the reign of
Artaxerxes Longimanus. How long they continued to be
offered after that time there seems to be no means of
determining.
Were this a case of customary right pled before a court
of law, the kind of evidence afforded by the Samaritans
would be looked upon as exceptionally strong. It must
be borne in mind that all law is founded primarily on custom.
Were the question at issue one regarding " Right of Way,"
one in which evidence as to custom is most frequently
called for, the testimony would be invaluable of one who
not only had lived all his life in the district, and used
56 THE SAMARITANS
the path in dispute, but could invoke family tradition that
his father and grandfather had used the pathway, and had
given him to understand that their use of it had never been
challenged. Of such a kind then is the evidence that may
be drawn from the ritual and beliefs of the Samaritans
as to the Religion of Israel.
CHAPTER III
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL
Assuming the conclusion at which we have arrived to be
correct, that even after the deportation of many of the
Israelites and the advent of Assyrian colonists, the Israelites
still formed the great majority of the inhabitants of Northern
Palestine, it may be further assumed that the religious views
and practices of the colonists would be very much tinctured
by those of their neighbours.1
This religious likeness to the Israelites would be increased
into practical identity by the instruction which the colonists
received from the priest or priests sent by Esarhaddon.
Hence as a preliminary to a study of the worship and
religious beliefs of the Samaritans of later days it is necessary
to consider the doctrines believed and the ritual observances
practised by the Northern Israelite tribes. Although it
might, from what has already been seen, be assumed that
even after the separation of Israel into two distinct states,
Jahweism continued to be the religion of the North as well
as the South, yet it is well to fortify this conclusion by
collateral evidence.
One evidence of special cogency is the prevalence of
proper names having JHWH as one of its elements. The
eldest son of Jeroboam " who made Israel to sin " is " Abijah,"
i.e., "JHWH is my Father." All the sons of Ahab, another
monarch concerning whom Judaean records would be little
likely gratuitously to relate anything favourable, whose
1 It would seem, if the evidence of Tolstoi may be trusted, that a
somewhat similar thing has taken place in the Caucasus, where the
Christian Cossacks have imbibed a great deal of the manners and
morals of the Moslem natives.
57
58 THE SAMARITANS
names have been recorded have all Jehovistic designations ;
Joash ("whom JHWH supports") who is left governor of
Samaria when his father leads his army to Ramoth-Gilead,
Ahaziah ("whom JHWH upholds") who succeeds his father,
and Jehoram ("whom JHWH exalts ") who in turn succeeds
him. His steward is Obadiah "the servant of JHWH."
The military commander who destroyed the House of Omri
is Jehu ("JHWH is"); his father is Jehoshaphat ("JHWH is
Judge"); his friend is Jehonadab ("whom JHWH impels").
The great Prophet of the Northern Kingdom is Elijah
("JHWH is my God"). Of the prophets who prophe'sy
before Ahab in Samaria before he sets out to Ramoth-
Gilead only two are named, Zedekiah ("JHWH is just")
and Micaiah ("who is like JHWH"). The fact that the great
mass of the names that have come down to us from that
period are Jehovistic is evidence of how widespread was the
reverence accorded to JHWH among the subjects and in
the household of Ahab. This phenomenon is all the more
singular, that in the beginning of his reign, Ahab seems to
have done more than merely tolerate the worship of Baal
(i Kings xvi. 31), whose cult Jezebel had brought with her
from Tyre. At the same time, not more than 7000 can be
claimed as not having conformed in any measure to the
worship of Baal (1 Kings xix. 18). The most probable
explanation of this would seem to be that there was a deep-
seated religious syncretism in Israel, natural to those whose
attitude in acts of worship was political rather than theo-
logical. To the statesman the worst of religious crimes is
intolerance, to the prophets, the worst sin was tolerance.
The same antagonism appeared, three-quarters of a mil-
lennium later, in the disastrous quarrel between Judas the
Maccabee and the Hasidim.
There is a phenomenon connected with Hebrew names
which requires to be noted. Before the time of David,
names involving " Baal " as an element are fairly common.
The cases in which these names occur are not in incon-
spicuous families ; the son of Saul who succeeded him on the
throne was really named Eshbaal, " the man of Baal "
(1 Chron. viii. 33), though scribes changed the name to
Ishbosheth, which has the impossible meaning " man of
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 59
folly " (2 Sam. ii. 8) ; his grandson, the son of Jonathan, is
called at first Meribbaal, "strife of Baal" (1 Chron. viii. 34),
afterwards scribally altered to Mephibosheth, " destruction of
folly " (2 Sam. ix. 6) ; also another son of Saul by his concu-
bine Rizpah, called Mephibosheth in 2 Sam. xxi. 8, was in all
likelihood really named originally as his nephew, Meribbaal.
A son of David, born to him after he became king over all
Israel, is named Beeliada, "whom Baal knows" (1 Chron.
xiv. 7), though it is transformed to Eliada, "whom God
knows "(2 Sam. v. 16). The name of no other foreign deity
occurs as an element in Jewish names till Israel came under
the dominion of an alien power. This indicates that Baal, the
God of the Canaanites, was regarded by Israel as standing in
a relation to them different from that in which did the deities
of other heathen nations. To understand the reason of this
it is necessary to go back to the conquest of the land.
When the Israelites crossed the Jordan we must assume
that the numbers ascribed to them in the books of Numbers
and Joshua are greatly in excess of reality. Instead of
entering Canaan with a warlike host of more than six
hundred thousand men, probably the real number would
be somewhere about the tenth of that figure. This would
represent a population of about a quarter of a million. Judg-
ing from the indications in the Tell Amarna tablets, Palestine
was not densely peopled, probably the number of the inhabi-
tants then did not seriously differ from the present figure
that is approximately from three-quarters of a million to a
million. The Israelite people as a whole would therefore
be approximately equal to from a third to a quarter of the
inhabitants which they found in Canaan. Had the native
inhabitants formed a homogeneous mass the chance of the
Israelites to effect the conquest of the land would have been
slight. So far from this being the case they belonged, accord-
ing to repeated numerations, to " seven " different nationalities.
Some of the names that, from the connection in which they
stand, might be reckoned national designations, seem rather
to indicate the character of their dwellings. While the
names the Amorite, the Hittite, and the Canaanite desig-
nated peoples of distinct national types, the Hivites and
Perizzites really meant villagers as distinct from inhabitants
60 THE SAMARITANS
of walled towns. The Jebusites and the Girgashites seem
to have been named from the locality in which they dwelt.
The three leading nationalities appear to have been inter-
mingled. A very similar state of things is seen in Palestine
in the present day, where Kurd, Bedu, and Druse villages
alternate irregularly. Un walled villages appear then to have
been relatively few. The body of the population lived in
small independent fortified towns ; most of them were
monarchical, ruled over by a patesi or priest-king. Some
of them appear to have been republics, as the league of
the four cities of which Gibeon was the chief: it is the
elders of the cities in question that treat with Joshua and
the Elders of Israel. The towns belonging to the same
race do not seem to have formed any league, each "city"
was, as a rule, entirely independent and by itself. Such
seems to have been the condition of matters in Babylonia
when Assyria began to intervene in the affairs of Southern
Mesopotamia. This rendered the conquest of the land much
more easy of accomplishment to the Bent Israel.
It is a mistake to imagine that the conquest of Canaan
was completed by Joshua ; the territories assigned by him
and Eleazar to the different tribes were really " spheres of
influence " within which the conquests of each tribe were to
be limited. The list of thirty-one cities enumerated with
their kings (Josh, xii.) as conquered, does not imply that
even in Joshua's lifetime they were permanently held.
Jerusalem and Hebron although on that list have still to
be conquered after Joshua's death (Judges i. 8, 10). The
former, soon after its reconquest by Judah, must have been
again regained by its original possessors, for in the story of
the Levite and his concubine (Judges xix. 11), which is dated
in the lifetime of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, Jerusalem is
in the hands of the Jebusites. What the several tribes seem
to have done, was to settle in the territory -assigned them,
occupying such of the cities as they had captured, and
whose inhabitants they had slain or expelled, watching for
any favourable opportunity to increase their hold on the
land.
Alike worldly prudence, as surrounded by a hostile
population, and loyalty to JHWH who had given them the
i
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 61
land, ought to have led the Israelites to maintain a close
union among themselves. So far from this being the policy
followed, they scarcely ever, even in a limited degree, during
the time of the Judges, seem to have recognised their national
unity ; never indeed unless when some foreign oppressor
forced on them the duty of mutual help. Even this did so
only to a very limited extent. Reference has been made
above to the evidence afforded by the song of Deborah of
the divisions in Israel by the fact that the absence of Judah
and Simeon from tjje army of Barak is not even made
occasion of rebuke^ When Israel was delivered from the
oppression of Midian by Gideon, he seems to have t>een
followed only by the men of his own tribe, that ^r Mnnrmnh
"Nul unlywas every tribe to a great extent independent, even
the internal unity of the tribe was loose and indeterminate.
The separate walled villages act as independent republics,
each under its own senate of " Sheikhs," or Elders. Meroz
is cursed by Deborah apart from the tribe to which it
belonged ; Gideon treats Succoth and Penuel as enemies
although they are Israelite cities, a hostility which they had
inaugurated. At the same time, taking the books of jUldgfia
and Samuel as they stand, the brazen altar in front of the
Tabernacle was regarded as the sacred hearth of the nation,
and the Tabernacle itself, the national shrine. Wherever it
was, the Tabernacle was the symbol of national unity ; to it in
times of emergency gathered the Elders of all Israel (Judges
xx. i). The union of the tribes of Israel was, like that of
the Hellenic cities by means of the Amphyctionic Council,
largely sentimental, but for any practical purpose useless,
unless popular sentiment ratified the decisions of the Elders
who represented it.
Meantime the walled villages possessed by the Hebrews
formed at first only an additional element in the congeries
of nations which inhabited Palestine ; in consequence,
however, of the victories of Joshua at Beth-Horon and
the waters of Merom, it was in all likelihood the predominant
element. On every side were the cities of the Canaanite,
the Amorite, and the Hittite. These Canaanite and Amorite
cities, as has been learned from the excavations at Gezer
and Lachish, were, at this period, irregular collections of
62 THE SAMARITANS
stone- built hovels, surrounded by earthen walls, with stone
towers at the gates. Prominent in all of them was a High
Place, with an altar, on which were offered gifts and sacrifices
to the Baal of the city. Beside the altars rose monolithic
matztzeboth, frequently if we may judge from Gezer, untrimmed
stones of varying size, and fixed in stone sockets towered
like masts the asheroth, sometimes round, sometimes square.
Occasionally a covered building may have occupied some
part of the sacred area, and also in other cases a secret cave
beneath the floor where Thyestean banquets may have been
held, and oracles delivered. In front of the gate of the city
was the Maidan on which the riders exercised their horses,
and within the gate a space, in which met the Elders of the
city. Probably in the centre there was an open square,
which formed the market-place.
When Israel, from being nomads, came into a land of
fixed habitations and appropriated lands ; when they took
possession of cities which they had not built, and vineyards
and olive-yards which they had not planted, the manners
and customs of the original inhabitants would tend to have
an important influence on them. Especially in matters of
religion and worship would the influence of the earlier
inhabitants be potent. The prominence of the High Place
in each town they captured, and the idea deep-rooted in
every savage mind of the local power possessed by the local
deity must insensibly have affected them. It was against
this influence that the Deuteronomic legislation was primarily
directed. Surrounding influences were too strong, the
Israelites did not cut down the asheroth, overthrow the matztze-
both, or break down the altars of the local Baals. Strangers
from neighbouring cities, or even survivors of the inhabitants,
who had perhaps been spared as slaves by the Hebrews who
now occupied the city, or who having escaped the first
onslaught of the conquerors returned in more peaceful times
to their former homes, these might easily lead the men and
women of Israel to adopt features of the old cult. Not
impossibly the features that were most abhorrent, the
cannibal feasts and human sacrifices, might be kept secret.
The effect on the Israelites of the religions of the
inhabitants of the land into which they had come being so
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISHAKL 63
obvious and well known, some study of these religions is
necessary. While all the nationalities in Palestine at the
time of the conquest are named separately, occasionally they
are compendiously termed Canaanites (Josh. xvii. 13 ; Judges
i. 9, etc.). When dealing with the question of religion
in Canaan we cannot assume that the pantheon of the
Canaanites and their ritual of worship were precisely the
same with those of the Amorites and I littitcs. At the
same time the assimilative influences which effected so much
in regard to the Israelites must have been at least as potent
in the matter of these other nationalities. Further there is
another side to be noted ; inquirers have to beware of
depending too much on hellenised interpretations of the
beliefs of Tyre and Sidon. These are all late, written after
the people had been to a great extent hellenised, and
moreover are presented in a Hellenic dress for a Greek
audience. The first phenomenon that meets the student is
the prevalence of the name " Baal," followed by a place-name.
But "Baal" means in such a connection "Lord of,"
" possessor of," e.g., Baal-Gad (Josh. xiii. 5), Baal-Hazor (2
Sam. xiii. 23). On the other hand there are occasions in
which the name "Baal" stands for the Supreme God, the
rival of JHWH. Thus in the dramatic scene on Carmel,
the question which jiU^h would put to the test was whether
Baal or JHWH was to be reckoned the Supreme Deity.
So, too, Jehu's proclamation (2 Kings x. 18) implies that he
intended to place Baal in the place of JHWH ; at least that
was what he intended the Baal-worshippers to understand.
This is not the place to discuss the historic evolution of
religion and worship in general, or of the religion and
worship of Canaan in particular. In regard to the latter
there are, as has just been noted, special difficulties; these
it is possible may be lessened by future excavations. While
this is so, some of the phenomena connected with the relation
of Israel to the worship of Baal would appear to be simplified
if the local Baals were regarded as due to a species of
religious degeneration. The universal JiaaL. the Lord of
all, was worshipped with different rites in the different
wailed villages. Myths would naturally arise to explain them,
which would involve Baal ; the myths of different places
64 THE SAMARITANS
would conflict, till the Baal of one city would be held as a
different person from the Baal of another. A similar process
has gone on in Romanist countries as to the Virgin.
Whatever their avowed creed, the peasantry act as if the
Virgin of one shrine were personally different, endowed with
different attributes from " Our Lady " of another. Another
process may have been at work, analogous to the fetichism
of West Africa. The Africans believe in a great Being too
great to be approached with prayer or offering, and too
good to work them any ill ; but they believe also in far lesser
beings, genii loci, inhabiting trees, rocks, pools, or even
more insignificant objects as an oddly shaped stone.
Unlike the great Spirit, the spirits that dwell in these objects
are malevolent and easily offended, but may, if properly
propitiated, prosper the undertakings of their votaries.
(R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa; Andrew Lang,
The Making of Religion?) Again we find an analogy in
Romanism. In Roman Catholic countries more prayers are
directed to the Holy Mother and the other saints than to
God the Father or to Christ. A similar process appears to
have taken place in Egypt where, according to Dr Wallis
Budge, there was belief in a Supreme God, the Creator of
all things, of whom the lower gods were attributes or
symbols. In India, if the student of religion compares the
theology of the Vedic hymns with the absurdities of modern
Hinduism, he sees the same process. It would be difficult
for the Jew, if animated at all with the harmonistic ideas
to be seen so strongly in Herodotus, to avoid identifying
JHWH and Baal. This would at once explain the ease
with which the Israelites were seduced into Baal-worship,
and how they came to introduce the name of Baal into the
designations they gave their sons.
i There seem to have been impure rites connected with
the worship of the Baalim. The scenes at Baal-Peor imply
that whoredom was connected with Baal-worship, although it
is not stated. Human sacrifices followed by feasts on the
victims seem proved indubitably by Dr Macalister's
discoveries at Gezer. The fact that such elements were
liable to come in, would be a valid reason for the prophetic
denunciation of the sacrifices offered on the High Places.
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 65
If different modes of worship were in any way liable to arise,
in consequence it might be, of the previous Canaanite or
Amorite worship, then Polytheism would be a present
danger.
Not improbably there would be strange ideas of the
persistence, near the scenes where they had been worshipped,
of the Baalim and Ashtaroth of earlier days ; this, too, would
form a danger to be met. Any misfortune befalling a
person of a superstitious nature would be interpreted as due
to the malevolence of the deity of the High Place whose
dignity had not been respected, and this would result in a
secret resumption of the idolatrous rites at his shrine. All
these dangers, neither small nor few, might well account for
the vehemence of the prophetic denunciation of the worship
of the High Places. The influence of the Canaanite religion
would tend to be all the stronger that there probably would
be much of resemblance between the ritual of the one and
the other ; their ordinary sacrifices would be made with the
same victims — oxen, sheep, and goats ; the ordinary feasts
of the people of the land would be arranged to suit the
periods of the agricultural year, and according to the Mosaic
Law the main feasts had a like relationship. This very
resemblance would make the necessity for prophetic
denunciation more urgent.
All this would suit perfectly with the common critically
assumed origin of Deuteronomy. The prophets, painfully
impressed with the evils which might result from the worship
on the High Places, wishing to get a higher religious
sanction for their condemnation of these irregular religious
centres, invoked the memory of Moses, and compiled a book
in his name, which represented the great lawgiver, before
his death, giving final instructions to the people he had led.
These discourses not only commanded the destruction of
every place in which there had been a heathen shrine, its altars
to be thrown down, its asheroth felled, and its matztzeboth
overturned, but that there should be only one sanctuary for
Israel. Only towards the very end of the Jewish monarchy
were the prophets impelled to compose those discourses,
when political destruction as the penalty of religious apostasy
was impending. The roll containing them was hid, and as
E
\
66 THE SAMARITANS
intended, duly found. The discovery of the " Book of the
Law" in the reign of josiah, is tfte rirst appearance and
publication ot this pseudo-Mosaic legislation. It is beside
the question to denounce this action of the prophets as
immoral ; they might imagine themselves inspired by the
same Divine influence as had inspired Moses, and commanded
to supply precepts omitted by the legislator. The book of
Ecclesiastes is a standing example of the same literary
device.
While it would occupy too much time to discuss
adequately the intricacies of the Deuteronomic controversy,
and would obscure the main line of the present argument, still
there are difficulties in the way of accepting this hypothesis
in its entirety which we would now submit. According to
the critical hypothesis of which this, the assumed origin of
Deuteronomy, forms an integral part, this book was the
earliest book of ritual law.1 /'Previous to this, ritual acts of
worship had been performed according to rules traditionally
handed down only among the priesthoods If that is so, how
is it that Hilkiah says, " I have found the book of the Law? "
If he had said, " I have found a book of precepts by Moses,"
that would have been the natural language of a man who
only now discovered the existence of a book of legislation.
His language implies that he knew the existence of Law-
books, but that this was a copy specially individualised. If
a copy of the Law had been placed at the foundation of the
temple when it was built by Solomon, and if in the structural
repairs instituted by Josiah the very copy which had been
so placed was discovered, that would satisfy the language of
Hilkiah. More important is the statement that first in
Deuteronomy was the doctrine of the one sanctuary
promulgated, and by implication that this one sanctuary was
that in Jerusalem. But in the first place, it is not accurate
to maintain that in this pseudo-Mosaic legislation sacrifices
are absolutely forbidden to be offered in any other place
than the central shrine. In Deuteronomy (xii. 21) it is
permitted the worshipper, should he be too far from the
1 Only a very inconsiderable portion of JE was legislative. The
great mass of it was narrative both before and after the " Book of the
Covenant." What of legislation there is is not ritual.
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 67
chosen sanctuary, if he wished to offer sacrifice, to kill the
bullock or sheep of his offering within the gates of his city.
When the sacrifice could not be offered at the door of the
Tabernacle, the offering would be made most naturally on
the local High Place. If it be objected that in the passage
referred to the reference is to a private feast ; it may be
answered that originally a feast and a sacrifice were regarded
as nearly synonymous terms, the same thing only looked at
from different points of view; thus in I Sam. ix. 12, Saul is
told that the Prophet Samuel is to be found on his way to
the feast on the High Place, and the guests are expected
to wait till he came "because he doth bless the sacrifice."
Subordinate shrines are thus anticipated in the book of
Deuteronomy itself. The discoveries in Assouan and
Elephantine confirm thisyyThe Hebrew community in Upper/
Egypt, in the days of the later Persian monarchs, believed
that they were worshipping JHWH according to the Mosaic
Law, although they had erected a temple for themselves.
They have no hesitation in appealing to the Jewish High
Priest at Jerusalem for his good offices against the oppression of
their neighbours, nor have they any feeling that the existence
of their temple is derogatory to the dignity of that on Mount
Zion. It is to be observed that the community is largely
composed of Jews, to whom the supremacy of the Jerusalem
Temple would specially appeal^ Later, in the days of the
Ptolemies, Onias erected a temple to the God of Israel at
Leontopolis. When he did so, far from thinking that he
transgressed the Law by so doing, he believed that all Jews
would welcome what he had done. When the Jerusalem
Temple had been desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes, by
his action they should have a shrine in which to worship, one
in which the legitimate High Priest ministered.
The clearest evidence of the permission of subordinate
shrines in the Deuteronomic Code, is that regulations are
laid down in regard to them. With reference to these, it is that
the Israelite is commanded (Deut. xvi. 21, 22) "Thou shalt
not set up a post {asherah) of any kind of wood beside the
altar of JHWH thy God, which thou shalt make thee;
nor erect an obelisk {matztzebah) which JHWH thy God
hateth." This cannot refer to any altar or shrine which the
68 THE SAMARITANS
nation as a whole shall set up. All that precedes refers not
to national action but to what individual persons or com-
munities ought to do. Although the chapter begins with
the celebration of the three great feasts in which It "\vas
expected that every male shouldappear before the Lord,
with verse 1 8 directions are given/not to the nation in
mass but to individual communities: "Judges and officers
shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, etc." In the verse
following the judges so to be appointed are exhorted
personally : " Thou shalt not wrest judgment, etc." In verse
20 the people are addressed individually : " That which' is
altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live and
inherit the land, etc." Then immediately, in that connection,
follows the passage in question. It is continued in the
opening verse of chapter xvii. : " Thou shalt not sacrifice to
JHWH thy God bullock or sheep wherein is blemish."
This cannot refer to the general national sacrifices only,
but also to what sin-offerings, etc., individual worshippers
presented before God. Consequently we must assume that
the direction given in the passage under consideration is
addressed to a limited village or city community. On any
other hypothesis why was this exhortation given at all?
If we assume, in accordance with the critical view, that
Deuteronomy was composed to meet the tendency to
worship in the High Places and induce, indeed compel
the people to sacrifice only in Jerusalem in the temple
there, this exhortation is scarcely intelligible. That
temple and its altars were already old when the book of
the Law was found. Did Hilkiah, or whoever composed
Deuteronomy, contemplate the possibility of Josiah setting
up either asherah or matztzebah within the courts of the
temple? Deuteronomy thus regulated the concomitants
of worship in the local shrines. There certainly were no
asheroth about the temple, although a plausible case might
be made out for regarding Jachin and Boaz, the two brazen
pillars in the temple court, as aesthetically representing the
matztzeboth of the Canaanite shrines. The regulations just
noted referred to the commands in Exod. xx. 24, 25 which
like the passage before us contemplates a multiplicity of
altars. " An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 69
sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings . . . and if thou wilt
make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn
stone ; " beside such an altar the Israelite was to set up
neither asJierah nor matztzebah. What the Law regulates it
allows.
By the reigning hypothesis it is assumed that according
to the Deuteronomic prophets the temple on Mount Zion
is the one and only shrine in which sacrifice is to be
offered. On this assumption it is singular that there is
no reference, direct or indirect, to Jerusalem. Had
Deuteronomy been composed, as is alleged, with the in-
tention of enjoining worship on Mount Zion. and on it
alone, it might have been expected that the writer would
have indicated clearly the place intended, if he did not, as
did the Samaritan interpolator with Mount Gerizim, directly
name it. The Psalmists had no diffidence in asserting that
"JHWH loveth the gates of Zion more than all the
dwellings of Jacob." "JHWH hath chosen Zion, He hath
desired it for His habitation." Why did this Jew, when
his aim was to make Zion the one sanctuary, hesitate to
point it out? It is not from his dramatic instinct keeping
him back from assuming that Moses knew anything of
the places to the west of Jordan, for the writer does not
feel himself hindered from representing Moses naming Ebal
and Gerizim ; " Thou shalt put the blessing on Mount
Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal " (Deut. xi. 2Q).
When the command is given to record "all the words of
this Law " on the stones which were to be " plastered with
plaster," the writer does not hesitate to say that these
stones were to be set up " in Mount Ebal " (Deut. xxvii. 4).
All this suggests that when this book was written, whoever
was the author, the place of the central shrine was not
fixed ; it was still " the place which the Lord thy God
shall choose" (Deut. xii. 5; xv. 20; xviii. 6, etc.). It
was recognised that the bent Israel should maintain their
national unity, if they were to fulfil their function in the
evolution of religion, and further that the most natural
way to do so was to have one great national altar, the
sacred hearth of the nation, with its accompanying shrine ;
yet the place best suited for this had not been determined.
70 THE SAMARITANS
Were it not that it would render the action of David and
Solomon in choosing Zion as their temple to JHWH
unintelligible, as well as the action of Jeroboam and his
successors in the Northern Kingdom, a case might be
made out for maintaining that the designation of Gerizim
as the place chosen, instead of being, as generally believed,
an interpolation, was part of the original text. In the
face of a direct precept like that found in the Samaritan
Recension, a man of David's piety would not have consecrated
the top of Mount Zion for the future sanctuary ; nor would
Solomon have built the temple there. But even had they
been capable of this, Jeroboam would certainly have embraced
the opportunity of getting Divine sanction for his revolt,
and naturally would have concentrated worship in the shrine
on Mount Gerizim, which had been named by God by the
mouth of Moses, instead of setting up Holy Places in Bethel
and Dan. This applies to all the dynasties which succeeded
that of Jeroboam. The original text therefore can have
contained no distinct designation of Gerizim or any other
site as the place which JHWH "had chosen to put his name
there."
What then was the worship on the High Places?
It was the worship of JHWH; it was totally distinct
from the worship of false gods. It is said of Ahab (i Kings
xvi. 31) "As if it had been a light thing to walk in the
sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat ... he went and served
Baal and worshipped him." It has been already shown
that there must have been at one time something like an
identification of Baal and JHWH ; yet notwithstanding
it is a heinous addition to Ahab's guilt that he worshipped
Baal. As to the kings of David's House, it was regarded
only as a slight abatement of the eulogy that they "did
right in the sight of the Lord " that the " High Places " were
not taken away; thus "the High Places were not removed ;
nevertheless Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all
his days" (1 Kings xv. 14). Very different are the terms
in which Manasseh is denounced. " He reared altars for
Baal, and made an asherah, as did Ahab, King of Israel, and
worshipped all the host of Heaven" (2 Kings xxi. 3).
When the priest or priests have been sent from Esar-
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 71
haddon to "teach them (the colonists) the manner of the
God of the land " (2 Kings xvii. 27), it would be the
worship of the High Places that they taught; yet the
writer of the book of Kings gives no indication that he
regarded the teaching as ritually defective. He assumes
that those who had been "brought from Babylon, from
Cuthah, and from Hamath, etc.," had been truly instructed
in the way to worship aright the God of Israel, but that
alongside of this they continued the false worship which
they had brought with them from Mesopotamia. It is
in perfect harmony with this, that when they claim to be
allowed to join the Jews in the erection of the temple
at Jerusalem, on the ground that for more than a century
and a half they have worshipped JHWH (Ezra iv. 2),
their claim is refused ; it is not denied that they have
done so, but it is maintained that only to the Jews was
permission given to build "the temple to JHWH, God
of Israel." Again, while the prophets Hosea and Amos
rebuke Northern Israel for worship of other gods, and for
worship at the High Places, it is as different things. Judah
is warned, " Come ye not to Gilgal, neither go ye up to
Bethaven (Bethel), nor swear JHWH liveth " (Hosea iv.
15); a warning which assumes at once that this worship was
wrong, and that it was a worship offered to JHWH. Earlier
a little even than this, the Prophet Amos rebukes the
Northern Israelites for breaches of ritual order, in terms
which imply that they knew and professed to follow the
Priestly Code (Amos iv. 4, 5). The worship of the
Ephraimite tribes was really a worship of JHWH, although
it was at the same time a worship on the High Places.
While from general considerations the conclusion above
stated has been arrived at, the special nature of the worship
has also to be considered. The most glaring difference
in the worship of Northern Israel from that of Judea was
the introduction of the "golden calves" which Jeroboam
set up in Bethel and in Dan. This question is one of no
little difficulty ; what was the precise import of the worship
of the calves? It has been supposed to be a transference
of Apis worship to Israel ; that Jeroboam had become
enamoured of this worship during his lengthened stay in
72 THE SAMARITANS
Egypt. But against this is the fact that neither in the
case of the Bull Apis nor of the Bull Mnevis is there any
word of the statue of the bull being worshipped, it is the
bull itself that is regarded as the symbol of deity. Another
theory which has received a considerable amount of German
support is that the " ox" was an accepted symbol of JHWH.
The episode of the golden calf in the desert might seem to
support this view. In this way Jeroboam was returning to
the older mode of worship. If this is correct it would seem
that the Mosaic authorship of the decalogue must be aban-
doned. But all tradition regards him as the author of the
" Ten Words." And it seems equally impossible to exclude
the second commandment from the ten.1 If the command-
ment against idolatry is not due to Moses, what figure of
such imposing stature among succeeding Israelites can be
imagined — what person of so great authority and influence —
as could introduce a precept at once so drastic and so opposed
1 It has been assumed as incontestable that Ephod and Teraphim
were images, and that their use in worship was regarded as legitimate.
In regard to both these assumptions a most interesting article by Pro-
fessor M'Fadyen appeared in the May (1916) issue of the Expositor. He
shows conclusively that in every case where the word " ephod " occurs it
retains its primary meaning of a garment, a sacerdotal garment certainly,
one so connected with worship that clothed in it the wearer was able
to give Divine responses. In regard to "ephod," the description in
the book of Exodus of that garment as part of the dress of the High
Priest is a guide to what an " ephod " was like. Before one would be
at liberty to maintain that it was anything else than a garment, at
least one passage must be produced in which the word cannot be a
garment. The contention is more restricted ; it is maintained that it
not only does not mean a garment, but that it does mean an image.
One of the passages in which the word is supposed to mean an image
is 1 Sam. xxi. 9, in which the sword of Goliath is said to be " wrapped
in a cloth behind the ' ephod.' " Of course it might mean an image in
that connection, but it might also mean half a dozen things besides.
Such a sacred garment would have a special place where it was kept,
either hanging up or folded away, and behind that place was the sword
of Goliath laid. Another passage is Judges viii. 27 ; Gideon, after
getting the earrings of the prey and their purple raiment " made an
'ephod' thereof and put it in his city, in Ophrah." The fact that purple
raiment went to the composition of this "ephod" is demonstrative
evidence that it was a garment not a statue. The next passage is more
vague. It is also found in the book of Judges (xvii. 4, 5). Micah
makes with the money which he had received from his mother "a graven
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 73
to every surrounding tendency ? The decalogue is attributed
to E, an Ephraimite living about 800 B.C. Elijah might
have been the legislator so far as personal influence goes,
but there is nothing iconoclastic, in the strict sense of the
word, about his mission, still less is there anything legislative.
But is there a necessity after all to regard the introduction
of the "calves" into the worship of JHWH as contradicting
the second commandment? Again we may appeal to the
history of Romanism. In every Romanist place of worship
of any importance on the Continent, or for that matter in
Britain or in America, there are statues of the Virgin and
the saints ; it may be that even with no sense of incongruity
the decalogue stands engraved in Latin on the walls of some
of these churches. Is there no possibility to find a solution
in this case along a line similar to that which enables the
Romanist to harmonise his prayers to the saints, and the
candles burnt before their images, with the commandment
image and a molten image," and quite separate from them is the " ephod
and teraphim." Of course Wellhausen and Kuenen allege interpolations,
and Vatke and Bertheau, two narratives united by a redactor ; by such
hypotheses documentary evidence may be divested of all value. In the
following chapter, vv. 14, 17, 18, 20, the same words occur and the same
distinction is maintained. In none of the other passages is there even
the semblance of evidence for the contention that " ephod " means an
image.
There is greater plausibility in the contention that " teraphim "
means images ; the word is so translated in the Authorised Version in
the earliest passage in which it occurs. The incident in Gen. xxxi. 19,
34, throws no light on the form of the "teraphim." As little illumina-
tive in this regard is the passage concerning Micah, save to this extent
that the "teraphim" was not an idol, however intimately it might be
connected with idol-worship. There is greater appearance of evidence
that the "teraphim" had a human form in 1 Sam. xix. 13. Michal took
the teraphim and placed it in the bed to make the messengers of her
father think that David lay there. Professor M'Fadyen points out that
only the bust need have been shown. The theory he favours is that it was
a mask which a priest officiating at these High Places wore. A similar
use of the mask to that indicated in this hypothesis is found in the West
Coast of Africa, where certain secret societies have private sacred rites
in which their officials are masked. Hence there is no evidence of
generally accepted image-worship to be drawn from the ephod and
teraphim, and therefore no proof against the knowledge of the second
commandment or of its Mosaic origin.
74 THE SAMARITANS
against image-worship ? The Romanist makes a distinction
in kind between the worship he offers to these statues and
_ that which he offers to God. Tudaism before the time of the
introduction of Christianity began to give more prominence
to the doctrines ronrerninpr angels ; but the belief in the
existence and activities of angels was already long deep in
the secret heart of Israel. Tt has been asserted tnat tKe
ews brought the doctrine of angels with them from Babylork.
The Talmudic assertion is that they brought the names of
the angels from thence. The very earliest documents, of
the Pentateuch have repeated references to angels. In the
case of Jacob's vision, attributed to E, the angels are repre-
sented as numerous. The word designating them is D^NpD
mala'chim, " messengers " ; but in Gen. iii. 24 (attributed
to J) another word appears D"1?")? kerubhim, "cherubim."
N**i-With the further evolution of doctrine the functions fulfilled
by these spiritual beings became more defined in statement.
They were supposed to be intermediaries between God and
man. The doctrine was latent in Israel at all times, that
\ God did not speak, even to His chosen people, directly but
jonly through the intermediation of angels. So Stephen
I in his speech before the Sanhedrin (Acts vii. 53) said that
1 the Jews had received the Law (ek Siarayas ayyeXwv) " fci^
>£he ministration ofangek." Similar to this is what Paul says
ifTThe Epistle to the (ialatians, speaking of the Law, that it
was Siarayeh &1 ayye\a>v, "ordained by angels " (Gal. iii. 19).
So also the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of
the Law as 6 SS ayyeXcov XaXrjOeh Xoyo?, " the word spoken
by angels" (Heb. ii. 2). Though the mediation of a plurality
of angels is not mentioned in the Old Testament, almost all
the theophanies appear also to have been really angeloph-
anies. When God appears to Moses in the "burning
bush" (Exod. Hi. 2) 1L Is1 iJaid, "the angeTot JhWh appea"red
■ unlu him" , so ltl the book of judges of Gideon (vi. J2,cf. 14).
of Manoah (xiii. 21, cf. 22). Another word than mala'cliim
is frequently used in connections which appear to make
" angels " the more natural rendering, i.e., D^x Elphiyi, the
word usually rendered " God,L"- Especially in the Psalms is
this the case. Thus, according to the Authorised Version, in
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 75
Psalms viii. 5 — a rendering supported by the Septuagint, the
Peshitta, the Vulgate, and the Targum. There are, however,
other cases where the same word is used and might be
rendered in the same way, e.g., Psalms lxxxii. 1 ; xcvii. 9 ;
cxxxviii. 1. It is to be observed that Jeroboam uses this
word when he says in the consecration of the golden
calves, "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up
out of the land of Egypt" (r Kings xii. 28). A fair case may
be made out for regarding his statement as meaning, "these
are the intermediaries of God, the angels who led your
fathers in the wilderness." If this hypothesis is correct it
will explain the comparative mildness^-ai— ti^e-_prophetic
-■denunciations of this idolatry. Elijah did not call fornre
from Heaven to split into fragments those idolatrous
symbols ; nor did bears out of the forest come at the curse
of Elisha to devour the priests who ministered before them.
It might have been thought that when the Prophet of Judah
came to Bethel to rebuke Jeroboam, not only would the
altar on which he had been burning incense have been rent
(1 Kings xiii. 3) but also that the gilded image itself would
have shared in its downfall. It is true it is said that
(Jeroboam offered sacrifices " unto the calves that he had
made" (1 Kings xii. 32); we must, however, remember that
the narrative is from a Judaean record and therefore biased.
Moreover, there might be differences in the victims sacrificed,
or the mode in which they were offered, which would excuse
a distinction being made similar to that suggested by the
Romanists in regard to the saints. It was a dangerous
innovation, but does not seem to have been as fruitful of
evil as might have been anticipated. It was a first step
towards polytheism, but it was not followed by a second.
No indication is anywhere given as to the precise figure
these gilded calves presented. The probability is that
Mealvea" ia a name— given in mntrm^t ; in all likelihood
" bulls" would have been more accurately descriptive. This
at once suggests on the one side the winged human-headed
bulls of Nineveh, and on the other the " cherubim," the
winged attendants on Deity in Ezekiel's vision. When
they are called "golden," it is not to be understood that
the statues of these " bulls " or " calves " were made of solid
76 THE SAMARITANS
gold ; there would be a core of wood or stone overlaid with
gold. These statues could scarcely be quite identical with
the Ninevite winged human-headed bulls, because they were
usually in pairs, and were not strictly statues but were really
bas-relief; the material whether wood or limestone was too
brittle for the legs to bear the body in a free statue. The
difficulty would be solved were the bovine figure represented
kneeling, in the attitude to be seen in the oxen that form
part of the capitals of the columns in Persepolis and Susiana.
Figures of bullocks of fine limestone in that attitude were
found in excavating the foundation of a building in Sidon
about a score of years ago.
, The mode in which these " calves " formed part of_worship_
is somewhat doubtfuL There has already been reference*
made to sacrifices being, offered by Jeroboam to the calves. In
this statement, besides the theological difficulties involved,
there is great uncertainty as to the nature of the sacrifices
! offered, and the ritual observed. A much more difficult
passage is that in Hosea xiii. 2b, rendered in both English
versions, " They say of them, Let the men that sacrifice
kiss the calves." It may, however, be translated, " Saying,
They who slay men in sacrifice, kiss calves." This is the
rendering adopted by Orelli, following the Peshitta, the
Vulgate, and Luther. The Septuagint has had a different
reading, and therefore gives a different point to the passage :
" Sacrifice men, for bullocks fail ; " ordinary victims fail of
effect, resort to human sacrifice. There are two points to be
noted ; the victims, and the mode of expressing adoration.
That human sacrifice was ever practised in Northern IsxagJL
is extremely impr^bn^1^ Whil^ th<* artipri pf Ahaz in the
Southern Kingdom in making "his son pass throughthe_fjxe "
(2 Kings xvi. 3), burning "his children in ^hf> firp" (^Chr^
xxviii. 3) makes human sacrifice in the Kingdom of the Ten
Tribes not impossible, yet if it were practised in the kingdom
of Jeroboam II. the silence of the prophetic historians in
regard to it is inexplicable ; they say that he " did evil in the
sight of the Lord," but this is not particularised as one of
the enormities of which he was guilty. With the exception
of this obscure passage, there is no indication of such a
practice existing in Israel. We should prefer to retain the
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 77
more ordinary interpretation, which regards the statement
as a ritual regulation addressed to those who would offer
sacrifice, " Let them kiss the calves." This brings us to
consider " kissing the calves " as an act of adoration. In
this, Romanism supplies an analogy ; the toe of the bronze
statue of St Peter in Rome has almost been kissed away by
the osculation of worshippers. While sacrificing to JHWH,
the worshipper was required to show honour to the " calves "
as representing the angelic intermediaries by whom the Law
had been given. {Thus the passage before us supports the
idea, indicated above, that the " calves " were symbols of '
subordinate beings to whom a lower form of worship wasj
due.
As to the ordinary ritual worship of the tribes of '
Northern Israel, the kind of altar, theimode of sacrifice, and
the victims offered are made plain, to a certain extent, by
Elijah's sacrifice on Mount Carmel. There had been an
altar on Mount Carmel, but it had fallen into disrepair owing
to neglect. That original altar had conformed to the
regulation of Exod. xx. 25 ; it had been made of unhewn
stones as it is of such that Elijah rebuilds it. Probably the
further condition had been evolved in the generations which
had passed, that it should be constructed of twelve stones,
" according to the number of the sons of Jacob." The victim,
a bullock, indicates that the animals sacrificed were those
designated to this service by the Levitical Law. The most
striking abnormality is that Elijah acts as sacrificing priest ;
there is no hint that he belongs to the tribe of Levi. On the
other hand, we do not know to what extent the inspired
prophet might supersede the priest ; the prophet could
depose kings, it might seem a slight matter to supersede
Levitical priests ; further the priesthood of the High Places
might not be regarded as subject to such strict regulations
as was that of the central shrine. It is further clear that the
victim was burnt, it was a whole burnt sacrifice. Another
peculiarity is to be noted ; this sacrifice takes place at the
time when the minhah was offered. A meat-offering or
minhah accompanied the lamb offered every morning and
evening. As a note of time it is used by Ezra (ix. 4) ;
he was astonied " until the evening sacrifice " 2iyn nroc& iy
78 THE SAMARITANS
'ad leminhath hatarebh. From this it would appear that the
evening sacrifice was so regular among the Northern tribes
that they calculated time by it ; probably morning sacrifice
was as well established. This would mean that on all the
High Places actually in use, every morning and evening
would rise the smoke of the offering.
There is yet another source of information, the prophecy
of Amos. Although a native of the Southern Kingdom, the
mission of Amos was to the Israelites of the northern portion
of Palestine. He denounces the various sins and short-
comings of the inhabitants, of rulers and ruled, of priests and
people. In one special passage he denounces their short-
comings in the matter of worship. After a severe rebuke of
the wives of the rulers of the nation (Amos iv. i), whom he
calls " Kine of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria,
which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, who say to
their lords, ' Bring and let us drink,' " and a denunciation of
the judgment of God on them, the prophet proceeds to take
up matters of religion, as if these transgressors or their
husbands wished to compound for their sins. He declares
that though they visit the shrines for worship they transgress.
Whether it means that it was transgression even to sacrifice
there, or whether it is that when in Bethel or at Gilgal they
transgressed, as seems to suit the connection, does not matter
for the present purpose, which is to ascertain what their
worship actually was.
The first description of their worship is that they " bring
ff) sacrifices every morning." In this they were in agreement
with the Southern Israelites ; in Jerusalem morning by
morning a lamb was sacrificed. If that is what is referred
to, then this merely completes the evidence afforded by the
narrative of Elijah's sacrifice at Carmel, which was timed
by the hour of the evening sacrifice. There is this difference,
however, in Elijah's sacrifice at Carmel the mention is not
of an offering in which victims were slain, but to the
unbloody " meat-offering " ; still as in the " evening sacrifice "
a lamb was slain and offered on the altar along with an
appropriate minhah, " meat-offering," the difference cannot
be reckoned of importance. In that case the meaning would
be that despite their oppression of the poor, they maintained
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 79
an elaborate system of daily sacrifices. There is a point to
be noted, however, the lamb of the morning sacrifice was
called lolah, " a whole burnt-offering " ; but this is zebah, " a
sacrifice," which after being consecrated and slain was used
for food ; they changed what was a daily confession of sin
and prayer for pardon into a feast. In any case there is
implied an identity of the sacrificial ritual of Samaria with
that of Jerusalem. The next element of rebuke is more
difficult to understand : " bring . . . your tithes after three :)
days." Whatever the force of this, it is clear that the
Samaritans under Jeroboam II. did obey the law of tithes.
There is less difficulty as to the sense of the next clause ;
Amos accuses them of offering ° a sacrifice of thanksgiving V)
with leaven." This clause is technical, and to be interpreted
accordingly. The rffin todah, "thank-offering," was funda-
mentally the same as the " trespass-offering," but in addition
there were to be offered " unleavened cakes mingled with
oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes
mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried," and besides this,
leavened bread was to be offered (Lev. vii. 12, 13). It might
seem that there was nothing irregular in all this ; but again
a technical word comes in, "iBj? qitteer, " to burn incense,"
but nothing leavened was to be burned. The connection
suggests that the Samaritans introduced this as an improve-
ment on the legal method. According to what was enjoined
in the Law, while the unleavened cakes were placed upon
the altar, but not burnt, the leavened cakes were not even
offered on the altar, but one was given to the offering priest ;
the rest were eaten at the sacrificial meal (Keil, Minor
Prophets, i. 271, Eng. trans.). The last characteristic which
Amos brings up for condemnation is that the Samaritans
" proclaim freewill offerings and publish them." The idea
seems to be that the worshippers were called upon to
offer " freewill offerings " (riillJ nedabotli), and when they had
come forward, their liberality was made known by public
proclamation. As a sacrifice meant a feast, the public
proclamation probably meant a public invitation to it. The
principal point, however, which has to be considered is the
fact that the technical word is used, which shows that the
80 THE SAMARITANS
prophet expected that the Northern tribes not only had
the same religious ideas, but expressed them in the same
technical language. In the following chapter, vv. 21, 22, more
technical terms connected with ritual occur. J H VV H declares,
" I despise your feast days (M'an haggechevi) and I will not
smell in your solemn assemblies (MTnxy latztzerothechem)"
In the following verse He declares He will not receive
their "burnt-offerings" (nfry 'oloth), " meat-offerings (DftfaD
minhothecherri), peace-offerings {xbv shelem (sing.) ). It is to
be observed that all these terms occur in P, and one of them,
minhahy in P alone, in the technical sense. What has to be
noted is, that a man who has no connection with either the
priesthood or the schools of the prophets, not only himself
knows all these technical terms but expects his audience of
the Ephraimite tribes to be equally well acquainted with
them. All these technical terms to which we have referred,
belonged to the worship of JHWH in the highly organised
form in which it is recorded in those portions of the
Pentateuch designated by P. As conclusive evidence that
the worship of the High Places, as found in Israel of the
North, was worship of JHWH, one has only to turn as
already noted, to Hosea iv. 15^, "Come ye not to Gilgal,
neither go ye up to Beth-aven (Bethel), nor swear, the Lord
(JHWH) liveth"; in these Northern shrines, Gilgal and
Bethel, it was the custom to swear by JHWH.
Another part of sacrificial worship was the burning of
incense. The composition of the aromatic powder to be burned
was somewhat elaborate; it was regarded as sacred, any
use of it for ordinary purposes was looked upon as sacrilege,
any imitation of it was forbidden. Night and morning was -
the incense burned before JHWH in the temple at Jerusalem.
This was part of the worship on the High Places when that
ritual became systematised, as is seen by the fact that
Jeroboam "stood by the altar to burn incense" when the
" Man of God out of Judah " (1 Kings xiii. 1) came to rebuke
him and denounce Divine vengeance on his shrines. It is
to be observed that in Bethel as at Jerusalem there is an
Altar of Incense ; in Egyptian wall-paintings incense is
offered to Deity in a spoon-like censer, or in a cup-like vessel
MOSAISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 81
either held in the hand or presented on those spoons already
mentioned ; no altar appears to be used. Incense burning
does not seem to be so prominent in Assyrian worship, if
one may judge from the monuments. It is clear, then,
that Jeroboam, even while breaking away from the established
modes of worship, wished to retain the most obvious features,
so that the extent of the breach might be minimised.
Jeroboam, however, assumed to himself this part of the
priest's office, to burn incense ; the sin of Uzziah in later
days (2 Chron. xxvi. 16) would seem to indicate a tendency
in monarchs at that time to claim this priestly function as
part of the royal prerogative.
As worship involves not only a consecrated place,
consecrated offerings, and consecrated actions and language
but also consecrated persons, the singular institution of the
Nazirites has to be noticed. Priests were always consecrated
personages, but the Nazirite was not consecrated as was
the priest for the performance of any special office ; he rather
was himself like a consecrated sacrifice. The Law of the
Nazirite is elaborately laid down in Num. vi. 1-2 1, a
passage attributed to P. The existence of the order is
assumed in the book of Judges (xiii. 14; xvi. 17), and also in
Amos (ii. 11, 12). The first two of these passages, those in
Judges, are connected with the history of Samson. The
part of Amos in which the reference to them occurs is
directed against the sins of Israel, by which the Northern
tribes are meant. While the institution then was well
known in Israel, it was also extant in Judah, as is seen in
Lam. iv. 7 : " Her (Jerusalem's) Nazirites were purer than
snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in
body than rubies, etc." The order of Nazirites was common
to both North and South.
To sum up the foregoing argument ; the Northern tribes
retained not only the worship of JHWH, but also to a
great extent all the ordinances of worship to be found in
the Southern Kingdom. There are two prominent points
of difference, one negative, the want of a central shrine ;
the other positive, the golden calves. Set up by Jeroboam
in Bethel and Dan, they seem to have been erected else-
where also ; at all events, it seems most natural to regard
F
82 THE SAMARITANS
"Samaria" in Hosea viii. 5, 6, as referring to the city, not
the province. If we are correct in our opinion, the worship
given to " calves " was lower in kind than that given to
JHWH.; they were the instruments of His will, His angels.
The Ephrairmtc tribes had thus the Law in all its complete-
ness, at latest when Amos issued his warnings to them.
In the argument just concluded it will be seen that we
have assumed, for the sake of broadening the discussion, the
correctness of the critical position, that Northern Israel wor-
shipped only by the High Places. We have not considered the
alternative possibility, that pious Israelites continued to visit
Jerusalem and worship at its temple. Yet to the attentive
reader the books of Kings and Hosea show not a few
evidences of the existence of such a tendency. The purpose
Jeroboam had in setting up the Golden Calves was to wean
the people from this habit, lest the religious precedence given
to the City of David might lead to the re-establishment of
the Davidic dynasty in the Northern tribes (1 Kings xii.
26-31). This purpose does not seem to have been completely
achieved, as Baasha appears to have found himself obliged
to adopt more forcible measures (1 Kings xv. 17 ; cf.2 Chron.
xv. 9, 10). An indication of the same tendency may be seen
in the reign of Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xix. 4). Even when the
Northern Kingdom is most flourishing, under Jeroboam II.,
Hosea regards the worship on Mount Zion as that which
alone is legitimate (Hosea iv. 15 ; x. 11 ; xi. 12); with him
the House of David are the Lord's Anointed (Hosea iii. 5).
The attitude which Elisha assumes to Jehoshaphat, as com-
pared with that to Jehoram, in the expedition against Moab,
confirms this (2 Kings iii. 14). Unless the prophets and others
of the pious of Ephraim and Manasseh were in the habit of
worshipping on Mount Zion, the high esteem in which Elijah
is held among the Jews is inexplicable. This unity in worship
will explain also the preservation by them of the books,
historic and other, of the Northern prophets. For further
discussion of this subject, see Chapter XII., p. 383.
CHAPTER IV
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL
The belief in Deity is wide as the race ; the cases in which
it has been alleged that certain races are totally without
the idea of a god have been discovered to be due to defective
observation on the one side, and on the other to the instinctive
reticence of the savage in presence of possible ridicule.
Very various, and in most cases very vague are the ideas
entertained as to the nature and attributes of the god or
gods, but under whatever disguise the belief is there. There
is generally present as a supplementary belief the assumption
that the Deity can, and ought to be approached with acts
of' worship, mainly some form of sacrifice. As universal
is the belief that Deity can in turn reveal Himself to his
worshipper. In short, in all races there is the assumption,
to use the words of the Apostle James, that if "we draw
nigh to God He will draw nigh to us " ; if the worshipper
approached Deity with sacrifices and offerings, He in turn
would draw near to His worshipper in revelations of His
will. Hence we find in every country that over against the
priest, with his knowledge of the ritual of worship that
would be acceptable to Deity, stands the prophet, with
his claim of being able to find out and communicate the
will of Deity, and incidentally the future, whether as
dependent on the will of the deities, or as known by him
from his superior powers and opportunities though hidden
from men. The prophet might assume the guise of a
medicine man, or a wizard, or haruspex. Sometimes the
same individual was at once prophet and priest After
the victim was slain, he might profess to tell from its
entrails what the will of the Deity was, or as at Delphi might
pass into a chamber, and there come directly under the
84 THE SAMARITANS
influence of the Deity, and thus be able to express in words
what the god willed. In these cases, although the person
was the same, the function was distinct. Another method
of Divine revelation which was not restricted to officials,
whether priests or prophets, was dreams ; here the prophet
appeared in the guise of the interpreter of dreams.
It will be seen that prophecy in Israel was no isolated
phenomenon, but that in this, as in the possession of priests,
Israel was on all fours with other peoples. At the same
time, no one can fail to recognise how immeasurably the
Hebrew prophets excel in spiritual and moral purpose _all
the augurs, haruspices, and diviners of antiquity, still
more the medicine man of modern heathenism. The
question now presses : Is the Hebrew prophet an evolution
from the medicine man, or is he a survival from a purer
day, and the medicine man a degeneration from the prophet ?
The most commonly held view is the former. This question
cannot be absolutely determined, as history does not reach
back to the origin of institutions. If the commonly held
view is correct, it would necessarily follow that the earlier
the notices of the prophets, the closer would be their
resemblance to the medicine man. As the present investiga-
tion has to do with Israel and prophecy within that nation,
inquiry may be restricted to the phenomena presented by
it. Abraham is called a prophet (Gen. xx. 7) ; he certainly
is never represented as resorting to incantation to gain a
knowledge of the will of God, nor is he represented as
invoking Divine direction by lot, a mode of learning the
Divine will afterwards so common. It may be observed
that the narrative in which Abraham is thus designated
is attributed to E, the Ephraimite document. Moses is
also a prophet, indeed the greatest of the prophets (Deut.
xxxiv. 10) ; it is never related of him that he used en-
chantments. In Num. xii. 6, which is claimed for the
Ephraimite document, the ordinary method by which
JHWH revealed Himself is stated ; " If there be a prophet
among you I, JHWH, will make myself known unto him
in a vision, and in a dream will I speak with him." There
is no word in this of anything approaching incantations
to prepare for receiving a revelation, still less is there any
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 85
idea of wresting a revelation from the Almighty by donning
a special dress, or going through any performances with
pebbles, bones, or shells. So, too, with Samuel, he has not
to go through any process to wrest from God the secret of
whom He purposes to set up as king ; God reveals it to
him that the youth whom JHWH has chosen will come to
him ; and when he does come God informs him of the fact.
Though Saul's servant expects that "the Man of God"
will be able and willing to tell them about the strayed asses,
he says nothing to intimate that he expects the revelation
even on that trivial matter would be given as the result
of an incantation. In regard to none of the prophets of
Israel is there any indication that the prophet used any
other means than prayer to get a Divine revelation. Most
frequently the revelation came to them without any wish
of theirs; Jonah indeed fled from the presence of JHWH
to escape declaring the message God had given him. The
only trace of any affinity of the prophet with the medicine
man and his methods is in regard to Balaam. It is said of
him (Num. xxiv. i) : " He went not as at other times to seek
enchantments," implying that he on the previous occasions
had done so. He is a degenerate, who though in a way
believing in JHWH, yet thought He might be bribed by
offerings or cajoled by enchantments to curse Israel. It
does not occur to him, as it would to a Hebrew prophet,
to call upon Balak and the Moabites " to break off their sins
by righteousness," to give up the hideously impure rites of
their worship. He recognises all the while that it is
righteousness and purity that gain the favour of God, hence
his advice to put temptation in the way of Israel that the
people may sink to the Moabite level and lose Divine favour.
It may then be regarded as clear that, whatever the case
with other races, the Israelite prophet was not evolved
from the medicine man.
The function of the heathen prophet, as of the medicine
man of the savage, is in the case of plague or distress of
any kind to inform the worshipper what sacrifices he must
offer to propitiate deity so that the evil shall depart from
him. He and the priest are thus closely allied. In the
religion of Israel they occupied a clearly contrasted position.
86 THE SAMARITANS
While the signs that guided the augur told what enter-
prises might be engaged in with hope of a prosperous
issue, what days were lucky and what days unlucky, there
was nothing moral in it all ; to the Hebrew prophet the
moral was everything. When distress of any kind visited
a people, the prophet pointed out the moral reason for
it, and required a moral not a ritual remedy. At the same
time there is no antagonism between the prophet and the
legitimate priest. In the Southern Kingdom, while the
people are sternly rebuked for trusting in ritual as a means
of pleasing God rather than in rectitude, there is yet no
opposition between the two orders. Of the three most
voluminous prophets, two are priests. Teremiah and Ezekiel ;
the third, Isaiah,, though he denounces all trust in ritual,
and demands " To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices to me?" (Is. i. n), yet when he has to choose
" faithful witnesses " one of the two is declared to be a priest,
and the other has a name that was a popular one with
the priesthood (Is. viii. 2). Not that there is not denuncia-
tion of the priests and abundance of it, but the prophets
share in the condemnation. Isaiah not only declares that
the priests but also that the prophets "err through strong
drink" (Is. xxviii. 7); further he condemns "the prophet
that teacheth lies" (ix. 15). Jeremiah, priest though he is,
denounces with fierce frequency the sins of the priests,
yet with unvarying regularity unites the prophets with them
in his condemnation (ii. 8 ; vi. 13 ; xiii. 13 ; xiv. 18 ; xxiii. 1 1,
and other passages) ; consequently both classes unite in
opposing Jeremiah, and in endeavouring to compass his
death (xxvi. 7-1 1). So far from the prophets being in
opposition to the priests, Jeremiah declares " The prophets
prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means " ;
indeed of the two the prophets were the more guilty. So
too Ezekiel, though with less frequency and vehemence,
if he declares that " the priests have violated the Law," he
has already asserted that " there is a conspiracy of the
prophets" (Ezek. xxii. 25, 26). In the minor prophets, too,
both prophets and priests are condemned. Micah, the con-
temporary of Isaiah, condemns both classes for their love
of money : " The priests teach for hire and the prophets
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 87
divine for money" (Micah iii. n). Zephaniah, the con-
temporary of Jeremiah, while he denounces the priests because
they " have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence
to the Law," also declares the prophets to be "light and
treacherous persons" (Zeph. iii. 4).
On the other hand, by the prophets of the Southern
Kingdom the priests are frequently directly or by implica-
tion highly commended. In the second Isaiah, it is repre-
sented as one of the crowning glories of restored Israel that
they " shall be named the priests of the Lord " (lxi. 6) ; and
further that JHWH shall say, " I will also take of them for
priests and for Levites (lxvi. 21). Jeremiah in showing
forth the blessings that shall accompany the restoration of
Judah declares, " I will satiate the soul of the priests with
fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness,
saith the Lord " (Jer. xxxi. 14). The latter chapters of the
prophecies of Ezekiel are occupied with ritual arrangements,
the form of the renewed temple and the duties and privileges
of the priests in connection with it. Joel calls the priests
" the Lord's ministers," declares that they mourn on account
of the desolation wrought by the plague of locusts, but gives
no hint that any shortcoming of theirs had in any special
way been the occasion of it. In the prophecies of Haggai
and Zechariah, the priests, and above all the High Priest, are
specially honoured. So far then as the Southern Kingdom
is concerned, there is no antagonism between the two classes,
prophets and priests.
In the Northern Kingdom, the prophets seem to have
drawn to themselves all that was properly religious — assuming
even what were correctly speaking priestly functions. On
Carmel, when putting to the test the right of JHWH to the
worship of Israel, F.lijah utterly ignores the priests, whether
of the schismatic High Places or of the legitimate shrine at
Jerusalem, and himself assumes the function of sacrificing
priest. It may certainly be urged that all the circumstances
were exceptional, and that in such a case that might be done
in regard to sacrifices which would not have been thought of
in a normal state of matters. Certainly earlier in the history
of Israel, Samuel repeatedly offers sacrifices himself; further
when Saul, on account of Samuel's delay, takes upon himself
88 THE SAMARITANS
at Gilgal to offer sacrifice Samuel blames him and announces
that in consequence his rule over Israel should be merely
personal (i Sam. xiii. 13). The case of Samuel is not quite
parallel with that of Elijah, as he was a Kohathite, a member
therefore of the same family of Levites as was Aaron (1
Chron. vi. 33-38). It is certainly the case that Elkanah his
father is called (1 Sam. i. 1) "an Ephrathite" = Ephraimite ;
that designation, however, may be held as asserting merely
that he was born within the territory of that tribe. Still
although he was a Levite, Samuel was not an Aaronite. ,It
seems, however, to have been acknowledged that in abnormal
circumstances the Levites might be called upon to perform
priestly functions, as in Hezekiah's Passover (2 Chron. xxix.
34). Samuel's assumption of the priest's office appears to
have been habitual. When Saul and his servant come to the
unnamed city in the land of Zuph, and determine to consult
Samuel about the strayed asses, they find that there is to be
a sacrifice in the High Place of the city and that Samuel is to
be celebrant (1 Sam. ix 12). That he should act as sacrificing
priest appears, from the language of the woman at
whom Saul had made his inquiry, to be quite the usual
practice. Again, when Samuel comes to Bethlehem to anoint
David ; while the elders of the city are anxious as to the
motive that brought him to sacrifice among them they are
not surprised that he should come to offer sacrifice. The
fact that Samuel was by birth of a family closely related to
that of the Aaronites lessens the cogency of any argument
from him as to prophetic practice.
What cannot fail to strike the student of the books of
Kings, so far as the history of the Northern Kingdom is
concerned, is the way in which the prophets ignore the priests.
We have already noted the fact of Elijah's supersession of the
priesthood on Carmel, but further there is no reference to
his ever meeting a priest at all. Elisha equally ignores the
priesthood. There must have been numerous priests as there
were numerous shrines, but the prophetic activity and-th^
priestly were on different planes. When the age of(Amos
is reached attention is directed to ritual, and failures in
regard to it commented on, as has been shown above.
Whether or not it is in consequence of this, the priesthood
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 89
will no longer allow itself to be ignored. Amaziah, as repre-
sentative of the priesthood, challenges Amos for speaking
against Bethel, and when he had failed to excite the wrath of
King Jeroboam against the prophet endeavours to frighten
him away. Amos treats the threats and the accusation with
something very like contempt (Amos vii. 10-17), and there-
after pays little attention to Amaziah or his underhand
efforts at the court. (^Hosea)who followed Amos treats the
priests with little respect ; he accuses them of murder and
lewdness (vi. 9), declares them to " have been a snare on
Mizpah, and a net spread on Mount Tabor" (v. 1). There is,
however, one passage (iv. 4) which, on the ordinary interpreta-
tion, gives a more favourable impression of the position of
the priests — " Thy people are as they that strive with the
priest." It is frequently held as meaning " Thy people are
utterly regardless, they will even quarrel with the priests/'
Some have suggested another reading (Sir G. A. Smith, Min.
PropJi., in loc), but the meaning does not seem to be more
satisfactory. The verses preceding show the evil condition
morally into which the people had fallen, and in consequence
the judgments of God are manifest. " Therefore shall the
land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall
languish." Then follows : " Yet let no man strive nor reprove
another," all efforts at amending them by reproof will be
resultless ; " thy people," the followers of the prophets, would
be engaged in as fruitless a task as striving with a priest. The
priests were so set in their ways and so sure of their ground
that they could easily baffle anyone that strove with them.
The relation of the prophets to the priests seems to be that
of contempt, which generally resulted in the former ignoring
the latter.
An interesting line of investigation is the extent to
which the influence of the prophets superseded that of the
priests in the religious consciousness of the people. While
the book of Tobit is late and unhistorical, it may truly repre-
sent the way in which some of the pious in Israel maintained
the faith by going to Jerusalem ; yet it probably would be
few who could do so (Tob. i. 6). A case that might seem to
support this, is that of the fourscore men that came from
Shechem and Shiloh with offering's " to brine: them to the
90 THE SAMARITANS
house of the Lord." This, however, only affords evidence of
the attitude of the pious in Israel after Josiah had extended
his reformation to the territory of the Northern tribes. There
is of course the fact that " divers of Asher and Manasseh and
of Zebulon humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem " to
attend the Passover celebrated by Hezekiah. It must, how-
ever, be remembered that they came at the express invitation
of the king, and even then were exceptional. Besides these
doubtful instances there appear few indications of the Northern
tribes regularly honouring the Davidic shrine on Mount Zion
with their offerings.
In considering the place assumed by the prophets to the
religious community of Northern Palestine, it must be
remembered that the references will necessarily be few and
incidental. Annalists recording events, having in view only
the immediate descendants of their contemporaries, would say
nothing about the ordinary and habitual. It is only when
something out of the ordinary and therefore deemed worthy
of commemoration is connected with the habitual that any
notice of it is introduced. A succinct account of the reign of
our late king, comparable in length with the narrative of
the reigns of Jotham of Jerusalem, for example, or of
lehoahaz of Samaria, would in all probability make no
mention of railways or motor cars, unless some disaster
connected with these modes of progression had to be referred
to. There is a striking passage which indicates that religious
dues which, according to the Levitical Law, were paid to the
priests, came in the Northern Kingdom to the prophets. In
2 Kings iv. 42, it is said, "There came a man from Baal-
Shalisha, and brought the Man of God bread of first-fruits."
According to Lev. xxiii. 20, the first - fruits ("Q3H bikkur)
were the perquisite of the priest : but in this case the man
from Baal-Shalisha brings them not to the priest but to the
Man of God, the prophet in Gilgal. The incident is
introduced merely to bring out the miracle which jilisha^
wrought, which made the " twenty loaves of barley and ears
of corn " provision for " a hundred men." We may deduce
from the purely incidental way in which it is narrated that
it was no isolated or out-of-the-way action on the part of the
man who brought the first-fruits, but was an instance of a
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 91
common practice. Although there is no evidence to support
it, yet analogy would suggest that much of the tithe went to
the support of the schools of the prophets. There might in
short be something of the rivalry between the priests and
Levites on one side and the prophetic communities on the
other that existed in the Middle Ages between the Secular
Clergy and the preaching Friars.
When the first-fruits were brought to the priest he was
to " wave the first-fruits, a wave offering before the Lord " ;
but there is no reference to this when the man of Baal-
Shalisha brought his first-fruits to Elisha ; the priestly share
in the dedication is unnoticed. It seems further as if there
were evidence of a system of non-priestly worship connected
with the prophets. The most important reference is purely
incidental. When the son of the Shunamite woman died,
" She called to her husband and said, Send me, I pray thee,
one of the young men and one of the asses, that I may run
to the Man of God and come again. And he said, Wherefore
wilt thou go to him to-day? (2_ Kings iv. 22, 23) it is neither
New Moon nor Sabbath." He would have regarded her
request as quite natural had it been made on either of these
days : hence there is implied that religious people in Northern
Palestine had a practice of visiting the prophets of the Lord
on New Moon and on the Sabbath, presumably, as these were
consecrated days, for some sort of religious service. We have
no information as to the nature of this service, but it cannot
have been sacrificial, or the Shunamite's husband would have
remarked on the absence of a victim. The nature of the
worship can only be conjectured. Yet by following out
analogies these conjectures may be regarded as having a
certain amount of probability. It may be assumed that prayer
was an essential part of this prophetic worship, as prayer is a
natural part of worship at alliimgs ; and as the prophets
were men of prayer. WhenQilisIm is about to raise the
Shunamite's son, he prays ; when his servant is terrified
by the sight of the Syrians surrounding Dothan again Elisha
prays that his servant's eyes be opened. Further as the
primary function of the prophet was exhortation, it is also
likely that on the occasion of such a gathering this would
not be foregone. When one examines the writings of the
92 THE SAMARITANS
literary prophets, one finds it obvious that all the oracles
imply speech to a listening audience, an audience who had
come to hear ; such an audience, in short, as is implied in
the gathering of the pious. If it may be assumed, as is
indicated by the structure of the prophecies which have
come down, that they were spoken, it is difficult to imagine
where an audience could be collected except in a house.
For safety all the inhabitants of Palestine were gathered
together in towns ; and the traffic of the narrow streets of
an Eastern town would be seriously interrupted if a speaker
collected round him even a dozen auditors. A larger
number might be collected in the suq or market-place, but
there, besides the difficulty of finding a place sufficiently
elevated to command the audience, the presence of a number
of people not there for business would be even more
objectionable than in the streets. When (Ezra} wished to
read the Law publicly he had a pulpit of wood set up from
which to address the assembled people (Neh. viii. 4). It is
observed that it is in " the broad place that was before the
water-gate " that Ezra had gathered them together. There
would thus have to be some preparation before an
audience could be addressed. The prophet appears to have
received those who wished to hear the message of God in
a house, presumably his own, as may be seen from Ezek.
xxxiii. 30-32. " They speak one to another, every one to
his brother, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word
that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee
as the people cometh, and sit before thee as my people, and
they hear thy words, but they will not do them : for with
their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth
after their covetousness. And lo thou art to them as a
very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can
play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but
they do them not." From this it is clear that it was
regarded as the mark of God's people to come and sit before
the prophet as pupils before a teacher. If then the pious of
the people were accustomed to come to hear the exhortation
of the prophets, it would most likely be that they would do
so on days when no work could be done, that is to say, on
Sabbaths and New Moons.
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 93
Although there is no distinct evidence of it, it may be
surmised that music formed part of the worship. It is
initially probable from the prominence given to music in
all worship. Ij* +^p n-»rrmi>Wc arpnUnt of the Dedication^
of Solomon's Temple, music h^ a prnmjnent pi am, — J' The
'J^eVites arrayed in white linen having cymbals, psalteries,
and harps . . . and with them a hundred and twenty priests
sounding with trumpets" (2 Chron. v. 12). Further, music
was supposed to have an effect on the mind of the prophet,
rendering him more sensitive to the Divine influence (2 Kings
iii. 15). From the incident to which we have just referred,
the music would not improbably be partly instrumental.
Another element may have been present. The prophets
assume in their audience a knowledge of the Law, both its
precepts and its histories. So far as these precepts regarded
ritual we have already noted them. The technical terms of
ritual would naturally be preserved among the priests, but
Amos, in whose prophecies these terms are most found, did
not address himself to priests especially. Indeed if Amaziah's
may be regarded as a type of the priestly attitude to Amos,
it is one of antagonism. By blaming his audience for failure
in matters of ritual, and expressing his reproof in technical
language, the prophet assumes that they were in a position
to know these terms and what they meant We cannot
imagine that reading was by any means a general accom-
plishment in Northern Palestine. If they could not read,
the audience of the prophets must have learned these terms
by hearing the Law read.1
1 If the reading of the LXX. is to be adopted, there would be no doubt
in the matter. "And they read the Law without, and called for public
professions '; (Amos iv. 5). This would indicate that it was considered
indecorous and savouring of ostentation to read the Law in the street ;
it was to be read indoors. However, as the question in the rest of the
passage is about sacrifices, the Massoretic reading is superior ; m'lFI
todah, "offerings of thanksgiving," is a rare word, and rn'in torak, "the
Law," a common one; moreover, jop qara means not only "to
proclaim" but also "to read"; as there was only one letter which
required to be changed to read yun /tutz, "without," instead of }'»n
hametz, "leaven," that would be regarded as a mistake and altered
accordingly.
94 THE SAMARITANS
There are more references to the narratives in the Law.
It might be said that great general facts, like the Egyptian
slavery and the march through the desert, might be
conveyed down by tradition. National tradition does not
retain memories of events that are dishonouring; the fact
that they had been slaves in Egypt was not one on which
they could glorify themselves. Had it been left to tradition,
the Israelites would have identified themselves with the
" Shepherd Kings," and represented themselves as dominating
Egypt. The reader need only be referred to the Book of
Jubilees to see what Jewish imagination can effect in 'the
way of self-glorification ; and that, too, despite the records.
Yet there is no fact in their past history so frequently
referred to by the prophets and Psalmists as Israel's deliver-
ance from the Egyptian bondage. Thus Hosea xi. i, " I
have called my son out of Egypt"; xii. 13, "By a prophet
JHWH brought Israel out of Egypt"; ix. 10, "I found
Israel like grapes in the wilderness." In Amos the number
of the years of the wilderness wanderings is expressly
mentioned (v. 25), "Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and
offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? "
In this last case the reference to the wilderness wanderings
does not direct attention to anything of which the people
might feel pride, rather very much the reverse. If we may
regard Psalms lxxx., lxxxi., as Ephraimite in origin, as the
avoidance of all mention of Judah or Jerusalem seems to
indicate, not only is the deliverance from Egypt referred to,
but also the episode of Meribah in which Israel's rebelliousness
was peculiarly manifested. It seems unlikely that tradition
would retain memories so little to the credit of the people.
But further there are references to special events. In
Hosea xii., the leading incidents of the life of the patriarch
Jacob are referred to : v. 3a, " He took his brother by the
heel in the womb " icf. Gen. xxv. 26 ; vv. 3b, 4a) ; " In his
manhood he had power with God, yea, he had power over
the angel and prevailed" {cf. Gen. xxxii. 24-2S). In regard
to this passage, it has to be noted that the verb rnb> sarah,
which is translated in Genesis "Thou art a prince," occurs
in this passage in Hosea, and is rendered " had power " ;
this verb is found only in these two passages. Further the
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 95
word b'y yakol, " to prevail," occurs both in the Genesis
narrative and in Hosea's reference to the incident. These
resemblances can most easily be explained by regarding
Hosea as referring to a written document, the words of
which were known. Certainly it is said in Hosea xii. 4^, " he
wept and made supplication to Him," and there is no word
of weeping in the Genesis narrative ; yet in the earlier part
of this chapter (xxxii. 7-12) there is given Jacob's prayer,
which surely has tears at the back of it ; at any rate it is
without doubt supplication. In the last clause of this verse 4
there seem to be references to the two visits Jacob paid to
Bethel : " He found him at Bethel, and there He spake with
us;" in the first Jacob was alone, in the next he had his
family with him {cf. Gen. xxviii. 13-19; xxxv. 10-12). The
whole episode of Jacob's residence with Laban is summed
up in Hosea xii. 12: "And Jacob fled into the country of
Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept
sheep." Hosea thus expected his audience to be thoroughly
acquainted with the history of the patriarch whom they
claimed as their ancestor, even to the words of the narrative.
Another event in itself very striking and hence, it is to be
admitted, likely to be preserved by tradition was the destruc-
tion of the cities of the plain. These cities and their over-
throw are frequently referred to in the prophets Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as well as the two prophets of the
Northern tribes to which we have mainly restricted our
attention. Though politically divided the two portions of
the Israelite nation stood related to each other in regard to
religion, as distinct from ritual, much as do America and
Britain ; hence the prophetic usage in the one kingdom may
be regarded as holding with regard to the other also. Hosea
(xi. 8) mentions Admah and Zeboim, the two less prominent
of these cities. Amos speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah as
overthrown of the Lord (Amos iv. 11); and in doing so he
uses the verb ^sn haphak. This word occurs ninety-five times
in Scripture; of these in sixteen it means "overturn" or
" overthrow," and seven of these cases refer to " the cities
of the plain " ; and of their destruction no other word is
used. The figure implied may be seen from 2 Kings
xxi. 13, "a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it
96 THE SAMARITANS
upside down (T]Bn haphak). The narrative of the overthrow
does not supply any features that make that figure a specially
happy one. Of the numerous Hebrew words meaning M to
destroy," that this and this alone should be used implies that
it is a stereotyped usage ; a usage, the fixity of which can
most easily be understood by it having been read in a written
narrative. Another incident, the knowledge of which is
assumed, is the seduction of Israel to sin by the Midianites
and Moabites. Hosea says (ix. 10), "They went to Baal-
Peor and separated themselves unto that shame." Micah
also refers to what preceded that fall, the intercourse between
Balaam and Balak (Micah vi. 5). The audience of the
prophets was thus expected to know the historical contents
of the Law till the people reached the banks of the Jordan.
The knowledge expected of them is not restricted to the
historical narratives in the Torah. Thus there is the promise
given to Israel by Hosea (ii. 15, 17), " I will give her . . . the
valley of Achor for a door of hope." Here there is reference
to the crime of Achan, and the suffering of Israel in conse-
quence until the iniquity was removed by the punishment of
the wrong-doer in the valley of Achor. By that execution
the valley of Trouble became a door of Hope. A knowledge
of the contents of the book of Joshua was thus taken for
granted. There is an equally incidental reference to a later
event in Hosea x. 9, " O Israel thou hast sinned from the
days of Gibeah." This implies a knowledge of the unsavoury
episode of the Levite whose concubine was murdered in
Gibeah ; when all Israel was gathered together to put away
the sin, even though it should mean the extinction of one of
the tribes of Israel. Another reference to history is interest-
ing from the light it throws on the Messianic hopes of Israel.
" Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek
JHWH their God, and David their king" (Hosea iii. 5).
The authenticity of this last clause has been impeached
but without valid reason. Sir George Adam Smith would
be willing to drop " David," but the parallelism requires the
proper name here to balance the name JHWH in the clause
preceding. After he has been in his grave a couple of
centuries and more, David is regarded as the Theocratic
King by the pious. This is all the more remarkable from the
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 97
contrast in which it stands to the views of David later enter-
tained by the Samaritans, as shall be shown in the sequel.
Cognate with this is the passage in Amos quoted by the
Apostle James to the Council of Jerusalem, " In that day
will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen . . . that
they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations
which are called by my name" (Amos ix. u, 12). The
glories of the Davidic Kingdom must have been known.
The tradition of the Northern Kingdom would not be eager
to retain in memory the glory of the founder of the dynasty
against which they had rebelled, any more than we might
expect Americans to preserve in careful honour the memory
of the Hanoverian sovereigns of England.
The above hypothesis is put forth tentatively, and in full
recognition of the weakness of each individual strand in the
argument, yet with some confidence that cumulatively the
force of it is not inconsiderable. In fact the prophetic worship
was in all essentials that of the synagogue of later days.
This being so an explanation will be to hand for the universal
prevalence of synagogue worship among the Israelites in the
age succeeding. If five times in every month all the pious of
Israel were directly in contact with the prophets, and were
open to be imbued with their sentiments, their influence would
be incalculable. The religious party in a nation is always one
to be taken account of; especially was this the case in Israel.
They had fallen to a low ebb when there were only " seven
thousand " who had not bowed the knee to Baal, but by
the fiery energy of Elijah followed by the more pervasive
influence of Elisha they had increased in numbers and in
zeal.
What tended to increase the influence of the prophets in
the Northern Kingdom of Palestine was the fact that they
were united in guilds ; or to give them the name usage has
made popular, " schools of the prophets." No description of
these "guilds" has been preserved, hence their constitution
and characteristics must be deduced from the casual
references of writers too familiar with them to think of
speaking of them in any other way than incidentally. They
seem to have originated with the Prophet Samuel. When
David flees from Saul and takes refuge with Samuel in
G
98 THE SAMARITANS
Naioth of Ramah, we see an organised community with a
recognised head. This is the impression the reader gets
from the narrative : " Saul sent messengers to take David :
and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying,
and Samuel standing as head over them" (i Sam. xix. 20).1
The " Naioth " appear to have been temporary booths,
possibly not unlike the reed dwellings that the Arabs
occasionally erect for themselves. A sidelight is thrown
on the structure of these "booths" by the incident related
in 2 Kings vi. 1-7. A prophetic community found " the place
where they dwelt too strait for them," and they determine
either to remove en masse or to send out a colony. Their
first step is to go to the valley of the Jordan to cut down trees.
This shows that the buildings intended were wooden. In
Palestine at the present time no permanent dwellings are of
wood ; the lower storey of a house is vaulted, and only the
second storey, if there is one, is roofed with wooden beams
supporting brushwood overlaid with mud. The trees in-
tended to be cut in this case must have been small, because
there are in fact no really large timber trees to be found in
the Jordan valley, and the beams they purposed cutting were
such as a man could easily carry on his shoulder. These
beams would form the posts round which the reeds would be
wattled. Not unlikely the interstices would be filled up with
mud. These " booths " would form a village, and in the
centre of it a hall which would serve as a synagogue. The
prophetic community were assembled together under the
presidency of Samuel ; this implies a meeting-place. It is
said that when the messengers of Saul came to Naioth " they
saw the company of the prophets prophesying." It is difficult
to understand precisely what this means. Graetz thinks
that they were chanting and that Samuel acted as choir-
1 The name given to the residence of these prophets is to be noted,
" Naioth in Ramah." Ewald would directly regard this as meaning
a school (Ewald, Hist, of Israel, iii. 49, Eng. trans.) ; in this view he
has the support of the Targum which translates the term by fcOD^N JV3
t t :
Beth U/fihana, "the house of instruction." Graetz maintains that the
"Bama" or High Place of Rama was outside the town and that
David fled for refuge to that as an asylum (Graetz, Gesch. der Judeti,
i. 203). The probability is it means "booths " as Driver conjectures
(Driver, Sam. p. 124). Gesenius translates "habitations."
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 99
master (Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, loc. cit). Although music
seems to have had a peculiar suitability to the exercise of
prophetic gifts, one would think there was more meant by
prophesying than merely chanting. There appears to have
been an element of excitement that proved infectious not
only to Saul's messengers but to himself also. Similar
phenomena have been frequently manifested in seasons of
religious revival.
The position of Samuel " standing as head over them "
(i Sam. xix. 20, R.V.) is a thing to be noted specially.
There had been prophets and prophesying before, but
now for the first time they were organised with a head
over them. If Samuel effected such a change in the constitu-
tion of the prophetic order as is implied in the institution
of the prophetic " guilds," the prominent place assigned him
elsewhere in Scripture is explicable.1
Thus in Jer. xv. 1, Samuel is put in the same line
with Moses : " Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses
and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be
toward this people." Also in Psalms xcix. 6, he is put
alongside of Moses and Aaron as representative of the
worshippers, while Moses and Aaron were representatives
of the priests. " Moses and Aaron among His priests, and
Samuel among those that call upon His name." Jeremiah's
exaltation of Samuel to the level of Moses, unless his
eminence had already been acknowledged, would have pro-
duced on Jeremiah's audience the same jar of incongruity
that du Maurier's aesthete's coupling of Shakespeare with
1 The reverse process has been suggested, viz., that the Deutero-
nomist glorified Samuel through him to glorify the prophetic order,
and declared him the founder of the order, and the anointer of the
first two kings, but that originally he had been merely the local seer
of an obscure town. If he were so obscure an individual why was
he chosen as the originator of the prophetic order? Why was the
origin of it not carried back to Moses ? Wellhausen and Kiinen recon-
struct the history of this period to suit their hypothesis, irrespective of
documentary evidence. Higher criticism is the only science (?) which
occupies itself with fitting the facts to suit its theories, rather than
its theories to suit the facts. When any statement which is found
in the documents contradicts the theory, it is promptly ruled out of
court and declared to be an interpolation, and ascribed to the
Deuteronomist or some other redactor.
100 THE SAMARITANS
Postlethwaite as a poet, or Velasquez with Maudle as a
painter, does on a modern. If so, Samuel's memory did
not owe its exaltation to the Deuteronomist, who at the
earliest, if the critical hypothesis is right as to the origin
of Deuteronomy, was a contemporary of Jeremiah. A great
deal of the difficulty in understanding the history of Samuel
arises from the impossibility which the Western intellect
experiences in apprehending the naive conditions and habits
of the primitive East. The head of the Corporation of a
fairly sized city in Palestine was accustomed to collect dues
in kind from the market women, and stuff the carrots and
cucumbers exacted into his capacious garments. One
knowing such things as that is less surprised at Saul being
prepared to offer Samuel a sixpence for information about
the strayed asses, and is less inclined to draw arguments
from that as to the obscure position occupied by Samuel.
How far the order of the prophets was organised under
Samuel there is no evidence to show. That Samuel knew
that a company of prophets would be met by Saul when
he came to Bethel, and that they would have with them
various instruments, implies a knowledge of probable move-
ments which suggests an organism, the arrangements of
which were regulated. Still the knowledge of the presence
of the prophets might be given to Saul as an evidence of
preternatural clairvoyance, to render credible to him " the
matter of the kingdom " ; but the word hebhel translated
" company " appears to be a technical use of a word which
ordinarily means " a cord," and secondarily " torture," as
cords were so frequently used for this purpose, hence all
" pain." Another secondary meaning was " a territory," from
cords being used to mark off boundaries. Only in the
passage which we are considering does it mean "a
company " ; the use then seems technical, and technical
terms imply organisation. The extent to which this organi-
sation was carried there is, as has been already said, no
means of knowing. For the period of nearly two centuries
which separates the age of Samuel from that of Elijah,
though there are many indications of prophetic activity,
there is little that can be called evidence of organisation.
Nathan and Gad appear as prophets to be in a manner
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 101
court officials. In the days of Solomon, although Nathan's
ministry continued after the death of David, and Ahijah
and Iddo also prophesied then, there is no evidence that
these prophets had much influence in the immediate
entourage of the king. Indeed Ahijah favoured Jeroboam
who rebelled against Rehoboam. At the same time, in second
Chronicles, these prophets are represented as the historio-
graphers of the reign of Solomon (2 Chron. ix. 29). When
the prophet of Judah came to Bethel to denounce Jeroboam's
schismatic worship, we can more easily understand his yield-
ing to the invitation of the old prophet of Bethel despite the
Divine command, if the prophetic order were to some extent
organised, and the Bethel prophet could give to him of
Judah signs by word or attitude that he belonged to the
"guild."
When Elijah is about to ascend into Heaven, we have
distinct notice of these prophetic communities in terms
that indicate that they were well-established institutions.
F'urther, Elijah appears to exercise a certain authority over
them. When he has gone up to Heaven in a fiery chariot,
the allegiance of the prophetic communities is transferred
at once to Elisha. There does not appear to have been
any method of election ; his close association with Elijah
made the acknowledgment of Elisha as his successor some-
thing of a foregone conclusion.
There might almost seem to have been something of
the nature of a revolution in the prophetic schools during
Elijah's lifetime. The four hundred prophets who urged
Ahab to go up against the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, and
promised him victory, seem to have been under the
presidency of Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah. They were
not Baal-prophets for they prophesied in the name of JH WH ;
but such men as Micaiah the son of Imlah, and also Elijah
himself were apart from this organisation. Such prophets
as Elijah and Micaiah may be regarded in the light of
non-jurors. The death of Ahab in battle against the
Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, and the practical discomfiture
of the armies of Israel and Judah before the troops of
Benhadad, when the four hundred courtly prophets had
promised the king complete victory in the name of JHWH,
102 THE SAMARITANS
would serve to discredit them and exalt Micaiah and Elijah
with those who followed them.
Under Elisha the prophetic " guilds " are seen to be
a powerful organised association. The individual com-
munities are numerous ; two of them are in close proximity,
Gilgal and Jericho ; these towns are only some three miles
apart. There was another at Bethel a score of miles off.
They are large, the community at Jericho can send out
from their numbers "fifty strong men" (2 Kings ii. 16);
the neighbour community of Gilgal finds its accommodation
too scanty for its numbers, and has to send out colonists
to found another dwelling-place (2 Kings vi. 1). Like the
mediaeval monks they appear to have assumed a special
dress (Zech. xiii. 4). It might almost seem as if the prophets
put some mark on their faces by which it could be seen
that they were of the " sons of the prophets," like the Hindu
worshippers of Siva and Vishnu. After the battle of Aphek
when a prophet comes to rebuke Ahab for his unseasonable
leniency, he disguised himself by putting ashes on his face.
When he relates his parabolic tale the king does not
recognise him for anything else than he pretends to be,
an ordinary soldier who has got into trouble with his
superior officer, but he "took the ashes away from his
face"; then it was that the king "discerned him that he
was of the prophets" (1 Kings xx. 41).1
It is to be observed that it is not said that Ahab recognised
the individual, but that he was of the prophetic order. If
there was such a mark, there is no means of fixing what
it was. That there is no notice of it elsewhere proves
nothing ; no one, however many the stories of Indian life
he has read, would be able to tell the difference between
the distinguishing mark of the worshipper of Siva and that
of the worshipper of Vishnu ; they are too well known to
the writers for them to think of describing them. The " rough
garment" which would-be prophets donned, as implied in
1 So the Authorised Version; the Revised has "disguised himself
with his headband over his eyes." The Authorised Version has followed
the Vulgate and Luther ; the difference does not affect our argument,
it only points to the fact that as among the Hindus the distinguishing
mark was on the forehead.
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 103
the words of Zechariah (xiii. 4), to notify their assumption
of the prophet's office, may have been an imitation of Elijah
with his girdle of leather. It may be noted that John the
Baptist, the last of the prophets, " had his raiment of camel's
hair and a leathern girdle about his loins."
The constitution of individual prophetic communities
must be considered. Each of these communities appears
to have dwelt in a small village. Though in thus dwelling
together they resembled the monks of later days, they were
not strictly ccenobitic, as they had separate dwellings, each
dwelling occupied by a family (2 Kings iv. 5, 6); if~one
family got into debt it had no claim on the assistance of
the rest of the community (iv. 1); they have no community
of goods. At the same time 'they have common meals at
which, when he is present, the " president " of the order
acts as " house-father," presumably superseding for the
time the head of the local community (2 Kings iv. 38).
If we are right in the conclusions at which we arrived earlier,
the dwellings in which the prophetic families were housed
were slight insubstantial buildings, possibly wattle and daub.
There would be a larger central building in which the
community could assemble for worship, and at all events
the male members for the common meal. There is much
in all this that resembles the Essene community at Engedi,
as described by Josephus (Jos., B. J. II. viii. 5); and Philo
quoted by Eusebius {Prep. Evan. viii. 1 1 ; Eng. trans, iv.
219); but in one particular the "schools of the prophets"
differed from the Essene community beside the Dead Sea
in this that as we have seen above they were not celibate.
The prophetic communities were united into one organisa-
tion, the head of which was a person to be considered in the
kingdom. He is always attended by a special servant.
While Carmel seems to have been his ordinary residence he
had also a house in Samaria. Elisha is sometimes to be
found in Gilgal sometimes in Dothan. He seems to have
made frequent journeys between Carmel and Samaria (2
Kings iv. 9). There is evidence that the organic develop-
ment was carried yet further. In the account of the famine
in Samaria during the siege by Benhadad, it is said : " Elisha
sat in his house and the elders sat with him " (2 Kings vi. 32).
104 THE SAMARITANS
These elders could not be the elders of the city ; for had these
been the elders of the city thus in consultation with the
prophet, independent of the king, it would have been regarded
as constructive treason. Saul reckoned it evidence of con-
spiracy against him that Ahimelech had consulted JHWH for
David (i Sam. xxii. 13). It would seem necessary to assume
that they were the elders of the prophetic order. The
narrative, to which reference has just been made, reveals also
something of the place in the political scheme of Northern
Israel which the head of the prophets occupied. When
Jehoram learns the state of distress to which Samaria is
reduced, he first determines to execute the prophet, as if it
were his blame that the Syrians were pressing Israel so
hard. Then repentant he follows his messenger attended by
the lords of his court (2 Kings vii. 2). It was Elisha who
engineered the overthrow of the House of Omri, when he
sent one of the sons of the prophets to anoint Jehu at
Ramoth-Gilead (2 Kings ix. 1-3). When Elisha lay a-dying
Joash came to him and declared him to be the " chariot of
Israel and the horsemen thereof" (2 Kings xiii. 14).
While the prophetic order occupied such a prominent
place in the Kingdom of Samaria, it fills no space at all in
the politics of the Davidic Kingdom. There is only the
incidental notice in Amos vii. 14 to prove that the "schools
of the prophets " even existed in Judea ; indeed even that
reference may be regarded as doubtful. When Amos says
that he has not been in the prophetic schools, he does not
necessarily refer to any schools, if such there were, in Judea,
since his province as a prophet was the Northern Kingdom
and the assailant he is answering belongs to Israel ; it may
well be that it was the schools in Samaria to which he
referred. While individual prophets had great personal
influence in the court at Jerusalem, none of them could send
a messenger prophet to anoint a claimant to the throne as
did Elisha. Both the priesthood and the kingship were
more powerful in the South ; both king and priest could
claim Divine sanction to their authority. The priests were
the descendants of Aaron " who was called of God " (Heb. v.
4): the king could claim to be the anointed of JHWH. In
the North, the priests had been chosen by Jeroboam "of the
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 105
lowest of the people" (i Kings xii. 31): and of the successive
dynasties which flitted across the stage in the Ephraimite
Kingdom none remained long enough to enjoy anything of
the prestige of the race of David, to whom the pious even
of the Kingdom of Israel gave a certain quasi allegiance
(Hosea iii. 5).
Arguing from analogy, these prophetic communities would
not be idle. While like the Essenes the ordinary industries
of the cornfield and the vineyard occupied certain of them, it
seems likely that they would find literary occupation also.
The monks of the Middle Ages afford an analogy ; to them
we owe the preservation of all our Latin classics. Still more
striking is the analogy of the construction of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle by the monks of the various monasteries
in England. As has been shown above there is evidence of
a mode of worship conducted by the prophets, not unlike
that of the later synagogue ; further from the knowledge
which the literary prophets expected to be familiar to their
audience, and from references involving terms that implied
the intervention of writing, it seemed probable thai- readier
of the Law was part of this service, and not unlikely portions
of the prophetic historical books were read also. Who wrote
these books so read ? It would seem only in accordance
with analogy that it should be the bne Nabhiim, " sons of the
prophets." As is well known to every one who has any
knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, the most important of
the books classified as historical in the Septuagint, and
following it in all modern versions, were by the Jews
attributed to the prophets. If the prophets were the
historiographers the attribution would be intelligible, but if
not, not. In Chronicles the authorities for the various reigns
are usually the writings of the successive prophets. Thus the
authorities for the history of David are the books of Samuel,
Nathan, and Gad (1 Chron. xxix. 29); for that of Solomon,
Nathan, Ahijah, and Iddo (2 Chron. ix. 29) ; Shemaiah and
Iddo for the reign of Rehoboam (2 Chron. xii. 15). It
might be maintained that the books of Samuel and Kings
had no connection with the writings of the prophets quoted,
but this is met by 2 Chron. xxxii. 32 : " The rest of the acts
of Hezekiah, and his goodness, behold, they are written in
106 THE SAMARITANS
the vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, in the book of the
Kings of Judah and Israel." Assuming that this is correct,
the account of the reign of Hezekiah given in the book of
Kings was written by Isaiah. But there are embodied in
the canonical book of Isaiah, four chapters parallel with those
in Kings ; to a great extent the one is the dittograph of the
other.1
The consideration of the books so reckoned by the Jews
confirms the attribution. Joshua was regarded as a prophet,
hence his book was in the Canon. In the book of Judges
prophets, men of God, continually intervene. The prophetic
character is most observable in the four continuous books
called in the Septuagint " the Four Books of Kings " — Samuel
and Kings of the Hebrew Bible. The first book of Samuel
begins with the birth of the prophet ; throughout the book
1 From this it follows, if the authority of the (Qhronicleryis to be
accepted, that, against the practically unanimous judgment oTcritics, the
historical chapters of Isaiah are authentic. The same critical authorities
deny the historical value of Chronicles, declaring these books not to
have been compiled till after the reign of Alexander the Great because
Jaddua, who is alleged by Josephus to have met Alexander, is mentioned
in Neh. xii. n ; and Nehemiah is assumed to be part of the book
of Chronicles, or to be from the hand of the same author. All the
evidence for this vouchsafed by Dr Driver is to say that the author is
"to all appearance identical with the Chronicler" (Driver, Introd., Lit.
O. T.} p. 511). Cornill (Introd., Can, Books of O. T., p. 249) would prove
it from the identity of the first verses of Ezra with the last of Chronicles.
" Hence the conclusion long ago deduced is that the book of Ezra-
Nehemiah is the continuation of Chronicles, and originally formed in con-
junction with it one continuous historical work, so that the Chronicler
would thus be the final author also of Ezra- Nehemiah." That it is the con-
tinuation of Chronicles may be admitted without agreeing to the identity
of authorship. The repetition of the last verses of Chronicles in the
beginning of Ezra rather points the other way ; an author would feel
himself under no obligation in continuing a narrative to repeat what he
had already written, juxtaposition in the manuscript would be deemed
enough. It might, however, occur to a continuator to tack on his work to
that which he was continuing by some such device. If that is so, Ezra-
Nehemiah might be written a century after Chronicles. Even if the
critical assumption be granted, certain names might be added to the
priestly genealogy long after the book itself was completed, a possibility
which Canon Driver acknowledges {lib. cit. p. 512, n. 2), and practically
abandons the probative force of these names by adding " the other marks
of late composition still remain," but without, however, having the frank-
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 107
he is prominent and even after his death he intervenes. In
second Samuel, which is occupied with the reign of David,
the numerous campaigns of the successful warrior are not
narrated with anything like the fulness with which his sin in
the matter of Uriah the Hittite, and the rebuke he sustains
at the mouth of Nathan the prophet, are recorded ; or his sin
in numbering the people, and the terrible threefold alternative
offered him by God through the Prophet Gad. Prominence
of prophetic action is seen very markedly in first and second
Kings. Nearly a third of the space of these two books is
taken up with events occurring during the reign of the
dynasty of Omri. So powerful is that dynast}- that to
Assyria Jehu, who overthrew it, is regarded as Jahna pal
Khutnri, " Jehu the son of Omri." From the stele of Mesha
ness to omit this clause from his argument. But was Jaddua the contem-
porary of Alexander ? This meeting of the High Priest and Alexander is
declared by these same critics to be unhistorical, when evidence is brought
from it for the authenticity of Daniel. The sole evidence that it was
Jaddua who met Alexander is Josephus, who as is well known drops a
whole century from his history at this point, identifying Darius Codo-
mannus with his great-grandfather Darius Nothus. As already mentioned
the Talmud relates the same incident (Yoma, 69^), but says it was Simeon
hatz-Tzaddiq, according to Josephus, the grandson of Jaddua. But further
to repeat an historical argument given elsewhere (see pp. 29-30 and 111-
112), Jaddua was the nephew of Manasseh whom Xehcmiah chased from
his presence because he had married the daughter of Sanballat of Samaria.
This occurred in 432 B.C. Is it likely, especially when we consider the
Jewish custom of early marriage, that a nephew of this Manasseh should
a century later be idling the office of High Priest, a dignity that in
ordinary circumstances went by primogeniture? There is thus no
evidence for the lateness of Chronicles to be deduced from Neh. xii.
11 ; consequently no suspicion of its historicity can be based on that.
Indeed if the canon laid down by Josephus be applied, not only
Chronicles but Ezra-Nehemiah would have to be dated long before
Alexander: he declares {Contra Apio/icm, i. S) that only those histories
written before the death of Artaxerxes the son of Xerxes were received
into the Jewish Canon. That this represents the principle on which the
authorities, whoever they were, selected the sacred books may be, if
not proved, at least rendered probable, by considering the books
included in the Canon and those excluded from it. Although their
critical decisions as to date and authorship might be greatly at fault, the
rule which Josephus lays down appears to be that which regulated their
selection. Hence the evidence of the Chronicles as to the prophetic
origin of Kings may be accepted.
108 THE SAMARITANS
of Moab we learn something of the prowess of Omri and his
son Ahab, how they had conquered Moab when his father
reigned. At the battle of Karkar the Assyrian King,
Shalmaneser H^sustains a check from the league of monarchs
of whom Ahab of Israel was one. Nothing of all this is told in
the books of Kings ; they are occupied with what Elijah and
Elisha did and said, and the monarchs are taken account of
only when their activity crosses the line of that of the
prophets. The sin of Ahab in the matter of Naboth's
vineyard is more important than the alliance which he made
with Benhadad, and the check which Assyria sustained in
consequence. Though the dynasty of Jehu lasted twice the
number of years that did that of Omri, yet the history of it
only occupies half the space in the book of Kings. There
are no outstanding prophetic figures round which to collect
narratives. To gather the civil history of Israel from the
prophetic histories, is like attempting to reconstruct from the
pages of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History the political history
of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus to the
accession of Constantine.
i — ' Although the influence of the prophets was so much
greater in the Kingdom of Israel than in that of Judah, yet
/ the Samaritans have not one of the books which owe their
[origin to the prophets. Though -Elijah, whose deeds fill so
large a space in the history as recorded in Kings, was a
Northern prophet, and his greatness so impressed the
Kingdom of Judah that the Jewish people believed that he
would precede the Messiah, yet the Samaritans have no worthy
traditions of him, or of Elisha (see p. 158).^ The contents of
the prophetic books might, one should have thought, have
secured their acceptance among the Samaritans. They speak
of Joshua as King Joshua in the late production which goes
by the title of " the Samaritan Book of Joshua " ; yet the
ancient canonical book of Joshua they do not possess.
Everything about Joshua was fitted to ensure admiring
memory on the part of the Israelites of the North ; he was
an Ephraimite, he was a successful warrior, and his grave
was among them. So obvious have all these things proved,
that the Samaritans have had to concoct a book compiled
partly from the canonical Joshua and partly from the wild
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 109
efforts of Samaritan imagination. If we pass to the book
of Judges it is only to find further reasons why the prophetic
books should have shared with the Pentateuch the reverence
of the Samaritans. The Judges whose prowess is given in
most detail are all members of the tribes that were part of
the larger Samaria. Barak belonged to Naphtali ; his
colleague and inspiration, Deborah, " dwelt under the palm-
tree in Mount Ephraim " (Judges iv. 4, 5); Gideon belonged
to Abiezer in the tribe of Manasseh (vi. 11). It was from
Gilead that Jephthah went forth to deliver Israel from the
tyranny of the Ammonites (xi. 1). Samson belonged to the
tribe of Dan (xiii. 1, 2). The two episodes which form an
appendix to the book of Judges are both connected more or
less closely with the Ephraimite tribes. Micah, the theft of
whose idols by the Danites is the subject of the first of these,
" was a man of Mount Ephraim." It was in Mount Ephraim
that the Levite sojourned, the murder of whose concubine
occasioned the action against Gibeah related in the second
of them. The first of these episodes was perpetuated in the
memory of the North by the shrine set up in Dan by
Jeroboam. And the reference in Hosea already noted
shows how the second had impressed the inhabitants of
Samaria (Hosea ix. 9). The opening chapters of first Samuel
are occupied with transactions which take place in Mount
Ephraim and Shiloh. If the rest of that book and second
Samuel is occupied with the adventures of David, which
mainly took place in Judah, yet the books of Kings are
fully more occupied with the history of the Northern
Kingdom than with that of the South, except at the end of
second Kings when the Northern Kingdom had passed out of
existence. It is in these books of Kings that, as already
noted, the history of the great prophets of the North, Elijah
and Elisha, is narrated. What can be the reason, then, of the
Samaritans excluding these books from their Canon, and
only retaining the Priestly Book, the Torah?
History, as it seems to us, supplies the answer to this,
as it does to many similar problems. When the Assyrians
removed all those who would naturally be occasions or
centres of rebellion, the prophets would certainly be among
those most carefully chosen for deportation. The colonists
110 THE SAMARITANS
would sedulously guard against the advent of any prophets
from the South to excite the " natives " to rebellion. More-
over, the Southern prophets never had the influence that
those of the North possessed ; the schools of the prophets
were inconspicuous institutions in Judah, if they existed at
all. Isaiah and Micah found their sphere of activity in their
own neighbourhood. In the days of Jeremiah the case of
Judah occupied the attention of the prophets to the exclusion
of everything else. Moreover, during the long reign of
Manasseh, the prophets and all that prophecy stood for
were thrust into the background. Hence the likelihood of
the prophets of Judah filling the blank left in Israel by the
deportation of their own prophets is reduced to a minimum.
When the colonists desired from Esarhaddon that they be
instructed in " the manner of the God of the land," he sent a
priest, or priests, to teach them, as the whole idea of worship
among the Assyrians was ritual : the prophetic side of the
religion of Israel, and above all the prophetic worship, was
a thing that would never be thought of by the Assyrian
monarch. The prophets and their schools in Palestine would
be regarded by the Assyrian government much as an associa-
tion of Dervishes in Egypt would be looked upon by that of
Britain. With the priests would be sent a book of the Law.
Esarhaddon and his son Asshurbanipal were diligent col-
lectors of religious formulae and ritual directions as is seen
by the contents of their library. No other books would be
sent — the prophetic books, which told of the deeds of the
Judges and of the imperial glories of the times of David and
Solomon least of all. The antagonism of the Israelite priests
to the prophetic order precludes any chance of those sent to
teach the correct ritual with which to worship JHWH ever
suggesting to their pupils, the colonists, or to the people left
in the land that there were other sacred books. This would
explain why the Samaritans have none of the historical books,
though they contain the narratives of the marvels wrought
by Elijah and Elisha, nor the works of the literary prophets,
although Hosea, whose prophecy is the first given in the book
of the twelve minor prophets, belonged to the North.
The alternative explanation is that Manasseh, to give
him the name which Josephus assigns him, only brought the
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 111
Torah when he came to Samaria to his father-in-law. There
are two theories as to the date at which the son-in-law of
Sanballat fled to Samaria ; one which accepts the chronology
of Josephus with its omission of a century and its confusion
of Artaxerxes Longimanus with Artaxerxes Ochus, and
Darius Nothus, the son of the former, with Darius Codo-
mannus, the successor of the latter ; the other identifies
Manasseh with the grandson of Eliashib whom Nehemiah
tells us he drove from his presence because of his marriage
with the daughter of Sanballat (Neh. xiii. 28). The Assouan
papyri prove, as stated above, Chap. II. pp. 29-30, that there
was a Sanballat in Samaria contemporary with Nehemiah
the cup-bearer of Artaxerxes Longimanus, as appeal is made
by the oppressed Israelites in Assouan to the " sons of
Sanballat " who have a position of authority in Samaria ;
this appeal is made in the reign of Darius Nothus, the son
and successor of the Artaxerxes of Nehemiah. Although it
is not impossible, nor indeed improbable that there was a
second Sanballat, grandson of the first, it yet is highly
improbable that, after the drastic measures which Nehemiah
and Ezra took against those who had married other women
than Jewesses, within a century " many of the priests and
Levites had entangled themselves in such marriages," and
that again a son of the High Priest should have married a
daughter of Sanballat of Samaria and, like his uncle, have
been driven forth with those who had done like him.
While Josephus (Ant. XI. v. 1-5, 7, 8) largely incorpor-
ates the narrative of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, he
dates the occurrences under the reign not of Artaxerxes but
under that of his father Xerxes, whose invasion of Greece is
related by Herodotus. In so doing he comes into conflict
with the history of the reign of Xerxes as given by Diodorus
Siculus and other authorities. In the seventh year of his
reign, according to Josephus, Xerxes commissioned Ezra,
apparently from Babylon, to go to Jerusalem for the restora-
tion of the worship of the God of Israel there. But according
to Herodotus (ix. 108, 109), Xerxes was either in Sardis,
whither he betook himself after his defeat at Salamis, or at
Susa, to which capital he proceeded after a delay of eighteen
months or two years. His stay in both places was disgraced
112 THE SAMARITANS
with scandalous intrigues. Nehemiah, Josephus says, was
cup-bearer to Xerxes, and was sent by him to Jerusalem in
his twenty-fifth year ; but Xerxes had been assassinated in
the twentieth year of his reign. It only emphasizes the
blunder to read of the twenty-eighth year of Xerxes.
The narrative of Josephus, besides, does not hang together ;
Sanballat gets the favour of Alexander {Ant. XI. viii. 4), and
having permission from him erects the temple on Mount
Gerizim. When Alexander goes to Jerusalem immediately
after the seven months' siege of Tyre, during the course of
which Sanballat had gained over Alexander and joined him
with seven thousand of his countrymen, an unexplained
change takes place. In connection with this visit Josephus
relates the meeting of Alexander with Jaddus (Jaddua) the
High Priest, and the favour with which he henceforward
regarded the Jews. Then after he had " settled matters in
Jerusalem, he led his army to the neighbouring cities. The
Samaritans seeing that Alexander had so greatly honoured
the Jews determined to profess themselves Jews." Neither
the Samaritans nor Alexander seem to be aware of any
treaty made by Sanballat, although the seven thousand men
are mentioned as present. The truth is, the story related by
Josephus is, as far as Jaddua is concerned, not historical.
If the second possible date of Manasseh's migration is
assumed other difficulties emerge. It is to be observed that
in the Biblical record there is no word of Manasseh's
departure to his father-in-law when Nehemiah chases him
from his presence, although it is extremely probable. Of
course there is no word either that he took the Torah with
him, or had any need to do so. According to the ordinarily
received critical theory, the Priestly Code had been but
recently brought from Babylon by Ezra. In accordance with
an overstrict interpretation of this code Manasseh had been
deprived of the priesthood, yet on this theory he carries
this Priestly Code with him to Samaria. The difficulties in
regard to this action of Manasseh we consider elsewhere.
If, however, it be assumed that he did convey the Pentateuch
to the remnant left from the Assyrians, and to the descendants
of the colonists whom the Assyrians had introduced other
difficulties emerge. Why did he not take the prophetic
PROPHETISM IN NORTHERN ISRAEL 113
books with him also ? He would wish to ingratiate himself
with the people among whom he was to make his abode.
The book of Joshua, as has been seen above, was one in
which the Samaritans who claimed to be Ephraimites would
be specially ready to delight, as it recorded the deeds of
an Ephraimite through whose prowess and conduct Israel
had conquered the Canaanites. The difficulty is not lessened
but increased if the critical hypothesis be adopted, according
to which the canonical book of Joshua was the result of
the same process of compilation and redaction, which it
is alleged is seen in the Pentateuch. When he took the
five books why did Manasseh leave the sixth, which would
be at least as interesting ? The motives that would naturally
have led to the conveyance of the book of Joshua to Samaria
would apply to all the historico-prophetic books, with the
exception of the last nine chapters of second Kings. Indeed
the omission of the seventeenth chapter of that book might
have been enough to bring the whole into harmony with
the feelings of Northern Israel; especially if there had been
an editorial variation on the monotonous condemnation of
the kings of Samaria. There was no antagonism between
the priestly and the prophetic orders in Judah then ; Haggai
and Zechariah, prophets though they were, encouraged Joshua
the High Priest in rebuilding the temple and restoring the
sacrificial ritual. Manasseh had thus no conceivable sub-
jective motive for excluding the books associated with the
prophets; as little could there be any external motive. If
Manasseh was able to persuade the Samaritans to abandon
their customary rules of sacrificial ritual and adopt the
Pentateuchal Law, he would have had small difficulty in
getting them further to accept as sacred oracles the whole
prophetic literature. On the assumption that Manasseh
brought the Law to Samaria, it is impossible to explain
why he did not bring also at least the historical books
associated with the prophets.
If, however, the Samaritans had, when he came to them,
the Pentateuch already, and had sacrificed, as they had
claimed in the days of Zerubbabel to JHWH in accordance
with its precepts for a couple of centuries and more, but
had not, for such reasons as have been indicated above,
H
114
THE SAMARITANS
admitted the other books, the action of Manasseh can easily
be understood. As they had accepted him as High Priest,
to the supersession of their own priests, the successors,
possibly the descendants, of those sent by Esarhaddon,
he for his part was willing to be content with the limited
Canon of the Samaritans. It would thus seem that the
hypothesis which we have advanced is the only one which
will explain the phenomena.
*2
CHAPTER V
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP
In a previous chapter it has been shown that the ritual
followed by the Northern Israelite tribes, although the
sacrifices were offered at the " High Places " by irregular
priests, was mainly the same as that in the central shrine
in Jerusalem, in which legitimate Aaronite priests officiated.
The priests sent by Esarhaddon would doubtless care-
fully adhere to this ritual. They would have the guid-
ance of the sacred Torah, with which, as we have seen
reason to believe the Assyrian authorities would be careful
to provide them to keep them right. When, on the fall
of the Ninevite Empire Josiah assumed, as Davidic king,
the rule over all Israel, it is. recorded that "the altar that
was at Bethel which Jeroboam the son of Nebat had made
he brake down, and burned the High Place, and stamped
it small to powder and burned the asherah. And all
the houses of the High Places that were in the cities
of Samaria which the kings of Israel had made, Josiah
took away, and did unto them according to all that he had
done in Bethel. And he slew all the priests of the High
Places that were there upon the altars" (2 Kings xxiii. 15,
19, 20). It will thus be seen that sacrificial worship upon
the High Places had spread over all the land, and priests
were attached to each of these local shrines. This must
have followed as the result of the teaching of the priests
sent by Esarhaddon. To meet this the reformation of
worship, which had begun in Jerusalem, Josiah extended
over the whole of Palestine. The death of Josiah at Megiddo
would tend to throw the sanctity given to Jerusalem into
abeyance. The subsequent fall of the city and the destrue-
ns
116 THE SAMARITANS
tion of the temple were fitted to destroy it altogether. The
action of the eighty men mentioned in Jeremiah (xli. 5) as
bringing, with the signs of mourning, "offerings and incense
to the House of JHWH, who had come from Shechem,
Samaria, and Shiloh, proves, however, that the belief in
a central shrine was not dead. Whether their intention
was, as seems most probable, to lay their offerings on the
site of the brazen altar amid the ruins of the temple, or if
it is maintained as it is by some that Jeremiah had conse-
crated the High Place of Mizpah to take the place for the
time of the ruined temple, it was to the central shrine they
brought their gifts, and so still the belief is there.1 When
the society that had gathered round Gedaliah the son of
Ahikam was broken up by his murder, the practice would
cease. With Ishmael's act of treachery, and the migration
to Egypt of the "captains" under Johanan, son of Kareah,
all civil government ceased, and so all safety for travellers.
There is no direct evidence to guide the investigator
in deciding what form worship took in the province of
Samaria during the half century or so that elapsed between
the death of Gedaliah and the issuing of the decree of Cyrus,
and the coming of Zerubbabel in accordance with it. It
probably was a renewal of the worship on the High Places
as the " adversaries of Judah and Benjamin " — the colonists
sent from Assyria — claim to have sacrificed to JHWH since
the days of Esarhaddon. As we have seen reason to believe
that these colonists were only a minority, probably a small
minority of the inhabitants of Samaria and Galilee, yet
as we also saw they probably would be the wealthier and
more influential portion of the community ; they thus might
presume to represent the whole people — the native Israelites
as well as themselves. It is to be noted that their worship
of JHWH is by sacrifice. Further, and more important
for our argument, it is to be noted that by their appeal
to be allowed to assist in building the temple at Jerusalem
1 Mizpah does not seem to have been a High Place of such special
eminence that it should be supposed to take the place of the ruined
temple. Mizpah was but little out of the way to Jerusalem from
Shechem and Shiloh, and the governor was there to whom it was
well to be respectful.
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 117
.they acknowledged that their mode of worship was only
to be regarded as a temporary expedient, to cease, or at all
events to fall into the background, when the temple on Mount
Zion was erected and legitimate sacrifices offered there once
more. Though after their destruction by Josiah the High
Places had been restored, yet his reform had not been
without effect ; even while they offered sacrifices and burned
incense on the High Places they acknowledged in their
hearts that Jerusalem was the place where men ought to
worship. Unless we assume some such feeling as this, the
action of the Samaritans is unintelligible. There was nothing
to hinder them ignoring the Jews and continuing to offer
sacrifices on the High Places, according to the teaching
of the priests sent by Esarhaddon. Certainly this had been
broken in upon by Josiah, but his reign over all Israel had
been but short, and they had been obliged to go back to
this worship while the Jerusalem Temple lay in ruins. There
was nothing to hinder them continuing to sacrifice in the
High Places unless the belief that legitimate sacrifices could
only be offered on Mount Zion. It would seem that they
acknowledged the Deuteronomic Code as binding. We have
already seen from the technical language used by Amos
that the Israelites of the North knew the Priestly Code as
well. Consequently it must have been the whole Torah
which was brought by the priests from the east.
It was clearly a later development when the Samaritans
came to believe that Mount Gerizim was the place chosen
by God for the one national shrine of Israel. It was a
further step when this belief was made the disfingulShmg
tenet of Samaritanism. Not impossibly it was Manasseh
who first promulgated this doctrine. In Deuteronomy
although the Divine purpose that Israel should have one
national altar was declared, and the duty of reverencing it
was impressed on the people, the choice of the place was at
some future time to be made by God. When the choice
was to be made, or how the place chosen was to be indicated,
was not revealed. It was open to any one to maintain that
Gerizim rather than Zion was the place God meant.
Certainly the selection of the valley which divided Mount
Gerizim from Mount Ebal as the place where the people were
118 THE SAMARITANS
to be assembled — when one half the tribes should stand on
the slopes of Gerizim to recite the blessings and the other
half on the opposite slopes of Ebal to recite the curses of
the Divine Torah — might not unnaturally be supposed to
point to one or other of these twin mountains as " the place
which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes
to put His name there" (Deut. xii. 5). The further fact
that on Gerizim was the blessing to be put (xi. 29) would
naturally suggest that it, of the two, was that most favoured.
The selection of Ebal as the mountain on which the stones
with the Law engraved on them were to be set up, seemed
to contradict what had preceded, so that the falsification of
the record seemed a not unnatural suggestion. That being
amended, some bolder falsarius introduced the name Gerizim
as the place Divinely selected. This interpolation probably
occurred not later than the days of Manasseh, not impossibly
at his instance as suggested above.
In the interval between the repulse which the Samaritans
received from Zerubbabel and the arrival among them of
Manasseh, the Samaritans, colonists and natives alike, fell
back on the worship of the High Places, and sacrificed on
them : a worship without sacrifice would be unintelligible
at least to the Assyrian colonists. At the same time there
seem to have been proffers of friendship, and manifestations
of a willingness on the part of the authorities in Jerusalem
to reconsider the action of their predecessors. Nor were
there wanting indications of a continued wish on the part
of the Samaritans to share in the worship of the Jerusalem
temple. Only on this supposition can it be understood how
Tobiah, who bore the nickname of " the Ammonite," could
have a chamber in the temple itself.1 The intermarriages
between the Samaritans and the priestly caste in Jerusalem
confirm the truth of the above suggestion.
With the arrival of Ezra first, and then of Nehemiah
in the reign of Artaxerxes, all this friendly intercourse
ceased, and the Samaritans were once more excluded, and
this time finally, from the temple at Jerusalem. It may be
1 Nicknames of this kind are not uncommon. We have referred
above to the case of Ludovico Sforza, called // Moro, the Moor, because
of his complexion, although of pure Italian descent.
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 119
that some vague remembrance of this is the reason why
Samaritan tradition, as handed down by Abu'l Fath, declares
that sacrifices ceased in the reign of Surdi (Artaxerxes),
when the Israelites returned from captivity. According to
the story of Abu'l Fath, when the Persian King would offer
sacrifices on Mount Gerizim, it is revealed that JHWH no
longer desires bloody sacrifices, but that henceforth prayer is
to be regarded as the only sacrifice acceptable to Him. All
this looks like a confused remembrance of the real events.
When in the reign of Artaxerxes the final company of
returning Jewish exiles under Ezra arrived at Jerusalem,
they opposed the Samaritans having access to the temple
there. Still more vehement became this opposition when
Nehemiah came as governor and backed it up. Of course
it was successful, and the Samaritans ceased to be able to
offer legitimate sacrifices. Until the temple was erected on
Mount Gerizim, and they could transfer their allegiance
thither, to the pious Samaritans legitimate sacrifice had ceased.
That sacrifice was revived on Mount Gerizim is certain, at
all events when Marjaescrr retired to Samaria, and the
temple was erected. v^Josephu^/ who relates the flight of
Manasseh and the occasion of it, and would have been glad
had he been able to record that he never offered sacrifice
on the altar in tho srhi~m,a,tir li?r"P,1pi does not make such
an assertion, implies that Manasseh did act as sacrificing
priest. In the time of our Lord, sacrificial worship and
burning of incense continued on Mount Gerizim. The
Samaritan woman, to repeat what has been already noted,
when she says, " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain,"
implies, from what she adds of the Jewish claim that men
ought now to worship in Jerusalem, that the descendants of
these Samaritan fathers still sacrificed there (John iv. 20).
In the case of the ten lepers cleansed by our Lord (Luke
xvii. 11-19), the Samaritan, as well as the nine Jews with
him, is told to show himself to the priests, presumably to
offer the sacrifices incumbent on the cleansed leper.
At all events sacrifices have now long ceased, possibly
the cessation began during the Roman persecutions ;
certainly they do not seem to have been offered under the
Mohammedans. But as already noted elsewhere, Benjamin
120 THE SAMARITANS
of Tudela and Sir John Mandeville assert that in their day
the Samaritans offered sacrifice on Mount Gerizim. Against
this, as just mentioned, is the statement of Abu'l Fath, that
all sacrifices ceased in the Persian period. Though the
date is wrong, yet as he wrote in the fourteenth century, the
very same century in which Mandeville visited Palestine,
and only two centuries after the visit of Benjamin of Tudela,
probability is in favour of his view. He was himself a
Samaritan, and spoke from within ; further, he had no
motive to deny that sacrifices were offered, had they been ;
the evidence of Abu'l Fath must be preferred to that of those
European travellers, to this extent at all events, that in his
day sacrifices had so long ceased that the occasion of their
cessation had passed out of memory.
As with the Jews, so now at all events with the
Samaritans, public worship has become entirely that of the
synagogue. The contrast between the present conditions of
the cognate nationalities is very great. While the Jews
have synagogues in every city of importance in the civilised
wnrlr^ thr Samaritans now have only one, that ;n N^hlng
Formerly the Samaritans had many more than this one
synagogue. Pietro della Valle found synagogues of the
Samaritans in Cairo, Gaza, and Damascus, in addition to
that in Nablus ; others are referred to by other authorities
as existing elsewhere. These synagogues have all been
destroyed, and the communities that worshipped in them
massacred by the Mohammedans ; that in Gaza was anni-
hilated only in the first quarter of last century. As has
just been said, the one solitary synagogue left to the
Samaritans is to be found in the small quarter of the city
in which they dwell, a poor despised remnant. The cluster
of cramped houses, which form the Samaritan quarter, is
afed in the snnrh-west of Nablus, on the slope of the
?f Mount Gerizirn- In going to the synagogue the
visitor passes through a small neglected garden to a stairway
much like that by which an ordinary house is reached in
those irregularly built Palestinian towns, in which the houses
cling to the sides of steep hills. After mounting the stair
the visitor enters a small white-washed apartment with a
stone floor, which is covered with matting. Dr Mills says
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 121
it is 37 feet 5 inches in length ; he does not state the
breadth, but if his plan has been drawn to scale, that must
be about 19 feet. As the synagogue is lighted merely by
a small window in the roof, and the visitor has just left the
dazzling light of the Syrian sun, his feeling is of obscurity
almost amounting to darkness. In ordinary cases the
visitor is not permitted to pass much beyond the threshold,
but is met by the priest and shown one or two of the
manuscripts which they possess. These manuscripts are
brought out of a recess called the muzbah^ox altar. As
already mentioned, the Samaritans, like the modern Jews,
regard prayer as taking the place of the sacrifices formerly
offeTecTor) the vinnhah pf rjieir temple, so now they offer
their prayers towards this representative of the ancient altar.
Pendent from the vaulted roof there hangs in front of the
sacred altar a veil of white linen damask, on which are sewn
pieces of coloured linen cut so as to form a pattern. The
synagogue is so planned that the worshippers, in turning
their faces to the veiled recess, turn them also towards
Mount Gerizim, the Qiblah of the Samaritans. As the
altar cloth in an Anglican church is changed according to
the festival, or the saint, to whom the Sunday is consecrated,
so is the veil in the Samaritan synagogue in accordance with
their festivals. Behind this veil only the High Priest and
the second High Priest are allowed to go. As already
indicated, within this recess are preserved the copies of the
Torah possessed by the Samaritans. They claim that this
muzbah is of the exact dimensions of the altar which Moses
made. While internally the measurements of the recess
are much below the dimensions given in Exodus (xxvii. 1),
if the measurements are made externally the discrepancy
is not so great. Mysteriously there hang in the synagogue
chandeliers, much like those found in Mohammedan
mosques ; as the Samaritans only visit their synagogue on
Sabbath when it is illegal to kindle a light, it is difficult to
see what purpose these chandeliers serve.
The ritual observed by the Samaritans in their synagogue
worship is in all essential points very much the same as that
of the Sephardim, the originally Spanish Jews who came
to Palestine fleeing from persecution. Like all Orientals on
122
THE SAMARITANS
entering a sacred place, the Samaritans put off their shoes
when they go into their synagogue. They assign as a reason
for this action that Moses was commanded to remove the
shoes from off his feet " for the place on which thou standest
is holy ground." Dr Mills mentions that when the Samaritans
enter the synagogue, they put on a religious dress of white
calico ; these dresses are kept in the synagogue. The Jews
use the Tallith in a similar way ; this the Samaritans do not
use^'-They have three services on the Sabbath ; the first on
FrHrffint nnrnffl. vi'hfin fir "M*fV> ^^ J^ws^the Sabbath begins;
thenext and longest early on Saturday morning ; thelast on
Saturday afternoon, a little before sunset. With tarbush on
head Lliiy ait ciu&s-llgged on the ground unless when the
sacred name occurs, then they prostrate themselves. When
in the reading of the Law certain phrases are pronounced,
every one brings his hand down over his face and beard.
The essential part of the service is, with the Samaritans
as with the Jews, the reading of the Law. It is divided into
portions, analogous to the Jewish perachotk, called qatzin.
These divisions are so arranged that the whole Law is read
through in course of a year. It ought to be said that
strictly speaking on the Sabbath the priest does not read the
passage for the day, but recites it. Dr Mills describes his
tone as being harsh and barking ; that must have been an
individual peculiarity as no other observer has noticed this.
Liturgic prayers are also recited to which responses are given.
They do not make use of the Psalms, but they have certain
hymns sung to weird tunes ; to these they attribute great
antiquity, declaring that the seventy elders whom Moses
appointed each composed a tune. They do not introduce
instrumental music into their worship, indeed do not cultivate
it, as they usually hire Mohammedan musicians when they
have festivals in which they desire such an accompaniment.
Among the Askenazim not only is the synagogue used
daily for prayers, but it also becomes something of a club in
which the Jews belonging to it meet, some to read, some to
talk ; each synagogue having a library, more or less extensive,
of theological literature. Unless on festivals the Samaritans
do not visit their synagogue during the week, except when
tourists are conducted to see it.
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 123
The Samaritans observe the Sabbath with greater
strictness than do the Jews. The Jews have devised various
modes of evading the extreme strictness of the legal enact-
ments ; of none of which do the Samaritans avail themselves.
The Law forbids the kindling of a fire on Sabbath ; the Jews
employ Gentiles to do this for them, as also to do other things
which, conducive to comfort, are forbidden to a Jew. By the
device of erubin, the Jew can extend the bounds of his house
indefinitely, and from these reckon his Sabbath day's journey.
The Samaritan's only Sabbath day's journey is from his
house to the synagogue. From Friday evening at sunset to
the sunset of Saturday, no light is to be seen in any
Samaritan dwelling. During that period no work is done,
not even opening a letter. They expect the Law to be
observed with equal strictness by all within their gates. The
Samaritans do not, as do the Jews, introduce the Sabbath by
repeating the Qiddush, nor close it with the Habdalah. As
the Rabbinists ascribe the introduction of these ceremonies
to the days of Haggai and Zechariah, this, were the authority
of the Talmud of any value, would imply that the Samaritans
had received not only the Law but the synagogal reading of
it before the time of Ezra.
To a nomadic, pastoral people, the phases of the moon
were of necessity a matter of special interest and importance.
Moonlight meant the need of careful watching against
possible marauders, on the one hand, and on the other the
opportunity of commodious march, if a change of camp were
desired. The reappearance of the faint sickle of light would
necessarily be greeted with rejoicing. The festival of New
Moon must have been very early celebrated by the Jews,
nomads as they originally were. The solemnities enjoined
by the Law are to be found in Num. x. 10; xxviii. II.
Singularly, these regulations are attributed to the latest
stratum of the Priestly Code. Naturally it might have been
expected that a ceremony so very ancient would have been
among the first to have its details legally fixed. As it is,
the existence of the feast is assumed in the passages which
have been referred to as already well known. In i Sam.
xx. 24, it is the occasion of a family festival at which all the
members of the king's household are expected to be present,
124 THE SAMARITANS
and the absence of David a thing to be resented. It is to be
observed that ceremonial purity is necessary to taking part
in it. When the Shunamite woman, as we have said in a
previous chapter (2 Kings iv. 23), wishes to go to Elisha, her
husband implies that her desire would have been intelligible
had it been New Moon. Ezekiel and both the first and
the second Isaiah assume this solemnity as one regularly
maintained. Hosea mentions it as a sign of the desolation
coming upon Israel that her New Moons would cease (Hos.
ih 11). Amos refers to the New Moon as a religious service
of which the ungodly were easily wearied. Blowing of trumpets
was an important part of this solemnity. In Psalm Ixxxi. 3,
the call is made to " Blow up the trumpet in the New Moon."
This is the more interesting as this Psalm has originated in
the Northern Kingdom ; Israel, Jacob, and Joseph are named,
but there is no word of Judah or Zion. The celebration of
New Moon is retained by the Samaritans but without the
blowing of trumpets. Alike under the Christian and
Mohammedan rule the Samaritans would find it expedient
to make their acts of worship as little conspicuous as possible.
Now the whole service is confined to the synagogue. They
call the feast Rosh Hodesh, " the beginning of the month."
Although now the date of the New Moon is fixed astro-
nomically, watchers are appointed who announce when they
have seen it. Thereafter on the following afternoon they
assemble in the synagogue. The service consists of a
recitation of certain prayers and reading of the portions of
the Law which bear on the solemnity. During the service
the ancient roll of the Law is exhibited for the reverence of
the worshippers : the whole service lasts about two hours.
The Samaritans regard this festival as set apart specially
for the worship of JHWH as the Maker of all things.
To the Samaritans as to the Jews, the most important
annual festival is "the Passover." In comparing the Jewish
Passover ritual with the Samaritan, it ought to be remem-
bered that the feast of the modern Jews which they call the
" Passover " is not, strictly speaking, a celebration of the
ancient feast of deliverance, it is rather an observance which
keeps that feast in remembrance ; in the hope that soon they
may keep it in its fulness in Jerusalem. The Samaritans
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 125
maintain that they have celebrated the Passover with its
true rites from the beginning. It is certainly the case that,
with the exception of forty years during which they were
debarred from celebrating it on their sacred mountain, they
have done so, consequently the Samaritan mode must bear a
closer resemblance to the ancient celebration than the Jewish.
Yet there are many points in which the Samaritans have
diverged from the way the feast was observed in the days of
Hezekiah.
One of these points is the mode of reckoning the date on
which the Passover is to be held. The Samaritan year, like
the Jewish, consists of twelve lunar months, alternately of
twenty-nine and thirty days. While in both too great
divergence from the solar year is avoided by the introduc-
tion of a second Adar as an intercalary month, yet, as the
Samaritans have not adopted the Metonic cycle, the Veadar
is not interpolated according to a fixed principle, but by
comparison with the Greek Christian Calendar. As a result
of this the date of the Samaritan Passover frequently differs
from that of the Jews. Sometimes, as in the year 1898 when
the present writer saw it, the Samaritan Passover was the
later by nearly a calendar month. The method by which
the Samaritans fix the date on which they ought to hold the
Passover is, according to a communication which the present
writer had from the High Priest, stated in the following
words : " It is to be held on the evening before the Full
Moon of the Greek Nisan." Nisan mainly coincides with
our April, but as the Greek Christian Calendar is pre-
Gregorian, there is a difference of twelve days between the
first of our April and the first of the Greek Nisan ; conse-
quently the Samaritan Passover occurs, at the earliest, on the
evening before the full moon after 12th April. The result is
that there is very considerable difference between the times
at which it is celebrated when these are reckoned according
to our Western calendars. When Dean Stanley saw it, the
feast fell on the 1 3th April, but when the present writer saw
it the date was 5th May. As the Calendar of Meton, which
adjusted the relation of the lunar to the solar year by a cycle
of nineteen years, dates from 432 B.C. and is adopted by
the Jews, its adoption must go back to the Greek period.
126 THE SAMARITANS
Probably they did so early in that period, as in the
Maccabaean struggle the years are given according to the
Seleucid era and the months have Macedonian names. The
Samaritans must then have broken away from the Jews
during the Greek period. The Samaritan dependence on the
Calendar of the Greek Church must date from the times of the
Byzantine emperors, therefore too late to have any bearing
on the question of the relative date of the Samaritan schism.
Connected with this is another peculiarity in which the
Samaritans differ from the Jews, i.e., the adjustment of the
Passover to the Sabbath. With the Jews the Passover Law
supersedes that of the Sabbath, with the Samaritans it is the
reverse. With the Samaritans should the Passover fall on
the Sabbath, then it is celebrated on the preceding day ; not
at sunset on the Friday, the day before, when according to
Eastern reckoning, the Sabbath began, but at midday. This
was the case when Dr Mills was present at the observance in
i860. The Jews had an arrangement by which they avoided
the Passover occurring on the day preceding the Sabbath.
The Samaritan adjustment — it at all events is clear — is quite
independent of the Jewish ; therefore it must be dated after
the separation. Other differences will be considered in con-
nection with the actual observance of the solemnity.
Some day before the 14th Nisan, which has been arranged,
as has been said above, to fall on the evening before the full
moon of the Greek Nisan, the whole Samaritan community,
except those ceremonially unclean, shut up their dwellings in
Nablus and ascend Mount Gerizim. They encamp in a cup-
like hollow to the west of the mounds that cover the ruins
of the ancient Samaritan temple. The tents are arranged
approximately in a circle, while apart, separated by a
hundred yards or so from the rest, is one solitary tent.
What strikes the observer is the dazzling whiteness of the
tents. Like the Jews, before Passover, the Samaritans either
cleanse specially, or renew most of their domestic utensils ;
probably the tents share in this cleansing and renewal. The
tent pitched apart from the others is so placed that any
worshipper becoming mortally ill, may in the article of
death be removed thither, by the hands of Moslems, lest the
sacred camp should be defiled by the presence of death.
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 127
The need for this was seen in the Passover celebration at
which the writer had the fortune to be present ; a woman
whose death seemed imminent was removed to this tent by
some Moslems who were there as sight-seers. Her death
was not so near as was anticipated, as she was still living on
the afternoon of the following day. It is a singular com-
mentary on this practice that the Samaritans assert that no
one ever dies on Mount Gerizim, during the stay of the
people on it for the Passover.
On the morning of the day preceding the Passover, a
trench of some ten or twelve feet long, and a couple of feet
broad and deep1 is dug to the north-east of the encampment ;
it is filled with brushwood as fuel. Next, a pit which has
been lined with stones is opened ; into it, too, brushwood is
cast. Both are kindled, and throughout the day the fire is
kept up, replenished with fuel from time to time. On the
trench are placed a couple of caldrons full of water. Between
these and the encampment there are laid on the ground a
number of thin posts, each with a cross-piece affixed to it
near the top. Near these posts is to be seen the group of
lambs which are to be sacrificed ; the number of these is
usually seven. They must all have been born in the month
Tishri of the preceding year ; they are usually purchased on
the ioth of the month just before going up to the mountain.
Towards the afternoon some fifteen or twenty men of the
Samaritan community, headed by the High Priest, take up a
position near the mounds that mark the ruins of the temple.
The High Priest stands on a low stone, while the rest of the
worshippers form a semicircle in front of him. He then
recites liturgic prayers and passages from the Torah bear-
ing on the festival ; in this the other worshippers join, but
they all read from books. At certain points in the reading
the worshippers draw their hands over their faces and stroke
their beards ; this action, as has been noted, they use in their
synagogue worship. The hymns introduced into the service
are chanted in a musical recitative.2
1 See Chap. I., p. 13.
2 No importance would seem to be attachable to the colour of the
garments even of the High Priest, as different observers have given
different accounts of this.
128 THE SAMARITANS
After they have finished chanting, the worshippers leave
the temple mounds and move in a body to the point on the
hill where are the caldrons and the smoking pit The
lambs are now brought forward, each lamb held by one or
two men. The " congregation " form themselves into a small
circle round the men with the lambs, the High Priest also
being within the circle. The recitation is now recommenced,
and continues until the sun nears the horizon, when the
words are repeated, " And the whole assembly of the congre-
gation of the children of Israel shall kill it (the Passover lamb)
in the evening." At once all the lambs are thrown on their
sides by the young men holding them ; then the shohet
passes rapidly along from lamb to lamb cutting the throat of
each with two deft strokes. In less than a minute with
scarcely a struggle the lambs lie dead. Round the High
Priest gather the men who have just held the lambs to kiss
his hands, the older men of the congregation the High Priest
kisses on the cheek. The men now sit down in groups
round each lamb, while boiling water is brought from the
caldrons and poured over the lambs to soften the skin ; they
then begin to pluck off the wool. In a little while the wool
is all plucked off, and the skin is left bare as the palm of the
hand and as white as parchment Next, the lambs are affixed
by. their hind legs to the thin posts to which we have already
referred, and rapidly disembowelled ; the feet are quickly
removed, and the right foreleg, the priest's portion, is cut off.
Dr Mills says that they are burnt along with the entrails.
The liver, which is kept separate in the disembowelling, is
thrust into the body of the lamb. While this is going on,
the High Priest continues his chant. As group after group
finishes, the lambs are twisted round the posts referred to
and laid one after another on a hurdle. When this has been
completed the High Priest takes up his position beside the
carcases and begins anew to chant. The shohet then goes to
the side of the pit in which fire has been kept burning all
afternoon, and those who had previously held the lambs come
forward and stand beside the heap of carcases. The shohet
standing beside the fire calls out in Arabic, wahed, " one " ; a
lamb from the heap is handed to him and by him the long
post or spit is thrust into the glowing pit in such a way that
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 129
it stands upright. He then calls out fnain, " two," and the
next is carried to the pit and thrust into it ; and so on until
the whole seven are placed. Care is taken that none of the
lambs rests on the wall of the pit lest it should be in the
slightest degree broiled. The top of these posts or spits
comes within three inches or so of the level of the ground.
When all this is duly completed the hurdle is brought and put
on the mouth of the pit; on it is then placed grass, and there-
upon mud, till not the slightest puff of smoke or steam escapes.
When the lambs are thus disposed of the High Priest retires
to his tent ; the chanting meanwhile is continued under the
leadership of the second High Priest. While this is going
on a huge sheet is spread on the space between the caldrons
and the temple mounds.
At the expiry of a period of time marked by the comple-
tion of the chanting of certain hymns, the Pligh Priest who
has retired to his tent is informed and comes from it to the
pit. At the same time the second High Priest distributes
the unleavened bread and hyssop — the bitter herbs of Exodus.
Seven new baskets, resembling those in which carpenters
carry their tools, are brought forward. The pit is now
uncovered, and the lambs are taken up one by one and
deposited in the baskets. When brought up the lambs
appear burnt black. When, as frequently happens, one of
the lambs falls off the spit in being brought up, one of the
worshippers descends into the pit to bring up the fragments.
The baskets with the roasted lambs are taken to the sheet
and placed at separate points on it. Groups of men gather
round each lamb ; some squat on the ground, others sit on their
heels, while others again stand and stoop over those sitting.
In accordance with the command in Exod. xii. 1 1, every man
was girt as if for a journey, with shoes on feet and staff in
hand. To those of the women and children who are seated
outside portions of the lambs are conveyed ; also portions
are carried to the tents for such of the women and children
as have not come out. The unleavened bread and hyssop
are now made use of along with the lambs. When they have
finished eating, every fragment of bone, wool, or flesh is
gathered together and burnt in obedience to the command
that nothing be left " until the morning."
I
130 THE SAMARITANS
Dr Mills says that when any of the community, either
from illness or ceremonial impurity, are unable to observe
the Passover at its proper date, " they may do so on the same
day of the following month, that is the month Iyyar." This
presumably means that the date is adjusted to the second
month of the Greek Christian Calendar, as that of the regular
Passover is to the first. This permission is in accordance
with the provision for a similar contingency to be found in
Num. ix. 9-12. Dr Mills adds: "This Passover is not
celebrated on Mount Gerizim."
There are several features in this celebration of the
Passover in which it differs from the Jewish practice as
related in the Talmud. Many of these points are of such
minuteness that they are manifestly the product of Rabbinic
refinements ; these may be passed over. Some equally
minute features have been introduced by the Samaritans, as
for instance, that the lambs should have been born in the
month Tishri of the preceding year ; this may be mentioned
as showing the independence of the tradition represented by
the Samaritans. What confirms this is the fact that the
Samaritans reckon the date on which the Passover should be
celebrated in a different way from the Jews, and the further
fact that while with the Jews, the Sabbath law has to give
way to the regulations regarding the observance of the
Passover, with the Samaritans as mentioned already, it is
the Passover that gives way to the Sabbath. On the other
hand they have none of the Jewish regulations which prevent
the Passover from being observed on Monday, Wednesday,
or Friday. It has been thought that the Samaritans had, at
the bidding of Ezra, revolutionised the worship they had
received from the priest sent by Esarhaddon " to teach them
the manner of the God of the land," and introduced the Priestly
Code. The way in which the Samaritans have adjusted
matters shows a complete independence of the Jews. At the
same time it has to be observed that in fixing a second
opportunity for observing the Passover, they follow an
injunction which is found in Num. ix. 9-12, a passage
declared to belong to the latest stratum of priestly legislation.
The point in the twenty-four hours at which the lambs
should be slain is differently interpreted by the Samaritans
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 131
and the Jews. The phrase which designates the time in
Exod. xii. 6 is a peculiar one, D^nyn pa (bin ha'arbayim),
" between the two evenings " ; it is found only in the middle
books of the Pentateuch. The Jews take this to mean " the
afternoon," from midday to sunset ; the Samaritans regard it
as meaning precisely at sunset, as if the one evening were
while the sun neared the horizon and the other the gradually
decreasing light which follows set of sun. This, too, is a case
in which the independence of the Samaritans is obvious. It
would seem further that the Samaritan interpretation is the
more natural and primitive. The reason the Samaritans have
for celebrating the Passover on the midday of Friday, when
otherwise it would fall on the Sabbath, has not transpired.
In the actual roasting of the lambs, there are points in
the Samaritan practice which are worthy of notice. The
description given by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with
Trypho, of the spit used in roasting the Paschal lamb suits
the spit at present used by the Samaritans. He sees in the
shape which results from the small cross-piece the symbol of
the cross of our Lord. Justin assumes that he describes what
had been wont to take place in the temple in Jerusalem
while it was yet standing ; in this he possibly was right. At
least he does not record any correction of his description by
Trypho : the old practice is continued by the Samaritans.
The roasting of all the lambs of the community in a common
oven points to a practice which must have originated in a
village community, and in a country where fuel was scarce.
In this it may be noted that there is a break away from the
mode in which the first Passover was celebrated. The killing
and roasting must, in that case, have all taken place within
the house. The Samaritan method seems to point to a time
in which in the Northern Kingdom every village had its
bamah, " High Place," and its common oven. The use of a
pit as an oven appears to be a primitive trait. If we com-
bine the Biblical notices with what is found in Josephus, the
Jewish Passover may be realised in a manner. The lambs were
slain in the temple between three and five in the afternoon,
and carried to the houses of the worshippers where they were
roasted. The Samaritan mode points to a different origin.
It is the case that for forty years the Samaritans were ex-
132 THE SAMARITANS
eluded from their Holy Mountain, and had to celebrate their
great feast in their own quarter ; how this was done there is
no means of knowing, as no European observer seems to have
been present on any occasion during the period of their
banishment. While it is most probable, it is not absolutely
certain, that the rites they used after their return were
precisely the same as those of the period before their
banishment. One feature has apparently been dropped
within very recent times. Dr Petermann and Professor
MacEwen, as also some other observers, speak of the blood
being taken and applied to the forehead of the onlooking
children, and sprinkled on the sides of the tent doors ; later
observers have noted nothing of this. Dr Montgomery says
on the authority of Moulton that this practice was given up
on account of the Moslems.
Closely connected with the Passover, with the Samaritans,
as with the Jews, is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. During
the whole period of the " Days of Unleavened Bread " they
are in tents on the top of Mount Gerizim. All leaven is
removed from their tents. The unleavened cakes, masat
(the Hebrew matzoth) are thin, almost as thin as parchment,
and baked without salt ; save for this last peculiarity they
resemble the bread of the Arabs. This feast lasts from the
13th Nisan to the 21st. On that day, " the great day of the
Feast," they form a procession and go through the village of
Makkada. Dr Montgomery says that when the procession
reaches the sacred site they halt, having read through the
book of Deuteronomy on their way. Dr Mills represents the
reading of the Law as taking place on Mount Gerizim, and
speaks of special emphasis being given to the blessing of
Joseph (Gen. xlix. 22-26). Colonel Warren identifies the
village of Makkada with the Cave of Makkedah, where the
kings defeated in the battle of Bethhoron hid themselves.
The Samaritans make more of this feast than do the Jews ;
the additions seem to be late.
Like the Jews, the Samaritans celebrate the Feast of
Pentecost, called in Deuteronomy (xvi. 10) "the Feast of
Weeks " ; it was essentially a freewill offering, " the tribute
of a freewill offering of thine hand according as the Lord thy
God hath blessed thee." It is reckoned as seven weeks from
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 133
Passover, that is, forty-nine days, or inclusively, fifty days,
hence its name " Pentecost," in Arabic, khamsin. There is a
difference between the Jewish and the Samaritan method of
reckoning the weeks. The Samaritans count them in accord-
ance with Lev. xxiii. 1 1, from "the morrow after the Sabbath,"
the day when the priest had offered, as a wave-offering, the
sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest ; that is from the first
Sabbath in Passover week. The Jews reckon from the
morrow of the Passover, regarding the Passover itself as a
Sabbath. As in their reckoning of the weeks of Pentecost
the Sadducees agreed with the Samaritans.it may be regarded
as the primitive ; when the Jews diverged it is impossible to
say. Among the Samaritans this feast is celebrated by a
service in the synagogue, followed by a procession to Mount
Gerizim, where the priest recites the passage for the day
which contains the law concerning harvest. In the syna-
gogue prominence is given to the decalogue, during the
reading of which candles are held round the desk while the
priest reads.
Both Jews and Samaritans have a civil as well as a
sacred year. The civil New Year is celebrated on the ist
of Tishri, approximately the ist of October. With the Jews
this is a time of great rejoicing, everyone appears in his most
gorgeous raiment ; in the synagogue a trumpet is blown, in
accordance with Lev. xxiii. 24, whence it is called the " Feast
of Trumpets." In some places where a sea is in sight they
turn their backs toward it and cast a stone over their shoulders,
in symbol of their sins cast behind their back into the depth
of the sea, in order to begin the New Year with a clean sheet.
With the Samaritans it is regarded as a season for repentance,
and for preparation for the Great Day of Atonement. In
harmony with this idea it is sanctified by a prolonged service
in the synagogue which lasts six hours, during which the
whole Law is read. It is regarded as a Sabbath and no work
is done on it. Bearing on this difference in mode of celebra-
tion, and on the idea behind it is Ezra's action as recorded in
Neh. viii. 9, " Ezra the priest said unto all the people . . .
1 Mourn not nor weep.' For the people wept when they heard
the words of the Law." It seemed no easy matter to get the
people to give over their weeping, for Ezra had to repeat his
134 THE SAMARITANS
exhortation and the Levites had to go among the people to
still them. This day, the first day of the seventh month, i.e.,
Tishri, was the commemoration of setting up anew the altar
" upon his bases " (Ezra iii. I, 3) nearly a hundred years before.
The primitive idea evidently was the Samaritan one to look
upon it as a day for repentance and sorrow for sin in prepara-
tion for Kippor, "the Great Day of Atonement." The Jewish
habit of casting their sins behind their backs indicates the
same notion still surviving.
As with the Jews, so with the Samaritans the principal
event of the month Tishri is the Great Day of Atonement
on the tenth day. In the annual series of solemnities it
is next in importance to the Passover. As sacrifices have
long ceased to be offered by the Samaritans, there is no
ceremony analogous to that of the Scapegoat. As further
they have no longer either brazen altar or Ark of the Covenant ;
nor is there any longer a Holy of holies, if the Samaritans
ever had that, into which the High Priest can go bearing the
blood to sprinkle it on the Mercy-seat ; all the ceremonies
of the day are resolved into prayer and fasting. In this
they are unlike the Jews, who retain a suggestion of the
sacrificial element so prominent originally in the Great Day
of Atonement ; on the eve of the 10th of Tishri, among the
orthodox Jews, for every man a cock, for every woman a
hen is killed. Among the Samaritans there is no similar
survival. On the afternoon of the 9th of Tishri — the day
preceding the Great Day of Atonement — every member of
the Samaritan community solemnly bathes in running water.
Thereafter they all partake of a meal which must be finished
half an hour before sunset. From that time till after sunset
the following day, neither food nor drink may be partaken of.
Even infants have to share in this rigid fast ; neither age
nor sickness procures exemption. Dr Mills adds : " The
day is looked forward to with no little anxiety."
Half an hour before sunset, the whole body of the
Samaritan community assemble in the synagogue and begin
the recitation of the Law. Throughout the whole night, in
total darkness, proceeds this recitation, partly spoken, partly
chanted, amid great excitement. The recitation of the Law-
is mingled with liturgic prayers and penitential hymns. In
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 135
early morning the worshippers form a procession to visit
the tombs of their prophets. These are not as might be
supposed Elijah and Elisha, Hosea and Jonah, prophets
who by birth and mission belonged to the Northern tribes ;
these are not reverenced nor even known. The position
occupied by Moses in the theology of the Samaritans pre-
cludes any other being regarded in the light of what is
ordinarily reckoned a prophet. In a subordinate way Aaron
is reckoned a prophet, but neither his tomb nor that of
Moses can be visited. Tombs in the neighbourhood of
Nablus are assigned to Joseph, Eleazar, Ithamar, Phinehas,
Joshua, Caleb, and the seventy elders, especially prominent
among these being Eldad and Medad. On the morning
of the Day of Atonement these tombs are visited, and some-
thing like worship is offered at each tomb to the saint Who
slumbers beneath. About noon they return to the synagogue
and resume the recitation of the Law.
When the afternoon is well gone, and the last chapters
of Deuteronomy have been recited with appropriate prayers,
there comes the concluding solemnity of the day — the
exhibition of the Law. The two priests who have been
reciting the Law alternately now go behind the veil which,
as mentioned above, hangs before the sacred recess, and
bring out the two oldest copies of the Law in their wrappings
of light blue velvet, embroidered with texts from the Law
in Samaritan characters. These are opened out and the
silver cases in which they are enclosed are seen. These
in turn are thrown open and the venerable rolls are revealed.
The priests take them out and hold them up to view, then
all the congregation prostrate themselves with prayers and
hymns. After some time spent in repeated prostrations,
the people press forward to touch, to stroke, or even in
favoured circumstances to kiss the sacred roll. When these
rolls are replaced in their coverings, the liturgy of prayer
and chanting continues till after sunset ; then the solemnity
of Kippor, or, as the Samaritans pronounce it, Kibburim,
is ended. The latter part of the service has a resemblance
to the Jewish simhath-torah (rejoicing of the Law), which,
however, is connected not with the Day of Atonement but
with the Feast of Tabernacles.
136 THE SAMARITANS
On the day following the Great Day of Atonement, the
Samaritan community commences to prepare for the Feast
of Tabernacles, which is held on the 15th of the same month.
They begin to construct booths in their courtyards of branches
from the palm, the citron, the terebinth, and the willow.
As the Law requires, the whole community dwell for seven
days in these booths. On each of these days service is held
in the synagogue, morning and evening ; during the day they
form a procession and ascend Mount Gerizim " in honour of
JHWH." No servile work is done during this week, nor
is business of any sort transacted. As with the Jews, " the
eighth day "(Num. xxix. 35) is held as a specially solemn
one. They assemble in the synagogue, when the priest
recites a liturgy special to the day. With this end all the
primitive feasts for which a claim for being of Mosaic
appointment may be made. Like the rest of the
Samaritan solemnities it is greatly simpler than its Jewish
equivalent.
The Samaritans celebrate a Feast of Purim, not as do
the Jews on the 14th Adar, but on the latter three Sabbaths
of Shebat, the month preceding. As the Samaritans have
annexed to themselves so much of Jewish history, it would
not have been surprising had their traditions declared that
they along with the Jews were the objects of Haman's
conspiracy. With them, however, it has nothing to do with
Esther or Haman ; according to the Samaritans it com-
memorates the commission of Moses to deliver Israel out
of Egypt. It follows from this that they do not regard the
name as having any connection with "lots," or with the
Persian word pareh, " to divide." They say that the word
purim means " rejoicings." It may have a connection ety-
mologically with -^a pa'ar, "to flourish, to ornament"; it
certainly occurs at the time when flowers are most abundant
in Palestine. The Samaritans admit that there is no
authority for this feast in the Law. It is possible that
Purim is really a primitive, perhaps even a Canaanitish feast,
to which a sacred meaning was given ; much as the Roman
Saturnalia baptised unto Christ became our Christmas. It
is to be noted that the Samaritan Feast of Purim coincides
very nearly with the Jewish Rosh-hash-Shana PAitanoth,
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 137
"the New Year of the Trees," both in date and general
character ; both occur in " Shebat," and both are festivals
of joy.
Besides these public services, in which the whole people
take part, there are rites that are connected more with the
individual and with family life. Of these the most important
among the Samaritans, as with the Jews, is circumcision.
On the birth of a son a messenger is sent to announce the
fact to the father, if he is not at hand. xAlthough the
Samaritan nation is perishing for lack of mothers, it is at
the birth of a son that there is rejoicing. Thereafter, on
the eighth day, comes the initiatory rite of circumcision.
With the Samaritans it is observed with greater simplicity,
and at the same time with greater strictness than among
the Jews. Among these latter, as may be seen in the
Jewish Encyclopedia, it is a rite of great complexity. Some
of the features have been added recently for hygienic reasons,
as the placing of all the instruments in boiling water, and
the use of sterilised lint in dressing the wound. The main
ritual differences are (i) The presence among the Jews of
Sandakim, " sponsors," one of whom holds the child while
it is being circumcised ; with the Samaritans there are no
Sandakim ; with them the mother holds the child. Cere-
monially both mother and child are unclean, consequently
so would any one be who held the child. (2) The cruel
addition of the " rent," regularly practised by the orthodox
Jews, is omitted by the Samaritans as by the Karaite Jews.
(3) The Samaritans, in this also in agreement with the
Karaites, perform the rite on the eighth da)' even though
that day should be a Sabbath. Among the orthodox Jews
the rite may be postponed, by Sabbaths and feasts even, to
the twelfth day. (4) With the Jews it is a special official,
a mohel who operates ; he is generally a Rabbi. With the
Samaritans it is the priest who circumcises. (5) With the
Jews it is generally performed in the synagogue, with the
Samaritans now it is performed in the family ; anciently
as the story of Germanus shows, it was performed in the
synagogue. At this ceremony, as with the Jews, the child
receives its name ; also as with the Jews, the Samaritan
child gets two names, one a sacred name, usually Biblical,
138 THE SAMARITANS
the other a Gentile name, necessarily Arabic, with a surname
by which he is known to the public.
The marriage ceremony is like all Samaritan ceremonies
simpler than the Jewish ; there is no canopy, no breaking
ojjbhg glass. When the day arrives whicE has been appointed
for the wedHingjj^siially a Thursday, the luckiest day in the
week in the estimation of the Samaritans, the priest sends
two messengers to bring the bride to the house of the bride-
groom, where the ceremony is performed by the priest,
the two messengers being official witnesses. The service
consists in reading appropriate portions of the Law in
Hebrew ; in the same language liturgic prayers are recited,
and hymns suited to the occasion are chanted. With the
Samaritans there is not as with the Jews a ceremony of
betrothal ; however, a few days before the marriage the
priest sends the bride from the bridegroom her betrothal
ring. As among all Orientals marriage is a matter of
business arrangement, not affection, the essential part of the
marriage is the reading of the contract and the accepting of
its terms by the two parties. The choice is restricted as
they may not marry any but one of their own creed.
Although there is nothing in their creed to forbid it,
polygamy is practically unknown among the Samaritans ;
probably the fact that women are in the minority may to
some extent account for this. Divorce is also rare for
possibly the same reason. The marriage of an uncle with
his niece, common among the Jews, is forbidden to the
Samaritans. The Levirate Law, which is still among the
Jews regarded as theoretically binding, though neglected
in practice, is held and practised among the Samaritans ;
but with a distinct and important variation. The Samaritans
maintain that were a man to marry the widow of his uterine
brother the command in Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21, would be
transgressed. Instead of a man having to marry his
widowed sister-in-law, the most intimate and trusted friend
of the deceased is expected to make the widow his wife.
This he is required to do unless he has already two
wives ; a position of things which practically can never
occur. It ought to be noted that here, as in so many
other points, the Samaritans are in agreement with the
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 139
Karaite Jews. The Jews have still in a restricted way the
Halitza ceremony, referred to in Ruth iv. 7, by which the
brother-in-law is relieved of his obligations ; this, however,
the Samaritans have not. It is clear from Matt. xxii. 24-28,
and the parallel passages, Mark xii. 18 ff., Luke xx. 27 ff.,
that the Jews of our Lord's day interpreted the Levirate
Law in the same way in which it was understood in the days
of Ruth, and as it is by the Jews of the present day. The
Samaritan interpretation of " brother " must be regarded as
a secondary formation due to a desire to harmonise the
passages in Leviticus with Deut. xxv. 5-10. The custom
of Levirate marriage appears to be primitive (Gen. xxxviii.
8- 1 1 ). As is the case generally in the East, and indeed
among the Jews wherever they may be, marriage takes place
at an early age, the husbands being from fourteen to sixteen
years old, and the brides from ten to twelve. To conclude
concerning marriage ; there is a marriage feast at which
music is performed, usually by Moslem musicians. The bride-
groom is expected to be particular to attend the synagogue
on the following Sabbath, when a special prayer is recited on
his behalf.
It is sometimes said that the Samaritans do not bury
their dead themselves, but employ Moslems or Christians to
perform the rites of sepulture. This opinion appears to have
been a deduction from the fact that the Samaritan remnant
claim that they are all priests. Historically the priestly
family, the Aaronic family, died out more than a couple of
centuries ago; hence even their High Priest is strictly speaking
only a Levite. In reality only the High Priests, first and
second, are debarred from touching a dead body ; at the same
time it is true chat the Samaritans generally employ Christian
or Moslem undertakers. On the occasion of serious illness
selected passages from the Law are read, round the bed, not
by the priest lest he should be rendered unclean by the
patient dying, but by some one appointed for the purpose.
When the Samaritan is in articulo mortis he is expected to
gather up the last remnants of his strength to repeat the creed
of the Israelite: Elwem Eloenu Elwem aedt " JHWH is our
God, JHWH is One." When it is seen that recovery is not to
be hoped for, bystanders begin to recite the Law and continue
140 THE SAMARITANS
until death comes. When this has supervened the body is
carefully washed in clean water, as with the Jews. After this
purification is completed the recitation of the Law is resumed,
and continued to Num. xxxi. Along with these readings
certain prayers are also recited. The body is then wrapped
in a shroud and placed in a coffin. It is to be observed that
the Samaritans are the only natives of Palestine who enclose
their dead in coffins. They do so, they say, because the body
of their father Joseph was put in a coffin in Egypt (Gen. 1.
26). Dr Mills says: "They do not pray on behalf of ^the
dead . . . believing that at death the individual's fate is
forever settled " {Modern Samaritans, p. 205). This, however,
is scarcely accurate, at least for the Samaritans of a somewhat
earlier date. Heidenheim {Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, i. p.
420) has preserved a prayer distinctly for the soul of one
departed. Either the extant Samaritans have abandoned
the opinions of their fathers, or the prayer represents merely
a sectional view. Confirmatory of Dr Mills' statement is the
fact which he mentions that the Karaite Jews, who agree
with the Samaritans on so many points, like them omit the
Jewish qaddish which, though its contents do not bear this
out, is supposed to benefit the dead. It may be that, knowing
Dr Mills' Protestantism and consequent disbelief in the
validity of such prayers, his informant out of Oriental
politeness professed to agree with him. One thing is certain
there is no formal ritual of mourning, they do not sit so many
days on the earth as do the Jews ; nor is it their custom, like
the Mohammedans, to revisit the graves of their friends and
inform them of the events of the past year. The present
Samaritan cemetery is situated to the west of the city.
Their ancient burying-place, Dr Mills was informed, was not
far from the eastern end of the valley.
Besides those ceremonies connected with the individual
which occur only once in a person's earthly existence, there
are daily rites^of religion. The Samaritans have not the
Jewish ceremonial washing, which has more to do with ritual
than with cleanliness ; their first religious act is the repetition
in Hebrew of a long morning prayer, a similar prayer is offered
at night. Besides these, there are ceremonial purifications
such as those in Lev. x. and xv., e.g., touching a dead body,
THE RITUAL OF SAMARITAN WORSHIP 141
or coming in contact with the ceremonially unclean, or with
the carcases of unclean animals ; there are also those cases
connected with sex. The leading distinctive characteristic
of the Samaritan ceremonies, when compared with those
of the Jews which correspond with them, is their greater
simplicity ; therefore it may be presumed that they represent
a condition of things much more primitive than is found even
in the Mishna. It is a question that presses ; why did the
Samaritans, when they had taken the Priestly Code with all
its additions from the Jews, not continue to follow them in
their further developments ? If it should be said, that the
burning of the temple on Mount Gerizim by John Hyrcanus
made a breach that was ineffaceable, then why did not the
Samaritans extend to the memory of Hyrcanus a hatred
similar to that which the Jews have for Titus? Samaritan
tradition on the contrary declares that John became a convert
to the Samaritan faith ; this probably is an echo of his
conversion to Sadduceanism. Indeed Abu'l Fath fails even
to chronicle the fact that John Hyrcanus did burn the temple
on Gerizim.
The following summary of the differences between Jews
and Samaritans in Passover ritual, was communicated to
the writer by Professor Dalman :—
(i) In both the lambs are a year old, but the Jews count
from the Nisan of the previous year, which makes the lambs
quite a year old ; the Samaritans reckon from Tishri, the
lambs being thus just six months old.
(2) Among the Samaritans, women and children partake
of the lamb ; Jews admit that it was originally so with them,
now it is a permitted privilege to them not an enjoined
duty.
(3) The Samaritans reckon " betwixt the evenings " from
the sky becoming yellow before sunset, till the red has quite
disappeared after sundown ; with the Jews it meant afternoon
and before nightfall.
(4) With the Samaritans the slaying of the lambs takes
place beside the pit-oven in which they are to be roasted ;
among the Jews the lamb was slain in the temple and
142
THE SAMARITANS
removed for roasting. It is possible that this is an accidental
difference, due to the circumstances of the Samaritans.
(5) The Samaritans allow the blood to flow, but dip
hyssop in it for sprinkling ; the Jews did not sprinkle after
the first celebration in Egypt. The Jews do not slay the
lamb now.
the lamb,
the skin.
the Samaritans
(6) While the Jews flayed
pluck off the wool and leave on
(7) To disembowel the lamb it is fastened to an upright
post supported by two men. The Jews fastened it to a
cross-beam supported by posts.
(8) The burning of what remains was by the Jews left
over to the following day ; the Samaritans do it that night.
CHAPTER VI
THE SAMARITAX YIKW OF SACKED HISTORY
UNLIKE every form of heathenism or Nature religion,
Judaism, like its two daughter faiths, Christianity and
Islam, claims to be essentially historic. That God had
called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and led him into
the land of Canaan ; further, that when he had entered into
the land, God had revealed Himself to him, and promised
it as an inheritance to his seed ; these were regarded as
definite historic events, and upon these primarily the whole
religion of Israel rested. The next stage in the evolution of
the religion of Israel was connected indissolubly with another
event or series of events. Israel having gone down into
Egypt, and having been oppressed there, had been led out
of the " House of Bondage " with signs and wonders by
Moses : that God had appeared to them in cloud and fire
on Mount Sinai, and had there given Israel a Law: that
God had led them through the wilderness, and brought the
people to the east bank of Jordan, in sight of the land
promised to their fathers, these were facts on the historic
reality of which the religion and the national existence of
Israel rested. The enactments of the Torah, moral or ritual,
had their validity and sanction from their historic setting.
But the history of the Torah terminates with the encamp-
ment of Israel in the plains of Moab over against Palestine,
the death of Moses, and the appointment of his successor,
Joshua.
If the claim of Israel to be the people chosen of God —
the people in whom all the nations of the earth were to be
blessed — was true, their history could not end at this point.
The initial promise given to Abraham that his seed should
us
144 THE SAMARITANS
inherit Canaan, a promise that had been given again to his
descendants in Egypt, had not been fulfilled. All the wonders
wrought in Egypt and at the Red Sea, all the marvels of
the journey through the wilderness would be meaningless
displays of power unless there were something more. The
crossing of the Jordan, and the conquest of the Land of
Promise under the leadership of Joshua, is a necessary
sequel to the encampment in the plains of Moab. But even
this cannot be the end. If Israel is the peculiar Treasure of
JHWH, the people cannot be suffered to be lost in the
chaos of nations dwelling in Canaan. If the function of
Israel was to preserve for the world faith in the One
Supreme God, who had revealed Himself to Abraham — and
this was the belief of the Samaritans as well as of the Jews —
then even when they had gained their inheritance and been
planted in Canaan they would still need to be preserved that
they should not be seduced by the practices of the heathen
around them, or overwhelmed by their military prowess, and
so their testimony be lost. From the analogy of the previous
Divine dealings with Israel, the subsequent history would
be also sacred, as the history of the intercourse of JHWH
with His people and the discipline through which He passed
them to fit them for the function which He had assigned
them.
The agents whom God used to confirm Israel in their
covenant relationship were the prophets. On the one
hand their exhortations to faithfulness to the God who
had brought them up out of Egypt, and their denunciations
of any failure to maintain purity of worship and morals,
tended to keep them in the right way ; but also on the other
hand by recording the history they showed how faithfully
JHWH had fulfilled His side of the Covenant, and therefore
how great was His claim on the faithfulness of Israel. The
advent of the Prophet as a functionary in the Divine treat-
ment of Israel was foretold in Deut. xviii. 15: "The Lord
thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst
of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto him ye shall
hearken." While this prophecy found its absolute and
complete fulfilment in the Mission of our Lord, the whole
prophetic order was in a lesser degree also its fulfilment.
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 145
The order was itself a prophecy which found its fulfilment
in Christ. As may be learned from Josephus {contra
Apioneni), the belief of Israel in the truthfulness of their
history was grounded on the fact that the writings in which
its events were recorded, were the work of prophets. As
might be expected from their authorship, these writings
regard the history of Israel from the Divine standpoint ;
it was a record of JHWH's providential dealings by which
He always preserved in Israel a seed to serve Him. These
prophetic records begin with the book of Joshua, and are
continued in Judges, Samuel, and Kings. As has already
been seen, none of these books occur in the Canon of the
Samaritans. A probable reason for this has been indicated
in a previous chapter.
While the Samaritans maintain that the Pentateuch
alone is sacred and canonical, they seem conscious to some
extent of the incompleteness of their Canon, if they would
successfully maintain the claim which they make to be the
true Israel. The history of the people chosen of God could
not end on the east of Jordan, in sight of " the land flowing
with milk and honey " which had been promised to them
before they left Egypt, but not put in their possession. To
complete the sacred record, not only must the promise be
related, but also it must be told how that promise was
fulfilled. Hence it would seem to be needful to maintain
that at one time the Samaritans must have had some
authoritative account of the conquest of the land. The
high esteem in which the Samaritans hold Joshua, placing
him just behind Moses and calling him King, confirms this
probability. In the hymns in which most of the theology
of Samaria has been preserved to us, we have references to
events which took place in the conquest. The fact that
when Esarhaddon sent priests to teach the colonists " the
manner of the God of the land " they were not accompanied
by prophets, as has been said above, may have had something
to do with the want of prophetic literature among the
descendants of the Northern tribes. Further there must be
borne in mind the wholesale destruction of Samaritan
manuscripts from the days of Hyrcanus downward, not
to speak of the earlier havoc wrought by the Assyrian
K
146 THE SAMARITANS
conquerors. The repeated inquisitions for manuscripts
*J\ ordered by the Christian emperors of Byzantium, followed
by their destruction, are especially to be deplored.
At the same time there have come to us several books
which contain the traditional beliefs of the Samaritans as to
the course of the Divine dealings with them. They are all
late, none of them earlier than the tenth century of our era,
yet they may be regarded as containing the genuine tradi-
tions of the Samaritans as to their sacred history. As might
be anticipated from their being the product of Orientals, the
records are twisted and modified to enforce a moral lesson,
or flatter national vanity. Still when allowance has been made
for this, their general agreement may permit the inquirer to
assume that in these writings we have the ideas entertained
by the Samaritans of the tenth Christian century, of the
course of the Divine discipline of Israel.
The earliest of these is a meagre chronicle discovered by
Neubauer while on a visit to Palestine. It is quoted as
authoritative by Abu'l Fath who refers to it as Tolideh. It
begins with a mode of calculating the feasts, and then proceeds
to give the succession of the Samaritan High Priests, starting
the genealogy with Adam. It is in Hebrew and in Samaritan
characters. As the list of High Priests terminates with the
tenth century, that century may be assigned as that of its
composition. It is accompanied by an Arabic version. At
various points notes are added as to contemporary events ;
the Babylonian captivity is said to have occurred during the
pontificate of Aqabiyah ; the arrival of Alexander of Macedon
happened in that of Hizqiah. More interesting to us as
Christians is the statement that " in the days of Jehonathan
was put to death Jesu, son of Mariam son of Joseph the
carpenter, in Jerusalem in the days of Tiberius, King of
Rome, by the hand of Palita the governor." Although
Eleazar son of Amram (1149) claims to be the author, yet
from the habit the Samaritan scribes have of completing such
genealogies and bringing them up to date, the earlier portion
of Tolideh may go back to a time before the "rule of the Sons
of Ishmael " ; so the Samaritans designate the Mohammedan
Era.
More important because much fuller though later is what
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 147
is known as the Samaritan book of Joshua. It was published
by Juynboll in Leyden in 1848 from a codex which is in the
Library of Leyden University. It had belonged to Joseph
Scaliger, having been sent to him from Samaria. The
language is Arabic but the script is Samaritan. It is
divided into fifty chapters ; the first twenty-five of these
agree fairly well with the course of the history given in the
canonical book of Joshua ; it begins the record of events from
the story of Balaam. Although it cannot justly be called a
mere midrash, as Dr Montgomery regards it, there are
midrashic additions and details. The twelve chapters
which follow relate the history of Shobach, the son of
Haman, King of Persia, which is certainly a typical midrash.
With chapter xxxviii. begins a new division of the book. It
opens with a long .account of the happy condition of Israel in
the period of Ridwani (of Divine Favour). There follows a
compendious account of the rulers from Joshua. Only two
of the nine Judges, which are all that the author recognises,
'Abil (Othniel) and Shimsham (Samson) are named. With
the latter the " age of" Ridwani (Favour) ends. Eli built a
temple at Shiloh and left Mount Gerizim ; in anger at the
action of the people JHWH removed His Tabernacle and hid
it in a cave. What follows has the appearance of discon-
nected scraps ; there is an account of Eli and Samuel and of
the death of the former on learning of the captivity of the
ark ; then an account of Buchtinosor (Nebuchadnezzar) who
is called King of Persia, follows ; without any reference to
intervening monarchs Alexander the Great is next intro-
duced ; another hand continues the narrative with an account
of Adrinus (Hadrian) and his destruction of Jerusalem. The
whole ends with the story of Germanus and Baba Rabba.
Dr Juynboll thinks it has been written in Egypt ; he would
date it at the middle of the fourteenth century.
Another chronicle, by far the most valuable, is that of
Abu'l Fath. It is an account of the history of the world from i-
Adam downwards and till the establishment of the rule of
" the Sons of Ishmael " beyond el-Hegira to the year A.D. 756.
An account of his authorities is inserted in his narrative ;
some of these are not open to us now, but in addition to those
he mentions he has had access to the canonical books ; but he
148 THE SAMARITANS
seems to have got this access directly or indirectly through a
Greek medium, as may be seen from the form certain proper
names assume. An example of this is Bukhtinosor, the
Samaritan equivalent for Nebuchadnezzar, which has clearly
been derived from the Greek N afiovxaSovoo-opos ; if the unac-
cented first syllable is dropped, and the d sound sharpened into
/ then the Samaritan form results ; this could not so naturally
be derived from either of the Hebrew forms of the name. A
similar instance is Elias for the Hebrew Eliyahu. The
Annals of Abu'l Fath has been edited by Vilmar in Arabic
from four codices. There are additions to these which carry
the narrative considerably further down than does the original
author. It is written in the medium Arabic which has been
adopted by the American translators of the Bible into
Arabic. A feature of Abu'l Fath is that he lays great stress
on chronology, always giving the number of years from one
critical point to another. He emphasizes the division of
historic time into the two great periods of Ridwani (Favour)
and Phanuta (Declension). The latter he divides into three :
(i) from Eli to Alexander the Great ; (2) from Alexander the
Great to Mohammed; (3) from Mohammed onwards. But his
chronological statements do not always agree with each other,
and are often very much at variance with facts. Still as he
claims to have got his facts from the High Priest, the Annals
may be regarded as authoritative as to the Samaritan view
of sacred history.
A more extensive chronicle was found by Adler and
published by him in the Revue des Etudes Juives, with
notes and a translation into French. The latter portion of
it, whatever may be said for the earlier and what may be
presumed to contain the more primitive elements, is very
recent, terminating in the reign of Abdul Hamid and the
year of our era 1900. It follows closely in the beginning
the Tolideh published by Neubauer, but amplifies it from all
manner of sources. Very little is given of the conquest of
the land by Joshua ; it is merely said that it happened
under the pontificate of Eleazar. As the first portion of the
history has been derived from the Pentateuch, the narrative
of events which follow the death of Joshua is drawn from the
canonical books of Judges and Kings. Although there is
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 149
nothing of the venomous hatred of Samuel and David which
is to be seen in the Samaritan Joshua and Abu'l Fath, the
writer appears to have made little use of the books of
Samuel. Ezra, Nehemiah, and even Esther are mentioned.
Of necessity the course of events is altered to suit Samaritan
predilections. Ezra gets the Torah by stealing it from the
Samaritans, and alters it in passages. Unlike all the other
Samaritan historians this annalist relates the conquest of
Samaria by Shalmaneser. He does not, however, omit the
alleged deportation of "the children of Joseph" as well as
those of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar ; it is to be observed that
he gives the name of the Babylonian king in the form it
assumes in Hebrew. The kings of Rome are mentioned in
connection with the pontificates with which the reign of each
was supposed to be contemporary. The writer has drawn from
Hebrew sources written in the square character ; thus Paraq
stands for Baraq in the list of the Judges; ti pi and 2 beth
could only be confused in the square script. It is written in
Hebrew with a considerable infusion of words borrowed from
Arabic, Samaritan, and Aramaic. For the mediaeval period
it depends largely on Abu'l Fath, and therefore its value as
giving a view of what the Samaritans believed in regard
to the course of sacred history is really secondary.
More recently discovered than any of the above is the book
which Dr Gaster published a few years ago under the belief
that it stood in the same relation to the canonical book of
Joshua that the Samaritan recension of the Pentateuch
stands to the Massoretic. A very little examination shows
that it is by no means ancient : DTiy kolam is used in the sense
of world (Gaster, Josh. i. i), a meaning which that word
has in Rabbinic, Aramaic, and Arabic, but never has in
Scriptural Hebrew l : when Joshua is said to return " to his
place " the word used is 133 cano which really means, when
used of a person, "his office," as of Pharaoh's cup-bearer
(Gen. xl. 13); the correct word would have been top® meqomo
(Gen. xxxi. 55). It is perfectly true that Dr Gaster's book
1 Although it has the authority of both English versions, the
rendering of 'olam as "world," in Eccl. iii. n, is incorrect. The LXX.
rendering is cudva. "The age " would be a more correct translation.
150 THE SAMARITANS
of Joshua is not simply the Arabic of Juynboll's Samaritan
book of Joshua translated into Hebrew : it is the canonical
book copied by a Samaritan with modifications to give it the
appearance of being an original recension. The scribe that
copied must have done so from an exemplar in square
character for he writes bashti instead of pashti\ as already
remarked only in the square script is p liable to be confused
with b. The introduction of the absurd episode of Shobach
is itself enough to prove its recency. It appears to be a
forgery written by some fairly well-educated Samaritan to be
palmed off on the European public as the genuine Samaritan
recension of the book of Joshua. Therefore for the purpose
of the present inquiry it is practically valueless.
Such are the authorities open to the student who would
investigate the views of the Samaritans on the historic
evolution of the Divine plan in regard to Israel. As might
naturally be expected from the high respect accorded to
Joshua, the history of the conquest of Canaan is that on
which most effort is expended. In regard to this the
Samaritan Joshua and the Annals of Abu'l Fath must be
our most reliable sources. The latter is closer to the record
as it is found in the canonical book of Joshua, while the
Samaritan Joshua introduces speeches edifying and other-
wise, and omits disagreeable facts ; the Annals are not guilty
in either matter to the like extent. There is no doubt from
the evidence extant that the Samaritans at the time the
Annals were written, though they did not regard the Jewish
Joshua as authoritative, yet looked upon its view of the
events of the conquest as essentially correct. The Jordan
was crossed on dry land by the dividing of the waters, and
the people celebrated the Passover in Gilgal, which, however,
Abu'l Fath calls Galilee. The visit of the spies to Jericho,
its siege and capture are all related as in Scripture. The
sin of Achan and the failure before Ai, which in the Annals
is called Huti, is duly recorded. It may be observed that
to make the guilt of Achan more heinous, in the Samaritan
Joshua it is asserted that the gold which Achan stole was
taken from the temple of the principal god of the city of
Jericho, and the weight of it was enormous ; there is nothing
of this in the Annals. The trick by which the Gibeonites
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 151
became the allies of Israel is related, and also the battle of
Beth-horon in accordance with the canonical narrative. The
standing still of the sun at the command of Joshua is given
in prose, not as in the canonical Joshua in verse. The
incident of the cave of Makkedah is not omitted, nor the
humiliation of the five kings whose necks were trod upon
by the leaders of the tribes of Israel, with the hanging
subsequent. The assigning of the territories to the different
tribes is related in a summary, which does not designate
as does the canonical Joshua the various cities to be found
within the boundaries of each. The Samaritan account has
the appearance of being handed on by hearsay through
some person or persons who had read the Jewish book of
Joshua. The Samaritan book of Joshua indulges in marvels
in regard to the battle of the waters of Merom, or as the
author designates it, Mairun ; the sun delays its setting and fire
from Heaven falls on the assembled Canaanites and discomfits
them. A feature is added to the account of the battle which
would indicate some acquaintance on the part of the writer
with the prophecy of Ezekiel. " A mighty river descended
from the Blessed Mountain (Mount Gerizim) and watered
all the plain"; in its waters "King" Joshua and all the
princes of Israel purified themselves after the battle. What
became of this river, how and when it disappeared, " Joshua "
gives no hint. One more element is given to the picture
of these early times, which throws a light on the beliefs of
the Northern Israelites at least of later times. On the top
of the Blessed Mountain was a temple erected, while at the
same time the Tabernacle was also preserved there.
At this point there is introduced both in "Joshua" and
the Annals, as also more recently in Gaster's Joshua, the
story of Shobach the son of Hamam, King of Persia.
Hamam had been slain by Joshua among the other kings.
Shobach determined to avenge his father and sent letters to
all the kings of the earth. Among these kings was a giant
the son of Japhet. All these kings — in number thirty-six —
send a letter to Joshua full of threatenings, and saying, as
guaranteeing their ability to make their threats good, that
they have 60,000 cavalry, and infantry without number.
Joshua assembles all the princes of the people and reads to
152 THE SAMARITANS
them the answer which he is about to send to this challenge.
It contains threats like those in the letter to which it is
an answer, and to emphasize these he proceeds to give a
narrative of all that God hath done for Israel in the past.
When they receive the answer of Joshua the assembled
kings are stupefied, so stupefied that speech fails them ; they
are utterly overwhelmed at the prospect of the destruction
awaiting them. But the mother of Shobach sends a message
to them to be of good courage. She is a sorceress, and
calling other magicians to her aid, she prepares to receive
Joshua and his army. According to the Samaritan " Joshua,"
this army amounts to 300,000 men, but Gaster's Joshua puts
it at the more moderate figure of 2000. When Joshua
arrives at Ajalon, he and his army are surrounded and shut
in by the magical arts of Shobach's mother, with seven walls
of iron, and Joshua himself is struck with stupor. Eleazar
the priest who had accompanied the Host of Israel sends a
letter by a dove to Nabih, Joshua's cousin, who abode on
the other side of Jordan, to inform him of the straits in which
they are. When he learns the plight into which the Host
of Israel have fallen Nabih hastens to their relief; the fire
of God descends, and Nabih slays Shobach with a wondrous
arrow, which, shot up into the air, comes down with such
force that it pierces right through the whole body of Shobach
and sinks twelve cubits into the earth.
Juynboll says that this story is also found in the book
"Juchasin," written in Spain in the year 1502 by Rabbi
Abraham ben Samuel Zacut. A later Rabbi, R. Samuel
Sholam, adds that he had seen this story in the Annals of
the Cuthseans. As it is found in Abu'l Fath it might be
thought that it was thence derived, but Juynboll points out
that Shobach in "Juchasin " is made the son not of the King
of Persia but of the King of Armenia. The only Shobach
mentioned in Scripture is the Captain of the Host of Hadarezer,
King of Syria, mentioned in 2 Samuel (x. 16-18) ; he is slain
in battle by David. Whence the story — it traverses all the
bounds of possibility too violently to be regarded as a
legend — it is impossible to say ; it has all the marks of wild
exaggeration which characterise the products of Arabian
imagination. As it appears among the Moslems also, it
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 153
may be dated some time after the Mohammedan conquest of
Palestine.
The story of Shobach does not seem to be part of the
original Samaritan book of "Joshua." It has been added
by a later hand as the story of Susanna and the Elders, and
that of Bel and the Dragon were to the canonical " Daniel."
In style it is quite unlike the earlier portion of the book.
There is a want of agreement between the narrative and
the actions of Joshua. Although nothing is said of any
campaign of Joshua beyond the limits of Canaan, yet the
story assumes that he has killed Hamam, King of Persia.
Notwithstanding that Persia was so far removed from Canaan.
Shobach addresses the remnant of the " Canaanites " as if
he were one with them. The introduction into the story
of the Gibborim (Giants) who merely appear by letter might
almost indicate that in this there are other elements to
be traced, viz., that Joshua had a conflict with the Anakim
related in some ancient book of legends in terms as wonder-
ful as the story of Shobach.
If the book of Joshua had been known among the
Northern tribes before the deportation in which all the
prophets and scribes, as well as all the wealthier inhabitants
of the land and so all the reading public had been removed,
the book would have to be handed down by tradition. It
became the traditional memory of what had once been
written. Such a history would explain many of the phenomena
presented by the book before us, its additions of speeches
intended to be edifying or instructive, and episodes which
seem to glorify the hero. A similar phenomenon is seen
if the earlier form of a Scotch ballad is compared with a
later ; as for instance the later version, "The Three Ravens,"
compared with the grim original ballad, " The Twa Corbies."
A similar process may be seen at work in the story-tellers
of Arab villages to-day. It is certainly the case that similar
results would have followed had some Samaritan read the
Jewish book and related what he had read in a loose para-
phrastic manner ; but the enmity between the nations
renders that unlikely.
If, as is maintained, the book of Joshua is the result of
the same literary activity as produced the Torah, hence that
154 THE SAMARITANS
there are the same component parts arranged in similar
strata of J, E, D, and P, so that there is a Hexateuch rather
than a Pentateuch ; then why did Manasseh only bring five
of the six authoritative books 71 If, however, the Samaritans
did not get the Law from Jerusalem, nor receive it from the
hands of a runaway priest, banished for his transgression of
that Law which he brought with him, but had long before
received it through the priests sent by Esarhaddon, who
did not bring, probably were not allowed to bring, the
prophetic books with their tales of the valour of Barak, of
Gideon, of Samson, and of the glories of David and Solomon ;
this would explain the vague, confused knowledge of the
history of post-Mosaic times, possessed by the Israelites of
the North. As Joshua was the great hero of Ephraim, the
leading tribe of the North, it was but natural that the
memory of his deeds, and what was written in the book
which treated of him, would be more permanent than any
other portion of the prophetic tradition.
After finishing the episode of Shobach, the compiler of
the Samaritan "Joshua" introduces a description of the
prosperity and holiness of the people under the rule of
Joshua, which may be compared to the Talmudic account
of the spiritual privileges enjoyed by the Jews under the
pontificate of Shimeon hatz-Tzaddiq. " Then the Israelites
observed the Sabbath, and the new moons, and the feasts ;
celebrating the Sabbatic year, intermitting all cultivation of
the earth for one complete year in seven, having neither
sowing nor reaping ; yet everyone had enough. Further,
the Israelites paid the tithe to the Levites of all their
animals, fruits, and crops. Of these tithes the Levites in
turn paid a tithe to the High Priest." All the requirements
of the Law are compendiously gone over, with the assertion
that then the Israelites fulfilled them. One case of obedience
may be dwelt on, as it exhibits their strict interpretation of
the Law of one Sanctuary. " Nor was there any sacrifice of
goats, sheep, or oxen, save on the altar placed in the
Blessed Mountain." These were the customs of Israel in
1 If the critical hypothesis is correct that at first the Hexateuch was
one book and only later was divided off, his conduct is even more
inexplicable.
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 155
the days of Ridwani, when JHWH was favourable to His
people.
After his death, Joshua was buried, says the book of
the Samaritan "Joshua," in Kefr Ghwaira ; according to
Abu'l Fath it was in " Temne which is Ghwaira." There
were nine kings who, according to the Samaritans, followed
Joshua. The first of these, according to "Joshua," was 'Abil
the son of the brother of Caleb. The derivation of this from
Othniel is due to a series of scribal blunders by a copyist
of the Arabic text. In Abu'l Fath Othniel becomes
Xathanel, a name that very frequently recurs in the lists
of Samaritan High Priests. The first element in the name
Othniel had early ceased to be used in Hebrew, consequently
the name had become meaningless : hence the change to
the similarly ending Xathanel, a name at once common and
intelligible; a change made all the more easily that the
Samaritans had ceased to distinguish the gutturals. Accord-
ing to " Joshua " the next " King " is Tarfia. From the fact
that he makes war against the Ammonites, he may be
identified with Jephtha. The transmutation here, as in the
case of 'Abil and Othniel, is to be explained by the trans-
position of dots above and below in the initial and
penultimate letters in the Arabic. Nothing is said of the
pathetic story of his daughter, nor of his quarrel with the
Ephraimites. No other name of the nine "Kings" who
succeeded Joshua is given except the last, Shimsham
(Samson). The united reigns of these nine amount to 215
years ; this with the 45 years of Joshua's reign makes the
total of the rule of Judges to be 2C0 years. A much more
detailed account of the succession of the Judges is to be
found in Adler's Chronicle. According to it the successors
of Joshua are in order : Xathanel, Ehud, Pharaq (Paraq).
Gideon and his defeat of the Midianites is recorded, but
there is no mention of Abimelcch, or of his massacre
of his brothers. The Judges which follow him are
Tola, Jair, Jephtha : the last named is declared to have
belonged to the tribe of Judah. According to the
Chronicle, each successive "King" was appointed by the
reigning High Priest. As may be seen, the Chronicle of
Dr Adler is much closer to the canonical book of Judges
156 THE SAMARITANS
than are either the Samaritan "Joshua" or the Annals of
Abu'l Fath.
When Shimsham was Judge, Eli, son of Japhani of the
seed of Ithamar usurped the High Priesthood from Shishir
the son of Uzzi, who at his father's death was a child ; he, as
the descendant of Eleazar, in whose line the High Priesthood
ought, by legitimate right, to have run, had the right to
the dignity. Having left the temple on Mount Gerizim,
Eli erected a temple in Shiloh, where he offered sacrifices
on the altar he had set up. As a punishment to Israel for
consenting to this, JHWH hid the Tabernacle, which Moses
had made in the wilderness, in a cave. Thus began Phanuta,
the period of Declension and disfavour. The history of Eli
is known to the writer of "Joshua" and Abu'l Fath. In
addition to the usurpation of which he is accused, he is
declared to be a magician. The immorality of which his
sons Hophni and Phinehas are guilty is recorded. The
enemies of Israel, the inhabitants of Jaffa and Beit Jibrin,
encouraged by the division of the people, assembled them-
selves and advanced against Shiloh. As the army of Eli
gives way before the foe, the golden Ark is sent to the
camp. Nevertheless the Israelites are defeated, and the
sons of Eli are slain, and the Ark of God taken. On receipt
of the news Eli falls back and dies. This is, feature by
feature, taken from the account in the first book of Samuel.
The history of Samuel sustains a strange transformation.
A boy of four years old, his father brings him to Eli to
train for service in the temple, because he is so bad !
Samuel is a Levite, an Aaronite indeed, yet he is descended
from Korah who rebelled against Moses and Aaron. There
is nothing said of his victory over the Philistines, or the
subsequent recovery of the Ark. As Samuel was educated
by Eli to be a powerful magician, possibly the victory of
Ebenezer would be put down to magic. One of his evil
deeds is that he anointed Saul to be King. When Saul is
slain Samuel adds to his criminality by anointing David.
Abu'l Fath gives a compendious account of David and his
history. The strongly sacerdotal character of the Samaritan
religion, and consequently of their records, is shown by the
fact that it is specially singled out as an enormity that
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 157
David exercised the Priest's office and offered sacrifice. His
sin in the matter of Uriah the Hittite is dwelt upon, but no
word is said of his repentance. The subsequent immorality
of David's family is also narrated as if it increased David's
own criminality. The glamour that surrounds the name of
Solomon in the East protects his memory to some extent,
notwithstanding that he had endeavoured to change the
Qiblah of the children of Israel from Gerizim to Jerusalem.
His action in this matter is minimised by the statement that
he erected the Jerusalem Temple on the foundations laid by
David his father. Adler's Chronicle enters into more detail
in regard to Solomon and his reign. His numerous wives
and concubines are mentioned, and how in his old age they
led him to worship false gods.
The story of the rebellion of the Northern tribes against
Rehoboam under the leadership of Jeroboam, is related by
Abu'l Fath much in the very terms of Scripture. How when
Rehoboam came to Nablus to receive the kingdom, he was
desired by the people to lighten the burdens which Solomon
his father had laid on them ; how he had asked a delay of
three days ; how in the interval the old men who had been
the servants of his father had counselled him to yield to
the people's request then, assuring him if he did so they
would be his servants forever; how, notwithstanding, he
forsook the counsel of the old men, and answered the people
roughly is all related, even to the unsuccessful mission of
Adoram, almost in the terms in which the events are told in
the book of Kings. The Samaritan historian must have had
the canonical book before him when he wrote. The account
given of Jeroboam follows in the beginning very much the
succession of events to be found in Kings. Abu'l Fath makes
Jeroboam the Wazir of Solomon, and tells that, being dis-
contented he fled into Egypt. After he was selected by the
Israelites at Nablus as king he set up two calves. This calf
worship is attributed to his residence in Egypt. While in
the Scripture narrative these calves are set up not only in
Dan but also in Bethel, in the Samaritan records Bethel is
replaced by Sebastiyeh (Samaria). The reason of this is
easily seen ; Bethel according to the Samaritan belief was in
Mount Gerizim.
158 THE SAMARITANS
Whereas before this, after the secession of Eli, there
were three sections of the people of Israel, now there were
four. There were, first, the Samaritans, the people of Joseph
and Phinehas who faithfully worshipped God on Mount
Gerizim ; next there were the schismatic Jews who followed
Eli to Shiloh and then David to Jerusalem ; and then those
who followed the heathen remnant in the land and worshipped
idols. Now to these was added a fourth class, those who
followed Jeroboam and sacrificed to the calves.
It might be thought that something of the stirring history
which followed in Samaria would have left some trace ; the
conflict between Tibni and Omri, and the almost imperial
dominion of Jeroboam II. But there is no word of these in
" Joshua," or in the Annals of Abu'l Fath. As the history is
related in these authorities so much from the religious side,
it might have been at all events supposed that the deeds of
the great prophets Elijah and Elisha would have been dwelt
on with interest. The great mysterious figure that rules over
the imagination of the Jews to this day is only noticed in
a travesty of his history. " This Elias was drowned in the
Jordan and died ; and they claim that after his death he was
taken up into Heaven and received the keys of Heaven that it
should not rain upon unbelievers. And they say that he went
to Sarafend (Zarephath, N.T. Sarepta) and found a woman
baking bread, and when she was not looking stole the bread,
and the baby child of the woman died from hunger ; when
the woman came out and reproached Elias with the death of
her son he called to the child and he got up " (Abu'l Fath,
p. 54). Abu'l Fath then proceeds to moralise on the sin of
lying in the name of God. The Greek form which the name
of the prophet assumes is to be noted as an evidence of the
source through which the story had come — not directly from
the Hebrew, but through some garbled version from possibly
Egyptian tradition. The form of the phrase as to shutting
up Heaven suggests the two witnesses in Revelation (xi. 6).
There is less said about Elisha, whose name also is hellenised
into Elusus. It seems a clear evidence that the prophets had
no influence on the Samaritan traditions, when the story of
Elijah was only known through such an absurd version and
the prophet designated by a Greek name. The reason which
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 159
we have suggested elsewhere ma)- explain this. At all events
an independence of the Jews is manifested in this as in other
beliefs and practices of the Samaritans.
Although Adler's Chronicle gives a fairly accurate account
of the successive kings of Israel and Judah who reigned after
the schism, it has been obviously derived from the canonical
books of Kings : the Samaritan "Joshua" and the Annals of
Abu'l Fath, which more truly represent Samaritan belief,
overleap three centuries without notice, and immediately after
the account of Jeroboam take up the conquests of Buchtinosor
(Xebuchadnezzar). In the Tolidck (Neubauer's Chronicle)
Nebuchadnezzar is made contemporary with the Samaritan
High Priest Aqabiah. It is to be observed that in the
genuine Samaritan Annals there is no reference to the siege
of Samaria by Shalmaneser, or its capture by Sargon and
the subsequent deportation of the leading inhabitants. The
only deportation which they recognise is that of Xebuchad-
nezzar. It is admitted that the primary objective of
Nebuchadnezzar was Jerusalem. The story of its capture
is drawn in a somewhat confused fashion from the canonical
Scriptures. Yumaqim (Jehoiakim) first submitted to the King
of Babylon, or of Persia according to "Joshua," and after
an interval of twelve years, according to "Joshua" — three
according to 2 Kings xxiv. I — rebelled. Nebuchadnezzar
came again to besiege the city, and took it : he put out
the eyes of Yumaqim. There is here an obvious confusion of
Jehoiakim with his brother Zedekiah. X'ebuchadnezzar is
said to have taken Yumaqim to Beisan, not far from the
Jordan, and there blinded him. As to the actual fate of
Jehoiakim there is some uncertainty : cf. 2 Kings xxiv.
1-6 with 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6, and Jer. xxii. 19 ; xxxvi. 30.
After the capture of Jerusalem, Abu'l Fath declares that
the conqueror proceeded to Sebastiyeh (Samaria) the seat,
according to Samaritan authorities, of the worship of the
Golden Calf, and destroyed it. From there he came to Xablus,
where he published a decree that after an interval of thirty
days all the Samaritans must prepare to go into captivity.
Aqabiah the High Priest, when this decree was promulgated,
determined to secure the sacred vessels of the temple from
desecration. In the days of Eli's secession, as noted above,
160 THE SAMARITANS
the ancient Tabernacle was hidden away from the sight of
Israel ; but when this takes place there is no mention of
the sacred vessels. According to "Joshua," when Aqabiah
thought about this, a cave suddenly opened before him in
Mount Gerizim ; into this cave Aqabiah collected everything
in the temple, and on the door of the cave he inscribed a full
account of all the vessels placed within it. The cave closed
up as miraculously as it had opened, and the inscription
which the High Priest had written vanished. Only when
the Thaheb (the Samaritan Messiah) shall appear will these
vessels be found.
It is not impossible that along with the Jews Nebuchad-
nezzar may have carried away to Babylon some of the
Northern Israelites. The territory of these Northern tribes
had been taken possession of by Josiah, and the inhabitants
appear to have acquiesced in his rule. Although it is
unlikely that Pharaoh Necho would allow his vassal Jehoiakim
to possess the extensive dominions assumed by Josiah, yet
not improbably there was some connection maintained
between the Israelites of the Northern tribes and Jerusalem.
We have no information as to what arrangements Necho
made for the government of his Asiatic dominions during
the short time he possessed it : as little do we know of those
made by Nebuchadnezzar when he wrested Syria from
Egypt. Although no word of it appears in the Jewish
records, which are wholly taken up with Jerusalem, it is by
no means impossible that from the territory which had
formerly been Samaria a deportation had taken place similar
in extent to that from Jerusalem. When, as noted earlier,
" fourscore men came from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from
Samaria to bring offerings and incense to the house of
JHWH" (Jer. xli. 5), they must have been representatives
of a very considerable number of the inhabitants of the
territory of the Northern tribes who were like-minded, and
whose loyalty to Babylon might therefore be doubted.
There is no likelihood that the rebellion of Zedekiah was an
isolated act ; he would have as allies some of the neighbour-
ing princes, who like himself were tributary to Babylon, and
like him had been seduced by hope of help from Egypt to
attempt to throw off the yoke. If Samaria was not under
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 161
the rule of Jerusalem, still the tributary sovereign who ruled
there would not improbably join in the confederacy against
Babylon. If so, similar treatment would be meted out to the
Samaritans as to the Jews. Should there be found as full an
account of the campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar as of those of
Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, discovered in Nineveh, many
such questions might be decisively answered. It is therefore
by no means impossible that a modicum of genuine tradition
has mingled with imaginative variations on confused
memories of the contents of the Jewish records.
When the Israelites were carried captive by Nebuchad-
nezzar, who it ought to be noted is regarded as King of
Persia, they took with them the Sacred Roll of the Law
which had been written out by " Abishua, the son of Pinhas,
the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, at the door of the
Tabernacle." This "great roll," as Abu'l Fath calls it,
Aqabia hid in the meadow of Niniveh, merj Ninwe. The
Israelites stayed many years in captivity, seventy according
to Abu'l Fath in Persia and learned " Persian letters." This
habit of regarding the King of Babylon as King of Persia
indicates a date at latest in the period of the Sassanide
domination. Colonists are sent to replace the deported
inhabitants ; these, however, complain to Surdi (Artaxerxes),
according to the Samaritans the successor of Buchtinosor,
of the adverse circumstances in which they are placed. The
result is that 300,000 of the Israelites are sent back into
their own land, the Samaritans under the leadership of
Sanballat and the Jews under that of Zurbil (Zerubbabel).
When they reached Palestine the question had to be deter-
mined as to where was the Israelite Qiblah, toward which
place ought the Israelites to pray, toward Jerusalem or
toward Mount Gerizim ? Zurbil and the Jews maintained
that it was the former, whereas the Samaritans with Sanballat
at their head held that it was the latter. The sacred books
of the Jews named no place, but those of the Samaritans
unequivocally designated Mount Gerizim. The king ordered
the question to be decided by ordeal ; the Torah in each
recension was to be thrown into the fire ; that which was
unconsumed to be regarded as the true. The Jewish Torah
was at once completely consumed but that of the Samaritans
L
162 THE SAMARITANS
leaped three times from the flames. Before it was thrown in
the third time Sanballat, after having prayed that he might
be pardoned, spit upon the roll, presumably to render it less
combustible. When the roll a third time leaped from the
fire it was found that only the place on which he had spit
had been consumed. One cannot help thinking that this
midrash has been invented to explain the evidences presented
by the Nablus Roll that it had been at one time exposed to
the fire. Where an ember has burned a hole approximately
round is explained by the story of the spitting.
When Surdi (Artaxerxes) was convinced of the truth of
the Samaritan religion he ordered that sacrifices should be
offered on his behalf on the altar upon Mount Gerizim.
Having received these orders the Samaritans drove away
the heathen colonists who had been sent by Nebuchadnezzar
and purified the temple. Nothing is said of the sacred
vessels — it may be presumed that they were brought out of
hiding by the High Priest. The Samaritans were preparing
to offer many sacrifices of thanksgiving, but the High Priest
was warned by God in a dream that bloody sacrifices were
no longer to be offered during the period of Phanuta.
Hence, according to Abu'l Fath, from the time of the
captivity sacrifices have ceased to be offered. It need
scarcely be reiterated that the cessation of sacrifices on
Mount Gerizim has been antedated by something like a
millennium.
The annalist at this point inserts a list of the kings of
Persia but a somewhat eccentric one. To Surdi (Artaxerxes)
succeeds Kesra (Cyrus), his somewhat remote predecessor.
His successor is Zerdusht (Zoroaster), a notion derived from
the Oriental opinion that only kingly authority can introduce
a religion. He is followed by Ahashverosh (Xerxes) ; to
him succeeds Artahast (a variation on Artaxerxes) ; and
then comes Darius, presumably Codomannus. A note may
be added at this point that according to Neubauer's Chronicle
a High Priest marries the daughter of Darius. " Joshua "
makes Alexander the Great the immediate successor of
Buchtinosor.
The first period of Phanuta which began with the
secession of Eli ends with the arrival of Alexander the
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 163
Great. Both "Joshua" and Abu'l Fath annex the account
Josephus gives of the meeting between Alexander and the
High Priest, and how Alexander declared that in a dream he
had seen a man habited as was the High Priest while he was
yet in Pella, and that he had encouraged him to invade
Persia. Only instead of Jaddua, the Samaritan chronicles
have, of course, the Samaritan High Priest Hizqiah. The
Talmud also has the story ; but according to it, as we have
said above, the High Priest who meets Alexander is not
Jaddua but Shimeon Hatz-Tzaddiq, his grandson, a version
in better agreement with chronology. A story is told of
Alexander in "Joshua" and Abu'l Fath which has all the
characteristics of Talmudic wit. Alexander, led away by his
flatterers, demands that a statue be erected to him on Mount
Gerizim, and having issued this decree departs to Egypt for
three years. The High Priest and all the rulers of the
people are overwhelmed by the demand that they should
desecrate the Blessed Mountain by erecting a statue and
they pray to God. In a dream a way is revealed by which
they may appease the king, and yet not break the law
against the making of images : all the boys born during the
king's absence are named " Alexander." When he is told
of it the king is amused at the artifice and is satisfied.
Following a story to be found in Quintus Curtius and
Diodorus Siculus, Alexander is said to have been poisoned
by Antipater (Abu'l Fath, p. 89), a thing Hogarth (Philip and
Alexander, p. 276) does not regard as at all beyond credence.
At this point, Adler's Chronicle introduces an account of
an attempt by Ptolemy to secure the treasures in the temple
on Mount Gerizim which was frustrated by Daliya the High
Priest, a story which suggests derivation from that of the
similar attempt of Heliodorus on the Jerusalem temple
treasures in 2 Maccabees. Abu'l Fath refers to the story
related by Josephus of the debate in the presence of Ptolemy
Philometer as to the rival claims of Jerusalem and Gerizim
(Jos., Ant XIII. iii. 4), but in the Samaritan version the
conclusion is the reverse of that given by the Jewish
historian ; not the Samaritans, but the Jews, are put to
confusion. Certainly with the present text of the Samaritan
recension, the supporters of the claims of Gerizim would have
164
THE SAMARITANS
the advantage in any such discussion of having the Mountain
actually named as that in which God's Name was to be
placed. It is to be observed that according to Josephus'
account, the Samaritans who had gracefully allowed the Jew
to state his case first were never allowed an opportunity to
represent theirs, but were put to death out of hand.
That Josephus was to some extent known among the
Samaritans is rendered probable by the account Abu'l Fath
gives of the three sects of the Jews. He says that they are
Pharisees, Sadducees, and Hasidim (p. 102), the last name
being put instead of the Essenes. These the annalist
practically identifies with the Samaritans. In this con-
nection it may be noted that Epiphanius mentions the
Essenes as a Samaritan, as well as a Jewish sect. The
mention of the Sadducees and Pharisees necessarily suggests
John Hyrcanus and his war against the Samaritans. Abu'l
Fath asserts that though Hyrcanus conquered and destroyed
Samaria, he was unable to take Nablus or to destroy
the temple on Mount Gerizim. According to Josephus,
Hyrcanus did destroy the temple on Mount Gerizim
after it had stood 200 years (Jos., Ant. XIII. ix. 1). The
annalist appears not to have got his account from Josephus,
as he gives the name of the king not in the Greek
but in Semitic form, Jehukhanan. His breach with the
Pharisees and his becoming a Sadducee on account of the
insult offered to the memory of his mother by Eleazar the
Pharisee, gave occasion to the belief which seems to have
been entertained by some Samaritans, as may be seen in
Abu'l Fath, that after Hyrcanus became old he admitted the
truth of the claims of the Samaritans to be the genuine
Israelites, and offered sacrifices on Mount Gerizim, through
the Samaritan priests, as he was not himself allowed to
approach the Holy Mountain.1 The obvious resemblance
in some prominent doctrines between the Sadducees and the
Samaritans probably occasioned this mistake.
1 This statement seems to be at variance with Abu'l Fath's earlier
assertion that sacrifices ceased in the days of Surdi (Artaxerxes). It
may be that the offerings presented by Hyrcanus were minhoth,
unbloody sacrifices. But finical attention to consistency is not a con-
spicuous attribute of Oriental historians.
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 165
After a slight leap over intervening events the period of
Augustus is reached. Herod is referred to as having been
made king by Augustus. Cleopatra is introduced as favouring
the Samaritans and advancing to their aid against the Jews ;
she is called the daughter of Dionysius. This is an echo of
the truth for her father assumed the title of Dionysus
(Bacchus). Cleopatra did certainly interfere in the affairs
of Palestine, as it had been bestowed upon her by Antony.
Augustus, however, took Alexandria and forced Cleopatra
to put herself to death ; all the dominions possessed by her
in Palestine, the land of the Philistines and the Mountain of
Galilee, being given to Herod. Notwithstanding his efforts
to conciliate the Samaritans, the fact that stands out in their
memory is the slaughter that he wrought among them. Of
this there is no evidence to be found in the pages of Josephus.
This belief in Herod's cruelty to the Samaritans is possibly
due to the annalist drawing his materials from Christian
Greek sources.
The influence of these authorities is very clearly seen
in the account which Abu'l Fath gives of our Lord.
" Jehaqam was High Priest thirty-two years, and in his
days was born ham-Meshiach, son of Miriam, betrothed
to Joseph the Carpenter." The title given to our Lord
is the Hebrew word for " Christ " with the Hebrew article
before it ; the word for " betrothed " is a hybrid word
composed of Hebrew and Arabic elements. The birth
of our Lord is treated as an event of importance and dated
as occurring in the 1300th year of Phanuta ; that is
250 years after Alexander the Great came into Palestine.
As Alexander's march through Palestine on his way to
Egypt took place 332 B.C., the Samaritan date is eighty-two
years too early. Abu'l Fath continues : " He was born
in Bethlehem and exercised His prophetic office in
Nazareth." " Herodes," he further tells us, " purposed to
slay ham-Meshiach, but He escaped from his hands." Abu'l
Fath knows the names of some of the twelve Apostles,
and tells of the destination to which they were sent. Boutros
(Peter) was sent to Rome ; Andrew and Matthew were
sent to the South ; Thomas to the land of Babel ; Philphos
(Philip) to Qerouan and Africa ; James to Elia — can this be
166 THE SAMARITANS
Elia Capitolina (Jerusalem) ? — and Simon to the land of the
Berbers. Finally ham-Meshiach was crucified and His twelve
disciples with Him in elQods (Jerusalem), while Tiberius was
king in Rome. This happened during the High Priesthood
of Jonathan, the son of Nethanel. Our Lord's baptism
is known ; it is to be noted that the Baptist is declared
to be a disciple of ham-Meshiach. This confused mixture
of accuracy and inaccuracy shows very prominently Greek
influence. All the names of the Apostles show that they
have come to the annalist from a Greek source. Peter
appears, in the Arabic transliteration of the name, as
Boutros, instead of assuming as in the Peshitta its Aramaic
form " Kefa." More remarkable are the forms which the
names James and John assume — Ya'qobos and Yohannes.
The termination in s shows that the Greek form has
influenced the writer ; yet the insertion of the he in Yohannes
and the ain in Ya'qobos shows that the Semitic form was
not entirely forgotten. It ought to be noted that these
phenomena are to be seen in the Palestinian Lectionaries
discovered and published by Mrs Lewis ; these peculiarities
are not manifested in the Peshitta. The Greek terminal
s is seen in Tomas, which is used instead of Thauma of
the Peshitta. Philphos, the form Philippos assumes,
indicates that the Greek doubled p had been softened into
ph; the ordinary Arabic equivalent for p is b as seen in
Boutros (Peter), Boulos (Paul). While in the Lewis-Gibson
Lectionaries most of these peculiarities are to be observed,
the Hebraistic ham-Meshiach does not appear. Matti, the
form which Matthew assumes, again is purely Hebrew ; this
in the Lectionaries is Mattai. Had the text of Abu'l Fath
been vowelled it is not impossible that it would have been
the same. These peculiarities may be regarded as dating
from pre-Mohammedan times.
Although the Samaritans suffered so severely at the
hand of Cerealis, during Vespasian's campaign against the
Jews, there is no reference to this in any of the Samaritan
annalists ; nor indeed is there any note of the capture
of Jerusalem by Titus. In Adler's Chronicle Sianos
(Vespasian) is said to have rebuilt Caesarea ; and in
Neubauer's he is said to have destroyed Dora. One might
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 167
have expected that the Samaritans would have gloated
over the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the shrine
which contended with that on Mount Gerizim for the
dignity of being the Qibla of Israel. So far as Samaritan
records are concerned the terrible tragedy of the siege
and fall of Jerusalem might never have occurred.
The war of Bar Cochba, of which so much less is known
than of the campaign of the Flavian Emperor and his son,
has impressed itself much more on the imagination of
the Samaritans. All the legends gather round the name
of Adrinus (Hadrian). Although it is doubtful whether
the Jews were in possession of Jerusalem during the war
of Bar Cochba, indeed whether the city had been rebuilt
after its destruction by Titus, it is represented alike in
the Annals of Abu'l Fath and in "Joshua" as undergoing
a siege at the hands of Adrinus. Abu'l Fath and " Joshua *
relate a midrash of the capture of Jerusalem which vies
in absurdity with the Talmudic account of what occasioned
the war related by Josephus, and the fall of Jerusalem.
A Jew from Galilee passing through Samaria on his way
to the temple at Jerusalem to offer two pigeons, lodged
for a night in the house of two Samaritan brothers named
Ephraim and Manasseh. These brothers removed the
pigeons from the box in which the Jew was carrying his
offering and in their place inserted two rats. The trick
was discovered in the Temple Court. The Jewish authorities
sent and seized the delinquents and compelled them to
become slaves of the Jerusalem Sanctuary. When Adrinus
besieged Jerusalem, these two revealed to Adrinus a sub-
terranean passage by which one could enter and by which
Jerusalem itself could be revictualled. According to
" Joshua " this passage was stopped, and the inhabitants were
reduced to such straits that as in the earlier siege under
Titus they devoured each other; and they were compelled
to surrender. Hadrian when he entered the temple saw
images, presumably the figures of the Cherubim, and rebuked
the Jewish High Priest for idolatry. This is a curious
travesty of fact ; to represent Hadrian, the great builder
of temples and setter up of statues to deities of every
nationality, as rebuking the Jewish High Priest for idolatry !
168 THE SAMARITANS
This tale is told with even more of ornament in Adler's
Chronicle. After the surrender a multitude of the Jews were
slain, the Holy Place burned with fire, and the city itself
destroyed. The Samaritan brothers were sought out and
honoured, and a house with four pillars was erected in which
were set up the statues of the two. Hadrian then proceeded
to Nablus and issued a decree forbidding any Jew to settle
in Shechem. Indeed Hadrian carried his favour for the
Samaritans so far that he made them rulers over the Jews.
He visited the temple on Mount Gerizim, and saw the
worship there. In further proof of this special favour,
he conveyed to Mount Gerizim the brazen gates which
Solomon had set up in the temple in Jerusalem. From
thence Hadrian proceeded to Alexandria; while he was
there he is related to have occupied himself with the
persecution of the Christians. When Hadrian returned
to Palestine the Samaritans lost his favour when he learned
that after he had left the priests had purified the temple
from the pollution entailed by his presence in it. In
consequence of this indignity, as he reckoned it, he came
to Samaria, laid Nablus waste, burnt the temple on Mount
Gerizim, crucified the scribes and judges of the Samaritans,
and left their bodies unburied. Where the sacred temple
had stood, Hadrian erected a temple to Caesar. It may
be noted that amid the traces of temple foundations still
to be found on the top of Mount Gerizim, remains of this,
erected by Hadrian, may be found. The reign of Hadrian
is regarded as an important period, and it is reckoned
to have been 45 1 3 years from the Creation.
To the reign of Hadrian the writer of "Joshua," as
mentioned above (ii. 19), ascribes the destruction of the
literature of the Samaritans. He thus relates the extent
of the calamity : " In these days was lost the Book of
the Future Life which the Samaritans had possessed from
the time of Favour {Ridwan)\ there were lost the prayers
which the priests recited, suitable to the character of each
sacrifice, and the hymns which they were in the habit
of chanting in the days of Ridwan. All these, written out
by the hands of the successive High Priests, had been
preserved religiously from the times of the prophets through
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 169
various generations down to that day. Further, there was
lost the Book of the Priests which the Samaritans had,
in which their succession was carried back to Pinhas
(Phinehas). After this calamity, no ancient copy of
these books has been found ; nor has there survived any
chronological table except the Law, and the book which
contained the lives of the High Priests" ("Joshua," chap,
xlvii., last par.). According to this writer, Hadrian died
from a sore disease affected with every sort of pain.
With an approach to accuracy singular for a Samaritan
historian Abu'l Fath calls Antoninus " the son and successor
of Hadrian." Adrinus held the kingdom forty years, and
after him reigned his son Antoninus (p. 117); the length of
the reign thus assigned to Hadrian is close upon double what
it actually was. "Joshua" gives his reign as twenty-one
years, a number which is in practical agreement with that
in Dio Cassius, Spartian, and the various historians of the
period. Antoninus, according to Abu'l Fath, not only showed
favour to the Samaritans but himself honoured the Law
by reading it not merely in Hebrew but also in the Targum,
and by fulfilling all its requirements. It is well known
that the Jews enjoyed during the rule of the Antonines very
special privileges ; these privileges would not improbably
be extended to the Samaritans. The Samaritan chroniclers
make no distinction between Antoninus Pius and his
successor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Commodus suc-
ceeded his father Marcus Aurelius ; unlike his pre-
decessors he persecuted the Samaritans. A disputation
which Alexander the Aphrodisian, the Aristotelian com-
mentator, had with the Samaritan High Priest, according
to Abu'l Fath (pp. 118, 119), was the occasion of the rage
of Commodus against the Samaritans. The account in
the Annals of the persecution is almost identical in features
with that ascribed to Hadrian in "Joshua," even to the
destruction of the literature of the Samaritans. Possibly
the real criminal was Commodus, and Hadrian's greater
name attracted to it the evil reputation of his successor.
After this, the history becomes very confused. Abu'l
Fath names many emperors but rarely in their true order.
The invasion of the Mohammedans is introduced before
170 THE SAMARITANS
the rise of the Sassanide Empire of Persia. Late in the
history does he refer to the followers of Dusis (the
Dositheans) and their creed. Later still he introduces
Shimeon the Wizard (Simon Magus) in connection with
a love affair. Although from the connection in which
he appears, Abu'l Fath would seem to place Simon Magus
in the third century of our era, he yet represents him as
disputing not only with the Christians but with Philo
of Alexandria. As to the Dositheans, Epiphanius regards
them as a Samaritan sect and attributes to them a strict
observance of the Jewish rites.
The framework on which all these notices of history,
internal and external, depends is the succession of the High
Priests. Although it is asserted both in " Joshua " and in the
Annals of Abu'l Fath that the list of the High Priests was
destroyed in the persecutions which the Samaritans sustained
at the hands of the emperors, whether Commodus or Hadrian,
yet they have given the names of the successive holders
of the office. This list appears with least admixture in
Tolideh (Neubauer's Chronicle). The reader is struck
in perusing it with the number of names that are unlike
those in ordinary cases borne by Israelites. A very common
name among the High Priests is "Aqbun," a name not
to be found in Scripture or in Josephus. Again there
is Baba, another name which recurs ; this has the appearance
of being of the nature of a nickname. The word means
" the gate " in Aramaic, and its Aramaic origin is emphasized
by the presence in its termination of the sign of the
Aramaic status emphaticus. One of the most marked of
those who bore the name, Baba Rabba, is introduced
into history in connection with the story of Garmanus,
already referred to. Of him it is said in Tolideh
(Neubauer's Chronicle) : " This Baba thrust out and expelled
all the enemies of JHWH from the land of Canaan and
reigned forty years." While the occurrence in this list
of names which have not the sanction of Scriptural use,
might be regarded as in some sort an evidence of a possible
tradition being behind it, on the whole the list may be
regarded as concocted and no more worthy of credence than
the list of the kings of Scotland which, a couple of centuries
THE SAMARITAN VIEW OF SACRED HISTORY 171
later than Abu'l Fath, George Buchanan placed at the
beginning of his history.
One point that emerges is the importance of history
in regard to the Samaritan religion. All history is viewed
by Abu'l Fath from the Divine standpoint. So far as Israel is
concerned it is divided into two portions ; Ridwan the
period of Divine Favour which came to an end with the
secession of Eli, and Phanuta, the period of declension
and of consequent Divine Disfavour. This latter period
will end with the coming of the "Thaheb" (the Restorer) —
the Samaritan name for the Messiah — he who is to restore
all things to the state in which they were during
"Ridwan." The Israelites arrived in Palestine 2754 years
after the Creation, and for 260 years enjoyed Divine Favour.
The termination of "Ridwan" is therefore dated A.M. 3014.
There was a tacit expectation that six millennia would
elapse before the " Thaheb " should appear, consequently
that the period of " Phanuta " would last about three
thousand years. This naturally suggested a division into
three subordinate periods of a thousand years. The first
of these, the Age of Divisions and Captivities, ends with
the coming of Alexander the Great. His arrival in Palestine
is dated by the Samaritans at A.M. 4100. Our Lord's birth
is placed by them rather too early, at 250 years after the
advent of Alexander.1 The Age of the Greeks, which begins
with Alexander, ends with Mohammed, whose date is
reckoned as A.M. 5050, 'that is to say 700 years after the
birth of Christ ; but as the Samaritans had made our
Lord's birth about eighty years too early, their date for
Mohammed is a very close approximation to "el Hegira."
The reign of "the Sons of Ishmael" ought by analogy
to have lasted only a thousand years, but it has already
overpassed that period by more than three centuries.
A survey of the Samaritan view of history shows that
like the Jews they regarded the course of history as under
1 In the Talmud (San. 107^, Sotah 47a) Jesus is said to have been
born in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 B.C.). This is in closer
agreement with Samaritan date than is our ordinary reckoning. The
Seder had- Doroth gives both the Talmudic date and the common
Christian one.
172 THE SAMARITANS
the direct government of God. Like the Jews, they looked
on Israel as the Heritage of JHWH, who arranged all
the periods of the world's history with a special view to
the needs of Israel whether of prosperity or of chastisement.
The termination of the history of the world was the coming
of the Thaheb and the inauguration of the Millennium which
ends with the final Judgment. According to the Jewish
Apocalyptic Literature, the coming of the Messiah and
the Last Judgment are events closely connected. Whereas
according to the Samaritans the Thaheb was to live uo
years, the age that is to say of Joshua — he was not to attain
the age of Moses ; after his death a lengthened period ensues
and then comes the end of the world.
Another aspect of the question which impresses the
student is the independence of the Samaritans in relation
to the Jews. When they do borrow from the Jewish records
it is not directly but through the Greek. There have already
been references to this in regard to the form that some of
the Hebrew names assume. Elias, as already observed, is
a marked instance of this ; the natural form which the
Hebrew Eliyahu would assume when transferred to Arabic
would be Eliyah.1 Even more marked is Elusus for Elisha,
which can be transferred letter by letter into Arabic. Their
whole view of sacred history is antagonistic to that of the
Jews in regard especially to all events subsequent to the
secession of Eli. We have thus on the one hand the necessity
strongly felt of exhibiting the Divine side of history as an
essential part of the Religion of Israel ; on the other the
effort made by human imagination to supply the lack of a
true account of events. When a comparison is made of the
Annals of Abu'l Fath, the soberest of the Samaritan histories,
with the Bible narratives, the reader at once feels how far
removed the first is from actuality and from the period in
which the described events are alleged to have occurred. An
indirect testimony is thus given to the trustworthiness of the
records of the Religion of Israel.
1 The name Elias in the Greek form is not uncommon among
Arabs belonging to the Orthodox or Greek Church at the present day.
CHAPTER VII
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS
It is the contention of the late Professor Robertson Smith,
in his introduction to The Religion of the Semites, that all
religion begins in ritual. This, however, is only true of the
overt expression of religious feeling. The rites and cere-
monies, in which religious emotion expressed itself,
themselves require an explanation, and that can only be
found in thought. These vague inchoate thoughts contained
in them the essence of a theology. There must have been a
reason why men so universally adopted sacrifice as part of
their religious worship. Whether the deity is regarded as
the host and the worshippers his guests, or the deity is
regarded as invited to a feast provided for him by his
worshippers, or whether we hold the traditional idea of
expiation as underlying all sacrifice, each of these implied
certain ideas as to deity and the relation in which his
worshippers stood to him. These vague thoughts would
probably never find expression in distinct memorable
phrases, and therefore would tend to evaporate as men
became more and more absorbed in the business of living,
to the growing exclusion of thought. The ritual remained,
its ceremonies became stereotyped ; all the more so that
there was no thought behind them to keep them fluid.
When time advanced and men began to unite themselves
in communities there was leisure to think, to put questions
and endeavour to find answers for them, to put a " because "
over against every "why." These explanations would
naturally take the form of stories — myths. Mythology is
the theology of childhood. There necessarily were further
steps of evolution ; in Greece this resulted in philosophy, but
178
174 THE SAMARITANS
in Israel God Himself intervened by His prophets, and
cleared away these hard and fast ceremonies and got behind
to their moral meaning. It was mainly emotional, the
prophet's message ; rites and ceremonies, myths and legends
were all thrown into the fiery alembic of inspired emotion.
But behind those burning utterances there were loftier
thoughts concerning God, Man, and Duty, than unaided
humanity ever had as yet attained to. As a further step,
these thoughts had to be separated and arranged. The
silver had been purified, it had to be drawn forth into ingots
of thought. The thoughts behind the visions of the seers
had to become a theology.
In regard to the Samaritans, whatever prophetic litera-
ture the Northern tribes may have had, besides the books
of Hosea, Amos, and Jonah, and the prophetic histories
preserved in the books of Kings, has been lost. We have
only the desiccated remains of their ritual, of which we have
already treated ; but we have something of their theology.
The works of one Samaritan theologian have come down to
us, who in his treatises and commentaries, translated into
terms of thought the floating traditions and opinions of his
people. This Marqah, to give him what is probably a
Latinised version of his name, appears to have lived in the
third century of our era. Before his birth an angel foretold
it, and said that he should be called Moshe (Moses) ; but as
this was too sacred a name to be given to any one even at
the command of an angel, the matter was compromised ; he
was called Marqah, a name the letters of which have the
same numerical value. In his views he is mystical and
Qabbalistic. Another source for the theology of the
Samaritans is to be found in their hymns, some of them
supposed to be older than our era. Collections of these
have been made by Gesenius and others. And yet a third
source is the Samaritan Targum or paraphrase of the Law.
Although the Samaritans resisted so strenuously all the
violent efforts put forth by pagan and Christian emperors to
convert them, they did not escape wholly the influence of those
among whom they lived. In the epistle which they sent to
their brethren in England, the Samaritans thus declare their
creed : "My faith is in Thee, oh JHWH, and in Moses the
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 175
son of Amram Thy servant, in the Holy Law, and in Mount
Gerizim, the Bethel, and in the day of Vengeance and
Recompense." To this is to be added the doctrine of Angels
and Demons. Dr Mills thus summarises the articles of the
Samaritan creed: "One only God JHWH, one only Law-
giver, Moshe (Moses), one only Divine book, the Torah (Law),
one only Holy Place, Mount Gerizim, the true Beth El."
These are primitive ; the doctrines of Angels, of Immortality,
and of the Last Judgment are, in the opinion of Dr Mills,
later additions.
In considering the creed of the Samaritans, the student
must always remember that with the Samaritans, as with most
primitive nations, religion is not so much a personal matter
as a national. Their primary belief is that they are the
only chosen people of God, bound to Him by seven
successive covenants: (a) of Noah (Gen. ix. 8-17), (b) of
Abraham (Gen. xvii. 4-14), (c) of the Sabbath (Exod. xxxi.
12-17), (d) °f the Ten Commandments (Exod. xx. 2-17), (e) of
Salt (Num. xviii. 19), (/), of the Passover (Exod. xii. 2 ff.),
(g) of the Priesthood (Num. xxv. 12, 13). These covenants
they are bound to keep ; they not only separate them from the
Gentiles, but since the defection of the days of Eli, from their
kinsmen the Jews also. They call themselves Samaritan
Israelites.
Samaritan theology may be considered under the heads
of (I.) The Doctrine of God; (II.) of Creation; (III.) of
Man ; (IV.) of Angels and Demons ; (V.) of Revelation ;
(VI.) of the Messiah; (VII.) of the Last Things.
I. Of God. — The Samaritans of the present day are
zealous monotheists. This zeal has doubtless to some
extent Been conserved, and even in a sense promoted by
the influences surrounding them from the rule of the
Christian emperors. When the Byzantine power gave way
to " the rule of the Sons of Ishmael," to quote the phrase so
frequently used by Samaritan scribes in dating their manu-
scripts, the Samaritans were confirmed in their monotheism.
It would seem to suggest the idea of Mohammedan influence
on their theology, that the Samaritans have introduced into
some of their hymns a formula which has in it an echo of
176 THE SAMARITANS
the opening words of the creed of Islam : " There is not a
God save one." This cannot be pressed, as these hymns are
of various dates, some appear even to be pre-Christian. How-
ever, the possibility of interpolation has always to be kept in
mind. But monotheism so permeates these poems, one and
all, that this element in their theology is not to be attributed
to Moslem influences. As an example may be taken the
opening words of the so-called prayer of Moses : " Magnify
His Holy Name; One is JHWH, and to be glorified, and
there is not one beside Him, alone in the Heaven above and in
the earth beneath ; there is not one beside Him, He is alone.
Blessed be JHWH our God, Whose name is to be glorified
and rightly to be praised." To this strict monotheism would
Gesenius attribute the fact that, in their recension of the
Pentateuch whenever Dsli;K is regarded as a plural noun, and
so joined to a plural verb in the Massoretic, the Samaritans
correct it into the singular. Of these cases there are three
in Genesis ; these most likely are due to blunders of the
Massoretic scribe, as for instance Gen. xx. 13, "God
(DViPK) caused me to wander tynn from my father's house";
clearly this is a blunder, caused not unlikely by the copyist
mistaking he for vav, which, as already remarked, are very
like in Samaritan script as seen MSS. In all these cases, as
the Samaritan is supported by the Septuagint, its reading is
probably the original. In one instance, Exod. xxii. 9, there
is a fair case for rendering Dvfrs " judges " with the Peshitta.
To pass from the doctrine of the unity of God, and
consider the attributes ascribed to Him. There is PERSON-
ALITY ; how far the Israelites either of the North or the
South recognised the possibility of an " impersonal God "
may be questioned. At all events Abu'l Fath and the
Samaritan "Joshua" alike attribute personal attributes to
JHWH ; there is no trace in their hymns, or in Marqah, of
the notion that the passages in which " wrath " is ascribed
to Him is to be looked upon as an anthropomorphism, and
resolved into a figure of speech ; in this they follow the
usage of the Pentateuch. The idea so prominent among
the Israelites, of a covenant relationship between JHWH
and the children of Jacob, implies a person with personal
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 177
preferences. In regard to other Divine attributes, which the
sons of Israel were more ready to overlook, from their
tendency to degrade JHWH to be merely a national deity,
such as Spirituality, Omnipresence, and Eternity,
these are expressed with great clearness in the hymns of the
Samaritans. A striking example of this is to be found in a
hymn translated by Montgomery {The Samaritans, p. 20S)
from Gesenius' Carmiua Samaritana (p. 100).
"There is nothing like Him, or as He is ;
There is neither likeness nor body.
None knows who He is but He Himself;
None is His Creator or His fellow.
He fills the whole world,
Yet there is no chancing upon Him.
He appears from every side and cjuarter,
But no place contains Him.
Hidden yet withal manifest, He sees
And knows everything hidden.
Hidden nor appearing to sight,
Nothing is before Him, and after Him nothing."
To this belief in the absolute and supreme spirituality of God
does Gesenius ascribe various differences between the Samari-
tan Pentateuch and that of the Massoretes, in which anthropo-
morphisms, which appear in the latter, are changed in the
former into phrases less objectionable. The examples which
he brings forward are neither numerous nor striking. That
which appears most plausible is Deut. xxix. 20, in which the
Massoretic text is nirr»~tlN \'S'V\ which Gesenius translates fumat
nasus Dei, " the nose of God smokes " ; for this the Samaritan
reads miT_t!N "irv and Gesenius renders cxardcscit ira Dei,
"the wrath of God (JHWH) waxes hot." It is to be noted
that the word which Gesenius translates in the first case
"nose" is the same as that which in the second case he
renders " wrath." As the LXX. supports the Samaritan
reading, the change may be ascribed to the Massoretic
scribe. Dr Montgomery has noted the fact, that while
agreeing on these essential points with the Jews, the
Samaritans do not like them repeat the shema\ " Hear, oh
Israel, JHWH our God is one JHWH," or perhaps better
"JHWH is our God, JHWH is one"; they prefer the less
M
178 THE SAMARITANS
explicit statement of the Moslems, " There is no God but
God " ; a preference due to the presence around them of
fanatical Moslems.
As a side evidence of the spirituality ascribed to God by
the Samaritans may be adduced the fact that they taunted
the Jews with having images in their temple at Jerusalem
(Sam. Jos. chap, xlvii.). The ground for this accusation is prob-
ably to be found in the figures of cherubim, which probably
adorned the second temple as they did the first (see Chapter
VI.). The taunt is late, and is founded, as taunts usually
are, on a misrepresentation. It is an evidence of how austere
their spiritualism was that the presence in the Holy Place of
those symbols of Divine majesty was deemed a lessening of
the absolute spirituality of JHWH. The Samaritan taunt
was retorted with greater unfairness by the Jews. They said
that the Samaritans worshipped not God but Ashima; a name
that had the venom in it of suggesting ashem, " guilt." Some
have maintained that it was a modification of the name
Semiramis (Montgomery, The Samaritans, p. 381, n. 18).
It is supposed that the fabulous queen whose adventures are
narrated by Diodorus Siculus is a Syrian goddess who was
worshipped by the Hamathite colonists. The taunt is late,
and long before it was uttered the Hamathite worship had
given place to that of JHWH. Another explanation for
this taunt may be suggested, which seems simpler. As the
Jews to avoid pronouncing the sacred name whenever it
occurs read adhonai, so the Samaritans read in these cases
hash-shem, " the name," or as the Samaritans would pronounce
it ash-shem. Another accusation which the Jews make, with
equal lack of truth, and with even less excuse, is that they
worshipped a dove. The Samaritans indignantly deny that
there is any justification for this assertion. One might almost
be tempted to think that some Jew had blundered into the
Christian church, which in the reign of Zeno occupied the
place on Mount Gerizim of the Samaritan Temple, and
seeing the symbol of the Holy Spirit, ignored the change of
the temple into a church, and asserted that the Samaritans
worshipped the image of a dove. The truth is that the
Samaritans avoid, as carefully as do the Mohammedans, any
representations of men or animals even in their houses.
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 179
Their single remaining synagogue is devoid of all ornament
whatever.1
The Apocalyptists, who represent a phase of Jewish
thought prevalent in the second century before our era, had
described JHWH as localised in Heaven, and having a
visible outward form. In Enoch xlv. and xlvi. there is given
a picture of Heaven in which the Eternal is represented as
a white-haired old man, and with Him is the Son of Man,
" who had the appearance of a man and a face full of gracious-
ness." The post-Christian, but yet Jewish " Ascension of
Isaiah," describes seven successive heavens in the highest of
which dwells JHWH. All such localisation and consequent
limitation is sedulously avoided by the Samaritans. God
with them is not restricted to time or place. A striking
example is quoted by Montgomery from Gesenius' Carmina
Samaritana (iii. 1 3), speaking of the place of Divine power :
" No ocean is there, nor sea, nor the very heavens them-
1 This calumny is probably believed by the Jews still. As late as
1836 in the Hebrew Review, vol. iii., p. 400, it is asserted: "It cannot
be denied that the image of a dove was an object of adoration to the
Samaritans, inasmuch as the representation of that bird is still found in
their synagogues." The French Consul at St John d'Acre, who in 1807
sent an account of the Samaritans to Bishop Gregoire, states : M Above
the pulpit in which they read the Law, there is the image of a bird,
which they call Achinah, a name peculiar to the sect. When they name
the most High they do not, like the Jews, call Him Adonai, but either
Achinah or Shema. This last word is the Aramaic K1SC* ' the Name,'
which is often used by the Jews likewise to express the Supreme Being."
Monsieur Courances, French Consul at Aleppo, writes to Bishop
Gregoire about the same time : " In the Samaritan synagogue at Naplosa
(Nablus) there is a stage on which they read the book of the Law. This
book is hidden behind a veil, which no one but the Chacham, principal
teacher, may withdraw. At the sight of the book, on which the image
of a dove is engraved, all the members of the congregation rise from
their seats."
It may be observed that these two accounts do not agree; in the one
the image of the dove is "above the pulpit," in the other "the image of
a dove is engraved " on the book of the Law. One may be permitted
to surmise that either the consuls were themselves Jews, or without
going to Nablus contented themselves with information supplied them
by Jews. The title given to the High Priest of Chacham deepens
suspicion ; this title is not known among the Samaritans but it is
common among the Eastern Jews. The writer here thanks Rev. W.
Marwick for directing his attention to this article.
180 THE SAMARITANS
selves." As to Omniscience ; Marqah in his Commentary
begins by an ascription of praise to JHWH in which he
declares: " There is no secret hid from JHWH; He knows
alike that which was, that which is now, and that which shall
be." When, in His revelation of Himself to the Patriarchs,
JHW7H appears, in the narrative of Genesis, to assume
spatial relations, Marqah sees in these Theophanies the
presence of angels who have been created for the occasion.
Some of the Samaritan doctrinal statements seem to be
specially directed against Christianity and the doctrine of
the Trinity. Thus in the long poem in Heidenheim's Biblio-
theca Samaritana, No. XXI., it is said : " I am that I am,
the One, there is no plurality ; what I made was according
to plurality. There is no place to Him so that plurality
should be possible. He is JHWH and not to be measured
as if He were set up according to number. Alone He is in
what He made, and another He knows not. He has no
instruments, no hands, no equal, no attribute."
At the same time Marqah occasionally to a certain extent
hypostatises the Kabhodh JHWH, "the Glory of the Lord,"
in a way that at least suggests the Logos of Philo. Speaking
of God's revelation of Himself by fire on Mount Sinai, the
fire is called (p. 43^) "the great fire from JHWH"; in the
following page it is called "the fire of the Glory." Later,
when describing the passage of the Red Sea, he says : " And
Moses ascended up, and the Kabhodh (the Glory) raised him
out of the defile, and from the depth of the Red Sea."
Another attribute of Deity which he also hypostatises is
Qesita, "truth" ; thus, p. $ia, " Moses stretched out his hand
over the Red Sea, and the Truth said to him, ' I will declare
thy greatness in all the generations of the world.' " Occasion-
ally it appears as if the former of these attributes, the
Kabhodh JHWH, occupied the place of "the Angel of the
Presence."
The earliest source of our knowledge of the theology of
the Samaritans is the Samaritan Targum. It is written in
a dialect of Aramaic, and is dated about the third century
of our era, but probably represents the interpretations and
renderings in vogue at least a couple of centuries earlier.
More markedly than even the Jewish Targum does the
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 181
Samaritan reject anthropomorphisms ; but while it does so,
it does not, as do the Jewish Targums, endeavour to main-
tain the separation of God from the world by introducing
the Memra JHWH. Gesenius recognises a tendency to
save the Divine dignity by changing, in certain circum-
stances, JHWH of the Massoretes into maPak JHWH, " the
Angel of the Lord " ; in the Divine interviews with Balaam
(Num. xxiii. 4), while the Massoretic has " God met" Balaam,
the Samaritan has "the Angel of God" met him. In the
following verse where the Massoretic has : " And the Lord
(JHWH) set a word in the mouth of Balaam," the Samaritan
has maFak JHWH did so. In the more anthropomorphic
passage, Gen. xviii. 33, after Abraham has finished pleading
for Sodom, it is said : " The Lord went his way " ; and this
appears in the Samaritan text of the passage ; in the Targum
it becomes " The Angel of the Lord departed." All this
evidences the desire of the Samaritans to emphasize the
incommunicable glory, the ineffable dignity of JHWH the
God of Israel.
While the Jews developed their theology on similar
lines, the Samaritans attained the same results by a different
road, and expressed them in different and in more emphatic
ways. Both endeavoured to save Divine supremacy by
conserving His spirituality, but they have proceeded along
different lines. Both reveal the essential monotheism of the
religion of Israel. The evidence borne by the Samaritans to
this is the more striking that in their case the remnant of
legitimate Israelites had such an infusion sent to them of
influential colonists, all of whom were idolaters.
II. Of Creation. — The opening chapters of Genesis
rendered it impossible that the Samaritans, holding as they
do the sanctity of the whole Torah, should do other than
maintain the doctrine that JHWH had created the world;
whether in the absolute sense of Creation out of nothing, or
in the more limited sense held by Philo, of framing and
ordering. The Work of Creation occupies a more prominent
place with them than with the Jews. Among the few early
inscriptions of the Samaritans which have come down to us
is one in which over asrainst the decalogue are set the " Ten
182 THE SAMARITANS
Words" of Creation. A very considerable number of the
Samaritan hymns begin with what are called Creation verses,
i.e., verses in which God is specially addressed as having
made the world. It is difficult to reach the idea of absolute
Creation, the mind is always prone to insert into the mental
picture a primordial "stuff," on which the Deity exercised
His mighty power, and from it framed the earth and the
Heaven. All primitive Creation myths manifest this
peculiarity. Thus, in the Babylonian Creation Epos, it is
from the carcase of Tiamat that Marduk frames the world
of Heaven and earth. Similar to this is the Scandinavian
myth of Odin framing the world from the bones and the
flesh of the Giant Ymir. Even Philo, with the account of
Creation before him, has to presuppose primordial matter,
which is to some extent refractory, over which the power of
the Creator though great was not unlimited ; hence the
possibility of evil. The Samaritans avoided this. In one
of their hymns, LXIX. of Heidenheim's collection, men are
called upon to give " praise and glory to Him who created
the world by the word of His mouth, who made man," "who
caused the world to appear from that which was not." To
avoid the appearance of making matter eternal, a view that
might be maintained from the Torah itself, the Samaritans had
various devices. If the first verse of Gen. i. is regarded as
the title of the section, then it might be maintained that
" Tohu-wa-Bhohu " (without form and void) was primordial
matter, existing but as a confused, undistinguished mass ;
the reducing of this to order might be taken as Creation,
this and no more. One method was to assert clearly that
God created " Tohu-wa-Bhohu." Marqah represents the
Egyptians calling upon JHWH and addressing Him as the
Creator of " Tohu-wa-Bhohu." A bolder course is taken by
one of their hymn writers ; JHWH is identified with "Tohu-
wa-Bhohu." To explain this, Heidenheim suggests some
connection of this phrase with the Egyptian deity Thoth.
Though this view presents no etymological difficulty, there
is nothing in the attributes of Thoth which connects him
with creation. The term seems to have a closer affinity in
thought with the " Bythos " of the Valentinian Gnostics.
Marqah appears at times as if he had imbibed some of the
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 183
Gnostic emanational ideas, as when he speaks of the seven
things which God has "chosen and separated from His
Godhead " (p. 68b), " from whom everything comes, to whom
it returns " (p. 144a:). The fact, however, that will and choice
are attributed to JHWH at once changes the character of
the process. Creation can be nothing else than emanation
by Divine volition. This view is confirmed by this other
saying, " By a word " — the expression of volition and thought
— "is the world renewed." Though this is not expressly
stated by him, from some of Marqah's sayings, it would seem
at any rate that he held that the world was created for the
manifestation of the Seven Things which God had " separated
from His Godhead," afrisli yathon VElahuthah, "Light, the
Sabbath, Mount Gerizim, Adam, the Two Tables of Stone,
the Great Prophet Moses, and Israel." This view is akin
to the Talmudic idea that the world was created for the
Law; and the Christian thought, that it was created to
manifest the Divine Glory in the work of Redemption. The
Samaritan is in reality a more detailed expression of the
Jewish idea. If one may take Marqah as the type of
Samaritan theology in general, there was a significance
seen in the very letters of the story of Creation. The account
begins with the word B'reshith, and the first letter of that
word is the second letter of the alphabet ; this is to show
that God first created the Abyss. Marqah declares that had
the first letter of the story of Creation been " aleph," the first
letter of the alphabet, no change would have been possible.
This last phrase referring to the possibility of change,
introduces another view held by Marqah, and probably by
other Samaritans as well, that there were several successive
creations. This is not in the sense in which Genesis is
ordinarily interpreted, that the Work of Creation was
accomplished by successive steps ; that after the creation
of the Abyss came the inflashing of light and then the fixing
of the dividing firmament, and so forth throughout the days.
His view is not that God accomplished the Work of Creation,
so to say, piecemeal, but that complete worlds passed away,
and were followed by others; Marqah founds his view on
Deut. xxxii. 7, which he renders, instead of " Remember the
days of old," " Remember that the world will die," reading
184
THE SAMARITANS
yamtith instead of the Massoretic fmoth. There is no trace
of this view in the hymns ; it may have been the result of
contact with Greek thought, especially of the Stoic type. At
the same time Marqah does not seem to have contemplated
a succession of identical worlds as did the Stoics, in each of
which are repeated in the same order the same events as had
occurred in all its predecessors. He does not seem to have
elaborated his theory to any extent. We must bear in mind
that the Universe, to the ancients, was a very small affair, if
compared with what astronomy unveils to us. Thus, Jn
2 Peter iii. 5-7, the writer seems to regard the destruction
of the world by fire which accompanies the last things as
equivalent to the destruction wrought by the flood. It is to
be observed that Marqah, too, has the " great fire which shall
devour the wicked, but which upon the righteous shall have
no power." One would compare also St Paul (1 Cor. iii. 13),
" the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is."
By the Samaritans, as by the Jews, the created Universe
was regarded as threefold ; Heaven, Earth, and Sheol. On
thc^last they do not dwell much. As to the Heavens,
they have, according to one hymn, seven, and according to
another, nine Heavens. While the highest of these, the
seventh or the ninth, is regarded as the most glorious, and
indeed called the " abode," yet the Samaritans do not localise
God in it. We have already referred to the " seven things "
which before Creation were separated from Himself by
Deity. While Light may be pictured as coming forth from
God before aught else definite existed, it is difficult to con-
ceive what figurate conception they could form of a pre-
existent " Sabbath " or " Mount Gerizim," not to speak of
" the Two Tables " of the Law and " the People Israel." The
pre-existence of Adam is to be found in> the Jewish Qabbala
in the form of " Adam Qadmon." Something not unlike this
appears in Christian theology in the doctrine sometimes
maintained of the Pre-existence of the Human Nature of
our Lord. The belief in the existence of Moses before the
Creation of the World is in harmony with that in regard
to Adam.
As the " Ten Words of^Creation " already referred to
throw a lighT*on~the views entertained by the Samaritans
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 185
of that work, it may be as well to give a translation of them
as they appear on the Nablus Tablet.
In the beginning God created.
And God said : " Let there be Light."
And God said : " Let there be a Firmament."
And God said : " Let the waters be gathered together."
And God said : " Let the Earth bring forth grass."
And God said : " Let there be Luminaries."
And God said : " Let the waters swarm."
And God said : " Let the Earth produce."
And God said : " Let us make Man."
And God said : " To you have I given it ! And God
saw all the work which He had made, and behold it
was very good."
And God said : " I am the God of your Fathers, the God
of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob."
It is impossible not to contrast this with the grotesque
Babylonian story of the Creation. Marduk chosen by the
other gods to slay Tiamat, the mother of them all, leaps
into the mouth of his grandmother and splits her up, and
makes the earth of the lower portion, and the sky of
the upper. Notwithstanding the general Canon that the
simpler form of a legend is the more ancient, the Germans
and their slavish followers here would have us believe that
from this grotesque story the Hebrew story has been evolved.
For my part I should as soon believe that Darwinism
was evolved from the story of " Jack and the Beanstalk."
Even admitting the etymological identity of Tehom with
Tiamat) this personification of "the Abyss" would seem
to be a secondary formation, like that which occurred in
the Middle Ages ; the theologians talked of the mouth of
Hell, and the artists of that time drew it as the mouth of a
gigantic dragon.
Before leaving the Samaritan theological views of
Creation it is worth while to observe the parallelism of
progress, with the difference of result in minor points. Both
Judaism and Samaritanism start from the same document,
the Law of Moses, both reach the idea of absolute Creation ;
of the two, the Samaritans maintain it the more rigidly. The
186 THE SAMARITANS
form in which it is conceived by the Samaritans, Emanation
by Will, is not Jewish. The difference may be regarded
as evidence of their independence of Judaism.
III. Of Man. — The genius of the Hebrew was but little
analytical ; it was introspective, but more in a religious than
in a psychological sense. As a consequence, the Samaritan
theologians do not treat their readers to disquisitions on the
constitution and faculties of Man. There is more than
a hint that they believed in the pre-existence at all events
of Adam. As has been already seen, Adam was one of
the seven emanations of Deity which preceded Creation ;
he comes exactly in the middle of the list, after Light,
the Sabbath, and Mount Gerizim, but before the Tables
of the Law, the Prophet Moses, and the People Israel.
At the same time they do not indulge fancies like that in
which the body of the Adam Qadmon was divided into
portions associated with the different " Sephiroth " of
Deity. In the "Ten Words" of Creation, the creation
of Adam occupies the eighth place, the last of the strictly
creative words ; the last two are the gift of creation to Adam,
and the statement of the covenant with Israel. As to
the Constitution of Man ; the Samaritans regard Man
as having a spiritual as well as a material nature, as being
composed of Soul and Body. In hymn No. XXI. n of
Heidenheim's collection, it is said of Adam that God made
him "from water and fire, from spirit and dust." Marqah
has a passage of a similar purport. In that hymn to which
we have already referred, it is declared : " He arose as the
son of twenty years, perfect in knowledge and speech." The
body of Adam was made from dust, but that dust was taken
from Mount Gerizim. The placing of Adam in the Garden
of Eden and the creation of Eve are related as in Genesis.
They have a doctrine of the Fall but it is not elaborated.
In the poem to which we have already referred, it is
significant of the idea they have of God that it is the angels,
not the Lord God, who say : " Behold Adam is become
as one of us to know good and evil." After the Fall, Adam
wandered away from God for a century, during which
he begat the Jinns ; he, however, returned to God and He
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 187
blessed him. He, with Abel, Enoch, and Noah, is regarded as
a being of special sanctity. At the same time the Samaritans,
no more than the Jews, have any real notion of the nature
of sin, or of the connection which the all but universally
expressed sense of alienation from God, and consequent
need of reconciliation with Him, has with the sin of Adam.
According to Dr Mills the Samaritans believe firmly in
the immortality of Man. They hold that "the soul at death
leaves the body and enters another world, and a different
state of existence." Strikingly they ground their faith
in this on Exod. iii. 6. " I am the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," the passage which our Lord
quoted against the Sadducees. It will be seen that the
theological anthropology of the Samaritans was limited in its
scope ; the question of Freedom of the Will never seems
to have emerged, nor any of the questions connected with
Original Sin.
IV. .OF- A NGFLS.— Because the Samaritans like the
Sadducees received as canonical only the books of Moses,
patristic opinion assumed that they agreed in everything.
Reland, influenced probably by this, contends that the
Samaritans do not believe in angels. The Fathers, however,
were not agreed in this, for Epiphanius while saying that the
Sadducees and the Samaritans agreed in denying the
doctrine of the Resurrection, declares that they differ as
to the angels, the Samaritans affirming their existence,
although the Sadducees denied it. It is difficult to under-
stand how either, with the account of Jacob's vision before
them of the " Angels of God ascending and descending,"
denied their existence. Logic, however, has little to do with
religion— it belongs to a sphere above logic. Whatever may
have been the case with the Sadducees, as to the Samaritans
we have ample evidence that they did believe in angels
and do. In the Samaritan Targum the plurality of the
angels is retained ; had the Samaritans by the time it was
written ceased to believe in them, the phraseology would
have been altered so as to explain them away. In the
Samaritan book of Joshua, all Israel, with Joshua at their
head, are represented as praising God who had created the
188 THE SAMARITANS
heavenly spirits, rufiani (genios caelestes). Further, when
Joshua calls the people to renew their covenant with JHWH,
he calls the angels to be witnesses {md lakitat). Dr
Montgomery has gathered together, chiefly from the hymns
in Heidenheim's collection in the Bibliotheca Samaritana,
a number of designations of the angels, as " Host of
Heaven," the " Exalted Ones," " The Congregation Above,"
etc. In their avoidance of anthropomorphism, and their
desire to exalt JHWH, the Samaritans were necessitated
to introduce angelic beings as intermediaries between the
Almighty and His creatures. When, as already remarked
in the Massoretic, it is said (Num. xxiii. 4) " God met Balaam,"
in the Samaritan it is " the Angel of God found him " ;
further, in verse 16 of the same chapter in the Massoretic
it is "The Lord (JHWH) met," in the Samaritan "the
Angel of JHWH"; with this the Targum agrees.
Although the Samaritans have nothing of the extensive
hierarchy of angels found in the Talmud and the
Qabbala ; nor of that to be found in the Apocalyptists,
e.g. book of Enoch ; nor have been influenced by the
angelologies of the Quran, yet, as may be seen from a
hymn published by Heidenheim in his Quarterly, some
of the Samaritan theologians assigned to the angels a
very extensive and diversified sphere of activity. Some of
them wait on God in His temple, watch over the
morning and evening sacrifices, and attend to the other rites
of worship ; while others fulfil Divine commissions in all parts
of the Universe, or convey orders to yet other angelic
servants of the Almighty. Although in the " Ten Words of
Creation " there is no mention of the angels, yet they
are declared to be the first created of all the creatures
of God. At the same time it would seem that, as with
ourselves, among the present Samaritans the doctrine of the
angels has fallen into the background, as Dr Mills takes
no notice of the Samaritans having any views on the
subject.
Although the Samaritans have not, as above observed,
the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Ophanim of Judaism, Rabbinic
Qabbalistic and Apocalyptic, nor the yet more complicated
hierarchy of the type of Dionysius the Areopagite, yet they
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 189
regarded certain angels as occupying a position of superiority
to the others. There were four to whom they assigned supreme
honour ; in this they agree with the angelology of the book
of Enoch, although the names given to these archangels do
not resemble those found in Enoch. In the book of Daniel
two angelic names occur, Michael and Gabriel. In the Apoc-
rypha are found other two, Raphael in Tobit (v. 4), and Uriel
in 2 Esdras (iv. 1). These are the names which are found in
the book of Enoch. Among the Samaritans there appears to
be some uncertainty as to the names to be ascribed to these
rulers of the Heavenly Host. Petermann says (Reisen, i. 283) :
" They (the Samaritans) recognise four ruling angels which are
named ; Phanuel is the first, and under him Anusa, Kabbala,
and Nasi." The first of these is found in Enoch liv. 6, occupy-
ing the place in which Uriel generally stands ; it appears to
be derived from the account of Jacob wrestling with the angel
(Gen. xxxii. 23) ; the name Jacob gave to the place is trans-
ferred to the Being with whom he wrestled, who is called
among the Jews, "the Angel of the Presence." "Anusa" is
the first word of the Egyptian cry of fear when they found
that their chariot wheels had been removed. The word
really means "Let me flee" (Exod. xiv. 25); the Samaritans
seem to have regarded it as a proper name. Dr Montgomery
thinks that Anusa is derived from Enosh, which appears in
Qabbalistic literature as a form of Enoch. The Scriptural
authority claimed for " Kabbala " is Num. iv. 20, where y^33
(KabaWa) is translated in the A.V. "when they (the sacred
vessels) are covered " ; in the R.V. it is rendered, after
Gesenius and Fuerst, " in a moment." There may be some-
thing in the conjecture that, despite the difference of spelling,
it is related to Qabbala (n?3p), "the secret doctrine," as if
this angel were the custodier of the Divine secret counsels.
The last angelic name, " Nasi," means " Prince," but is
derived from the name which Moses gave to the altar which
he erected to God after his victory over Amalek, " Jehovah-
Nissi." Instead of the last name Dr Montgomery gives,
following Heidenheim {Bib, Sam. Lit. xlvi.), " Zilpa," a name
which appears elsewhere as that of Leah's maid. He says
he cannot trace its origin. Like the Jews, the Samaritans
190 THE SAMARITANS
associate the angels with the stars, though not in so definite
and prominent a way.
A belief in good angels necessitates a corresponding
belief in evil spirits. The demonology of the Samaritans is
not extensive, nor is it developed hierarchically as is that of
the Talmud. Petermann, who got information orally, says
that the Samaritans named Azazel, Belial, and Jasara as
devils. From its occurrence in connection with the " Scape-
goat" and the " Great Day of Atonement" (Lev. xvi. 10), the
origin of the first is obvious. The second name is probably
derived from the apparently personal use of the term in
Deut. xiii. 13 (14), "the children of Belial." It may be noted
that under the form " Beliar " this name occurs as leader of
the devils in " The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs," in
the " Ascension of Isaiah," and the " Book of Jubilees." The
third name Dr Montgomery would connect with tzar'ah,
"the hornet" (Deut. vii. 20); as neither Petermann nor
Montgomery has given the name in Hebrew or Arabic
characters, nor any reference, the correctness of the etymology
cannot be affirmed ; the function assigned to the " hornet "
in the passages where it occurs, driving out the enemies of
Israel before them, scarcely suits the common idea of
diabolic agency. Dr Cowley, in an article in the Jewish
Quarterly (viii. 571), refers to a being called " Mehablah, who
corresponds somewhat to Satan." The creation of the evil
spirits the Samaritans connect with "the darkness" over
which the Spirit of God brooded ; the descendants of Cain
also became evil spirits. The rebellious angels were yet
another source for the hosts of evil. In this last they agree
with the demonology of Enoch and of Jude. The demonology
of the Samaritans is thus rather indefinite in character, but
their belief in magic as exhibited in the story of Shobach as
it is related in Abu'l Fath and in the Samaritan " book of
Joshua," must have been profound : evil spirits under the
controlling power of magical formulae erect a sevenfold iron
wall which hems in Joshua and the host of Israel. This
last exhibits affinities to the stories of the "thousand and
one nights."
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 191
V. Of Revelation. — Not only has every people a belief
in Divine Beings, but also considers it possible to learn from
them what their will is. It might be that the worshipper
gained this from the flight of birds, from the entrails of
sacrificial victims, or from the configuration of the stars.
The precise way in which the deities arranged matters so
that their will was revealed in this manner, was never
explained. It was more intelligible when the gods were
supposed to reveal their wishes by dreams and oracles. It
was a higher stage in religious development when the
Hebrews held that JHWH their God had revealed His will
in a written Law. There was reason in the distinction made
by Mohammed between those religions which had sacred
books and those which had none. A book which contains a
revelation naturally suggests a human intermediary who has
received the Divine message and committed it to writing.
To the Samaritans, Moses was the only " Mediator " between
God and humanity, meaning by that the Samaritans. The
Samaritans have prophets whose graves they visit ; these,
however, are none of the prophets associated with the
Ephraimite tribes. The want of any prophetic book of
history parallel with the books of Samuel and Kings is a
phenomenon to be noted in view of the relation in which
the Samaritans stood to the Jews. The fabrication of the
Samaritan " book of Joshua " appears to be an attempt to
meet this want. Moses, as we have said, is the one great
prophet through whom JHWH revealed His will. He alone
had seen God and had spoken with Him face to face ; he had
received the Law from JHWH. Not impossibly the unique
honour given to Mohammed by the Moslems, not to speak
of the Divine Nature ascribed to our Lord by the Christians,
would tend to exalt Moses to the solitary pedestal which he
occupies in the faith of the Samaritans.
The sacred Torah does not owe its sanctity to the fact
that it was communicated to Israel by Moses. As we have
already seen, the Law was regarded as emanating from
Deity before the creation of the world. The very Tables of
Stone on which the Law was written lay in the primeval
fires until they were delivered to Moses. While they have
Scripture for saying that the Law was engraved on these
192 THE SAMARITANS
Tables by the " finger of God," Samaritan opposition to
anthropomorphism appears in this that they make lightning
the finger of the Almighty. Whether this highest sanctity
was ascribed to the whole Law or only to the Ten Words is
not quite certain. A special sanctity was certainly ascribed
to the Decalogue, as is evidenced by the fact that it has been
so frequently found inscribed separately. Highly as the
Samaritans reverence the Law, they do not descend to the
blasphemous absurdity of the Rabbin, who represent the
Almighty occupying a portion of every day in studying the
Law. The Law is reverenced by them as being JHWH's
sole revelation of Himself to man. Moses was regarded by
Marqah as evolving the whole Torah from the Ten
Commandments.
As the unique position occupied by the Law emphasized
the dignity of Moses, through whom it had come to Israel,
it laid the Samaritans more open to Moslem and Christian
influences. Yet these may easily be exaggerated. Marqah's
creed seems almost an echo of that of Mohammed : " There
is only one God, and there is no prophet but Moses the son
of Amram." It is really independent ; it contains a double
protest, on the one hand against the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity, and on the other against the many claimants to
the prophetic office, who latterly appear to have been pre-
tenders " wear ing a rough garment to deceive." In reality
Islam does not seem to have exercised as much influence on
the Samaritans during the time of the rule of the "Sons of
Ishmael" as Christianity did in the earlier period when
it was supreme. Although in pre-Christian times the
Samaritans expected a Messiah, as we shall see, in later
times some as ben Manir called " Moses " the " Messiah."
He is called the " first of creatures," a designation which
suggests what is said of our Lord in Col. i. 15, "The first-
born of every creature." Pre-existence is ascribed to Moses
as it is to Jesus in Christian theology, but not as to Christ,
an eternal pre-existence. In a hymn which appears in
Heidenheim's Bibliotheca Samaritanay there is a prayer
in which Moses occupies a place almost equivalent to that
of Christ, in the phrase which concludes our Christian
supplications " For Christ's sake." After references to God's
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 193
goodness the writer says, " Oh Lord J HWH, turn from the
heat of Thy wrath and be appeased for the sake of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and for the labour of Thy servant Moses "
{ubkamal 'abhadh'ka Mosheh). As may be seen the other
patriarchs receive a certain amount of honour, but it is sub-
sidiary to that given to Moses: he was before Creation an
emanation of the Supreme God, he is above all the organ
of Divine revelation ; " faithful in the house of God."
VI. Of THE Messiah. — When our Lord had His conver-
sation with the " Woman of Samaria" at Jacob's Well, and
impressed upon her the need of a spiritual religion, she
appealed to the national expectation of the Messiah " who
would teach them all things." Confirmatory of this is the
fact that in the Carmina Samaritana there are many
references to the coming of one who should restore unity
to Israel and subdue "seven nations"; the reference of the
latter statement being to the "seven nations" whom Joshua
subdued. Although Messiah is not the name ordinarily
given to Him whom they expect, they sometimes so speak
of Him as in the Ludolf letters (III.) the Samaritans say,
" The Messiah has not yet arisen." The name by which He
is generally designated is " Thaheb." There is considerable
discussion as to the precise meaning of this title. The root
of the word appears to be the Aramaic equivalent of the
Hebrew 2W shubh changed into inn thahebh; here the tav takes
the place of shin in accordance with the character of the
Samaritan, and he the place of vav. Thus the root contains
the idea of "returning." In the participle, in which the vav
reappears, the word assumes a subjective sense and means
repentance. This suggests that the work ascribed to the
Thaheb was not wholly that of a military conqueror, who
would in a material sense "restore the kingdom to Israel."
It is to be noted that while 3*B> shubh occurs in the Hebrew
Pentateuch close upon 180 times, only once is it rendered in
the Samaritan Targum by any derivative of 3nn thahebh ;
sometimes the Hebrew root itself appears.
The emphasis of the Samaritan idea of the Messiah lies
in a different direction from that of the Jews. The Thaheb
is one who will restore spiritually thejpeople of Israel to the
N
194 THE SAMARITANS
covenant relation to JHWH, which so far as obvious signs
are concerned they have meanwhile lost, and politically give
them dominion over the nations. As a preliminary to this,
he will reunite Judah to Ephraim. On the ground of
etymology it has been held by some that there was a belief
among the Samaritans that the Thaheb would be a re-
incarnation of Moses ; of this there seems no proof. A
Christian writer, Eulogius, says that the Samaritans expect
a reappearance of Joshua ; that also remains unconfirmed
from Samaritan sources. Although "anointed Royalty,"
the prominent element in the Jewish conception, is
secondary in Samaritan theology, it is not absent ; Joshua
is called a king, and so are such of the judges as they
recognise. Kingship had not such a hold on the Israelites
of the North as it had among the Jews ; the imperial glories
of David and Solomon and the long succession of sovereigns
of the Davidic race gave kingship a glory which the ever-
changing dynasties of the Ephraimite tribes never could
have. Moreover, for a short while under the Hasmonaean
and Herod ian rulers kingship was in name revived. The
prophetic idea of the successor of Moses was looked upon
as more essential. A very interesting addition to our know-
ledge of Samaritan Christology was given to the world by
Dr Merx at the Stockholm Congress of Orientalists in 1889,
in the form of a pre-Christian hymn in honour of the Thaheb.
It is clearly assumed that this " Thaheb " of the Samaritans
is inferior to Moses; while Moses lived 120 years, the life
of the "Thaheb" was to be only no years, the years of the
life of Joshua. Though in this hymn the conquering side of
the Restorer's work is that which is most prominent, the
prophetic side is that which is first referred to ; as pre-
liminary to his conquering progress " JHWH will call him and
teach him His Law, and clothe him with His prophecy." At
the same time, he is pre-eminently a conqueror D^j nb>y ins Tjijjp'i
" And he shall reign over eleven nations." His kingdom,
however, was only to be a temporary one, much like the
Messiah expected by the cultivated of the orthodox Jews.
As, however, he was at the same time to be " The prophet
like unto Moses " his resemblance to the Messiah expected
by the Samaritan woman is striking ; an anointed one who
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 195
yet was a heavenly teacher who would show his people
all things.
A later Scriptural notice of the Samaritans reveals
another aspect of their Christology. When the evangelist
Philip came to Samaria, he found Simon Magus occupying
a position of great influence among the inhabitants of that
district. He evidently had veiled his claims by using
mysterious indefinite terms in regard to them. His followers
went further, they declared him to be "the mighty power
of God." This would imply not only that Simon claimed
to be the " Thaheb," but that the "Thaheb" according to
his claim was a much loftier personage than one who was
about to repeat in his own person the glories of Joshua ;
rather he seems to have claimed to be the incarnation of
the " Logos " of Philo, in short a Samaritan Jesus Christ.
Indeed, Jerome in his Commentary on Matt. xxiv. repre-
sents Simon as saying, " I am the Word of God." This,
however, must have been written long afterwards, if
Jerome's account is accurate, as Jerome further represents
him as claiming to be the " Paraclete " — a claim that implies
a dependence on the fourth Gospel. It is possible that the
latter designation had been drawn from a work of some
follower of Simon, and therefore not necessarily represent-
ing Samaritan thought. Even if the words were really
Simon's they might represent a change in his own views
consequent on his intercourse with the Christian apostles
and evangelists. On being rejected by the Apostles Simon
may have redefined his position, and declared himself no
longer the Messiah; that by his baptism he had acknowledged
Jesus to be, but claimed to be the Paraclete promised by
Jesus. Though the word parakktos is solely Johannine, so
far as the New Testament is concerned, it yet may have
originated with our Lord Himself. The modification our
Lord's words have sustained in passing through John's
memory may have been less than we are sometimes in-
clined to think ; the term Paraclete, as applied to Christ's
promised successor, who should complete His work, might
have become part of the ordinary language of the Christian
Church, though this, because no other of the New Testament
writers had found occasion to use it, has not been recog-
196 THE SAMARITANS
nised. This view is favoured by the fact that the term
had got into Rabbinic.
Like the Jews and not a few of the Christian Fathers,
the Samaritans expected the Thaheb at the beginning of
the seventh millennium of the world's history. According
to their own reckoning, which is very uncertain as to
the post-pentateuchal period, this date is long past ;
Dr Montgomery tells of a letter sent off by the Samaritan
community in 1808 which was dated by them "Since the
Creation 6246 years." Petermann who visited Nablus
in 1853 found the Samaritans expecting the advent of
the " Thaheb " in five years. When Dr Mills, who visited
them in i860, interrogated them they postponed the date to
1 9 10. When they now may expect him it is impossible
to say, as they are reticent on the subject ; they probably
have now reverted to the opinion of Scaliger's corre-
spondents, " God only knows the time when the • Thaheb '
will appear." They expect him to be of the seed of Joseph.
They meet the difficulty that in their community there are
no descendants of Joseph by expressing their belief that
somewhere, east or west, there are Samaritan communities
in which will be found descendants of Joseph who have kept
their genealogy. From one of these communities will come
the deliverer, the "Thaheb." The Jews have an idea of
a Messiah ben Joseph, who will precede the Messiah ben
David, and will fulfil the prophecies of a suffering Messiah.
VII. Of the Last Things. — With the Jewish Apoca-
lyptists the appearance of the Messiah was expected to be
the immediate precursor of the Last Judgment and the end of
the world. The Samaritan view differs from this ; the reign
of the "Thaheb " is supposed merely to begin the Millennium.
When this period of peace and righteousness, and for the
people of God, prosperity, comes to an end, the abounding
wickedness of the Gentiles will move JHWH to wrath ; as
before the Flood, "the whole earth had corrupted its way
before the Lord," so after the Sabbatic millennium. One
cannot fail to observe the resemblance which this bears to
the scheme of history presented in the Apocalypse of St
John. After Satan has been bound a thousand years, he
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 197
is to be loosed a little season, when he will " come forth
to deceive the nations" (Rev. xx. 3, 8). The eschatology of
the Samaritans had therefore several points of resemblance
to that of the Early Church ; the coming of the Messiah was,
according to neither, the immediate precursor of the Last
Judgment, and between the Millennium and that solemn
event there is to be a period of falling away.
Eschatology has an individual as well as a general
reference. In regard to the individual, it has to a certain
extent been considered under " Man " ; it has been shown
that the Samaritans held that the soul was immortal, but
also that there was a resurrection of the body. In the
earliest expression of their faith which the Samaritans sent
" to their brethren in the West " there is certainly no clause
which affirms the Resurrection, yet from the presence in it of
a clause which states their belief " In the day of Vengeance
and Recompense," it would seem necessarily to follow.
Certainly the Samaritans affirmed their belief in the resur-
rection of the body in their conversations with Dr Mills
{Modern Samaritans, p. 219). One of their proof texts was
" I, even I am He, and there is no God with me, I kill
and I make alive " (Deut. xxxii. 39). The doctrine is fully
developed in Marqah. It is to be observed that Origen
in his Commentary on Matt. xxii. 23-33, assumes that, like
the Sadducees, the Samaritans deny the Resurrection. So
Epiphanius, speaking of the Sadducees, says : " They reject
the Resurrection of the dead, thinking like the Samaritans."
The received date for Marqah is between these two Fathers.
As Marqah's evidence is from within, it is to be preferred.
Abisha's description of the Last Day would seem to
have been influenced by the Revelation of St John. " Then
will be annihilated all beings from man even to cattle and
birds, from grass and herbs to forest trees and fruit trees.
All hard and stony rocks, all valleys and mountains will
then disappear, only the sacred mountain will remain in
the midst of its gardens, a place of refuge for all. Then
shall all flesh perish from fear of the God of Israel. Then
speaks the Kabodh JHWH 'the Glory of the Lord,' the
Memra, the Logos, ' See now that I even I am He, and
beside me there is no God.' When He has spoken, every
198 THE SAMARITANS
place will heave in which the dead have been buried. Then
the earth itself shall split up, and out of it shall ascend
an odour, the odour of the returning Israelites, an odour
like the smell of myrtles. They stand there bearing
the infirmities, which they had when they were put in
their graves. The prophets and the priests will be there, and
among them Moses. And Moses shall pray for his people,
and Aaron and his sons shall offer propitiation. The
people shall then be divided, the pious shall go into the
Garden of Eden, they shall be in one part, in another
part the wicked shall stand smoking before the fire. Moses
shall pray for them, and they shall all be turned into dust."
This conditional immortality applies only to the children
of Israel, as is seen by what follows. Heidenheim says that,
according to the Talmud, the dust of the wicked forms
a footstool for the righteous in Paradise. " When the
Gentiles shall rise out of their graves they shall be naked,
smelling vilely. Their faces shall be covered with blackness.
They have no saviour nor any one to set them free from the
flames of fire ; this fire shall burn them in deepest sheol."
According to this account of the Last Things, the number of
those who are permitted to enter into the Garden of Eden
must be extremely limited ; only the pious among the children
of Israel are to have that privilege, the wicked of the
children of the Holy People are, as has been seen, to be
turned into ashes. To all nations, lasting, presumably
everlasting, tortures are assigned. The Samaritans of half a
century ago were, according to Dr Mills, not quite sure
whether the life after the Resurrection would be everlasting
or not ; they declared that this would depend entirely on
the will of God. Amram, Dr Mills' informant, admitted
that the question had never been put or considered in their
theology. The limited number of those the Samaritans
admit to their Paradise is necessitated by the limited
boundaries they assign to it. As, according to their belief,
the primitive Eden was situated within the limits of Mount
Gerizim, so too the Paradise of eternal blessedness is placed in
this same Holy Mountain. It may be noted that the Samaritan
theologians do not dwell as does Mohammed on the elements
that constitute the bliss of Paradise ; in regard to this they
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 199
are wisely reticent. As to the place of punishment the
Samaritans are equally silent.
Summary.
While in regard to theology the views of the Jews and
the Samaritans are essentially one, there are not a few
minor points in which they differ. The primary doctrine of
Israelitism is, and always has been the unity and spirituality
of God. The Samaritans manifest a greater sensitiveness
than the Jews to anything that would seem to impinge on
either of these sides of the doctrine concerning God. Such
doctrines, to be received at all, must be grasped in all their
sharpness. The Samaritans appear to have stereotyped their
monotheism at a time when the two sections of Israelitism
had separated from each other. It may be said that when
the priest from Nineveh preached JHWH and His worship
to the heathen colonists, these colonists endeavoured to
combine the new faith with the old idol worship (2 Kings
xvii. 33). We must bear in mind that all primitive religions
were essentially monotheistic, but as in Roman Catholic
countries the saints get more prayers than God, so among
the nations, the lower gods usurped the honours due to the
Most High. The contrast then, in the case of these colonists,
was between an absolute monotheism in which the Supreme
alone was worshipped and believed in, and a Supreme God
believed in merely in a vague way, but not worshipped
because He was too good ever to do them hurt and too great
to care about their acts of worship. The heathen gave his
worship to lower gods who were nearer him, who were
malevolent enough to will to hurt him, and at the same
time near enough to appreciate his prayers and sacrifices.
The syncretism must soon have broken down. When the
f Samaritans, as we already had occasion to remark, offered
Zerubbabel to assist in the rebuilding of the temple at
Jerusalem, they claim to have been worshippers of JHWH
from the days of Esarhaddon ; the Jews in refusing their
assistance do not deny the purity of their worship or assert
the intrusion of any polytheistic elements into it. Having
got rid of the subordinate deities, with the zeal of new
converts, they carry out their new faith to its logical
200 THE SAMARITANS
conclusions ; hence they become even stricter in their
monotheism and in their rejection of everything like idolatry.
The case of Islam is in point. The unitarian ism of the
Moslem is more in evidence than that of the Jew, and their
rejection of everything approaching to image-making. No
pictures of men or animals are to be found in the house of
an Orthodox Moslem. Originally the Moslems had been
image-worshippers ; the Kaaba was full of idols. In like
manner the Samaritans obeyed the Second Command-
ment with absolute literalness : while the Jews introduced
Cherubim into the adornment of the temple in Jerusalem,
the Samaritans built theirs bare of all such adornment.
Indeed they taunted the Jews with their failure to keep the
Law in all its purity. This could scarcely have dated from
the time of Ezra, nor does the mood of mind harmonise with
the placid adoption wholesale of the Ezrahitic additions to
the Law.
The Samaritan effort to maintain the absoluteness of
Creation manifests a similar effort after the logical. The
doctrine of the angels affords the clearest proof of the
primitive character of Samaritan theology. It is clear that
Samaritan angelology dates from a period before Ezra
brought " the names of the angels from Babylon." Later
they seem to have imitated the Jews in giving names to the
angels, but these generally are formed on a totally different
principle from that which rules in Jewish angelic nomencla-
ture. The Samaritans have formed their angelic names
ingeniously from texts of Scripture. The Jews on the other
hand have taken attributive statements concerning Deity and
added to them the syllable el, e.g., Uriel, the Light of God
or God is my Light ; Raphael, God the healer. If the
Samaritans got the Law from Manasseh after Ezra had
brought the names of the angels, why were the angelic
names not received also ? So too with the evil spirits, the
Samaritan names are quite different from the Jewish. It is
evident that Samaritanism represents a type of Israelitism
which existed before the angels were named. Samaritan
Christology is also independent of the Jewish. The title
" Thaheb " regards the work of the promised deliverer from
a point of view totally different from that of the Jews. The
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SAMARITANS 201
eschatology of the Samaritans, conditioned as it is by the
place assigned to Mount Gerizim, is in marked contrast to
that of Judaism, but it is manifestly a later growth.
Supplementary Note.
It may be observed that no use has been made in the
foregoing of Dr L. Wreschner's pamphlet, Samaritanische
Traditional mitgeteilt und nach Hirer gescJiielitliclicn Entzvicke-
lung untersucJit, because the views of the writer have been
so overladen with Jewish prejudice that his conclusions are
practically valueless. He assigns reasons, in themselves
not at all cogent, for maintaining that all the Samaritan
differences from orthodox Judaism are late, without con-
sidering arguments which seem much stronger, pointing
to an opposite conclusion. Thus__he assujrnes_that_ the
Samaritans rejected the traditional text of the Pentateuch,
and never takes any account of "the possibility that the
Samaritan text is in many cases the primitive, prior to
that adopted by the Jews. Exaggerating the resemblance
between the Sadducees and the Samaritans into an identity,
he argues that it is more likely that the Samaritans borrowed
their doctrines from the Sadducees than that "the important
sect of the Sadducees, sprung from the soil of Judaism,"
should adopt from an inconsiderable foreign sect explanations
of the Law. Nor is a .third possibility noted that the resem-
blances between these two sects are due to similar causes
operating independently. The_source_of both is sacerdotalism.:
the Sadducees were the priestly party among the Jews, and
the Samaritans, as they got their revived knowledge of
the Law through the priests sent by Esarhaddon, had no
indication given them of the spiritual aspirations which
tradition had carried down along with the precepts of
the Law, the custodiers of which were the Prophets. So
too Wreschner would account for the many resemblances
between Samaritanism and the doctrines of the Karaites :
the Samaritans borrowed from the Karaites. The origin
of the similarities appears to be totally different ; the
Karaites by rejecting the interpretations of the Law intro-
duced by the Pharisaic Rabbin reached a position in point
of doctrine in man)- cases identical with that of the
202 THE SAMARITANS
Samaritans who had never accepted them. He assumes a
heathen origin for some of the Samaritan peculiarities, e.g.,
the restriction of the Levirate Law to the case of a virgin
betrothed whose husband had died before the marriage
was consummated ; this Wreschner considers borrowed from
India, without indicating any way in which this variation
had been introduced into Samaria from so remote a source.
It may be noted that the authority for this being a doctrine
of the Samaritans is the very suspicious one of a Talmudic
treatise. Dr Wreschner arguing from the way in which
the Samaritans escaped the persecution which Epiphanes
directed against the Jews — a fact known only from the
biased evidence of Josephus — deduces that the Samaritans
very readily adopted the views of others. He utterly
ignores the terrible persecutions which the Samaritans
endured at the hands of the pagan emperors of Rome,
and the persecutions still more terrible which they suffered
from Christian Byzantine emperors. From these persecu-
tions the Jews were exempt.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT
It is impossible to go back historically, to the origin of
writing. By the very nature of the case there could be no
record of the time when man first found out a way to make
his thoughts permanent Possibly from the beginning of
that earlier time when man learned to communicate to others
his thoughts and feelings by audible signs, by speech, the
words would be emphasized and explained by gestures, signs
which appealed to sight. But to convey thought beyond the
range of the voice, still more to hand it on to the future,
something more was needed, hence the step was taken of
depicting visible signs ; not only making thought visible but
permanent. The sound of a voice is dissipated when spoken,
but litera scripta manet. The earliest stage of writing was of
necessity hieroglyphic — things were represented by the
pictures of them ; an ox would be expressed by the roughly
drawn picture of an ox. An action would be suggested by
drawing the figure of a person performing it ; as running,
by a person running. An emotion, though more elusive,
could be depicted by showing a person in the attitude
naturally assumed by one under it, as grief by a figure
sitting with the hand on the forehead. Such a written
language would be quite independent of vocal speech. The
picture of a horse would be recognised everywhere for what
it was, but while an Englishman would call it " a horse," a
Frenchman would name it " un cheval," and a German " ein
pferd." Such a written language, totally divorced from
speech, is easily conceived, but as a matter of fact, Chinese
is the only language that is to any serious extent ideographic.
Among Western nations, numerals are the only ideographs
203
204 THE SAMARITANS
in general use ; to them all the numerical signs, Roman and
Arabic, have the same meaning, but are designated by very
different words.
Although by means of conventions its scope could be
considerably extended, it would soon be found very difficult
to express anything but the simplest facts by an ideographic
language. The vocal signs that existed alongside the visible
had, by convention, a greater capacity for conveying shades
of meaning ; hence arose the practice of giving vocal
language visible signs, instead of expressing thought directly
by more or less conventionalised hieroglyphs, doing so
indirectly by visualised words. When the name of a thing
was composed of syllables, each of which was significant, it
was natural that these would be represented each by the
picture of the thing signified. This stage is found represented
both in Egypt and Assyria. Convention came in to extend
the meaning of the picture when it represented a syllable.
When each syllable was thus depicted, the unity of the word
which they formed was indicated by subjoining a separate
sign, which showed whether it was a person or a place that
was intended. A further step in analysis was taken when
the initial sound in a name was all that was supposed to be
represented by the picture. In this an approach was made
to strictly alphabetic writing ; but only an approach, as the
same sound was often represented by different signs, while
again the same signs might represent different sounds.
Meantime a process of simplification and conventional-
ising was going on in regard to the hieroglyphic symbols,
especially in Assyria. The fact that the alluvial plain of
Babylon did not supply stone but did a fine clay which
could be formed into tablets, on which a fine pointed wooden
chisel might be used, led to modification of the hieroglyphic
pictures in one direction. Egypt, which had no strata of
fine slay, had the papyrus reed, the pith of which supplied
another material for writing on ; this led to modification in
another direction. Characters were not so naturally inscribed
on it by a chisel as by a reed pen dipped in ink. In the
hieratic and demotic script of Egypt, the hieroglyphs tended
to assume curved lines instead of the upright and horizontal
wedges affected in the plains of Babylon. The Hittites
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 205
who also had a hieroglyphic language did not invent for
themselves a cursive script but adopted the Assyrian,
cumbrous as it seems to us.
This, however, must be developed a little more in detail.
In regard to Assyria, while in the earliest form of the
cuneiform, there was a resemblance though distant to the
object presumed to be represented, every generation
lessened the likeness until at length there was not the
slightest suggestion of the original hieroglyph. As an
example £^ even when laid on its side c(3 has the
faint suggestion of a " house " ; it can also be understood
how a| the figure of a " house," with four lines introduced,
might suggest reduplication, and so a "great house";
but when the symbol becomes :<«g the resemblance has
wholly disappeared. Another example may be adduced ;
^ as the rough suggestion of a foot, may quite naturally
be used as the symbol for " to walk " ; it might retain its
suggestiveness even when laid on its side so c3 ; but all
resemblance has disappeared in ^ of the later cunei-
form. This difficulty is not lessened when a word written
in this later cuneiform is developed ideographically ; thus
7J "water" placed within {T1 "mouth" becomes tfB
and means "to drink." To the end, ideograms intrude
themselves into Assyrian, not infrequently drawn from
Sumerian, at times representing not the idea but the sound
of the Sumerian word. At the same time there were
alphabetic signs representing the consonants. Even the
earliest extant cuneiform inscriptions manifest a consider-
able divergence from the purely ideographic. The process
implied must have involved a lengthened period of time of
which there is no record.
In the case of Egypt the process is more under the eye
of the observer. The artistic skill of the Egyptian people,
and possibly the material they used, induced them to per-
petuate their picture writing to a much later period, and in
a much purer form than was the case in the valley of the
Tigris and the Euphrates. Down to the times of the Roman
emperors, sacred inscriptions were engraved in hieroglyph.
Parallel with the hieroglyphic there were two other scripts,
the "hieratic" and the "demotic." The former, the
206 THE SAMARITANS
" hieratic," is nearer the hieroglyphic ; it was used for
documents of importance, such as royal proclamations and
sacred edicts. The other, further removed from the hiero-
glyphic, was used for more ordinary purposes, hence its name
" demotic." The difference between these scripts is due to
desire on the part of the scribe to write rapidly. It is
interesting to observe the process by which the " demotic "
was evolved. Thus / (or r) was represented in hieroglyphic
by a lion couchant £^> ; in the Prisse papyrus, that
became jj& ; in the later "hieratic" it became n_i , and
in the " demotic " ^ . But throughout the whole process
ancient Egyptian never became perfectly alphabetic ; there
were always occasions in which a word or a portion of a
word would first be pictured and then spelt.
While the two great empires, the Assyrian and the
Egyptian, bounded Palestine to the south and the north-
east, there was on the north another powerful empire, the
Hittite, the importance of which has been realised only in
comparatively recent times. Still more recently have the
many attempts at deciphering their inscriptions been crowned
with anything like success. The writing of the Hittites is
distinctly hieroglyphic ; but while the Egyptian hieroglyphics
were incised, those of the Hittites were carved in relief.
Indeed, in every way there is the greatest contrast between
the two systems of hieroglyph ; the Hittite figures are
coarsely drawn and of squat proportions, whereas elegant
proportions and clear sharp outlines are the characteristics
of those of the Egyptians. Another peculiarity of Hittite
hieroglyph is that there is a much closer portraiture of the
object which formed the hieroglyph, than is to be found in
the idealised hieroglyphs of Egypt. The truth of what is
here advanced may be seen on looking at the illustrations
of Hittite inscriptions to be found in Wright's Empire of
the Hittites, and elsewhere. Dr Sayce (Murray's Dictionary
of the Bible, "Hittites") says that the Hittites only used
hieroglyphics for monumental purposes, and instead of
modifying them into a more current form for ordinary
occasions, they* adopted the Assyrian cuneiform.
The origin of the Semitic script in all its varieties has
been sought in each of these modes of writing. The Semitic,
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 207
or as it is sometimes called the Phoenician script had an
extensive vogue geographically ; from the Taurus Mountains
on the north it extended in various forms to Syene
(Assouan) in the south, and from the banks of the Tigris
on the east to Carthage and Marseilles on the west. The
essential point in which the Semitic script differed from
those of the great empires around was this ; while they
remained more or less hieroglyphic, it was from the first
alphabetic. An approximation to this alphabetic stage
had been made, as we have already seen, by all three
languages above referred to ; in regard to the Assyrian and
Egyptian, this may be said with certainty, and in regard
to the Hittite with a high degree of probability. The final
step was taken of affixing one sign and one only to one
sound and to one only, by one or other of the northern
Semite races. This people evolved the alphabet, which in the
names of the letters and the order in which they follow each
other has been predominant in all essentials from the days
of David and Solomon, if not earlier, down to the present
time. Before the alphabetic writing was adopted correspond-
ence in all the northern Semitic area seems to have been
carried on in the cuneiform character and in the language of
Babylon. Cumbrous as this mode of writing seems to us,
it was not only used for official communications, as the Tell
Amarna tablets show, but also for ordinary epistolary cor-
respondence. At the same time it is relatively certain that
the spoken language of Canaan, at the time when the Egyptian
governors were corresponding with the chancellory of Khu-
en-aten, was not Babylonian but a form of Hebrew. While
this is so, the probability is that when they committed any-
thing to writing, the script used would be cuneiform. Hence
there is a plausibility in Colonel Conder's contention that in its
earliest form the Pentateuch was not written, in the ordinary
sense of the word, but was impressed in cuneiform characters
on clay tablets with small chisels. Later in the year in
which Conder published his book, The First Bt'&fe, Dr Otto
Winckler advocated the same view in a magazine article.
Since it has thus received German support this opinion is,
according to Dr Sayce, that generally held. There is, how-
ever, a difficulty in allowing to this more than, at most, a
208 THE SAMARITANS
high degree of probability. It is not to be assumed as
certain that in some elementary form the Semitic script was
not known and used. The earliest examples of this mode
of writing show that a long history of selection and simplifica-
tion stands behind them. Centuries before Ahab reigned in
Israel or Mesha in Moab the process must have begun, by
which the script in question was evolved.
Whence was the Semitic script descended? Hommel
(Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr., pp. 50 ff.) maintains that it was
derived from the cuneiform. In this there is no inherent im-
probability. Whatever province it was in which this script
took its origin, it yet was one within the bounds of the
ancient Babylonian Empire. It suits, too, with Hebrew
tradition, which records that Abraham the ancestor of the
Hebrew people came from Babylonia, from Ur of the
Chaldees. The general vogue of the language is proved
by the fact already noted that even when writing to the
Egyptian king, whose officials they were, the Egyptian
governors of Palestine wrote as we have seen in cuneiform
characters and in the Babylonian language. When, however,
it is tested letter by letter, Hommel's view is not confirmed.
His additional opinion of how the step was taken is even
less plausible. He thinks that some tribe of wandering
Bedu struck with the wonders of writing, adopted the
signs used by the Babylonians and simplified them into
an alphabet. But the question as to who evolved the
alphabet is quite different from the source from which
it was evolved. Hommel chooses out eight characters
as proving the source of the Hebrew alphabet to have been
in Babylon. These are O alpu, an "ox"; ^ bitu, a
" house " or " tent " ; /- gimmidu, a " gift " ; ^ or p daltu,
a " door " ; njj katu, or idu, a " hand " ; ^ inu, an " eye " ;
$ nunu, a "fish"; <> or ^ rz'su, a "head." He adds
other two as possible instances of derivation; \\\\ mi,
probably "water"; =3 e of indeterminate meaning. The
first of these eight first mentioned signs is not unlike
A alepk, since both are roughly drawn ideograms of the
same object, but even so the Semitic does not seem to be
derived from the Babylonian; it is drawn differently. In
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 209
regard to the second what resemblance there is, is distinctly
fainter and suggests a different object ; while the Babylonian
symbol resembles a "booth," the Semitic suggests a "tent"
£7. . The form of the third letter in Babylonian / — is
only like the later Maccabrean «/v and the Samaritan form
of the letter, not the earlier angular "^ which is an attempt
to indicate the head and neck of a " camel." Only the
contracted form of the fourth has any resemblance to £>
daleth in the angular, which is an attempt to indicate a
"tent door," an object naturally triangular. Hommel's fifth
example — the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet — appears
to be the rough representation of the fingers of a hand ; but
still liker is it to the sign put on Moslem houses all over
the nearer East, to avert the evil eye ; the yodh /J/ of
the angular script rather suggests the closed fist. Between
the Babylonian 0 nunu and the angular ^ nun there does
not seem to be much resemblance, though both having the
same name must have been derived from the hieroglyph
of a " fish." As to inn, an " eye," if it were reversed and set
upon its apex, it would be almost identical with V ayin
in Samaritan; but is quite unlike the earlier form of the letter
which is O almost our " o," the letter which occupies
the corresponding place in our alphabet. Still less is there
any connection observable between Hommel's eighth
example and the twentieth letter of the Semitic alphabet ;
if 4^ risk is the name of that sign it resembles not ^\
res/i but (p qoph. The other two are really not to be
taken into consideration at all. After all due estimate of
the evidence, the resemblances and differences, etc., we feel
ourselves, in regard to Dr Hommel's theory, obliged to come
to a verdict of " not proven " with a distinct leaning towards
a negative decision.
The theory advanced by Dr Rouge that the Semitic
script was derived from Egypt has also considerable initial
probability, though not so much as has that of Hommel.
The Egyptians had made a closer approximation to the
attainment of an alphabetic system than had the Baby-
lonians. There was an intimate connection between Egypt
and Palestine throughout the whole historic period. The
lengthened stay of the people in Egypt would naturally
O
210 THE SAMARITANS
have led the Israelites to imbibe much of Egyptian culture.
Still, Israel was only one branch of the Semite race, and
not to appearance that with which the alphabet originated.
The connection of Egypt with Palestine began long before
the exodus of the Hebrews from the land of Egypt. For
two generations the country had been, at the time when
the Tell Amarna tablets were incised, under the dominion
of Egypt. Certainly the tablets found in Tell Amarna
are in cuneiform character and in the Babylonian tongue,
as has been already stated; but though official diplomatic
correspondence was carried on in Babylonian, as at present
such correspondence in Europe is in French, it does not
follow that the people, who certainly spoke a variety of
Hebrew, wrote in cuneiform. From the advance made
by the Egyptians towards a true alphabet, it might seem
not at all unlikely that when the Canaanites were devising
an alphabet they should be influenced by Egypt, and by
the semi-alphabetic signs used by its people. Rouge
wrote a book to prove the correctness of his theory of
the dependence of the Semitic alphabet on Egyptian
"demotic." He does not claim to have been the first to
make this suggestion. In his book, to which reference has
just been made, he surveys several of these systems accord-
ing to which the Phoenician or Semitic alphabet was derived
from Egypt. He goes back to antiquity to find support
for his theory, and on the authority of Eusebius, quotes
Sanchuniathon as attributing to Thoth, the son of Misor
(Egypt), the invention of letters ; this Rouge regards as
indicating that there was a tradition among the Phoenicians
that they had got their alphabet from Egypt. He, however,
gives no indication of the process by which the Semitic was
derived from the Egyptian. It is true M. Rouge lays down
elaborate rules and principles on which it is necessary
to proceed in deducing the Semitic signs from the Egyptian,
and illustrates his scheme by numerous tables and figures.
Yet a careful study of the evidence he adduces fails to
produce conviction. Thus Rouge thinks that ^ is derived
from 2, > Dut no resemblance can be perceived between
this and the earliest form aleph assumes on the monuments,
e.g., t>* and x< . Further this "demotic" form sprang
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 211
from the hieroglyph ^ a, an " eagle " ; the Hebrew
word for an eagle is nesher, a word that does not contain
the letter aleph, and therefore does not supply the required
initial. In all the list there are only two letters where form
and sound do at all support M. Rouge's contention. The
Egyptian for an " owl " is em ^ ; it becomes first £
and then 3 which has some resemblance to J, the
form mem assumes on the ancient Semitic monuments,
but the resemblance is far from striking. A more favourable
example is {Jj shehet, "papyrus growing"; here form and
sound agree with the Semitic shin. But both mem and
shin are roughly drawn hieroglyphics, significant in the
Semitic tongues ; mem is a modification of mayim, " water,"
and its form on the Moabite Stone y suggests this; shin
is shen, a " tooth," and again the earliest form the
letter takes is a rough delineation of w a row of sharp
teeth. This earliest form, instead of being liker its alleged
Egyptian source, as seen on the Prisse papyrus, is much less
so than that to be seen in the square character shin B>. In
the " hieratic " and " demotic " scripts, the Egyptian form of
shehet assimilates more to the Semitic 7nem than to shin.
What resemblance there is, is merely fortuitous.
There remains Colonel Conder's theory that the Semitic
alphabet was derived from the Hittites. In this case as in
the others there is a certain initial plausibility in favour
of the suggestion. The Hittite Empire would naturally
impress itself on the mind and imagination of the whole
northern portion of South-western Asia, the region wherein
the alphabet with which attention is occupied sprang up.
One of their subordinate capitals, Carchemish on the fords
of the Euphrates, threatened to dominate the whole of
Mesopotamia. On the west, the whole force of the Egyptian
Empire had to be put forth under its greatest monarchs to
prevent them holding in possession all Palestine. As far
south as Hebron there was a colony of Hittites, with whom
Abraham became confederate. This great and widespread
influence would render plausible the theory which would
seek the origin of what has been called the Phoenician
alphabet in the signs of the Hittite syllabary. Colonel
212 THE SAMARITANS
Conder has, in his article on " Writing," in Murray's
Dictionary of the Bible, expounded his theory at some
length ; only somewhat confusingly, in his table of " Com-
parative Alphabets," he replaces the term "Hittite" by
" Syrian." His theory depends on the correctness of his
transliteration of Hittite inscriptions ; but nowhere has his
system found acceptance. According to Colonel Conder,
both the name of the letter and the object which its form
indicated were drawn from the language of the Hittites.
He maintains that daleth as the name of a letter does not
signify a " door " but a " bucket," and sees a greater resem-
blance to that object than to a tent door in the triangle
which represented the letter in the earliest inscriptions. The
name for a skin bucket was in Hittite, according to Colonel
Conder daltu, but skin buckets assume several shapes even
if daltu be the Hittite word for it. Moreover, if one looks at
the table given in " Murray," it is found that the parallel
signs do not always suit, e.g., the tenth symbol in the Hittite
column seems decidedly more like the hieroglyphic source
of the eleventh Semitic sign than of the tenth ; on the other
hand, the Hittite eleventh suggests the Hebrew tenth.
Against this apparent plausibility which may be admitted
with reservations is to be set the fact that the Hittite
language was not alphabetic, and further it was not developed
in the alphabetic direction even so far as was the Babylonian
and Egyptian ; for its cursive script it depended on Assyrian.
Thus it would seem to be impossible to deduce the
Semitic script from any one of the suggested sources, the
Babylonian, the Egyptian, or the Hittite. All three
manifested a tendency towards becoming alphabetic, but
each and all they stopped short of the final step. Who then
took the step? The answer to this can only be found by
interrogating the alphabet itself. As the people who
invented the alphabet would primarily desire to inform
their own people of their thoughts and wishes, the objects
they would choose to employ as alphabetic signs would be
those that were familiar. Hence we can deduce something
of the habits of the nation from the objects with which they
were constantly in contact.
Something may be deduced from the general character
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 213
of the symbols employed and the mode in which they are
delineated. The presence of fine clay in the Mesopotamian
valley suggested the use of tablets and of impressing the
symbols on them by chisels; this led to a modification of
the forms of the symbols. On the other hand, as we
have seen, in Egypt the want of clay and the presence
of the papyrus suggested the use of its pith as a sub-
stance to receive the graphic symbols. This led to the
employment of a reed pen dipped in ink. This tended
to modify the form of the symbols in another direction.
From the angular shape assumed by the letters in the
earliest instances of the Semitic script, they appear to have
been scratched with an instrument having a hard sharp point
on a surface of stone. This would exclude both Egypt and
Mesopotamia, and point to the hilly district lying between
the region of the two rivers and the Mediterranean as the
dwelling of the inventors. The region would fit in with the
suggestion of Hommel that it was the wandering Bedu
who, impressed with the wonders of writing as they saw
them in Babylon, adopted the idea, but modified and
improved it into the alphabetic form. But the nomad had
no motive to induce him to write ; the tales and songs with
which he and his friends entertained each other had been
handed down by tradition in memory from his ancestors,
and he was ready in his turn to convey them in the same
way to his descendants ; books would seem to him a useless
encumbrance and writing a futile accomplishment. There
were, however, traversing this desert tract of country,
wanderers certainly but not unlettered Bedu, the Midianites,
whose caravans conveyed the trade of Mesopotamia to
Egypt and that of Egypt to Mesopotamia. Another people
has been suggested, the Phoenicians ; they, like the
Midianites, were traders, and dwelt on the western edge of
the region above indicated.
The geographical localisation of the inventors of the
alphabet to which we have been led by considering the form
of the letters and the medium used by the inventors, is
confirmed by looking at the language or languages in giving
permanence to which they were employed. This language
is Aramaic, with its cognate Hebrew. The region occupied
2U THE SAMARITANS
by this language has been indicated above. It had flowed
down into the rich plains of the land between the rivers.
That the inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria as far back
as the time of Sargon spoke and wrote Aramaic is evidenced
by the weights in his palace. On them, while on the one
side is the formal legal inscription which recounts the names
and titles of the sovereign in cuneiform, to which is added
the statement of the weight, on the other in Aramaic is the
simple statement of its relation to the sheqel whether part or
multiple : on a British coin, on the one side the names and
title of the king are given in Latin, and on the other in
English the value of the coin. The docquet on the wrapper
which contains a Babylonian contract table is usually in
Aramaic, while the contract itself is in Babylonian. In
Scotland, while up to the middle of last century certain
documents necessary in the purchase of landed property
were written in Latin and in black letter, the docquet
was in English and written in the ordinary engrossing
hand. From this it is clear that the ordinary language of
the people was Aramaic even in Nineveh and Babylon,
and the script commonly used was that of the Semitic
peoples north and west of these cities. The script is the
same in Sinjirli and on the Moabite Stone.
On the principle which has just been laid down, it will
be advantageous to see what light is thrown on the origin
of the Semitic alphabet by the objects from which the
hieroglyphs behind the letters have been taken. The first
letter, as has already been remarked, is aleph and means
"an ox." In comparing the Semitic alphabet with the
cuneiform, the resemblance has been noted which the figure
had to the roughly drawn head of an ox — a likeness to be
found in the script of the Cretan inscriptions. The ox
was the animal most used in agriculture. The Laws of
Hammurabi show how much importance was placed on
agriculture in Babylonia. On the other side of the desert,
the Phoenicians were regarded as such adepts in the art of
husbandry that works on this subject were translated from
Phoenician into Greek. If our supposition is correct that
beth is intended to represent a "tent," this would indicate
nomadic life ; the form the letter assumes in Minoan might
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 215
suggest rather a built house, but the Minoan form is
distinctly a secondary formation, whatever its actual date.
The third letter gimel, which seems to be a rough portraiture
of a camel's head and neck, carries a little further the
suggestion of the alphabet originating with a nomadic
people. The figure which Evans gives in the Scripta Minoa
represents a human leg bent at the knee. This, however,
proves only that to the Cretans, unfamiliar with the camel
as they were, the sign for gimel suggested a bent knee ;
much as are the initial letters to chapters of illustrated books
conjured into forming an illustration of what is coming.
The common meaning of daleth is a "door"; from the
triangular shape it is clearly a tent door that was in the
mind of the artist. This also supports the nomadic origin
of the alphabet.
If Gesenius is right in considering the name of the fifth
letter, he, as connected with the exclamatory ke, " behold,"
and in his further conjecture that it is intended to represent
a " lattice " seen in profile, an upright with three sloping lines
21 represent with fair accuracy the slats of a lattice affixed
to the upright side of the window. Sir Arthur Evans in the
Scripta Minoa would connect it with heth, of which he would
regard it as a modification, and consequently would attach
to it the same meaning ; this, however, will be considered
later under that letter. Vav the sixth letter means a " nail,"
a meaning borne out better by the corresponding letter in
the Minoan script {Scripta Minoa, i., pi. vi.). This would
suggest wooden structures and carpenters to erect such ;
but the form it assumes on the " Moabite Stone " and in the
Siloam inscription \'\ more naturally suggests a tent-peg,
the division at the top indicating the crutch of a small
branch, a thing very frequently used for this purpose. This
harmonises more with the nomadic idea. The seventh letter
zain has a name significant in Aramaic, Eastern and Western,
but not in Hebrew; it means a "weapon." In the Baal-
Lebanon inscription it is J which has the suggestion of a
feathered dart ; the other and later forms, as on the Moabite
Stone, appear to have resulted from emphasising the cross
lines. The form of this letter found in Crete points to
another weapon as that intended ; it seems to have been a
216 THE SAMARITANS
double-headed battle-axe. (Scripta Minoa, pi. v., this form
is also said to occur in South Semitic.) But as weapons were
used equally by nomads and husbandmen no evidence is
afforded as to which were the inventors. The eighth letter
heth is usually held as meaning a " fence " ; its form, two
upright parallel lines joined by two or three horizontal ones,
constant from the Ba'al-Lebanon inscription to the lettering
on the Maccabaean coins, and but slightly modified in the
Samaritan and in the script of Assouan, quite suits this.
The root is not found either in Hebrew or in Aramaic, but
in Arabic 1>^- occurs which means "to surround with a
fence." This points to enclosed fields and agricultural life :
there is no suggestion of a " zareba " of cut thorns in any
form the letter assumes. The ninth letter ieth affords no
evidence, as there is great dubiety as to the object intended
to be represented.1 The letters which follow, yodh and kapk,
the " closed fist " and the " open palm," are not distinctive.
This applies also to ain, pe, qoph, resh, and skin, as all
representing parts of the body. Lamed an " ox-goad "
suggests agriculture ; nun a " fish " and tzade a " fish-hook,"
point to residence beside either the sea or a great river. In
neither case is the implied hieroglyphic very evident ;
Hommel suggests as above noted that nun ^ is derived
from the Babylonian $ , but the line chosen does not seem
to be suggestive of the original form. The sharpness of the
angles at the turns in the figure precludes Sir Arthur Evans'
suggestion of a "serpent." Unless it is intended to be a
shorthand representation of a person fishing with a rod, the
early form of tzade V^ has no resemblance to a " fish-hook."
The complete lack of any maritime symbols as a " ship " or
an " oar " or a " sail " renders it more likely that the home of
the inventors of the alphabet is to be found on the banks of
the Tigris and the Euphrates, rather than on the seashore.
The recent discoveries in Crete have led to the general
acceptance of the opinion, strongly maintained by Sir
Arthur Evans, that the alphabet which we have denominated
Semitic really originated in the island kingdom of Minos. We
1 The Minoan form certainly represents a chariot wheel and the
Sinjirli shape is not unlike it, but the form on the Moabite Stone is less
like it. The meaning of the word is uncertain.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 217
do not think the proof which he advances at all convincing.
The lack of any symbol, among those used as alphabetic.
having a connection with maritime matters, militates also
strongly against the Minoan claim to the origination of
the alphabet. As the Minoan language is as yet un-
known, there is no evidence that behind the signs were
significant words the initial sounds of which were indi-
cated. The picture of a house is unmistakable, but while
beth is a "house" or "tent" in Semitic, there is no proof that
the Minoans had a word for a house with the same initial.1
The fact that one of the names is significant in Aramaic
though not in Hebrew points in the same direction. The
Phoenicians — the only rivals of the Aramaeans — spoke
Hebrew. The probability seems to be that it was one of
the tribes that conveyed the produce of Assyria to Egypt and
vice versa, but who had their home in the high land over-
looking Mesopotamia, and pursued agriculture in the intervals
of trade, who invented the alphabet. It is to be observed
that even yet the vowels were not expressed, the ahevi letter-
were only used for very exceptional circumstances when
the vowel sounds were emphatic. In Semitic languages
vowel sounds are somewhat indefinite, noticeably is this the
case in regard to Arabic. It seems as if they regarded the
vowels as a sort of indefinite sound-stuff modified by the
consonants.
The order of the letters in the Semitic alphabet is not
to be considered unimportant. The number of alphabetic
poems, Psalms and others, in the limited Hebrew litera-
ture show the attention that wi-.s directed to this. In
Ps. cxix. the alphabet is repeated in groups of eight verses,
each of which begins with one letter Besides this Psalm,
there are seven other alphabets in the book of Psalms,
one of these requiring two Psalms for its completion,
Ps. ix. and x. Of these seven, only two are, in our prevent
text, perfectly regular, cxi. and cxii. ; these have this pecul-
iarity that each letter is followed only by half a verse. While
in our present text Ps. xxxvii. is defective as it wants the
lettery ain, in the Septuagint a verse occurs, omitted in the
Massoretic, which supplies the missing letter. The remain-
1 This question is discussed more fully in Appendix III.
218 THE SAMARITANS
ing four alphabets in the Psalms are defective. Ps. ix. and x.
appear to have been intended to form together one alphabet,
but in the first of these daleth is omitted, and in Ps. x. the
verses which follow the lamed verse on to the twelfth are
not alphabetic. It would be beside the present argument
to dwell on the other instances. The book of Lamentations
has four alphabets ; three of these are irregular by transpos-
ing ain and pe. The alphabet which occurs in Prov. xxxi. is
normal. When these poems were written the order of the
letters was fixed. As most of the Psalms written in this styje
are attributed to David, the order of the alphabet must have
been regarded as very old. Whether Jeremiah wrote the
book of qinoth (Lamentations) or not, the book is certainly
old ; if not pre-exilic, it was written under the agony of the
exile ; though three out of the four alphabetic poems have the
slight irregularity above referred to, the evidence for the
common order furnished by the general agreement greatly
outweighs this.
Another sign of the fixity in the order of the letters of
the alphabet, and the importance attached to it, is the use
made of it in cryptic writing. For instance, there was athbash
in which the last letter of the alphabet was put for the first,
and the second last for the second, and so on through the
alphabet ; an example of this is to be found in Jer. xxv.
26 and li. 41, in which TJW Sheshak stands for ?33 Babel.
Another of these cryptic modes of writing is called albam ;
in it the alphabet was divided into two, and the first letter of
the alphabet was put for the twelfth, the second for the
thirteenth, and vice versd ; an example of this is supposed
by Rashi to be found in Is. vii. 6, " the son of Tabeal "
really standing for " the son of Remaliah," as the " son of
Tabeal " was an utterly unknown person. All these devices
implied that the order of the alphabet was fixed. The device
of giving numerical values to the several letters according to
their place in the alphabet implies the same fixity ; only the
date at which this came into use cannot be determined. The
Phoenicians had separate signs for numbers, as may be seen
on the Sarcophagus of Ashmunazar. On the Maccabaean
coins letters are regularly used for numerals.
Since the order of the alphabet had become fixed, and
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 219
this order had come to be looked upon with something akin
to reverence, it might be expected that there would be some
principle behind it. There do seem to be at least traces
of a systematic arrangement. In the first four letters, S33 1,
there is first a weak letter, then a labial, then a guttural in
the English use of the word, and last a dental. Further, the
latter three are mutes. In the group of letters which follows
we have a similar succession, with this difference that in the
third place there is a sibilant. The letters of this group
would, were they English letters, be called aspirated, with
the exception of the last, tt teth, which is the hardest of the
Unguals, or to use another nomenclature, the dentals.
Singularly enough, theta, the letter which in the Greek
alphabet occupies its place is an aspirated letter. Another
peculiarity which suggests itself is that the sibilant T zain
has among sibilants the flat sound associated with mutes.
A possible reason for excluding zain from the first group
was that if it occupied the third place it made with beth the
ill-omened word D buz, "contempt," and the equally ill-
omened word T3 baz, " a prey." Again, the aspirated sibilant
SJ> shin, if placed in the third place among the aspirates, made
with the following letters the ill-omened L5nfc> shahat, " to slay."
This might be the reason why the first group of letters has
no sibilant, and why shin is relegated to the end of the
alphabet. As a last group we have the weak letter ain — in
Samaritan it is a " servile" letter — the pe a labial, next tzade
a sibilant, qoph a guttural, and last of all tau a dental. The
arrangement followed in the liquid group may have been the
result of intrusion from another alphabet which began
with the liquids. The Romans seem to have originally had
such an alphabet, and hence called the letters elementa. The
letter "\resh was probably the last to be added to the list of
letters. The Egyptians made no distinction between it and /.
The Japanese and the Chinese are under the same disability
at the present time. The intrusion of the elementa appears
to have wrought disorder in the process of the symmetrical
evolution of the alphabet, so far as the middle portion of it
is concerned. It is not unlikely that the primitive form of
the alphabet had been long enough known for the phrase
220 THE SAMARITANS
to come into use, which made aleph and tau stand for the
beginning and end of anything. If this were so, there
would be a reason why shin when displaced, and resh when
received into the alphabet, should neither of them be placed
after tau.
This is to be taken merely as an attempt to investigate
the principles that might have underlain the order of the
letters in the Semitic alphabet. It is impossible to say when
the process was completed. If the correctness of the tradition
which attributes to David the majority of the alphabetic
Psalms may be assumed, then in his days the alphabet had
already long attained its present fixed order. In that case,
the process of arranging and rearranging must have taken
place in the preceding centuries. Not impossibly these
alterations might in some part have been the work of
the Phoenicians, who would be under the necessity of
recording their transactions in a form in which the terms
of them might readily be recalled. If there actually was
an elementary alphabet used by any of the nations of the
Mediterranean basin, they would be the most likely to come
into contact with it.
As we have already indicated, the Semitic alphabet
underwent several modifications in the course of its long
history. Of the time when these changes took place, or the
place where they did so, there is no indication. The earliest
inscriptions give the impression that they stand at the end
of a long process. Within the period of which we have
inscriptions a process of modification may be traced. The
most ancient specimens of this script have been incised
on stone or scratched on metal ; the Sinjirli inscriptions,
however, are exceptions, they are carved in relief. The
incising tends to emphasize the sharpness of the angles.
These angles are not so sharp in Sinjirli, as the chisel in
leaving the letters in relief would be liable to remove the
points of the angles. Even when incised the letters had
a tendency to become curved ; this may be seen by com-
paring the lamed on the Ba'al-Lebanon fragment with the
same letter in the Siloam inscription. There was thus
probably, alongside of the monumental writings, engrossing
with reed or stylus on some less recalcitrant material than
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 221
rock or stone. This angular script lasted till close upon
the time of Alexander the Great. The latest extant
example of this script is the inscription on the sarcophagus
of Ashmunazar which is generally dated at approximately
400 B.C.
The earliest inscription as yet known which has been
preserved, has been scratched on the fragments of a bronze
bowl found in Cyprus. It has been dedicated to a deity
called Ba'al-Lebanon by one who denominates himself
the "servant of Hiram King of the Sidonians." If we
may identify this Hiram with the friend of Solomon the date
of the inscription would be about 950 B.C.1 The next
important inscription is that on the stele of Mesha, King
of Moab. As Mesha was the younger contemporary of
Ahab, the date of his inscription may be set down as
approximately 850 B.C. The excavations that took place
in the foundations of Ahab's palace have brought to light
jar handles and ostraka, with inscriptions in the same script.
The series of inscriptions found in Sinjirli extend over
a considerable period ; but as Panammu, who writes the
most important of them, describes himself as the servant
of Tiglath-Pileser, the probable date of his inscription is
a hundred years later than that of Mesha, about 750 B.C.
The last inscription to which reference may be made in
this connection is that found in the conduit in Siloam.
As the conduit in which it was found had been made by the
order of Hezekiah under fear of the invasion of Sennacherib,
its date can be pretty definitely assigned to 700 js.c.
A comparison of the alphabets (p. 222) shows an increas-
ing tendency to prefer curved lines to straight ones, and to
soften sharp angles into curves. This means the growing
influence of scribal writing on the script of the epigraphist.
Another symptom of the same influence is the preference for
a continuous line over a broken one. These tendencies
1 One of the leaders, along with Hezekiah, of the rebellion against
Sennacherib, was Luli of Tyre, "king of the Sidonians" (Winckler,
Babylonia and Assyria^ p. 256, Eng. Trans.). It is evident then that a
"King of Tyre" might at the same time be " King of the Sidonians" —
when Tyre held the hegemony among Phoenician cities, the Tyrian
king would be King of the Sidonians.
222
THE SAMARITANS
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Table Showing Script of Semitic Languages.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 223
may be clearly seen if the beth of the Ba'al-Lebanon
inscription, or that on the stone of Mesha be compared
with examples of that letter in the inscription on the sarco-
phagus of Ashmunazar. In the earlier examples the letter
is built up of four straight lines ; but in the inscriptions
on the sarcophagi of Ashmunazar and of his father Tabnit,
it is formed of one curved line. The letter daleth exhibits
the same tendency, though in a less degree. The preference
of the scribe for continuous lines over broken ones may
be seen in the way the letter qoph varies from a circle
with a line through it, as it appears in the Ba'al-Lebanon
inscription, to the circular curve ending in a straight
line found in that of Siloam, and finally to the yet more
dashing curve by which the letter is delineated on the sarco-
phagi of Sidon. One letter, mem, does not exhibit this
progress towards a form which admitted of more rapid
writing ; its last form implies the use of more strokes
than did the earlier. It will be observed that the forms
which some of the letters assume in the Siloam inscription
differ much from those which these letters have in other nearly
contemporary inscriptions, aleph, gimel, vav, and tzade being
marked instances. This may be due to local influences ;
the mem assimilates somewhat to the Sidonian form. Both
aleph and beth seem to be to some extent anticipations
of the later forms of the Maccabaean coins and the Samaritan
inscriptions. The Ashmunazar inscription shows several
peculiarities, which it may be observed are also to be found
in the slightly earlier inscription on the sarcophagus of
Tabnit. The gimel has a shape which has none of the
suggestion so obvious in Mesha's inscription, of the head and
neck of a camel, and becomes almost identical in form with
the Greek lambda ; zain has no longer any resemblance to a
dart as in the Ba'al-Lebanon inscription, as little to the
Minoan double battle-axe, but has become very like the
Greek zeta. The use of zain to indicate the ends of sentences
and occasionally of words is to be noted ; this is a peculiarity
found on several Sidonian inscriptions as on that of Jeho-
melek, King of Gebal. The most noticeable change is to be
seen in the letter yodh, which has assumed a shape closely
akin to that met with in Samaritan MSS. ; sometimes it is
224 THE SAMARITANS
almost exactly like the letter shin turned upside down. The
shape oisamech is also peculiar, but its genesis from the form
earlier prevalent is easily intelligible, the desire to lighten
the labour of writing by making the line continuous. The
most remarkable variation is to be found in the letter tau.
Instead of the simple cross as seen on the Moabite Stone and
in the Siloam inscription, and as figured by Evans in the
Scripta Mznoa, the letter in most of the Phoenician
inscriptions is formed of an upright line sloping slightly
to the right at the top ; near the top on the right of the
upright there is a little hook turning downwards. A similar
form is found on a weight figured in Lidzbarski {Nord. Sem.
Epig. Tfl.t xxvi. i) brought from Asia Minor and dated by
him fifth century B.C. It is to be observed that the lamed in
the Phoenician shows a marked tendency towards the shape
it assumed in the Samaritan. The Sidonian script is thus
a preparation for that of the Maccabaeans and the
Samaritans.
After the inscription on the sarcophagus of Ashmunazar,
the next specimens of Hebrew script are the inscriptions on
the Maccabaean coins. The earliest of these was struck in
the pontificate of Simon, the last survivor of the sons of
Mattathias. More than a quarter of a millennium separates
the date of Ashmunazar from that of Simon the Maccabee ;
during the interval a complete change has passed over the
character of Hebrew writing. The script of the Maccabaeans,
for inscriptions on coins, remained for the most part un-
changed to the time of Bar-Cochba. To the casual observer
the Maccabaean resembles that to be found in the older
Samaritan MSS. This likeness is confirmed by a circum-
stance related by Moses ben Nahman (1194) of himself; he
found in Akka a coin with an inscription which he could not
read himself, but which he got some Samaritans resident
there to read for him. At the same time a comparison
between the two scripts shows that though they are very
like they are by no means identical. When both are com-
pared with the later Sidonian it is seen that while in some
points the Maccabaean differs less from the later Phoenician
than does the Samaritan, in some other points the re-
semblance between the Samaritan and the later Phoenician
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 225
is greater. That there should be very considerable differ-
ence is only to be expected ; from Ashmunazar to the earliest
Maccabaean coins is, as has just been said, an interval of more
than two centuries and a half; from the latest coins of Bar-
Cochba to the earliest Samaritan inscription is a period at
least as long ; from that to the earliest manuscript of un-
questioned date is probably twice or thrice as long a space
of time. Though on the Jewish coins the forms of most of
the letters remain unchanged from the accession of Simon
to the death of Bar-Cochba, a period of 270 years, yet one
or two of the letters have been modified, notably 32) he,
1 % vav, z \ tzade, and pY qoph, as may be seen on the table.
If the script of the earlier of the Samaritan codices now
to be found in the libraries of Europe and America is com-
pared with that of the few Samaritan inscriptions extant, it
will be found that, considering the difference between writing
with a reed on parchment or paper, and engraving with a
chisel on a limestone slab, the characters are practically
identical ; yet the period from the engraving of the one to
the writing of the other was, as stated above, nearly three-
quarters of a millennium. This fixity of script is a
phenomenon to be observed. Within the same time the
Jewish writing of Hebrew had evolved the square character,
which is found in our Hebrew Bibles, the Rabbinic or Rashi
character, and still later, the cursive script. Why the
Samaritans selected the particular script they have, and
conserved that with such tenacity is difficult to explain. It
has to be admitted that within the last century a deteriora-
tion has set in, as may be seen on the table in the second
column of Samaritan.
As already remarked, the present Samaritan script was
the result of evolution. It has been noted that it has a
double affinity, to the later Sidonian on the one hand, and
on the other to the Maccabaean. When looked at more
closely it is seen that in regard to nine letters there is
greater resemblance on the part of the Samaritan to the
Maccabaean. In the case of six of these, aleph, beth, daleth,
mem, nun, and tau, the resemblance is obvious and applies to
the whole Maccabaean period ; in regard to other three, gimel,
caph, lamed, the resemblance is only to the script on the later
P
226 THE SAMARITANS
coins. In the case of four letters the Samaritan form is more
akin to that on the Sidonian sarcophagi, that is, he, yodh, heth,
qoph ; of these the most striking is yodh, which in the Mac-
cabaean is like the he of the Samaritan script, with the lower
bar turned to the right instead of to the left, thus resembling
the form it has on the Moabite Stone. In the Samaritan as
in the Sidonian the yodh is, so to say, thrown on its face.
The heth of the Maccabaean coins closely resembles the same
letter on the Siloam inscription. The qoph of Samaritan
inscriptions and manuscripts is formed in the same way^as
that on the Sidonian sarcophagi ; while that on the Mac-
cabaean coins has quite a different genesis. The upright
shape of the Maccabaean letter makes it more akin to the
earlier forms, though most of them have a cursive look awant-
ing in the Maccabaean. With regard to resh, the Maccabaean
coins figure that letter occasionally, with a slight inclination
to the left of the foot of the upright as if a line were starting
from thence ; in the Samaritan MSS. this is clearly drawn,
but it does not appear in the epigraphic form of the letter.
While the shin of the Samaritan inscriptions resembles
closely that on the Ashmunazar sarcophagus, the manuscript
form differs from it considerably. There are seven letters
whose form is peculiar to the Samaritans : vav, zain, teth,
samech, ain,pe, tzade. In the case of four of these there are
no Maccabaean examples extant, viz., zain, teth, samech, and
pe ; in regard to these it may well have been that, as in the
case of the nine letters first mentioned, the resemblance
between them and the Samaritan was also great One point
may be noted : the form of vav found on the Samaritan
inscriptions must have been that conveyed by the Sidonians
to Greece, as may be seen from the shape of the digamma,
which is perpetuated in our own letter F.
It is clear from the above comparison that the Samaritan
script closely resembled that used by the Jews in the time of
the Maccabees, and that both scripts differed considerably
from the earlier angular script found all over South-western
Asia. While the Jewish scribes modified the script which
they used, influenced possibly by their intercourse with Egypt,
until at length the square character resulted with which all
are familiar, the Samaritans retained the more epigraphic
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 227
style which had been common at the time of the Maccabaean
struggle. There must have been some reason which rendered
this form of the Semitic script in a manner sacrosanct to
them. It must have been some occurrence which associated
a document written in that script, presumably a copy of the
Divine Torah, with a crisis in their religious history. As the
script of the Maccabaean coins underwent some changes,
slight but definite, it may be possible to find some indication
of the approximate date when the manuscript was written
which has dominated the later Samaritan script. In com-
paring the earlier and later forms of the letters on the Mac-
cabaean coins it will be seen that the most striking change is
in the letter he. On the coins of Simon the Maccabee the
letter assumes a form like a Roman E reversed — a form
between that on the Sidonian sarcophagi, and that on the
Samaritan inscriptions. With the coins of John Hyrcanus
a markedly different form appears, one that is in a sense a
precursor of the coming square character. Another letter in
which there is a difference of earlier and later is vav. A
form figured in Madden {Hist. Jew. Coinage, pp. 43,44) has an
upright, curving a little to the left at the top, and about the
middle a line passing through the upright ; the coins on which
this form appears are dated first, second, and third years of
Simon. This shape is closely akin to what is to be found in
Samaritan MSS. and still more to the epigraphic form. With
Simon's fourth year of coinage another shape appears, a
perpendicular surmounted by the letter z. As has been
remarked, it must have been from a form cognate to the first
of these that the Greek digamma and our Roman F have
sprung. The letter yodh on the Simonian coins resembles at
once the shape that letter has on the Sidonian sarcophagi
and that on the Samaritan inscriptions. The coins of John
Hyrcanus show that letter in a form not unlike our z ; later
coins show it like that on the Moabite Stone. This points to
the script which has become consecrated among the Samari-
tans as dating from the earlier portion of the pontificate of
Simon the Maccabee. This would be explained if a copy of
the Torah written in that script had been preserved, in a
way so marvellous that it seemed miraculous, in the temple
of Mount Gerizim, during one of the numerous occasions in
228 THE SAMARITANS
which that temple had been burned. The most celebrated
of these was that, when John Hyrcanus, as related by Josephus,
conquered Samaria, destroyed the city, conquered Shechem
(Nablus), and burned the temple on Mount Gerizim "two
hundred years after it was built." Such manuscripts as were
preserved in the temple would not, at least most of them,
have been recently penned. Hence, if one MS. was saved
from the conflagration, that it should have been written
during the pontificate of Simon or even earlier is by no means
improbable. This, however, is not to say that the present
Nablus Roll is the MS. so saved.
The Jews admit the Samaritan script to be older than the
Ashurith which they now use. The Talmudic account of this
(San., pp. 2i£, 22a) is as follows : " The law was first given to
Israel in the 'I&ri character and the holy tongue ; again it was
given in Ashurith writing and the Syrian tongue. The Israel-
ites chose the Ashurith writing and the holy tongue, and left
to the Hediotce the 'Ibri writing and the Syrian tongue. Who
are the Hediotce ? Rabbi Chasda says ' the Cuthaeans ' (the
Samaritans)." It is to be observed that the. Talmudists
made no distinction between the script of Samaria and that
yet earlier found on the Moabite Stone. It is a proof of the
extreme conservatism of the Samaritans that for so many
centuries they have not altered their mode of writing.
Although the Jews changed their script repeatedly the
Samaritans did not imitate them. The Samaritans claimed
to have worshipped JHWH from the days of Esarhaddon,
and their claim was not disallowed ; they must have had
some ritual and liturgy ; is it likely that they, so conservative
in regard to the writing used in the Torah, would change all
that at the bidding of a priestly scribe who refused even to
have their assistance in rebuilding the temple, and regarded
intermarriage with them as equivalent to marriage with
heathen? At the same time it must be remembered that
this Jewish tradition concerning the date of the introduction
of the square character is certainly incorrect. The square
character was not introduced for more than half a millennium
after Ezra.
But besides the characters there are other peculiarities of
Samaritan writing. In Hebrew inscriptions of the age of
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 229
the Antonines the writing is continuous, as in the Bni Hezir
inscription and in that at Kefr Bir'im ; there is nothing to
mark the termination of a word or sentence. In earlier
specimens, as in the Mesha inscription, that in Siloam, and
those in Sinjirli, a dot is inserted between each word. This
peculiarity is to be observed in all Samaritan MSS. and also
in the inscriptions ; in the latter it is a colon that frequently
appears rather than a period. The Samaritans thus seem
to have perpetuated an ancient mode of separating words
which had been abandoned by the Jews. Sentences in
Samaritan MSS. are marked off by colons, and the end of
paragraphs is shown by three or four dots reinforced by a
line, sometimes placed horizontally, sometimes standing
perpendicularly.
Another peculiarity of Samaritan writing, which points
to development on lines independent of the Jews, is the
way Samaritan scribes took to make the lines of writing fit
exactly over each other. In the inscription of Mesha, King
of Moab, the lines, except at the circular top, terminate
approximately over each other ; when, however, the line
ends in the middle of a word, as happens in regard to the
very first line of that inscription, the word is completed in
the next, irrespective of syllables. In more recent Hebrew
MSS. the device of Uteres dilatabiles, letters that might be
elongated, was used to fill up the line to the margin in such
a way that there should be no words left unfinished to be
continued in the line following. The way the Samaritan
scribes attained the same end was different : they left a
space, larger or smaller as might be needed, before the
margin was reached, and passing over this space combined
the last two, or sometimes the last three, letters of the last
word into a group close up to the margin. When the end
of a paragraph was reached no attempt was made to fill up
the line; an arrangement of dots and lines indicates that
it has terminated. In most manuscripts there is at the end
a separate paragraph generally short, in which the scribe
informs the reader of his identity, when and where he wrote.
In this, too, the Samaritan scribes had a method of their own.
A page or two before the end of the manuscript the column
was split for the breadth of rather more than a letter ; this
230 THE SAMARITANS
space was ruled off by lines drawn with a stylus ; one or
two letters of a word may be on one side of this space and
the rest of it on the other. When the eye is carried
down the column every now and then a letter is intruded
into the space otherwise left blank. It is soon observed
that these letters are formed into groups, marked off by a
tiny line. It is further noticed that these groups form words,
and if read continuously the words join into a sentence or
sentences. These sentences convey the information usually
found in a colophon, and constitute what is technically called
the tarikh ; it contains the name of the scribe, it may be
also the name of him at whose instance the manuscript has
been written, the place where and the date when it was
penned ; the latter stated according to the years " of the rule
of the children of Ishmael," that is to say, " el Hegira."
There are several other peculiarities of writing ; as they
have no vowel signs, words might sometimes be ambiguous,
thus i>N may mean " God " or " not," according as it is
vocalised ; so when it means " God " a line is placed over
it. This also is done when a word is shortened.
The most ancient form of books appears to have been
rolls. In Nablus there are several rolls of the Torah,
including the one which the Samaritans claim to have been
written by Abishua, the great-grandson of Aaron. The
numerous manuscripts in Europe and America are all
codices or made up in book form. They are made of
vellum, parchment, or paper. One thing the Samaritan
scribes are very particular about in all these codices is
that the writing should begin on the right-hand page. In
this way there is always a blank page to the outside. The
most of the codices are in folio, but not a few are in quarto ;
the famous copy in Paris, which Pietro della Valle brought
to Europe, and by it renewed the knowledge of the
Samaritan Pentateuch, is a quarto.
Most of the codices are written in parallel columns, two
columns on the page. Generally the one column contains
the Hebrew text while the other has the Samaritan Aramaic
Targum ; sometimes instead of the Aramaic there is the
Arabic version. In one manuscript there are three columns
on the page, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. It ought to be
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 231
noted that almost in every case, even in the case of the
interpretation being in Arabic, the character used is
Samaritan.
After considering the mode of writing it is needful to
attend for a little to the mode of reading ; the letters written
may be the same but may be very differently pronounced.
This possibility is made obvious when one hears a passage
of classic Greek read first by an English scholar and then by
a modern Greek. In such a case it will be seen that not
merely are the vowels differently pronounced, which is the
difference between the Latin of Scotland and that of England,
but that many of the consonants, as pronounced by the one,
would be unintelligible to the other. The primary source of
this difference was the pronunciation of the letters of the
Greek alphabet adopted by Erasmus, whose teaching
England received in this matter, the vocalic differences
being caused by the change in vowel values in England
itself. The state of matters in Palestine, when Ezra arrived
there from Persia, was in regard to Hebrew not unlike that
in Europe in regard to Greek at the time of the Revival of
Letters. Hebrew had become practically a dead language, it
had ceased to be the language ordinarily spoken ; Aramaic
had dispossessed it. If the Samaritans had not the Torah till
it was brought them by Manasseh, in Ezra's recension, they
would have no traditional mode of reading Hebrew. If they
received the Torah from Ezra through Manasseh they would
also have received the Jewish mode of reading it. With
Semitic conservatism they might have been expected to
have perpetuated this. With the Jews the consonantal pro-
nunciation of Hebrew is the same whether the Jews who
speak it are Russian or Spanish. From this it may be
deduced that the primitive sounds of all the consonants
have been fairly well preserved. It might be thought that
Origen's transliteration, where that has been preserved, might
have shown how Hebrew was pronounced in his day ; but the
uncertainty as to the way in which Greek was then pronounced
renders this less available. The transliteration of proper
names gives some information ; it is obvious from these that
the Hebrew of that time was not wholly devoid of gutturals ;
such names as 'Axad/3, " Ahab," and '0x^'«?. " Ahaziah,"
232 THE SAMARITANS
prove this. If it may be presumed that the modern Greek
pronunciation of gamma was that in use in Alexandria at
the time when the Septuagint was translated ; we learn that
ain in Hebrew had, like the same letter in Arabic, a double
pronunciation, consequently sometimes represented by the
simple vowel and sometimes by gamma ; compare Dinj? A/zw?,
" Amos," and nw Tdfa, " Gaza" ; in Arabic the first is ain
the second ghain. It is clear that Hebrew as pronounced
by the Jews had the gutturals.
One marked peculiarity of the way in which the
Samaritans pronounce Hebrew is that they drop all the
gutturals, or which is the same thing, pronounce them all as
aleph. This peculiarity explains not a few of the variations
of the Samaritan recension of the Pentateuch from the
Massoretic. A singular result of this may be observed ; not
a few of the Samaritan alphabetic poems begin not with
aleph but with ain. Benjamin of Tudela, as mentioned in an
earlier chapter, found that in his day they had the same
disability. This Samaritan peculiarity is a thing which
itself needs an explanation. Reference has been made to
the ordinary English pronunciation of Latin ; the explanation
of that is simple, all the vowel and consonantal sounds are
harmonised to English usage. The same thing applies
mutatis mutandis to the German way of pronouncing Latin.
In every case the tendency is to assimilate the pronunciation
of the dead language to that of the living language of the
people. But in the present case the language of the people
is Arabic, a language which is even richer in gutturals than
Hebrew. The Samaritan pronunciation of Hebrew so far
from being assimilated to Arabic is in direct and absolute
contrast to it. The fact that Arabic is a language closely
cognate with Hebrew makes this resistance to a natural
tendency all the more striking. It is only to be explained
by the conservatism that is connected, especially in the
East, with everything related to religion or worship. Since
the Samaritans neither received nor perpetuated the Jewish
pronunciation of Hebrew, they must themselves have had a
customary pronunciation of that language. This would seem
to imply that they had the Torah before the days of Ezra.
There is a fact which has a bearing on this subject. The
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 233
Assyrians and Babylonians spoke a North-Semitic language,
cognate to Hebrew ; they, like the Samaritans, assimilated
most of their gutturals to akph. It has been sometimes
asserted that all the gutturals were so assimilated ; but this
was not the case, for they had the strong guttural n heth,
as proved by such names as Sennacherib (Eavaxdpiftos,
Herod, ii. 141) l; the Greek transliteration here shows that
the guttural was pronounced. Had the statement been
absolute it might have been maintained, that this assimila-
tion of the gutturals with akph by the Samaritans was merely
the perpetuation in Palestine by the colonists of the mode of
speech which they had used in their own original land, and
which they applied to the reading of Hebrew. But not only
is it not accurate as to Assyrian, the colonists spoke not
the monumental Assyrian but Aramaic, which retained
the gutturals.
Another fact, however, has to be noted. The language
of Phoenicia was Hebrew : the tradition is generally admitted
to be correct that the Phoenicians gave Greece the alphabet.
It is clear that when they conveyed it to Greece they had
ceased to pronounce the gutturals. As the Phoenician
alphabet had no signs for the vowels and had no sounds
for four of their signs, the Greeks put vowels into all these
vacant places ; so aleph became a, a, he became e (short e),
heth became rj (long e), and ain became o (short 6). It was
not that the Greeks were without gutturals in their speech ;
they had to add to the Kadmean alphabet four supple-
mentary letters, one of which was x c^\ equivalent to heth of
the Semitic alphabet. Another of the gutturals they repre-
sented by the rough breathing. To some extent gamma
later had a sound akin to ain; this, however, was a later
development of Hellenic phonetics. As the Phoenician
alphabet is found in the Minoan remains in Crete {Scripta
Minoa, pp. 88, 89), it must have been conveyed thither
not later than 1400 B.C. (Leaf, Homer and History ', p. 39),
centuries before the building of Solomon's Temple. The
introduction of this fashion of assimilating the gutturals
to aleph, akin to the English inability to pronounce ch in
"loch," might set in with the affinity made by the House of
1 The name appears in the Septuagint as Zewaxyplv-
234 THE SAMARITANS
Omri with the royal family of Tyre. This would explain
how it was that while the North dropped the gutturals
the Southern tribes retained them. Hence it would follow
that, at all events from the time of Ahab, the Israelites of
the North read Hebrew in a way not unlike that in which
the Samaritans now do, and therefore would read the Torah
so, if they had it. This would be perpetuated if the priests
sent by Esarhaddon brought the Torah with them. If the
Samaritans got the Sacred Law from Jerusalem in Hebrew —
a language which had ceased to be spoken — why did they
not adopt the Jewish mode of reading it? Manasseh would
read the Law as the Jews did. The Galilaeans seem to have
had the same peculiarity as had the Samaritans, hence
Peter's speech betrayed him in the court of the High
Priest's house.
In regard also to the begadhkephath letters, those that
were regarded as aspirated unless they had the daghesh lene,
the Samaritans, now at any rate, are subject to a certain
amount of disability. Of these letters they only aspirate
beth and pe ; the others they always pronounce as if
dagheshed. The Jews of the time when the Septuagint was
translated appear to have had no difficulty in regard to
the aspiration of the " dentals." In fact they aspirated them
more frequently than they ought to have done, if the extant
rules are to be regarded as then binding ; not only have we
* Japheth " but also " Thogarma." There is no distinct indi-
cation of the date at which this inability began, hence' it is
not of so great importance. It may be noted that all foreign
Jews labour under the same disability, even those in Damascus.
This may be largely due to their surroundings in the case of
Jews in Teutonic or Romance countries. It has, however,
little bearing on the present argument
Petermann in his valuable Hebrceische Formenlehre nach
der Aussprache der heutigen Samaritaner (p. 4) says : " Earlier
the Samaritans had several books in which the rules for
reading Hebrew were set down ; but according to the
assurance of the High Priest these have been lost. Now
there are only fragments of a book entitled Qanun ibn Dartha
fHmaqray ' Qanun son of Dartha on reading,' and fragments
of a commentary on it." Dr Petermann at the conclusion of
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAMARITAN SCRIPT 235
the book above referred to has given a transliteration of
Genesis as it is read by the Samaritans at the present time.
We subjoin the first five verses of the first chapter of
Genesis : —
(i) Barashet bara eluwim it ashshamem wit aaretz. (2)
Waaretz ayata te'u ub'u waashek al fani turn urii eluwim
antra! ef at al fani amine m ; (3) uydumer eluwim yai or uyai
or ; (4) uyere eluwim it a' or kitov, uyebdel eluwim bin a" or ubin
aasliek ; (5) uyiqra eluzvem Id or y dm ulaashek qara lila uyai
erev uyai beqar yom aad.
CHAPTER IX
THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF THE SAMARITANS
It is generally recognised that the language of a people reveals
much of its history ; thus Dr Max Muller saw the pastoral
life of our Aryan ancestors proved by the fact that the root
from which the words for " money," " wealth " in so many
tongues springs, is ultimately connected with cattle, as
pecunia from pecu, "cattle," and portrays the idyllic scene
of the primitive household in which the " daughter "
(duhitar) is the milkmaid, and the "brother" {brahtar) is
ready to help. Not merely is there revealed the primitive
condition of society in which a language arose, but also
something of national history may be culled from the
predominant words used by a people. The close political
relations maintained between Scotland and France, over
against England, may be evidenced by the number of
French words, names of common things, that are or were
in use in Scotland but unused in England. Another example
is pointed out by Sir Walter Scott in Ivan/we, as shown by
" ox " and " beef," " sheep " and " mutton," " calf" and " veal."
When the animals in question were in the fields and under
the charge of their herds they had Teutonic names, but
when they became viands on the tables of the masters of
those herds they received French names. This is evidence
that there was a race of serfs who spoke a Teutonic tongue
ruled by a race of nobles who spoke a variety of French.
But the last of these examples shows that such evidence can
go deeper ; that the word for the flesh of the calf is " veal "
not " veau," proves that the conquest had taken place after
the "t" in vitulus had dropped out of speech, but before
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 237
the " 1 " had been in speech commuted into " u " ; that is
to say between the ninth and the fifteenth century. But the
English language as a whole proves something more ; its
Teutonic structure, and the majority of its commonest words
having an Anglo-Saxon origin prove that though the
majority of the words of its vocabulary are Romance,
the Teutonic element was ultimately the predominant.
In making historical deductions from the phenomena of
language, several things have to be borne in mind. While
a word borrowed has to submit to the laws which regulate
the development of the language into which it has been
introduced, the language from which it has been taken
has been changing also ; thus, in the word " mutton "
the " 1 " that was sounded in it when the word came to
England was commuted in this country into"t" and in
France into "u," as in "mouton." Hence, in making
deductions from words in one language to words of the same
root in another, these laws must be taken into account.
Further mere isolated examples must not have any stress
laid on them, as the peculiarity which such a case exhibits
may be due to some accidental circumstance, and prove
no general tendency. We have dwelt all the longer on this
as the argument in the present chapter will be based on the
phenomena of language, and there is no work so far as we
are aware which deals with the logic of language, save in the
most general way.
In considering the evidence for the history of the
Samaritan religion, and of its relation to that of the Jews,
to be derived from the successive languages used by the
Samaritan people, Arabic may be put aside. The Samaritan
community is too small — it would take but a small village
to accommodate them — to have any reaction. They are
totally submerged in the Arabic speaking population
around. It is nearly thirteen centuries since, by the victory
in the battle of Jarmuk, the land of Palestine passed from
under the rule of the Byzantine Empire and fell into
the dominion of the Arabs; or as the Samaritans themselves
call it, "the kingdom of the Sons of Ishmael." Some
centuries would elapse before Greek and Aramaic — which
had been for nearly a millennium, the one the public, the
238 THE SAMARITANS
other the domestic language of the people — would yield
place to the speech of the conquerors. It seems, however,
ultimately to have done so completely ; within little more
than half a millennium all attempts at literature made by
the Samaritans appear to have been in Arabic. The most
important of these are the works already referred to, and used
as authorities in regard to the Samaritan view of sacred
history, the " Samaritan Book of Joshua " and " the Annals
of Abu'l Fath." Both these books have been written in what
may be called middle Arabic, neither affecting the Euphuistic
elegancies of High Arabic nor falling into the vulgarity
of Low. In fact these authors, as above said, use the kind
of Arabic which the American translators of the Holy
Scriptures have made use of. It has been noted in regard
to the latter of these two writers that in some cases he shows
the influence of Hebrew in his language, as when speaking
of our Lord he calls Him hameshiach instead of either
the Arabic al-Messih or the Aramaic Messiha. The effect
that Arabic has had on the Samaritans has no evidential
value as to their relation to the Jews and their religion ;
hence for our present purpose it may be put aside.
It may be regarded as practically certain that during
the period of the Greek domination, works in Greek would
be composed and published by Samaritans, especially by
those resident in Egypt. No fragment of any such works
has been preserved. However, one never knows what the
dust heaps of Egypt may yet have in store for us. This much
is so far certain, that the Samaritan community in Egypt
had a translation of the Law for themselves, known to the
Fathers as the Samariticon ; indeed one Jewish writer
maintains that the Septuagint is merely a revisal of this, and
thus would account for the numerous points of resemblance
between the text behind the version of the LXX. and
the Samaritan recension. Nevertheless, it would seem
that the Israelite community in the province of Samaria
have left no trace of the extent to which their hel-
lenisation had gone. Consequently Greek also must be
counted out.
There remain, therefore, the two Semitic tongues to be
considered, Hebrew and Aramaic, represented respectively
fi
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 239
by the Hebrew of the Torah (the Pentateuch), in the
Samaritan recension, and the Samaritan Targum or Aramaic
paraphrase of it. As the recension of the books of the Law
possessed by the Samaritans is necessarily earlier than
the Targum upon it, it will be advantageous to consider
it first, and see what evidence it affords of the relation
subsisting between the two divisions of the Israelite
nation.
Gesenius, in his famous dissertation de Pentateuchi
Samaritani Origine Indole et Auctoritate, devotes the
seventh of the eight classes into which he divides
the variants, which distinguish the Samaritan recen-
sion from that of the Jewish Massoretes, to the con-
sideration of " forms of words accommodated to the
Samaritan dialect." Assuming as he does without proof
that the Jewish recension is the primary, and that therefore
all variations are due to intentional alterations by the
Samaritans, he under this head enumerates instances in
which he believes the Samaritan scribes altered the text to
suit the peculiarities of the Hebrew spoken by the inhabi-
tants of the Northern province. This implies the possibility
of investigating wherein Samaritan Hebrew differed from
that of Jerusalem.
The history of these differences and their origin must
be studied. When the Patriarchs came' into Palestine they
found Hebrew the language in possession. This is seen by
the place-names as Shechem " a shoulder," Succoth " booths,"
Zoar "little," Kadesh "sanctuary," and many more. The
language spoken by the Patriarchs themselves when they
came from Mesopotamia may have been Aramaic, or
Hommel may be right in holding that it was some primi-
tive form of Arabic. However that may have been, they
easily learned the tongue of the people of the land ; all the
more easily that between Hebrew and Aramaic the differ-
ences had not been emphasized by developments on both
sides in contrasted directions. Even as late as the days of
Tiglath-Pileser, as may be seen in the Sinjirli inscriptions,
the differences between the two languages are much slighter
than they afterwards became. When the Israelites went
down into Egypt they were a large community, and one
240 THE SAMARITANS
that kept themselves separate from the Egyptians at the
first ; latterly, the contempt and hatred which the Egyptians
had for them, enforced it ; hence they did not acquire the
tongue of Egypt. When they returned to Palestine, Hebrew
was still the language of the people of the land, as seen by
such personal names as Adonizedek.
In the North, Hebrew had been fully developed by the
Phoenicians, and with them it had become alphabetic. This
alphabet they had conveyed to the Greeks and Cretans. We
have already adverted to the evidence which the Greek
alphabet affords that the Phoenicians, in that prehistoric
time in which they had passed on their alphabet to the
Hellenes, had ceased to pronounce the gutturals. As it
seems probable that none of the other Palestinian races
laboured under this defect (else the gutturals would have
disappeared from the spoken tongue of the Jews) ; there were
already two dialects of Hebrew in Palestine, one of these
was peculiar at all events to a portion of the north of
Palestine. Hence there is an inherent probability in the
assumption of Gesenius that the dialect spoken in Samaria
differed from that in Jerusalem. One may demur to the way
in which he takes for granted that the Torah was originally
written in the Southern dialect, and was assimilated by in-
tentional alterations to that of the North ; the alterations
may as readily have been due to the desire of the Jewish
scribes to assimilate the language of the sacred Law to their
Southern speech.
When, under the seventh of his classes of variants — points
in which the Samaritan recension of the Pentateuch differed
from that of the Massoretes — Gesenius discusses " Samaritan-
isms," he has to admit that these are singularly few. Had
the dissertation been written a few years later, or had it
been republished by the author, he would have lessened
the number yet more by omitting some of those he notes.
The first subsection of these variants contains those due to
interchange of gutturals. Had Gesenius already published
the collection of Samaritan hymns which he found in London
when he wrote his dissertation, we may be sure he would
have omitted this subsection, since he must have seen
that while five of these eight hymns were alphabetic,
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 241
and therefore that the alphabet had a fixed order, there
was not one of them but was irregular in regard to
the place of the gutturals. In the first of these, there
are three ain verses in all of which the letter is mis-
placed ; it occupies the positions of aleph, he, and heth, and
he occupies the legitimate place of ain. There could be no
intentional variation in this case, but it was necessarily a
blunder due to pure inability to distinguish between the
gutturals. That in the Samaritan recension " Hararat "
appears instead of " Ararat," proves merely that the
Samaritan scribe inserted the he, which he did not pro-
nounce, instead of the aleph, which he equally did not
pronounce; or the delinquent may have been the Jewish
scribe who dropped the he and inserted an aleph. In regard
to the majority of the instances in the Torah which Gesenius
brings forward, they are found only in one manuscript, which
Walton, or the editor of the Paris polyglot which he copied,
perversely chose to put as the text. This is the case in
regard to *jO for *«a in Gen. xxiii. 18, nat? for jdb> xxvii. 19,
Vffl for K1DN xxvii. 33, to take no more. Gesenius recognises
a liability on the part of the Samaritans to confuse the ahevi
letters, a liability which rather indicates accident than in-
tention. Sometimes the Samaritan form is the more
primitive, as "B instead of *D (Gen. xlv. 12), in which case the
variation has more probably come from the Jewish scribes
than from those of Samaria. The elliptical sentence, Gen.
xiii. 9, which may be rendered literally from the Massoretic :
" Is not the whole land before thee ? separate thyself now
from me ; if the left I will go to the right, if the right I will go
to the left." To make this intelligible the English versions
insert, " if thou wilt take." On the other hand, the Samaritan
implies another insertion and would read, " If you prefer the
left I will take the right"; in the Samaritan there is no
creation of a new verb or couple of verbs for the transaction.
In the following subsections, Gesenius takes up the various
grammatical elements and considers the variants under
them. Pronouns are among the earliest forms of speech
to be distinguished. Gesenius points out the differences
which subsist between the two dialects in regard to them.
The first instance he brings is "'AN atti instead of n« att for
Q
242 THE SAMARITANS
the 2nd pers. fem. In all probability, Gesenius is right in
regarding this as a Northern peculiarity, because the cases
outside the Torah in which it occurs, are all in narratives con-
cerning events and persons in the North ; thus Jud. xvii. i, is
in regard to Micah's mother; i Kings xiv. 2, is in the narra-
tive of Jeroboam's wife ; the other instance is in regard to the
Shunammite woman, 2 Kings viii. 1. In his grammar and
his dictionary, Gesenius admits that the Samaritan is the
primitive form. This renders it probable that the alteration
was due to the Southern scribes. If it is the case, as some
maintain, that originally there were no-matres lectionis, then
although a word was written without the * it would be pro-
nounced with it. The plural of the 2nd pers. fem. broadens
the final vowel by making the vowel not seghol but tsere,
written plenum; probably the softer pronunciation is the
earlier. In regard to the suffix of the 2nd pers. fem. the
vowel is strengthened by the * yodh ; this tendency to
multiply matres lectionis is a sign of relative recency, as in
the inscriptions these are few. The Hebrew verb distinguishes
the gender in the second person ; in ordinary Hebrew this
pers. fem. in the pret. sing, terminates in n tau with the shva ;
in Samaritan it terminates in * yodh, a form most likely primi-
tive. An instance of the insertion of the * yodky when the
vowel is not in Southern Hebrew at all cognate with it, is to
be seen in Gen. iii. 21, and constantly elsewhere when the
word recurs, the Samaritan has nurva kithnoth instead of the
Massoretic nfana kathnoth. It may be remarked that there
is an uncertainty as to the vowelling of the word ; sometimes
it was pronounced kuthoneth, sometimes fcthorfth. The
word yj.Twv shows that the i sound was in the first
syllable when Greeks borrowed the word. This seems to
indicate that the Samaritan pronunciation is a survival of
the primitive.
Gesenius brings forward a number of individual cases of
what he considers examples to the point. Many of them
are due to the fact that the Samaritans did not pronounce
the gutturals ; and a scribe, writing to the dictation of one
reading from the Torah, would, if he were not specially
attentive, be liable to confuse one guttural with another,
utterly without intention in the matter. Some of the
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 243
examples, however, seem to imply a real difference of a
kind that may be looked upon as dialectic. One example
may be sufficient to show this ; in Gen. xi. 6, the
Massoretic has VDP yaz'mu from DOT zamam ; instead of
this the Samaritan has U»P yazmanu as if derived from a
root pT zaman.
Without considering all the examples which Gesenius
has produced, it must be admitted that he has proved the
correctness of his presupposition that there were distinct
differences between the Hebrew of Samaria and that of
Jerusalem, and further, that these are to be observed in the
two recensions. The study of these reveals the fact that
while some of these differences would seem to indicate that
the more primitive linguistic forms have been preserved in
the Samaritan, others show that in the Massoretic at times
are found the earlier forms. This proves that Hebrew
developed along one line in Samaria and in Jerusalem along
a somewhat different one.
The differences which resulted from the dropping of the
gutturals has been considered in another connection. There
are, however, a series of cases which are placed by Gesenius
in another category of variants. His first class is " Readings
which have been corrected by the Samaritan scribes in
conformity with the rules of ordinary grammar." In the
Pentateuch, according to the Massoretic recension, and in the
Pentateuch alone, the 3rd personal pronoun Kin huf is com-
mon in gender so far as the k'thibh — " what is written " — is
concerned ; it is vowelled for reading as if it were written
IWI hV when the pronoun refers to a noun feminine. In the
Samaritan, the feminine pronoun is written as itis to be read.
The Massoretic reading is due to a blunder in the MS. which
the Massoretes made their model, the blunders of which
they have perpetuated. The origin of the blunder is not
difficult to discover. In the earliest inscription in which the
square character appears, that of Kefr Bir'im, there is no
distinction between 1 vav and * yodh. The MS. used by the
Massoretes must have been written in that script, and copied
by scribes who did not write to dictation but followed with
the eye what was before them. The Samaritan scribes were
under no such liability to mistake, as in the script of Samaria
244 THE SAMARITANS
/}/ yodh is quite different from "* vav J ; hence they are not
so much to be regarded as having corrected the Massoretic
text in this point, as having avoided the blunder of its
writers. Another case of Massoretic blunder due to the
same cause is 17\ walad in Gen. xi. 30, instead of *i£ yalad
as it appears in the Samaritan. Another difference has a
slightly more complicated history. In Gen. i. 24 occurs what
Gesenius in his grammar remarks as an early form of the
construct irvn haitho ; the early sign of the construct appears
rather to have been ' yodh, as seen in such names as
Melchizedek, Gabriel, etc But primitively as seen from the
inscriptions the final yodh was very generally omitted ;
consequently the Samaritan scribe wrote the ordinary
construct, and the scribe who wrote the Massorete mother
manuscript copied the yodh as vav, and this has been per-
petuated. Another set of cases is where the Massoretic
has the pronominal suffix of the 3rd mas. \\ oh instead of
the ordinary 1 0, as has the Samaritan. A case might be
made out for this being an earlier form, as it is found on the
Moabite Stone ; it is, however, simpler to regard it as also
due to blunder on the part of the Massoretic scribes.
If, as is probable, one of the manuscripts in the ancestry of
the Massoretic model was written in the Samaritan script,
and the copyist had confused vav and he, these letters
resembling each other in that script, the mistake would be
easily explained. The suffix in he on the stele of Mesha
may represent ah not oh and so be an Aramaism like the
plural in nun.
Even if we neglect those differences which are due to
scribal blunders, there still remain differences numerous
enough to show that there was a distinction between the
Northern and Southern Hebrew, scarcely great enough to
be called a dialectic difference yet still quite distinct. There
is a difference between the English written or spoken by an
educated American and that spoken or written by an
educated Englishman, but it is too slight to be regarded as
a dialectic difference. Because an American speaks of
1 While this is the case almost universally, in some carelessly written
MSS. yodh is written in a way that it can only with difficulty be dis-
tinguished from vav or he (Gesenius, Carmina Samaritana, p. 6).
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 245
" railroad cars " and says that he " feeds corn to his horse,"
while an Englishman speaks of "railway carriages" and
"feeds his horse with corn," these differences cannot be
dignified by being spoken of as "differences of dialect";
but they prove that in both nations the English language is
a living one, and able to react on circumstances. On a
similar principle we may argue that Hebrew was a living
language in the North as well as in the South when the two
recensions diverged. But even in the time c^Ezr^' and
*Tehemiah2£he language ordinarily spoken by the people
was Atamak^into which the Hebrew of the Taw fr?^ <-p ^^
translated in order that the people could understand -the
.atiim- (N^l). i/iilJ) If this was so in the South, much more
would it be the case in the North. The colonists sent
into the territory of the Ephraimite tribes by Sargon,
Esarhaddon, and Asshur-bani-pal would have Aramaic as
their only common language, and the remnant of the
Israelities would have to learn something of it to hold inter-
course with them ; this process began in the North a century
and a quarter before the fall of Jerusalem. If the inhabitants
of Northern Palestine received the Law at the hands of
Manasseh, the son-in-law of Sanballat, in the days of Ezra
and Nehemiah, still more if the flight of Manasseh took place
in the time of Alexander the Great, as, following Josephus,
most of the higher critics maintain, their relation to the Law
in Hebrew would be very much that of the Italians of the
Renaissance to the Greek classics and the New Testament.
If they accepted whole-heartedly this Torah as divine, they
would be as earnest, when they multiplied the copies of the
Law, in their endeavours after a fastidious accuracy, as were
the scholars employed by Lorenzo the Magnificent in
copying the classics ; it would be too sacred for them to
modify the wording. It is more natural to believe that the
alterations were made, on the one side or the other, while
Hebrew was the spoken language of both peoples. The
modifications which, according to Gesenius, have been made
in the Torah by the Samaritans, are of the kind one sees in
a Scotch song published in London ; the language of the
song is brought into closer adjustment to the Southern
usage. In this case, both dialects are living.
246 THE SAMARITANS
There is, however, another language which claims to be
Samaritan — Samaritan Aramaic. As we have just been main-
taining, in all probability by the time of Ezra and Nehemiah,
and certainly by the beginning of the Greek domination,
Aramaic, not Hebrew, was the tongue ordinarily spoken in
Samaria. As this was the case, there would necessarily arise
the same need for interpretation and explanation as there
was in Jerusalem ; hence the Samaritan Targum.
The time is past in which even scholars could regard
Aramaic as a dialect of Hebrew, and a dialect of a later
date. Aramaic is an ancient language, and one still spoken
by the Nestorians beside the upper waters of the Tigris and
the Euphrates. Aramaic and Hebrew must originally have
been identical. There probably were connecting dialects ;
for instance, the Hebrew of the Mesha inscription has many
Aramaisms in it, e.g., the plural in nun. The earliest extant
Aramaic inscriptions, those of Sinjirli, are so Hebraistic that
it was at first doubtful how they should be regarded, whether
as Hebrew or Aramaic. They were set up, some of them,
in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser. In Scripture, there are in
Aramaic six chapters in Daniel, and in Ezra what is
equivalent to three. If they were written at the date they
claim, they are more recent than the Sinjirli inscriptions
by approximately two centuries. Slightly later than the
chapters in Ezra are the Assouan papyri. In the main,
the Aramaic of these documents is identical with that of
Daniel. Later still is the Targum of Onkelos.1 Although
the Targums were begun in Ezra's time, they were not com-
mitted to writing till probably near the end of the second
century A.D. The traditional interpretation was handed
on from meturgeman to meturgeman ; and thus, although it
would sustain modifications, these would be relatively slight,
and there would always be an archaic flavour in the style.
1 Some scholars maintain that the Aramaic of Onkelos is the same
as that of Daniel and Ezra. It is difficult to imagine how, if they have
really read both Onkelos and the Aramaic of Daniel, they can hold
such an opinion. One may be permitted to think that the necessities of
a theory to which they are committed have overborne their judgment.
The difference is greater than that between the English of Shakespeare
and that of Macaulay.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 247
Extempore prayers among ourselves usually prefer the
idioms of the Prayer Book or the Bible to that of the English
of everyday speech. Notwithstanding that the Aramaic
of Onkelos is archaic, the difference between it and the
Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra is very marked. The Aramaic
of the Bible is much more akin to that of the Assouan
papyri.
At the same time, the Aramaic of the Bible may be
regarded as one in dialect with that of the earlier Targums ;
thus, Chaucer and Cowper use the same English ; the
differences between them are due to time ; whereas the
difference between Burns and Cowper, who were contem-
poraries, is one of dialect. There are two leading dialects
of Aramaic, Eastern and Western, otherwise called Syriac
and Chaldee. If the date of the Peshitta on the one hand,
and of the Targums on the other, be taken as the point of
comparison, the difference most clearly marked is that in
regard to the preformative of the 3rd sing, and plural
mas. imperfect (future) ; while in Chaldee it is, as in
Hebrew, ' yodh, in Syriac the preformative in these cases is in
2 nun ; in the Mandaean subdialect ? lamed is the preforma-
tive in the substantive verb.1 From this it is evident that
the Aramaic spoken in Samaria was Western, as it had
Wit. yodh preformative. It has no trace, as has the Aramaic
of Daniel and Ezra, of having ever been Eastern, or having
had the Syriacisms rubbed off in course of successive
transcriptions. Not only does the Aramaic of the Samaritan
Targum differ from Biblical Aramaic but it differs also from
that of the Jewish Targums.
Although not representing so truly and scientifically the
1 The "lamed" preformative to the substantive verb is found in
Daniel and Ezra. Driver regards it as a phonetic variation on nun.
Dr Bevan would explain it by the Jewish avoidance of a combination of
letters that would suggest the Divine Name, hence they write lt5 for 15
instead of n"1 as this is a Divine Name. There are, however, hundreds of
instances of the substantive verb in the Targums in the 3rd mas. sing,
and plural imperfect ; and in no one instance does the 7 preformative
appear. Dr Bevan's theory proves too much, and therefore proves
nothing. In Daniel, there are cases in which, judging by the rendering,
the text behind the LXX. of Daniel must have had the nun preformative,
e.g., ii. 5-7.
248 THE SAMARITANS
philological connections of a language, its vocabulary exhibits
the commercial and social relations of those that speak it.
Moreover, it is that with which the student first becomes
acquainted. The great amount of intercourse between
Britain and France may be proved by the fact, that though
English is a Teutonic tongue, the majority of the words
which make up its vocabulary are of French origin. And
the comparatively limited intercourse with Germany during
the formative period of the language is shown by the paucity
of those that owe their origin to words borrowed from German
fully developed. Perhaps even more cognate examples are
Turkish and Modern Persian ; though the one is an agglutin-
ative tongue and the other Aryan, yet so large is the infusion
of Arabic in both languages that an Arabic scholar can
occasionally divine the purport of sentences in these languages
by Arabic alone. In the case of both of these languages, it
is the fact that both peoples had adopted a religion which had
originated in Arabia, and its Sacred Book, the Qoran, was
written in Arabic. If the Samaritans received their religion
from Judea, their language would exhibit traces of this.
The vocabulary of the Samaritan Targum differs very
much from that of Onkelos. Not a few of the words, indeed,
seem strange to Aramaic. It may be that some of these
may be due to the blunders of ignorant scribes, writing in a
time when Aramaic had ceased to be spoken, miscopying
what was before them. The second word in the Targum
Dope talmes is one that has no Semitic root ; it is used to
translate K"0 bara, " to create." It may, indeed, be connected
with uTi_ tzelem, " an image," though this does not seem a
natural etymology ; it cannot, at any rate, be the result of
blunder, as more than once again the word occurs. The first
word nmNOip qemautha is supposed by some to be derived
from the more ordinary Dip qedem,the omitted l daleth being
compensated for by doubling the d mem ; the objection to
that etymology is that d and m are sounds that do not
naturally coalesce. It perhaps may be connected with Dip
gum. Then there are words used in Samaritan Aramaic in
other than the sense in which they appear in other forms of
Aramaic, and especially in the Jewish Targums; thus p]T£
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 249
tzdaq means to "cry out" to "shriek" in Jonathan ben
Uzziel, but in the Targum of Samaria it means to " name,"
e.g., Gen. i. 5. "God called the light day." The word used
both in Onkelos and the Peshitta is fcOp qera. These things
show that Samaritan Aramaic developed along lines totally
independent of the evolution of the Jewish and Edessene.
More important as to the philological affinities of a
language than the vocabulary are its grammatical forms ;
and of these, the pronouns require very much to be studied.
As in most Semitic tongues, pronouns have two forms,
separable and inseparable, the latter being the oblique
cases of the former. If the list of the forms of the 1st
pers. pronoun sing, is taken from Petermann and Nicholls,
of the four forms two coincide with the Hebrew, "3JK anoki
^K am, one with the Targum of Onkelos KJN ana (this latter
is noted by both grammarians as rare), and one peculiar to
the Samaritan H3K aneh ; what is the commoner form of the
V T
1st pers. pronoun sing., either in Targumic, Chaldee,
or in Syriac, is rare in Samaritan. In the plural of the
first person, so far as spelling goes, the Hebrew is followed
almost to the exclusion of the Targumic, but the pronuncia-
tion does not differ so much, Unas anachnu (pron. anaanu),
pruK anachnan (anaanan), px anan. The tendency is thus in
the Samaritan to a greater affinity to the Hebrew than is
shown in the Targumic. In regard to the 2nd pers. sing,
the same tendency is seen in the dropping of the nun. The
plural mas. is in better agreement with the Aramaic of the
Targums. The 3rd pers. sing. mas. and fern, is nearly the
same in Hebrew and Aramaic, only that frequently in the
latter the final unpronounced aleph is also unwritten. The
relation between the two may be seen in the paradigm on
following page.
A study of these forms shows that the Aramaic of
Samaria and that of Judea developed along independent
lines. It confirms the statement above that, on the whole,
the Samaritan has a greater affinity for the Hebrew than
has the Targumic.
It has already been mentioned that the Semitic pronoun
had no oblique cases, but that these were expressed by in-
separable pronouns in the form of pronominal suffixes.
250
THE SAMARITANS
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LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 251
Fundamentally, there are two relations which require to be
expressed by oblique cases — the possessive and the objective
— in classic nomenclature, the genitive and accusative ; the
Semitic grammarians, approaching the question from a
different point of view, call them nominal and verbal suffixes,
the former representing the pronoun in the adjectival or
possessive form, the latter, the accusative or objective form.
In this somewhat complicated system it will be seen by the
student that the Samaritan occupies generally an inter-
mediate position between Hebrew and Chaldee. In regard
to verbal or objective suffixes, the ist pers. sing, is the same
in all three ; in the 2nd, the Chaldee is slightly liker the
Hebrew; but in the 3rd, the Samaritan and the Hebrew are
alike, while the Chaldee differs. The same may be said of
the plural suffixes ; the Hebrew and Samaritan are alike, and
the Chaldee differs from both. The singular suffixes to
nouns singular show, on the whole, a closer resemblance of
the Samaritan to the Chaldee than to the Hebrew, but the
plural suffixes to nouns singular in the Samaritan are
practically identical with those in Hebrew, whereas the
Chaldee differs considerably. The same judgment must be
come to in regard to the pronominal suffixes to nouns
plural ; the Samaritan forms are practically identical with
the Hebrew, but differ from the Chaldee.
Another series of words in which linguistic affinities may
be sought is the numerals. A study of the table of numerals
shows that while the Samaritan conforms in the units to the
Chaldee, generally speaking, and differs from the Hebrew,
in regard to the decades (twenty, thirty, forty, etc.) the
affinity of the Samaritan is closer to the Hebrew. In
both Hebrew and Chaldee the decades are expressed by
changing the unit into the plural, as ja*i« arbct, "four,"
in both languages, so "forty" becomes in Hebrew D^jniK
arbaHm, and in Chaldee it becomes pjOTK arbeHn ; the
Samaritan here agrees with the Hebrew and has D^znx
arbctim. As the unit "three" in Samaritan is the same
as in Chaldee, of course the first part of the term for
"thirty" is the Chaldee term, but the termination agrees
with the Hebrew. In regard to a " hundred " the Samaritan
is unlike either Hebrew or Chaldee, which agree with each
252 THE SAMARITANS
other. A " thousand " is the same in all Semitic languages.
It is thus seen that in regard to numerals, as in regard
to pronouns, the Samaritan is much closer to the Hebrew
than is the Chaldee of the Targums. Occasionally double
forms appear ; in such cases, not infrequently, the one
is the Hebrew form and the other the Chaldee.
The study of the verbal paradigms reveals parallel
phenomena in the case of verbal forms. The singular
Preterite of the Samaritan is identical with that of the
Hebrew verb, but differs from the Chaldee in several
particulars. The vocalisation is different ; while in
Samaritan, as in Hebrew, the first syllable is open with
qanietz, in the Chaldee the first syllable has the s/i'va vocale.
The plural is nearly in as close agreement with the Hebrew ;
the Hebrew, however, has no feminine of the 3rd plural which
the Samaritan agrees with the Chaldee in having. The 1st
pers. plu. ends in na in Samaritan and Chaldee, while the
Hebrew ends in nu ; but in regard to the first syllable, there
is agreement all through between the Samaritan and the
Hebrew. In the Future or Imperfect, the singular persons
are consonantally closely alike in all three, except that the
Chaldee retains the final nun in the 2nd fern. All three
differ as to the vocalisation of the second syllable. The 2nd
and 3rd pers. mas. of the Samaritan agrees consonantally with
the Hebrew, but in the 2nd and 3rd plural fern, it agrees with
the Chaldee. In the Infinitive there are in Samaritan
two forms, the one agreeing with the Hebrew, the other
with the Chaldee. Consonantally, Samaritan, Hebrew,
and Chaldee agree in the Imperative, save in the plural
fern., in which the Chaldee differs from the other two by
ending in akph instead of he. In regard to the participles
all three are different. As Samaritan is clearly a form
of Aramaic, the arrangement of the conjugations follows
the Chaldee ; the passive conjugations are distinguished by
the syllable n« ith prefixed to the root. While this is the
rule, instances occur of Niphal, as Gen. x. 25, niphlagat ;
so also, instead of ithpael in some codices the pual form
appears, as Exod. xxix. 33, yisulla. Before a scribe would
drop into such a form it must have been used by the
Aramaic speaking people about him. There is even a case
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 253
in which the Hophal conjugation is used instead of
the more legitimate Ittaphal, Lev. x. l$, ufqedet. In
Biblical Aramaic there are instances of the Hophal, as
Dan. vii. 11, hubad. Another verbal peculiarity in regard
to ain-vav and ain-yodh verbs is that the letter ain is
introduced in the preterite DJ?P gam, Gen. iv. 8, "ijn dar,
Num. xxxii. 40.
Primitive relationships also afford evidence of linguistic
affinities ; father — mother, son — daughter, brother — sister,
husband — wife. The first of these pairs is the same in all
Semitic languages. In regard to the second pair, while bar
is the common Aramaic word for a "son," ben occasionally
appears in Samaritan. The Samaritans manifest their
independence in that they have evolved a regular plural
for bar ; instead of the usual benin they have frequently barim.
The Samaritan word for " brother " is not ah, the word
so generally used in Semitic languages, but telim. As
to " husband " and " wife " the second is represented by the
same word as in the Aramaic of the Targums. In regard to
" husband," the Samaritan generally prefers geber to bdal,
while the Targum of Onkelos prefers the latter to the
former.
The particles of a language are the words which most
distinctly mark its relationships. The common adverbs,
prepositions, and conjunctions remain with a minimum
of change in the historical development of a language.
Hence it is that in these may be found the clearest evidence
of external interference : thus, when in English we find that
so common a word as " very " is a Latin interloper which has
displaced the Teutonic sehr, we may deduce this to be the
result of external interference by a people speaking a tongue
derived from Latin. When the lists of Samaritan adverbs
to be found in Nicholls' Samaritan Grammar is compared
with those in the Targums, it is found that only a minority
of them are common to both subdialects of Aramaic. The
majority of the Samaritan adverbs are not found in the
Targums, and several Targumic adverbs are not found
in the Samaritan. There are instances of Hebrew adverbs
being found in the Samaritan which do not occur in Targumic,
e.g., h lu, " would that." Certainly the great majority of prep-
254 THE SAMARITANS
ositions and conjunctions are common to both forms of
Western Aramaic ; yet even in these classes of particles
there are cases in which the Samaritan has prepositions
which the Targumic does not employ, as pi23 kebun, "over
against," MB katti, " below," nyp se'ad, " as far as." There
are some which the Samaritan has in common with Hebrew,
as Wk etzel, " near." The same is the case with conjunctions ;
there are several Samaritan conjunctions that are not found
in Onkelos ; as for instance H? baran, " lest," "'Op matt,
" because." There are some conjunctions which Samaritan
has in common with Hebrew which yet are not found
in Onkelos, e.g., DS z'm, "if." Certainly, the inseparable
prepositions are the same in Samaritan as in Chaldee, but
this is not very significant, as they are common to all
Semitic languages. The enclitic conjunction ^ u or \ ve is
also common to Hebrew and Arabic as well as to Aramaic.
There are cases in which Hebraisms occur in all the
Aramaic versions of the Scripture. The most noticeable
of these is IV yat or yath, the sign of the accusative. It had
almost disappeared from Aramaic by historic times ; it
occurs only once in Daniel as the support of an oblique case
of a pronoun (Dan. iii. 12). It is to be noted that the
equivalent T\\ vath occurs only once in the Sinjirli inscrip-
tions, and in a similar grammatical connection, as the support
of a pronominal oblique case ; nhj vatho (Hadad i. 28). This
represents the Hebrew nx eth, and occurs in the Targums,
and in the Peshitta also, where eth is found in the
original. There are, however, other phenomena in the
Samaritan Targum which exhibit the special relation in
which it stands to the Hebrew original. Samaritan has,
as has every other form of Aramaic, the status emphaticus,
which serves for the definite article, but in addition it on
occasion uses the Hebrew article in ~n ha: thus in
Gen. i. 27, " man " as the species is written Dixn ha'adam.
More striking than this, as evidence of the influence of
Hebrew on Samaritan, is the occasional occurrence of the
vav conversive, e.g., Gen. i. 3, "irtJ \T1 vayehe nahar, "and
light was," and Exod. x. 8, "iTjp vaya'zar, " was brought in."
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 255
The first example is in Petermann's text but not in Brull's,
the latter in Brull's but not in Petermann's ; but when
copyists show a tendency to fall into such Hebraisms, it is
evidence that these were not uncommon in the speech of the
people.
But the Targum is not the only specimen of Samaritan
Aramaic which has been preserved. There are collections of
hymns which will fall to be considered under the head
of the Literature of the Samaritans. Apart, however, from
the consideration of them as literature, attention may
be directed to the form the language assumes when it
occurs not in a translation from Hebrew but in independent
original compositions. In them there is manifested, even
more strongly than in the Targum, the tendency to mingle
the two languages ; when a hymnist intends to write Hebrew
he drops unconsciously into Aramaic, and vice versa. The
second hymn in Heidenheim's collection is on the whole
Hebrew, yet the first word *20IV yithrabbi, "be magnified,"
is Aramaic; the verb is common to Hebrew and Aramaic,
but the conjugation is Aramaic, and the word terminates
as the Aramaic form does. The next three words are
Hebrew EHpn Dtyn nt ze hash-shem haq-qodesh, " this is the holy
name," although the order is scarcely that of classic Hebrew ;
and it is to be noted that instead of the Aramaic status
emphaticus the Hebrew article is employed. The clause that
follows ends in the word "D33 {kabhed in the niphal), a
Hebrew grammatical form which, as already mentioned,
sometimes occurs in Samaritan ; but further, although the
root is an Aramaic one, in the form of tfbhad it means,
not as it does here, " to be honoured " but " to be angry."
No. IV. of the same collection begins in Hebrew, but before
the sentence ends, drops into Aramaic ; the last word,
although common to both Hebrew and Aramaic, is in an
Aramaic conjugation. In short, many of these hymns have
the aspect of an uneducated Scotsman's English or an
Englishman's Scotch ; in both cases there is, as here, a
perpetual liability to leave the dialect intended and begun,
and drop into the other with which the writer or speaker is
better acquainted.
256 THE SAMARITANS
The phenomena which have just been noted — the
Hebraistic features in the Samaritan grammar, the introduc-
tion of Hebrew words and constructions into Aramaic
compositions, and the liability to pass from one language
to the other — are worthy of special consideration. All
the more is this the case, when, along with them the state of
matters in Judea is brought under review. The people of
the Southern Kingdom were ignorant of Aramaic at the
time of Sennacherib's invasion, for Eliakim and Shebna
requested Rabshakeh to speak to them in Aramaic in order
that their conference might not be understood "by the
people that were upon the wall." A similar condition
of ignorance in regard to the language of diplomacy
may be supposed to have prevailed among the inhabitants
of Northern Palestine at the same date, as the few
colonists sent by Sargon would not be numerous enough
to affect the language of the people generally. While
this was the case as long as the kingdom of Judah still
stood, when both North and South fell under the Persian
rule, the circumstances, linguistically, of the two divisions
of the land must have been very similar. In both, the
original language of the population had been Hebrew,
and still to a certain extent was so. In both there had
been intruded an element whose language was Aramaic.
The few colonists sent by Sargon had their numbers aug-
mented by the much larger number sent by Esarhaddon.
and later still by others sent by his son and successor
Asshur-bani-pal. Not impossibly, these would be supple-
mented by natives of Syria and of other countries whose
language was Aramaic. There is no record of Nebuchadnezzar
sending colonists into Judea, after the Assyrian manner ;
but members of neighbouring Aramaic speaking nations
drifted in and seized lands and heritages the lawful pro-
prietors of which had been slain, were captives, or had gone
down to Egypt. The probability is that in both districts
the language spoken was Aramaic, with a large admixture
of Hebrew. There is no probability that the colonists sent
into the territories of the Northern tribes pronounced
Aramaic without the gutturals as the Samaritans did
Hebrew. Although the Assyrians had in their own
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 257
cuneiform language only one guttural, n keth, yet from
the evidence of the Sinjirli inscriptions in which there is no
uncertainty as to K aleph and V am, or as to n he and n keth,
we may be reasonably sure that they made use of all the
gutturals in speaking Aramaic. But the habit of the
conquered people overbore the custom of the colonists sent
by the Imperial power. Taking somewhat of .the position
of the Assyrian colonists in the North, in the South were
those who returned from the Babylonian captivity. They
would be accustomed to speak Aramaic in public, and in
intercourse with their neighbours in Babylonia, but almost
certainly among themselves they spoke Hebrew in com-
parative purity. There is this peculiarity to be noted, these
returned captives would necessarily speak Syriac, that is
to say Eastern Aramaic, not Western or Chaldee. But the
Targums of Onkelos and of Jonathan ben Uzziel are in
Chaldee. Intercourse with the people of the land who
naturally spoke Chaldee would gradually rub off the
orientalisms of the new-comers and assimilate their dialect
to that of those around them.
The resemblance between the two communities was so
great, at once in external circumstances and linguistically,
that an assimilation of language might have been supposed
to have resulted, all the more because they were near
neighbours and professed to worship the same God, and,
before the arrival of Ezra, had been united together through
frequent intermarriages. If they received the Law by the
hands of Manasseh, it would seem to have been natural that
they would at the same time have adopted the Southern
pronunciation of the Hebrew, and the Southern Targum.
In both the South and the North Hebrew must still have
been understood, as is evidenced by the fact that in the reign
of Darius, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and later still
Malachi, delivered their message in Hebrew with something
like purity. If the Samaritans received all the Ezrahitic
additions to the Law with unquestioning docility, how was
it that they did not assimilate their mode of pronouncing the
sacred language to that of those whose teaching they had
accepted ? It may have been that Hebrew was used only in
regard to sacred things, much as Latin in the Middle Ages.
R
258 THE SAMARITANS
This probably continued down through the Persian period
until the domination of the Greeks set in. The language
became debased, as may be seen in Ecclesiastes. If the original
Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus may be judged by the manuscript
so opportunely discovered, it is written in a much nearer
approach to classic Hebrew than is the language of
Ecclesiastes. Probably the style of Ben Sira represents an
endeavour to restore Hebrew to its pristine purity, a move-
ment akin to the Atticistic style of the Greek writers of the
age of the Antonines. It is singular that though Hebrew
was known so late, it has influenced the language of the
Targums so little. It might have been expected that,
as the Targums were handed on, not by writing but
traditionally, from one meturgeman to another, the influence
of Hebrew would have been all the more observable ; but
the traces are few, compared with what are to be found in
the Targum of the Samaritans.
Another phenomenon is worthy of note. Although it
was late in the second century when the Targum of Onkelos
was committed to writing, and the Roman rule was, so far
as language was concerned, a continuation of the Greek,
there are practically no evidences of Hellenic influence in its
vocabulary. In this, the Targum of Onkelos differs from
the Peshitta of the New Testament ; in it, such connectives
as *6« alia, " but," and ">3 gar, " for," indicate the influence of
Greek. The Samaritan Targum shows less trace, but it has
some, as for instance, Dfaa genos, which is the Greek yeVo?
(Gen. i. 1 2). The preposition "•ro katti, " below," is derived
from Kara. Yet certainly, considering the length of the
Greek predominance, it is singular that it has left so little
trace. The Hellenic influence was dominant for close upon a
millennium ; yet the Arabic domination, which has lasted for
three centuries more, has produced even less effect on the
Aramaic of Samaria.
All this emphasizes the independent position of the
Samaritans in relation to the Jews. It has been noted how
much more prominent the Hebrew element is in Samaritan
Aramaic than in the Aramaic of Judea, which expressed itself
in the Targum of Onkelos. This difference may have been
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 259
due to the fact that the colonists who brought Aramaic with
them came to Samaria in successive relays, with considerable
intervals of time between each. Each several detachment
would be swallowed up of the people among whom they had
been sent to dwell. When a new band of colonists arrived,
they would find those who had preceded them absorbed
among the Israelites, speaking a sort of Hebrew and worship-
ping JHWH with somewhat uncertain rites. In such circum-
stances, the original colonists may not infrequently have
become more vehement partisans of the native cause than
the natives themselves. The descendants of the English
colonists in Ireland became Hibernis Hiberniores — more
partisanly Irish than the Irish themselves. One result of
this is that the Aramaic in use in Northern Palestine became
very much Hebraized. Judging by their hymns, the language
of the Samaritans became somewhat of an amalgam.
The Samaritans maintained this linguistic separation
from their brethren of Judea, despite that, under the
Empire of Rome, Judea and Samaria were usually under
one governor. Herod had Samaria added to his dominions,
and united — Archelaus inherited them. When the Romans
sent Coponius first, and others till Porcius Festus, as pro-
curators, the two provinces were united under their rule.
Notwithstanding that they had the same religion, were under
the same civil authority, they maintained not merely in-
dependence of the Jews but even an enmity to them, so
that the Samaritan woman said to our Lord, "The Jews
have no dealings with the Samaritans." Josephus in his
history exhibits the attitude of the Jew to the Samaritans :
he has no good word to say of them. This hatred they
repaid with interest. That being so, their testimony to the
contents of the Mosaic Law must be regarded as that of
independent witnesses, not the mere parrot-rote repetition
of pupils who imitate their master.
Literature of the Samaritans.
The consideration of the language of the Samaritans
leads naturally to a survey of their literature. All the later
Samaritan literature, that is to say, all after the twelfth
260 THE SAMARITANS
century of our era, has been written in Arabic. Even the
so-called Samaritan "Book of Joshua," to which reference
has been made in a previous chapter, is written in the tongue
of " the Sons of Ishmael." The historian who is the principal
source of our knowledge of the views entertained by the
Samaritans as to sacred history, Abu'l Fath, wrote his
Annals in the same language. All this, though written by
Samaritans, is to be reckoned not as Samaritan but as
Arabic literature. Similarly, during the rule of the Greeks,
and under the dominance of Rome and its continuation by the
Caesars of Byzantium, there were Samaritan books composed
in Greek the names of which may have come down to us.
Even if these works were discovered in Egypt among heaps
of papyri and ostraka, they would be regarded not as
specimens of Samaritan literature but as that of later
hellenism. It is therefore entirely to such literary remains
as are still to be found in Samaritan Hebrew or Aramaic
that our attention will be directed.
The amount of this is exceedingly scanty. Some time
in the second century of the Christian era there must have
been a wholesale destruction of Samaritan writings. In the
Samaritan " Book of Joshua," above referred to, this disaster
is attributed to the reign of Hadrian ; Abu'l Fath, however,
describes this destruction as taking place more than half a
century later, in the reign of Commodus, the son and suc-
cessor of Marcus Aurelius. The study of the Samaritan
Chronicles reveals in them such an amount of chronological
confusion that little reliance can be laid on particulars.
When it is noted that in them Adrinus (Hadrian) is declared
to be the successor of Alexander the Great, and he of
Buchtinosor (Nebuchadnezzar), it becomes evident how little
trust is to be placed on the chronology of Samaritan tradition.
All that is clear is, that somewhere in the second century A.D.,
the Samaritans had to endure a severe persecution, and that
in that persecution the destruction of the sacred books was
a special object of their persecutors. As the agents of the
Imperial police would be unable to read the Samaritan
character, all books in Samaritan would be seized and
destroyed, as well as the copies of the Torah of which they
were more immediately in search. The result was (so the
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 261
Samaritans say) that the Torah alone was saved, and,
according to some authorities, with it the list of the succes-
sive high priests ; this, however, is doubtful.
Although the destruction has not been so absolute as
this would indicate, very little has survived. The most
important of these literary survivals is the Samaritan
Targum.1 As it is a translation, it has a larger infusion of
Hebrew than it otherwise might have had. As a transla-
tion, it is more faithful than even Onkelos. To show the
difference, let the curse on the serpent (Gen. iii. 14, 15), as
it appears in the Samaritan Targum, be compared with the
version in Onkelos. In the Samaritan it is : " And the Lord
God said to the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou
art cursed above all cattle and every beast of the field. . . .
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed ; and he shall bruise thy
head and thou shalt bruise his heel." On the other hand,
Onkelos renders : " I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy son and her son. He will re-
member thee and what thou didst to him at the beginning,
and thou wilt be watchful of him at the end." Another
passage which involves some difficulty is Gen. iv. 7. The
Samaritan rendering is : " If thou doest well, thou shalt be
absolved ; if thou doest not well, at the door sin croucheth ;
at thy hand is its remedy, and thou shalt rule over it ; " but
Onkelos is much more paraphrastic : " If thou doest thy work
well, thou shalt be pardoned ; if thou dost not do thy work
well, to the day of judgment thy sin shall be reserved, when
vengeance shall be exacted from thee, if thou do not repent ;
but if thou repent, it shall be remitted to thee." An example
in which Onkelos is, though paraphrastic, not so much so,
is verse 23 of the same chapter — the song of Lamech.
It may be compared with the straightforward rendering of
1 Dr Paul Kahle ( Textkritische u. Lexikal. Bemerk. zum Sam. Penta-
teuch Targum) thinks that there never was, among the Samaritans, a
generally recognised Targum like that of Onkelos among the Jews. He
is led to that conclusion by the number and nature of the various readings
found in such fragments of Samaritan Targum as have turned up from
time to time. His conclusion, though important, has no direct bearing
on our inquiry as to the Samaritan language and doctrine.
262
THE SAMARITANS
the Samaritan. Other instances for comparison might be
suggested, e.g.y the Blessing of Jacob, especially the sections
in regard to Judah and Joseph (Gen. xlix. 8-12, 22-26). On
the whole, the Samaritan Targum is written in a simple
direct style.
There are several collections of hymns extant ; some of
them appear to be early, dating from pre-Christian times.
There was a collection of these hymns made by a certain
Mattura, whose date is difficult to fix. Heidenheim has
published a collection of hymns which he thinks is really
that of Mattura. These hymns are all liturgic, without much
poetic or religious feeling. They are of various dates, as has
just been intimated — some earlier, some later. The earliest
are written in fairly good Hebrew, with an occasional
admixture of forms drawn from Samaritan Aramaic ; they
are largely centos of phrases from the Pentateuch, and are
mostly fragmentary. They are all anonymous, save that
the names of Moses and Joshua are placed as titles. There
were, in all probability, collections of hymns earlier than any
still extant ; these, however, have been lost in the persecution
referred to. The hymns in the collection published by
Heidenheim in the Biblioiheca Samaritana, which are in
Hebrew, probably are survivals from those earlier groups.
Heidenheim divides the hymns of the collection which he
has published into three classes. (1) The first, those in
relatively pure Hebrew, he would ascribe to the period
beginning with the time when the jews rejected the help
of the Samaritans, which these had offered when the former
had returned from captivity and were engaged in rebuilding
the temple at Jerusalem. The erection of the temple on
Mount Gerizim, in consequence of this, led naturally to the
composition of hymns, suitable to the ritual which they had
set up. (2) The second class were composed during the period
in which the Samaritans separated themselves doctrinally
from Sadduceanism. This revolution in the Samaritan out-
look was apparently due to a considerable extent to the
influence of Christianity. The language in which these
hymns are written is New Hebrew, with a yet greater
admixture of Aramaic forms. (3) The third class is formed
from hymns during the period beginning with the eighth
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 263
Christian century, in which Arabic was beginning to
replace Aramaic and Greek as the predominant language,
alike of the home and the market-place. The hymns
show some slight traces of Arabic influence in their
language.
This collection, which Heidenheim has published, is
preceded by a lengthened introduction in Hebrew. It is
really a cento of verses extracted from Genesis, and relates
the history of the Patriarchs from the call of Abraham to
the carrying down of Joseph into Egypt. It ends with the
statement: "And JHWH was with Joseph and he found
(favour in the eyes of his master) and JHWH blessed the
house of the Egyptian, and he left l all that he had in the
hand of Joseph ; and Joseph was a goodly person and well
favoured." This termination suggests that the true end of
the " Introduction " has been lost. While the call of Abraham
forms a natural beginning to such a sketch, the slavery of
Joseph does not form an equally natural conclusion. The
sketch is interesting, as it presents some variations from the
narrative in the received text, Massoretic or Samaritan. As
an instance, alike in the Massoretic and the Samaritan,
Abraham is said (Gen. xii. 6) to have " passed through the
land to the place Shechem, to the plain (or ' oak ') of
Moreh " ; in this introduction it is to the " height " of Moreh
that he comes ; this merely involves the change of X aleph
into V ain, a change all the more easy to make as, by the
Samaritans, neither letter was pronounced.
As an example of these hymns, that numbered II. in this
collection may be taken. It is called " The Prayer of Mo^'
and is in fairly good Hebrew. Its language has already
been referred to. A translation is subjoined to give a
specimen of Samaritan hymnology : —
Magnify this holy name ; one is JHWH and to be glorified ;
There is none beside Him in the Heaven above or upon the earth
beneath ;
There is none beside Him.
Blessed be JHWH our God, whose name is glorious and rightly to be
praised.
1 The text reads, by blunder, -Qjn "and he served."
264 THE SAMARITANS
May our heart be circumcised, and the heart of our seed ;
Let us fear Him and loye Him ;
Let us learn and observe the ten words of the Covenant
Which He spake in Horeb from the midst of the fire,
In the day of the assembly.
JHWH God merciful and gracious, forgiving to us and to our fathers,
Our rebellion, in Thy grace, everything in which we have sinned,
Transgressed, gone astray before Thee.
Ah Lord, I am that I am, remember Thy servants,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, O Lord, in their labour.
Turn not away from us on account of our hardness, our wickedness, and
our sins ;
We are sinners before Thy Majesty, and transgressors before Thy
Greatness.
Thou art JHWH a God merciful and gracious ;
Go now with us, O Lord, in our midst,
For a hard stiff-necked people are we.
And forgive us our iniquities and our sins ;
And give to us our inheritance, O Lord, the merciful.
For Thy great name, deliver us from everything false.
And save us from every abomination, and cleanse our souls from every
abomination,
And sanctify our bodies from all uncleanness.
And forgive to us and to our fathers our rebellion, in Thy mercy,
From everything in which we have sinned, erred, and transgressed
before Thee.
O Lord, we will circumcise our hearts,
And shall return to Thee with our whole heart and soul ;
And we shall love Thee with all our heart, with all our soul, and with
all our might.
For good to ourselves we will beseech Thy favour, and Thy goodness,
Thy compassions, and Thy favours.
Consecrate us to observe Thy ceremonies, and Thy statutes, and Thy
commandments, and Thy judgments at all times.
That will give some idea of the character of those hymns.
It may be noted that some of these poems referred to above
— as for instance, No. IV. — begin with a quotation from the
Pentateuch in Hebrew (Deut. xxxiii. 4), then immediately
lapse into Aramaic. Others, while wholly Aramaic, yet admit
numerous Hebraistic forms ; others, intended to be Hebrew,
admit Aramaic forms and constructions. At times, as above
noted, the Arabisms may be observed. In regard to verse
forms, there seems to be no case of the parallelism which we
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 265
find in Hebrew poetry, maintained through a poem. In
three, IX., X., XI., there is use of a refrain, as in Ps.
cxxxvi. A very considerable number are in rhyme ; not
rhyming couplets, but using one rhyme through a stanza
of a dozen lines or more. Thus No. XII., a short poem of
twelve verses and twenty-four lines, has only one rhyme, the
syllable « nu. All scholars are aware that a similar frequency
of pronominal suffixes occurs in Hebrew; and that many
passages in the Prophets have so great an appearance of
rhyming, that some have been led to regard this as not
merely, like alliteration in English poetry, an adornment,
but of the constitutive essence of the versification. Study
soon reveals that the Hebrew prophets did not build up their
poems by the help of similarly ending lines. It is different
with the Samaritans ; they show that rhyme is with them no
casual occurrence, by placing the rhyming syllables one over
the other in a column, with a blank space of varying length
between it and the rest of the word of which it is the
termination. Some of these poems combine with rhyme the
acrostic character so frequent in the Hebrew Psalms.1 An
example of this is to be found in XXL, which has twenty-
two stanzas of varying lengths, each of which begins with the
letter which follows in alphabetic order that with which its
predecessor began. Like not a few of the Samaritan
alphabetic poems, it begins with V ain instead of K aleph, an
irregularity due to the Samaritan inability to pronounce the
gutturals. It is a hymn for the Great Day of Atonement,
and is attributed to the seven daughters of Jethro, the father-
in-law of Moses. Each stanza of this long poem of 665 lines
has only one rhyme ; the rhyming syllable in the first stanza
is al, in the second is yah, and so on : it is to be noted that
the fifth stanza, the rhyming syllable of which is jn ra\
carries on the assonance with m, m and fcO, It recounts
the history of the Pentateuch in liturgic form. Several
other of these hymns are, like this, at once alphabetic and
1 In mediaeval times the Jews sometimes produced poems of this
construction, e.g. the hymn Agdamuth, written by Meyer ben Izhaq
in the eleventh century ; the first forty-four of its ninety-nine lines
are both rhyming and alphabetic. It rhymes throughout on the
syllable sn.
266 THE SAMARITANS
rhyming. Although there is no parallelism, the lines in
many of the poems are divided by a pause into two approxi-
mately equal parts ; in this way there is a rhythmic effect
produced.
Earlier by sixty years than Heidenheim's publication
were the Carmina Samaritana given to the world by
Gesenius. He found a collection of Samaritan hymns in the
British Museum, but through misplacing of the leaves the
whole had the aspect of confused fragments. As some of
them were accompanied by an Arabic translation and some
were not, and several were alphabetic, he was enabled to
discover that there were twelve separate hymns. There
were in the University of Gotha where he was professor,
certain Samaritan MSS. which he collated. Eight of the
twelve hymns, the first seven and the twelfth, he has published
with a Latin version ; a summary is given of the remaining
four. Six of those he has given are alphabetic ; but unlike
the alphabetic hymns published by Heidenheim, the alpha-
betic succession is not restricted merely to the first letter of
each stanza ; but if the stanza has four lines, it is every
second line; if two, each line. Gesenius would date those
hymns, which he has published, as composed possibly after
the persecution inflicted on the Samaritans by Justinian, or
that endured in the beginning of the Mohammedan rule.
The probability is that they belong to various epochs, as
they do not all indicate recency of persecution. The
prevalence of rhyme in some would indicate a predominant
Arabic influence.
A specimen may be given of the nature of these Canning
Saniarijatuiehv a translation of a few of the opening stanzas
of the first of them : —
There is no God save one : (i) Creator of the World,
Who can measure Thy Greatness ? Thou hast wrought in majesty
In the space of six days.
(2) In Thy Law, great and true, We read and become wise ;
In each of those days Thou didst magnify Thy creative Power.
(3) Made great in Thy Wisdom, They proclaim Thy Excellency.
They reveal Thy Divine Power ; Nothing is unless to magnify
Thee.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 267
(4) Thou hast created Thy glorious works Without weariness.
Thou hast drawn them forth from nothingness, In the space of
six days.
(5) Thou hast created them perfect ; There is not defect in one of
them.
Thou hast shown forth their perfection to be seen, Because Thou
art the Lord of Perfection.
(6) Thou didst rest without weariness On the seventh day ;
Thou madest it a crown For the six days.
(7) Thou didst call it holy, Thou madest it head,
The time of every convocation, Chief of all holiness.
(8) Thou didst make it a covenant Between Thyself and Thy
worshippers ;
Thou didst teach them To guard its observance strictly.
(9) Happy they who celebrate the Sabbath, Who are worthy of its
blessing.
Its holy shade makes them breathe again, Free from all labour
and fatigue.
(10) With glorious gifts Our Lord has honoured us,
He gave to us the Sabbath day At length we rest since God has
prepared quiet.
The poet next glorifies the Law and Moses through
whom it had been revealed.
The last verse may be translated as exhibiting the place
ascribed to Moses : —
(22) An Ocean of Speech, Did Divine Excellence make Moses,
The end of Revelation is Moses, The end of the Revelation of
our Lord.
Of the rest of these hymns the most interesting is one
by a certain Abu'l Fath 1 relating the sufferings endured by
the Samaritans from their persecutors ; it is numbered V.
in Gesenius' collection. We subjoin a few stanzas from
it:—
(5) If there is no helper for us, He Himself will afford us aid.
O merciful King, Pity our humiliation.
1 It is not clear whether this is the historian or not.
268 THE SAMARITANS
(6) We are Thy servants, The sons of Thy Servants ;
Be it far from Thee That Thou shouldest forget Thy covenants with
our ancestors.
(7) We take refuge in Thy favour From the midst of our mighty
oppressors.
The above examples may be held as sufficient to give an
idea of the hymns of the Samaritans.
Some poetic fragments, hymns for circumcision, marriage
songs, etc., were discovered by Merx in the library of Gotha,
but do not call for remark. The same scholar also found a
poem on the Thaheb, the Samaritan Messiah. Its value is
more theological than literary.
The prose literature of the Samaritans is mainly repre-
sented by the theologian Marqah. As with the last cited
poem, the value of his treatises is mainly theological. The
style is rather rhapsodical than even rhetorical. Marqah's
Book of Wonders begins thus :
" Great is the might of the Omnipotent.
Let us clothe ourselves with fear lest we be destroyed.
No secret is hid from Him, and all is in His power.
He knows what is, what was, and what will be.
Of Himself is His might, He has need of no other."
If this is compared with the treatises in the Mishna, which
were probably nearly contemporary with Marqah's literary
activity, the wide difference between their literary atmosphere
is observable. Marqah had not gone to school with the
Jewish Rabbis.
In verse, the Samaritans owed little to _the Jews. The
ruling feature of Jewish versification was parallelism, but
there is no trace of it as a constituent part of the verse of
the Samaritans. On the other hand, the Samaritans used
rhyme as a vehicle for their poetic expression of which the
Jews did not make use until late times. Both they and the
Jews had a favour for the alphabetic acrostic ; and both
occasionally used the refrain. Still these are not the
essentials of verse ; in all three, the Samaritans followed
other models than the Jews. If they did not follow the Jews
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF SAMARITANS 269
in matters of literary form, still less were they likely to do so
in religion.
Literary activity has ceased for centuries among the
Samaritans. Latterly they have been especially im-
poverished. All their later work, as mentioned above, has
been in Arabic.
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CHAPTER X
COMPARISON OF THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH WITH
THE MASSORETIC
ABOUT three centuries ago an Italian nobleman, Pietro della
Valle by name, determined to make a prolonged tour in the
East. In the beginning of his journey he passed through
Constantinople ; while there he was entertained by the
French Ambassador, a man interested in scholarship ; he
suggested to Delia Valle that he should, if possible, secure
a copy of the Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch.
Mindful of this, when he reached Cairo, Della Valle
endeavoured to induce some member of the Samaritan
community there to sell him a copy of their Torah, but not
one would part with a copy on any consideration. He pro-
ceeded to Gaza, but with the Samaritan community there
his efforts were equally fruitless. The same was the case in
Nablus. At length in Damascus he succeeded in procuring
two copies, one of which found its way to the Royal Library
in Paris, now the Bibliotheque Nationale, where it still may
be seen. The other was sent to the Vatican. The text, as
represented by the Parisian copy, was printed under the
editorship of Morinus, a pervert from Protestantism. The
controversy between Roman Catholic and Protestant had at
that time reached an acute stage. The Thirty Years' War
had just begun, and the two parties were specially embittered
against each other. Morinus, emphasizing the difference
between the two recensions, demanded of the Protestants
which of the two represented the genuine Word of God,
claiming that the Church alone had the authority to decide.
He was answered by numerous Protestant scholars, all of
whom maintained that the Samaritan Recension was late
275
276 THE SAMARITANS
and worthless. Some like the younger Buxtorf, in their
eagerness to rebut the claim to antiquity put forward in
favour of the Samaritan drawn from the script in which it
was written, went so far as to declare, against the evidence
of the Jews themselves, that the Law was originally written
in the square character. These discussions, which went on
for a couple of centuries, proceeded mainly on a priori grounds,
and were therefore for scholarship practically valueless. At
length a serious attempt was made to estimate scientifically
the nature and extent of the differences between the two
recensions. Little more than a century ago, in the year
1 815, Gesenius, in proceeding to the degree of Doctor of
Theology, presented, as his Thesis, a short treatise entitled,
de Pentateuchi Samaritani Origine Indole et Auctoritate, to
which there has already been reference. In it he removed
the question into a new region ; putting their theological
bearings to one side, he proceeded to examine the differ-
ences themselves, their number, extent, and character.
Gesenius, good Protestant as he was, assumed without
further ado that the Massoretic text was the primitive, and
that the Samaritan text arose from it by intentional variation.
As nearly all the more recent investigators have been non-
Catholic, and the majority of them Jews, it is not surprising
that the same assumption has been implicit in them all. It
scarcely needs argument to show that such a procedure is
eminently unscientific. In the pages which follow we shall
endeavour to avoid any presumption in favour of one or
other.
It is very difficult to see why, in determining the relation
between the Samaritan and the Massoretic, the critical
school, who treat the Massoretic text with such slight respect
sometimes, are so enamoured of it, when the question as to
the relative priority or the dependence of the one on the other
has to be considered. The Massoretic text appears to have
been gradually evolved. The distinction between the qri
and the k'tkifr, between what ought to be read and what
is written, is familiar to every one ; even the youngest
student of the Hebrew Scripture is soon made aware of
this. The origin of this requires to be explained. That
which has to be "written" has frequent blunders which,
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 277
however, are in the main corrected in the qn\ that which
has to be "read." This perpetuation of blunders which
are known, and duly corrected in each copy, seems only
explicable on the idea that some one roll of the Law, some
one roll of the Prophets, and some one roll of the K'thubhim
had for some reason become sacrosanct, perhaps from having
been the property of some much venerated Rabbi ; its very
blunders, though recognised to be blunders, are hallowed by
the roll in which they occur. Another manuscript, or
perhaps two, suggested the correct reading. There may be
a well-grounded suspicion that many blunders may have
been retained because the manuscripts which supplied the
qri agreed in the blunder with that which was copied in
the k'thibh. That this singular amalgam of blunders and
corrections was the result of a process may be proved
by comparison of the Massoretic with the text behind
the older versions. Although the — Tnrah was regard prl
as the most sacred portion of. the Scripture, and therefore
one should have expected that it would be most carefully
copied, and most sedulously kept free of errors ; yet in
the Pentateuch there are a larger number of recognised
blunders in proportion than in any other part of Scripture.
When the versions are brought into comparison, it is
found that the older the version the further it is from
the Massoretic. The oldest version is that of the LXX.
The differences between the text behind it and the Masso-
retic are extensive and well known. An interval of several
centuries separates the Septuagint from the next Greek
translations. With regard to two of these, by Aquila and
Symmachus, only fragments have been preserved, and these
mainly in quotations ; hence no absolutely trustworthy
evidence can be drawn from them as to what relation
the text from which they translated bore to the Massoretic.
In regard to Theodotion, we have the advantage of
possessing a complete book, the book of Daniel, in his
translation. The result of a study of Theodotion serves
to show that while his version has been made from a text
much nearer to the Massoretic than that behind the Septua-
gint, it still was one which differed considerably from it.
Nearly contemporary with Theodotion, but not improbably
278 THE SAMARITANS
somewhat earlier, is the Peshitta of the Old Testament.
Theodotion's version seems to have been made in the
first half of the second century of our era, which is a
not improbable date for the Peshitta of the New Testament ;
but the language of the Peshitta of the Old Testament
appears to be older, so it may quite well be dated in
the latter half of the first century. The relation of the
Peshitta to the Massoretic is much closer than is
Theodotion's. The latest of the older versions is the
Vulgate, the work of St Jerome, written in Palestine in the
fifth century ; its evidence is specially valuable. Jerome
was a scholar and gave all diligence and used every
assistance to get the exact text and the precise meaning
of every passage. Over and above his version, he wrote
commentaries on a number of the books of the Old
Testament, and in these there are many textual notes; we
can thus form a pretty clear idea of the text in his day.
In regard to the Psalms we have not only his revision of
the Latin Psalter then in use — a version of the Septuagint —
but the version which he made direct from the Hebrew,
and thus can measure the change which the Hebrew
text had undergone in the interval. While the text which
Jerome used is much closer to the Massoretic than that
behind Theodotion, it still is far from being absolutely
identical with it. For one thing, the distinction between qri
and htthibh does not seem to have been known to him
or to the Rabbin, his instructors, in Palestine. There are
two cases in which the qri is most illuminative in which the
scribe of the Vthibh has written vb lo, " not," instead '"h /o,
" to him " ; in both cases the blunder is corrected by the
qri. The instances are Is. ix. 3 and Ps. c. 3. In regard to the
first of these, "Thou hast multiplied the people and hast
not increased the joy," Jerome in his commentary recognises
the difficulty but shows no knowledge of the way of escape to
be found in the qri. He would explain the apparent con-
tradiction by instancing the perpetual grief of the Apostles
over the impenitence of Israel, though converts were
multiplied. With regard to the Hundredth Psalm, Jerome's
own version is placed in a column parallel to that in which
is printed his amended version of the LXX. In his own
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 279
version he renders the clause in question — Deus, ipse
fecit nos et ipsius sumus. The conclusion to which we feel
obliged to come is that in Jerome's days the Massoretic text
had not been reached. The fact that the Peshitta, though
probably earlier than Theodotion, is closer to the Massoretic,
suggests that the model manuscript on which the ttthibh
is based must have been written in Babylon. The close
agreement of the Targum of Onkelos may be explained
by its Babylonian origin, or at least sanction. From this
it will be seen that the Massoretic text is late and not by
any means very accurate. There is therefore no ground
for assuming, as do so many of the students of the Samaritan
question, that the Massoretic represents the primitive
text.
The variants which exist between the Samaritan
and the Massoretic are very numerous, but of very
different value. The student may find a convenient list
of them in the beginning of Bagster's Hebrew Bible. It
labours under one disadvantage, that it has been made from
the text in Walton's Polyglot, which is very defective ; the
editor seems to have had a perverse preference for the worse
reading in every case. The number of the differences may
be estimated when it is seen that they occupy fifty pages in
the beginning of Bagster's Hebrew Bible. Another list
available for the student is that by Petermann appended
to his Versuch einer Heb. Formenl. nach der Aussprache der
heutig. Samaritaner and occupies 108 pages. The disadvan-
tage with regard to Petermann's list is that the Samaritan
text implied in it does not in every case agree with the text
of Genesis, which he has transcribed to show the Samaritan
pronunciation. With the two, however, the student is in
a position to consider the variants. Blayney's transcrip-
tion of the Samaritan of the Polyglot text is valuable still,
although it occasionally adds blunders of its own to those
of Walton's text. Much better is the careful text of von
Gall.
As a suitable introduction to the study of these differences
between the Samaritan and Massoretic texts, since it will
exhibit the general nature and relative frequency of them,
it would seem advisable to take a limited portion of the
280 ^ THE SAMARITANS
Pentateuch, note in it the successive examples of diverg-
ence as they occur, and then consider their nature. As the
portion of the Hebrew Scripture most likely to be familiar
to those who read the original, the first chapter of Genesis
may be taken. As it is convenient we may make use of
Bagster's list. The first difference noted is that the
Massoretic begins with a large 2, whereas in the Samaritan
the opening 2 is of the same size as the other letters. So
natural is it to us to emphasize the beginning of a book or
of a section of a book by using- a large, perhaps ornamental,
letter that the large 2 would not be recognised as a peculiarity,
were it not for the Massoretic note which draws attention to
it. On looking through the Hebrew Bible it will be found
that only other three books, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and
first Chronicles begin with large letters. The next variant is
found in verse II, where in the Samaritan 1 " and " is inserted
before fjf aytz, " a tree " ; the English versions insert " and "
here. It is to be noted that this " and " is supplied in all
versions, ancient and modern. In the same verse ' in
JHTO mazrid , "a seeding seed" is dropped in the Samaritan ;
this involves a change of conjugation from Hiphil to Piel.
Elsewhere in Scripture there is no instance of the participle
of either conjugation of this verb ; the imperfect of the
Hiphil occurs in Lev. xii. 2, the preterite Pual, the passive
of the Piel, is found in Is. xl. 24. As the variation involves
no change of meaning, the versions do not decide. In verse
14 there are four variants ; first the Hebrew word for " lights "
is written plene in the Samaritan with all the matres
lectionis nriixp instead of rhx» as in the Massoretic ; second,
in the Samaritan there is a clause added p«n by "VKfi? lehdeer
V T t - " t :
W hdaretz, "to give light upon the earth," which is not in the
Massoretic ; in this the Samaritan has the support of the
LXX., according to the text of Brooke and Maclean, and the
Vulgate ; fourth, the Samaritan writes the vowels in 'otAot/t,
" signs," plene in both cases, whereas in the Massoretic
the matres lectionis are omitted. The only difference in
verse 15 is that the Samaritan writes both syllables of the
word " lights " plene, but the Massoretic so writes only
the first. In the next verse the Samaritan writes the word
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 281
just mentioned as it has already done ; the Massoretic has no
vav at all. There are three other differences due to blunders
of the scribes of some Samaritan MSS., but the best do not
have them, although Walton has them in the Polyglot ; they
are not parts of the genuine Samaritan text. The second
syllable of the word gadhol is plene in the Samaritan.
Verse 20 varies from the rule ; generally the Samaritan has
a tendency to fill in the matres lectionis, while with the Masso-
retic the tendency is to omit ; in this verse the word for
" flying " is written plene in the Massoretic but defective in
the Samaritan. There are three variants in the next verse ;
two of them are merely the insertion of vav ; the third
is D instead of B> but it is found only in one MS. ; it is a
blunder of hearing. For the Jussive form of the imperfect
Hiphil of the verb 22~\ in the Massoretic the Samaritan has
in verse 22 the simple imperfect of the Hiphil. There is in
verse 24 what Gesenius regarded as an archaic construct
in 1 in the Massoretic; this the Samaritan omits. It
is possible that what was originally written was the
ordinary archaic construct in "• modified by blunder into 1,
from the practical identity of these two letters in the early
square script, as evidenced by the Kefr Bir'im inscription.
In Samaria the archaic form had fallen out of use. There is
another thing to be noted, which suggests another possible
explanation ; the vav omitted is compensated by the
insertion of the article before px aretz, a change which
further assimilates the construction to that of later classic
Hebrew as seen in the following verse. This would suggest
that the supposed archaism is due to the blunder of a Jewish
scribe, who, copying into square character a manuscript in
Samaritan script, and mistaking he for vav, letters very like
in some forms of Samaritan, transferred what was the article
prefixed to eretz to the end of the preceding word. This
explanation is rendered all the more probable by the fact
that so the clause is identical with the parallel clause in
verse 25. In verse 26 while the Massoretic writes «rwo"i3 in
one MS. the Samaritan drops the vav. In verse 28 the
Samaritan correctly has shurcq instead of kibbutz in the
word n'^'23 and the article is inserted before mn and after bb,
282
THE SAMARITANS
In the next verse, the Samaritan omits and the Massoretic
inserts the article in precisely similar circumstances. In the
30th verse the Samaritan has the article before fcpn but
has not 1 in the first syllable ; the Massoretic omits the article
but writes the first syllable plene. As the first three verses
of chapter ii. belong really to the same document as
chapter i., the variant in them may be noted. There is
only one, but it is more important than those preceding ;
where, in verse 2, the Massoretic has " seventh " and the
Samaritan has ■ sixth," in this supported by the LXX. and
the Peshitta. As mentioned above, Petermann gives a
slightly more numerous list of variants, though omitting
some that are in Bagster's list. While these differences are
fairly numerous, they are in the main unimportant ; indeed,
only a very few of them cause any difference in translation.
Although in the main so unimportant, these variants are
so numerous and differ so much in value and character that
a classification of them is necessary ; to be understood, they
must be grouped. This necessity becomes all the more
obvious when study is extended over the whole Pentateuch.
Gesenius saw this, and in his famous dissertation made an
elaborate classification of these variants, which has been the
basis of all subsequent attempts. He arranged them in
eight classes. (1) Emendations to make the text agree
with the laws of ordinary grammar. (2) Glosses or explana-
tions received into the text. (3) Conjectural emendations
of passages which labour under some verbal difficulty, real or
imaginary. (4) Readings corrected or supplemented from
parallel passages. (5) Larger additions interpolated from
parallel passages. (6) Emendations of passages which
labour under some difficulty as to matters of fact, chiefly of
a historical kind. (7) Forms of words altered into agree-
ment with the Samaritan dialect. (8) Finally; Passages
conformed to the theology and modes of interpretation
peculiar to the Samaritans.
The great and undeniable debt which Semitic scholarship,
especially so far as it relates to Samaritan, owes to Gesenius
must not make us blind to the defects of the above
classification, or shun the duty of criticising it. It must be
remembered, on the one hand, that he wrote a hundred
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 283
years ago when the bitterness of the controversy between
Protestantism and Catholicism had not quite disappeared ;
and on the other, that during the century which has elapsed
many things, bearing on the subject under consideration,
have been discovered.
The first thing to be noted as obvious in this classification
is the unscientific assumption, which has been referred to
above, that the Massoretic text is the primitive. Gesenius,
in an earlier portion of his Thesis (p. 16), asserts that the
Samaritan text was derived from a manuscript written in
square character, brought to Samaria in the age of Alexander
the Great. Had he known certain facts when he was
composing his Thesis, which came within his ken later, or had
he properly estimated facts which were open to his know-
ledge, he would have seen that these two assumptions were
in conflict one with another. If the MS. was written in
square character, it could not have been conveyed to Samaria
in the days of Alexander, as that script was not introduced
till half a millennium after the Macedonian Conquest.
Historical difficulties connected with that date fall to be
considered elsewhere. Gesenius had the Maccabaean coins
within his reach, and might have known that the inscriptions
on them were in a script akin to that of the Samaritan
manuscripts, and consequently that centuries after Alexander
the Jews themselves did not use the square character.
Even a cursory study of this classification shows it to be
very defective, merely as a classification. In fact, it has as
many defects as a classification can have. It is in the first
place defective, because it takes no note of the huge majority
of variants which are due, not to intention, but to accident.
It is redundant ; class 5 is contained under class 4. It has
no principle according to which the classes are arranged, and
consequently it is confused ; the eighth class — passages con-
formed to Samaritan tenets and modes of interpretation —
differs more in motive from the other classes than they do
from each other ; much more, for instance, than the third and
sixth, or the fourth and fifth differ from each other. The
classes I, 3, and 6 all contain emendations to escape difficul-
ties, grammatical, verbal, or historical ; the fourth and fifth
contain cases in which supplements are made to the text from
284 THE SAMARITANS
parallel passages, and differ from each other only in the
size of the supplement. Class 2, like classes 4 and 5, consists
of additions to the text, but the source of these additions is
not parallel passages.
Defective as is the classification of Gesenius. still more so
is that of Kirchheim, as given by Deutsch in his article on
the " Samaritan Pentateuch " in Smith's Dictionary of t/ie_
Bibh. . His- classes are thirteen: (1) Additions and altera-
tions in favour of Mount Gerizirei (2) Additions tor the
purpose of completion. (3) Commentary. (4) Change, of
verbs and moods. (5) Change of nouns. (6) Emendations
of seeming irregularities. (7) Permutations of letters. (8)
Of pronouns. (9) Of gender. (10) Letters added. (11)
Addition of letters which are prepositions, conjunctions, the
article, etc. (12) Junction of words that are separated in the
Massoretic, and separation of those that are joined. (13)
Chronological alterations. The enumeration of the classes
in this classification is sufficient to condemn it ; comment is
scarcely needed. The want of any class for blunders, as
distinct from intentional alterations, the utter want of any
principle of classification, the want of any attempt at equi-
pollence of classes, or distinction of one from another, so
that one should not overlap another, all these things make
the classification of Kirchheim even worse than that of
Gesenius. Perhaps the worst attempt at classification is
that of Kohn. It was suggested by him as an improvement
on that of Gesenius by being a condensation of it. He
reduces the classes of Gesenius to three: (1) Words which
are expressed in Samaritan forms. (2) Diverse corrections
and emendations. (3) Glosses and corruptions feigned on
account of religion. It will be observed that the second
class really contains all the others. Like the classification
of Gesenius on which it was intended to be an improvement,
this of Kohn's assumes that the Massoretic is always correct,
and further, that all variations from it are due to intention.
It is clear that no classification can be satisfactory that makes
these two preliminary assumptions.
As Unity of Principle is necessary to any logical scheme
of classification, a little consideration will show that the most
natural principle for this purpose must be founded in Origin ;
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 285
that is to say, that the variants should be classified in
accordance with the sources from which they resulted. This
at once suggests a primary division into two leading classes ;
first, Variants due to Accident, and next, Variants due to In-
tention. The first class of variants, those due to Accident,
are usually denominated Blunders, and neglected. In many
cases " blunders " may be neglected ; if the object be to find
out the true text of a classic, blunders may very generally be
neglected. Yet even in regard to this, at times the true text
may be arrived at as being that from which given blunders
could most easily spring. But to the critic who desires to
discover the conditions under which the MS. which he is
studying was produced, " blunders " are often invaluable.
Thus in Greek manuscripts, the phenomenon of itacism
proves that the MS. which shows many traces of it had been
written to dictation, and that the reader spoke a dialect of
Greek which made no distinction between 17 and «, etc. In
short, as blunders are usually due to external circumstances,
they not infrequently throw some light on the nature of
these circumstances, consequently they sometimes may
supply the critic with a clue to the date of a document, and
to its place of origin.
Variants due to Accident. — To understand the origin of the
accidental differences which characterise the two recensions
— the blunders, whether made by Samaritan or Jewish scribes,
which distinguish the one from the other — we must consider
the conditions under which ancient manuscripts were pro-
duced. The picture which rises before the mind of a modern
reader, when manuscripts and copyists are spoken of, is of a
youth, large-eyed and emaciated, with a single roll before
him, copying it, by the light of a suspended lamp, into
another parchment roll. This was doubtless the way many
of the copies of classical authors were made by the mediaeval
monks. The majority of the MSS. of an older date present
many phenomena, which cannot be explained on the sup-
position that this was the way in which they were produced.
Mistakes due to the confusion of letters that resembled might
be understood on this supposition ; but it would not explain
how words and letters, which as written had no resemblance,
were confused one with another, when they sounded alike.
286 THE SAMARITANS
This implies that the majority of ancient MSS. were written
by amanuenses to dictation. It must be remembered that
though books were dearer in the early centuries than they
are now, they yet were much cheaper than they would have
been had they been copied directly. A publisher in the first
Christian century managed things differently ; he had a score
or more of slaves, who were trained scribes, and further, he
had a reader, who dictated from a manuscript before him to
the scribes who wrote. There would thus be a considerable
saving of time and labour in the production of MSS., and
consequently a cheapening of their price. If the reader in
such a manufactory of MSS. spoke at a time indistinctly, or
if any of the copyists had defective hearing, one letter might
easily be mistaken for another, and words having a general
resemblance might be confused ; all the more readily as the
scribes would write mechanically, without any regard to the
meaning. Further, the MS. before the reader might have
become somewhat rubbed, or it may have been indistinctly
written at first, and the distinctions between resembling
letters so little emphasized, that one might easily be mis-
taken for another. The reader, too, would become liable to
read mechanically, and words that had a general resemblance
might be confounded in defiance of sense. These mistakes
of the reader would be repeated in all the twenty copies.
Again, if two successive sentences began with the same
words, or ended with the same words, a confusion might be
caused which would result in the omission of one of them.
Yet another source of blunder has to be considered. When
a sentence begins in a way that suggests a customary end-
ing, though as a matter of fact it ends differently, reader
and writer alike are liable, from inattention, to follow the
customary. When the passage read is a long one, a scribe
may omit a word or two, or again might inadvertently use
a synonym for the word really dictated. We have thus under
the head of Accidental Variants to consider those due to
mistakes (i) of hearing ; (2) of sight; (3) of defective attention.
(1) A comparison of the Samaritan text with that of
the Massoretes reveals the fact that the gutturals Nnny are
specially liable to confusion. Thus, one of the sons of
Benjamin is called D^BH " Huppim " (Gen. xlvi. 21) (Masso-
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 287
retic), but in the Samaritan the name is written D^SK ; in this
case, N and n are interchanged. Another example of this
is to be found in Gen. xxvii. 36 ; instead of f6jtk as in
the Massoretic meaning " reserved or left," the Samaritan
has r6sfn "delivered," "snatched away from." Although,
as it is the more picturesque version, there might be a
primd facie probability in favour of the Samaritan, the fact
that the LXX. is against it, may be held as decisive. This
confusion of the gutturals is more strikingly seen in the
Samaritan hymns, many of which are alphabetic ; many
of them begin with V instead of N. This is due to the
fact, commented on in a previous chapter, that the
Samaritans omit the gutturals when they read Hebrew.
When the extant Samaritan MSS. were written, Hebrew had
ceased to be understood, at least by the class from which
the scribes would be taken, consequently the guttural they
wrote, to the silence of the reader, might be chosen at times
haphazard. Sometimes gutturals are inserted by the
Samaritan scribes in cases where they do not appear in the
Massoretic, as in Gen. xlvi. 16, where the Samaritan has
JlJDVK for the Massoretic ]p?N; or again, a guttural present
in the Massoretic is omitted by the Samaritan as in
Gen. xlviii. 16, instead of the Massoretic "]fc6» "angel,"
the Samaritan has *jta " a king." Though the Israelites
of the Southern Kingdom did not labour under the same
disability in regard to the gutturals that the Samaritans
did, even with them there is an occasional uncertainty
in the matter of these letters. In Exod. iii. 2, the Masso-
retic reads n^3 " in a flame," instead of nnn^n as in
the Samaritan. Another case of an inserted or dropped
guttural is to be found in Exod. xiv. 27, " And the Egyptians
fled D'p3 against it " lmn$ (literally " to meet it "). Instead
of nasim the Samaritan reads cyDJ nas'z'm " marching."
Although the Massoretic is supported by the versions, a
fair case might be made out for the Samaritan. In this
instance either the Massoretic has dropped an am, or the
Samaritan has inserted it.
288 THE SAMARITANS
Deutsch accuses the Samaritans of confusing the ahevi
letters. This accusation is due to ignorance or forgetfulness ;
the first two of these letters are gutturals ; the confusion
in regard to the latter two is to be sought among the Jewish
scribes rather than among those of Samaria. Cases, where
in the Samaritan he and vav are confused, are due to the
likeness of these two letters in the Samaritan script.1
Other groups of letters are liable to be confused ; thus the
" Unguals " daleth, teth, and tau are at times confused in
individual MSS. among the Samaritans. An example of
this is to be found in Gen. x. 3, where instead of nB'H
(Massoretic), the Samaritan has 1B"i. In Gen. xv. 10 Walton's
text has niD2 instead of lira as in the Massoretic. As E> and D
became identical in sound, it is not to be wondered at that
in some cases they are interchanged as in Gen. xlii. 25,
where in Walton's text IpD stands for lpe> of the Massoretic.
As it involves another class of consonants, Gen. xxxi. 33
may be referred to; in Walton's text, instead of t?BH
" to search," which is in accordance with the Septuagint (the
word is omitted from the Massoretic) there is found CJbn " to
bind." In this case, Walton's text has the support of only
one MS. These are specimens of the variants to be ascribed
to mistakes in hearing ; such mistakes, however, it ought
to be understood, are not confined to the Samaritan scribes.
(2) We have now to consider the second class of accidental
variations ; those due to mistaking one letter for another
which resembles it m appearance^ Pairs of letters so like as
to be confused in one script are not at all liable to be con-
fused in another : thus n and n are very like in the square
character, but in the Samaritan they are unlike r"S0^ : still
less are these letters like in the script of the Hasmonaean
coins 3 3 ; in the angular script which preceded these
last - named scripts, the unlikeness is also marked -^cx .
Yodh and tzade are very similar in Samaritan Mm, but do
1 Confusions in that script sometimes involved more of these letters.
Gesenius in his introduction to his Carmina Samaritana (p. 6) speaks of
a manuscript in which the three letters he, vav, and yodh are so
much alike ut cegre dignoscantur "that with difficulty they can be
distinguished."
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 289
not resemble each other in the square character 01 V), nor
in the early angular 2f . Some letters are like in two
scripts ; thus daleth and resh (1 *i) resemble each other in
the square character, and also in the angular ^ , but the
likeness is not so great in the Samaritan Cj"C]. Further,
the evolution of the angular script was a process, the various
stages of which may be traced. From the date of the Moabite
Stone, inscribed in the days of Jehoram the son of Ahab, to that
of the inscription on the sarcophagus of Ashmunazar, the
contemporary of the younger Cyrus, is a period of nearly
half a millennium. Examination shows that, while some
of the letters remained unchanged, others altered very
materially.
As a stream, ere it reaches the sea, is prone to carry along
with it, and hold in solution something of all the different
soils through which it has passed ; so a manuscript of the
Old Testament Scripture in the square character, however
late, may bear in it traces of each successive transcription,
and of each successive script. The origin of mistakes in a
manuscript which seem to be due to confusions of letters like
each other in an ancient script, is not disproved by the presence
in it of blunders due to resemblances in characters which
belong to a later script. Although every individual manu-
script must be dated by the latest script found in it, the
matter of the document, the contents of the writing inscribed
on it, must have its chronological position fixed by the
earliest.
Some critics, and among the rest, as has already been
observed, Gesenius, maintain that certain of the differences
between the two recensions are due to confusion of letters like
each other in the square character, and consequently they hold
that the Samaritan Pentateuch was copied into the Samaritan
script from a manuscript written in the square character.
This opinion can only be defended on the presumption that
the Samaritan script is more recent than the square, which
no one can maintain in face of the fact that the Jews
themselves maintain the contrary {Sank. 2\b). The letters
singled out by Gesenius as those which have been con-
fused in transcription in consequence of their likeness in
290 THE SAMARITANS
the square character are ^ daleth and -\ resh, n he and n hetk,
"\ vav and * yodh. As to the first of these pairs, they are like
not only in the square character but also in the angular.
Such differences as may be due to confusions of these letters
must be ascribed to transcription from a manuscript in the
script of the Moabite Stone, not from one written in the
square character, which would be too late. The cases in
which he and heth are confused are due to mistakes of
hearing, not of sight. There remain only yodh and vav.
These letters do not resemble each other in any other script
than the square. A careful examination of the instances 'of
such confusion proves that they are all due to the blunders
of the scribe to whom we owe the manuscript which is per-
petuated in the k'thibh of the Massoretic text. In a very
considerable number of cases, the blunder is acknowledged
by the qri being in agreement with the Samaritan ; in some
other cases, the Septuagint bears evidence to the correctness
of the Samaritan reading. The first instance selected by
Gesenius is peculiarly unfortunate for his contention ; in
Gen. x. 28 he maintains there has been a confusion between
the letters in question, as the Samaritan reads ^TJ/ eval, and
the Massoretic reads ?2ty uval. In the parallel passage,
1 Chron. i. 22, the Samaritan reading is found. The LXX.
had the same reading in their Hebrew, as they render Ei/aX.
In chapter xxxvi. 14, the ^"corrects a blunder of the k'thzfrh,
in writing tfat instead of B*iJP with the Samaritan and the
LXX. Another case in which the Massoretic has vav and the
Samaritan yodh is Gen. xlvi. 30 ; the Massoretic has the inf.
"•fliap instead of the 1st pers. pret. ; the similar clauses in Gen.
vii. 1 ; xvi. 13 ; the probability is that there the change was on
the side of the Massoretic. A similar case is Exod. xiii. 22, in
which the Massoretic reads e»pj instead of vh"0\ as does the
Samaritan, supported in this by the LXX. and adopted by
the R.V. In this case the difference of meaning between the
two words does not alter the sense of the passage ; it amounts
to the same thing whether JH WH (understood) is considered
the nominative and the verbal form taken as the Hiphil, so
that the clause read," He did not remove the pillar of cloud,"
or, as in the Samaritan, the verb be taken in the Kal and
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 291
the clause read, " the pillar of cloud departed not." In another
passage in which the same difference exists, Exod. xxxiii. 1 1,
every version, including the Targum of Onkelos, supports the
Samaritan ; it would look something like nonsense to in-
troduce J HWH as " not removing " Joshua from the taber-
nacle. In regard to proper names, no decision can be come
to when both recensions are consistent. In the case of
Peniel (Gen. xxxii. 30) the Samaritan has Penuel, but
though the Massoretic has Peniel in verse 30, in the follow-
ing verse it lias the Samaritan form ; it appears also in
Judges viii. 8. There is thus no instance in which it can be
proved that the Samaritan scribes have confused vav with
yodh ; on the other hand, there are several instances in
which confusion of these letters by Jewish scribes can be
demonstrated. Hence, there is no evidence that the Samaritan
text is dependent on a mother text in the square character.
There are in the text of Walton's Polyglot, especially as
represented by Blayney's transcription, a number of cases in
which the differences from the Massoretic appear to be due
to confusions of letters similar only in the Samaritan script.
Every one of these may be proved to be confined to one or
two MSS. The)' are not given in Petermann's transcription,
nor are they found in his list of variants ; von Gall has them
not. It follows from this that the variations involving
mistakes due to the Samaritan script are late, and have
originated long after the two recensions had separated.
There are indications that one at least of the ancestors of
the manuscript, from which the Ictliibh of the Massoretic
has been copied, was written in the Samaritan script. These
are not so numerous as to suggest that the common ancestor
of both recensions was written in it.
Older than the Samaritan character is the script which
is found in Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions all over South-
western Asia, from the Euphrates on the cast, the Taurus
Mountains on the north, Cyprus on the west, and the
Arabian desert on the south. It is to be admitted that all
the examples of this script are inscriptions; and that no
manuscripts, either on parchment or papyrus in this script,
have been preserved. The ostraka recently found in the
foundations of Ahab's palace show it in a somewhat cursive
292
THE SAMARITANS
form. A careful study of the Siloam inscription shows that
the script in which it is written has had, for its model,
writing with a reed on papyrus or ostrakon. It has also
to be acknowledged that the script of the papyri found in
Assouan and Elephantine differs very much from that of
the Mesha and Siloam inscriptions. There is, however, no
indication that this Egyptian script was ever generally used
in Palestine ; further the Samaritan script does not seem to
have sprung from it.
Are there traces, in the variants which separate the
recension of the Massoretes from the Samaritan, of these
being caused by confusions of letters in this angular script ?
The pair of letters most frequently confounded are 1 daleth
and i resh. As mentioned above, Gesenius brings forward
confusions in regard to these two letters as evidence that
the mother MS. of the Samaritan Recension was copied from
one written in the square character. But the Jews them-
selves regard the Samaritan script as older than the square
character ; hence it is out of court. The script next earlier
is that found on the Maccabaean coins. It is, as is well
known, closely akin to the Samaritan script. In it, the two
letters in question are not confusingly alike, as may be seen
by comparing them on the tables of alphabets (p. 222).
The latest date advanced for the conveyance of the Jewish
Pentateuch to Samaria is the reign of Alexander the Great
{circa 332 B.C.). The earliest examples of what may be
called the Samaritan script are the coins of Simon the
Maccabee {circa 140 B.C.), nearly two centuries after
Alexander. The latest instance of the angular is the
inscription on the sarcophagus of Ashmunazar, of which
the date is 399 B.C., or two generations before Alexander.
But the angular script- itself has a long history ; hence in con-
sidering resemblances of letters and consequent confusions,
the date at which certain characters were like must be taken
into account. In all forms of the angular, however, daleth
and resh closely resemble each other. The first instance
of confusion of these is in Gen. x. 4 where D^l*i " Dodanim " of
* • T
the Massoretic appears as in the Samaritan D71V1 " Rodanim."
In this case, the Samaritan has the support of the LXX. ;
SAMARITAN AND MASS0RET1C PENTATEUCH 293
further, when the name recurs in I Chron. i. 7, it has
the Samaritan form. Although it was the Palestinian
reading as early as the fourth century, since it is adopted
by Jerome, the Massoretic text is clearly incorrect ; indeed
this is admitted by Gesenius. Another passage in which
in its difference from the Massoretic, in regard to these
two letters, the Samaritan has the support of the LXX. is
Gen. xlvii. 21. In E.V. the passage is rendered : "As for the
people, he removed them to the cities from one end of the
border of Egypt even unto the other end thereof." The
Samaritan reads : " The people he enslaved from one end
of the boundary of Egypt to the other end thereof." The
difference involves the third and fifth words D"H3J^ inx Tnyn
instead of as in the Massoretic onj£ ins "vayn. As will be
seen, the difference in the first of these words is in the last
letter, which is "1 resh in the Massoretic and *r daleth in the
Samaritan. In the last, the difference is greater ; not only
is there the confusion between i and 1 in the radical before
D* of the plural, but either the Massoretic has dropped a 2
or the Samaritan has inserted it. Jerome supports the
Samaritan ; a fact indicating that the Palestinian text in
his day agreed in reading with the Samaritan. The Peshitta
follows the Massoretic, a fact which must be held as
supporting the idea, above indicated, that the Massoretic
originated with the Babylonian school. The Samaritan
reading carries on the process narrated in the preceding
verses ; the Egyptians had successively sold their cattle and
their land to Pharaoh, the next step was to sell themselves.
In verse 25 they acquiesce in their bondage: "Thou hast
saved our lives, let us find grace in the sight of my Lord
and we will be Pharaoh's servants." The Massoretic implies
that the Egyptians had not dwelt in cities before the
governorship of Joseph. The periodic flood of the Nile
would necessitate life in cities, or at least villages, from the
very first. Another passage involving the same word is
Lev. xviii. 21 : "Thou shalt not give any of thy seed to make
them pass through the fire to Molech." The Samaritan
reads : " Thou shalt not give of thy seed to be enslaved to
Molech (or to a king)." The Septuagint renders : " Thou
shalt not give from thy seed to serve the ruler (apxovri)."
294 THE SAMARITANS
Jerome renders : " Thou shalt not give of thy seed to be
consecrated to the idol Molech." This was evidently the
Palestinian reading of the fourth century A.D., as Jerome
follows the Massoretic vocalisation in the last word. It is
needless, however, to go over all the interchanges of these
two letters — interchanges which Gesenius holds to be the
" most frequent of all." Before we leave consideration of
these cases, however, there are two passages in which the
difference appears to be due to the resemblance of these
letters, but which is really to be explained otherwise, hi
Gen. xlix. 7, instead of "tt"»N " cursed," the Samaritan has "Vix
" mighty " ; this does not seem due to accidental confusion
but rather to intention, to avoid bringing the tribe of Levi
under a curse. The other case, Gen. x. 19, is somewhat
confused, and appears rather to be the result of defective
attention, started possibly by confounding 1 and 1. Even if
there were no other cases, those we have adduced prove
that the mother roll must have been written in the angular
script. But, as shown above, the angular script had a
lengthened history during which some of the letters under-
went considerable modifications, consequently investigation
must be pursued further. The two letters the confusion of
which has just been considered, while very like in the
Ashmunazar inscription, and in those of Sinjirli, differ
observably on the Moabite Stone, and in the Ba'al-Lebanon
inscription. As Ashmunazar died only sixty-six years
before the advent of Alexander in Palestine, the evidence
afforded by mistakes involving T and i is rather palaeographic
than historic.
There are, however, other letters in the angular script
which resemble each other closely, and do so in the angular
alone. Thus mem and nun do not resemble each other
at all either in the square character or the Samaritan, but do
so in the earlier form of angular, as seen in the Ba'al-
Lebanon, Mesha, and Siloam inscriptions. The likeness
is not so great as to be confusing on the Tabnit and
Ashmunazar sarcophagi, which are four or five centuries
later. The most frequently recurring instance of the con-
fusion of these two letters appears in the name of Jacob's
youngest son ; in the Samaritan he is invariably called
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 295
Benjamim, whereas in the Massoretic he is as regularly
denominated Benjamin. Although this variation must have
originated in a blunder on one side or other, the fact that
both forms have a significant and suitable etymology may
explain the perpetuation of both ; if the Massoretic name
means "the Son of the Right Hand," i.e., the favourite,
the Samaritan means " the Son of Days," either referring
to him as the son of his father's old age, or a prophecy
of love that, though so early bereft of his mother, his life
would be long. Another instance is Pithon in the Samaritan
for Pithom (Exod. i. n) ; as in this case the Massoretic form
is in closer agreement with the Egyptian, it is probably
the primitive. In Num. xxxii. 35 is another case ; one
of the towns assigned by Moses to the tribe of Gad is called
Shophan in the Massoretic, but Shuphim in the Samaritan.
In this case, the Septuagint shows Sophar, a reading that
on the whole rather points to the Massoretic ; the Peshitta
has Shuphom ; Jerome agrees with the Massoretic. One
more case may be instanced which is interesting as involving
not only a confusion of mem and nun but also of caph
and vav. The passage is Deut. xii. 21 ; while the Masso-
retic reads DiK^ fasum, "to place," the Samaritan has £Bgp
leshakken, " to cause to dwell." As has been shown above, mem
and nun resemble each other in the script of the Moabite Stone
and of the Siloam inscription ; but further, caph and vav are
also resemblant in that script, though not so closely, y and y ,
A confusion between another pair of letters is seen in
Num. xxx. 9, where the Samaritan has iN 'o, " or," and the
Massoretic riNl veth, the sign of the ace. ; here the letters
confused are tau and vav ; the tau of the Ba'al-Lebanon
inscription resembles the vav of that of Siloam ; vav does not
occur in the Ba'al-Lebanon inscription.
There is in Gen. xxxi. 53 what seems to be a
confusion between ' yodh and "i resh, letters which do not
markedly resemble each other in any known script ;
Opton in the Massoretic becoming DTTdM in the Samaritan.
It will be seen later, however, that this is really a blunder
springing from another source.
From all this it may be regarded as certain that at
the time when the two recensions diverged, the mode of
296 THE SAMARITANS
writing commonly used was akin to that of the inscription on
the stele of Mesha of Moab, and of the Siloam inscription ;
in other words, the mother roll from which ultimately both
the Samaritan and the Massoretic have been copied must
have been written in the angular script. But this script,
as has been already remarked, had a history. When it
was introduced cannot be fixed even approximately. The
earliest inscription extant shows an alphabet that has long
passed beyond the hieroglyphic stage. The sweeping curves
to be found in even the earliest of these indicate that the
stone-cutter was reproducing a mode of writing which had
attained its form from having been written with a reed
on parchment or papyrus. It seems probable that while
the chiefs were corresponding with the Egyptian court
in the diplomatic tongue of Babylon, and using the cunei-
form script on clay tablets, native scribes were evolving, for
native needs, the characters inscribed on the jars of the wine-
cellar of Ahab. The progress of evolution may be seen
in regard to some of those letters liable to be confused ;
thus daletli is in the Ba'al-Lebanon inscription and that
on the Moabite Stone a simple triangle, and so less likely
to be confused with resh which always has the right-hand
side prolonged. But in Sinjirli a hundred years later,
and in the Siloam inscription about fifty years later still, the
two letters by the modification of the daleth have become
indistinguishable. In regard to mem and nun; these are
like in the earliest forms of the angular script as in the
Sinjirli inscriptions, that of Siloam, and that on the! Moabite
Stone, whereas, in the inscriptions on the sarcophagi of Tabnit
and his son Ashmunazar, there is little resemblance between
them. This would imply that somewhere between the time of
Ahab, the contemporary of Mesha, and the fall of the Northern
Kingdom the divergence took place. The common exemplar
from which both recensions have sprung must be dated still
earlier; but how much so we have no data to go upon.
It is held by Colonel Conder that the earliest form in which
the Pentateuch appeared was in cuneiform on clay tablets;
in this view he has been followed by Dr Winckler, without
acknowledgment. This, however, must have been in a
period long previous to the divergence of the recensions.
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 297
(3) There now remains the third class of unintentional
variations to be considered, those due to defective attention.
These are not so important, both because they are very
generally restricted to one or two MSS., and are not common
to the whole recension, and because no deduction as to date
can be made from them ; inattention is confined to no
century. These mistakes take various forms ; sometimes
transposition of letters in a word, sometimes of words in
a sentence. If the reader did not know Hebrew very well,
he might reverse the letters by mispronunciation ; or read-
ing carelessly, might change the order of the words ; or
the scribe writing mechanically, hearing correctly enough,
might yet modify what he heard. These are some of the
more common forms in which these variants occur. Thus,
in Gen. xxviii. 20, the Samaritan of Walton's text has p3JT
ya'baq, instead of 3py ydqob ; in this case, the great majority
of the Samaritan MSS. support the Massoretic. A similar
case is found in Num. iv. 6 in which the Massoretic has "133
beged, but the Samaritan of Walton's text 313 bedag ; in
this case also the great majority of the Samaritan MSS.
support the Massoretic. The same may be said of Num. xix. 3
in which in the Polyglot text DJT^ shahat, "to slay," of the
Massoretic is replaced by nt3B> sliatah, "to spread"; in this
case, the Polyglot text has the support of only one MS.
In the case of Deut. xii. 17, Walton's text, on the authority
of one MS., has the meaningless "px? lelok, instead of P3N?
le'kol, "to eat." In the case of JSia (Samaritan) and pss
(MassoreticJ, Paran (Gen. xxi. 21, Num. x. 12), a good deal
could be said for the Samaritan reading being the more
probable ; " the place of wild asses " rather than the " place of
beauty." In this case, therefore, the change ma)- be laid to
the door of the Massoretic. In Exod. xl. 3 there is a case of
transposition of letters, but it is not impossible that it
has been the result of intention ; the Samaritan has jT|23
kapporcth, " Mercy-seat," while the Massoretic has nphs
paroketh, "vail"; in this it has the support of all the
versions. The clause is rendered in the A.V. : " Thou shalt
cover the ark with the vail " ; instead of the last word, the
Samaritan has " with the Mercy-seat." It is obvious that the
298 THE SAMARITANS
"vail" did not cover the "ark," and that the "Mercy-seat
did. Moreover, the verb lap sukak, " to cover," is used of the
cherubim (i Kings viii. 7). The omission of any reference
in the Massoretic to the Mercy-seat which occupied such an
important part in the great Day of Atonement is to be noted.
It would seem probable that the transposition of the letters
is due to a blunder of an ancient Jewish scribe. This variant
suggests that the divergence of the two recensions took
place before the translation of the Septuagint.
There are a few instances in which the order of the
words has been changed. In Gen. xii. 16 the Massoretic, as
rendered by the A. V., is : " He (Abraham) had sheep and oxen,
and he-asses and men-servants, and maid-servants and she-
asses, and camels." The Samaritan reads : " He had sheep and
oxen, exceeding much property, and men-servants and maid-
servants, and he-asses and she-asses, and camels." Although
the LXX., the Peshitta, and the Vulgate support the Mas-
soretic, the order is evidently the result of blunder. This
would tend to support the opinion that the divergence of
the two recensions is to be dated before the translation of
the Torah into Greek. The next cases, Gen. xxxiv. 12 and
Exod. xxix. 18, involve no change of meaning. In Lev.
vii. 29 there is a transposition which involves a change in
construction but not of meaning. There are several un-
important variants which may be passed over. The order
in which the daughters of Zelophehad are named in Num.
xxxvi. 1 1 is different in the Massoretic from that in which
they appear in the three other instances in which they are
enumerated ; the Samaritan has the same order in all four
cases. Although the LXX. to some extent agrees with the
Massoretic, the variation seems to have been the result of
inattention on the part of the Massoretic scribe or reader.
One more instance of transposition may be referred to,
Deut. iii. 19; in this case, the Massoretic has arranged the
terms in the natural order : " Wives, little ones, cattle,"
whereas the Samaritan puts " little ones " first. In this case,
the blunder has been on the side of the Samaritan scribe.
There are other but less important instances of alteration
of order in the names of the nations that were to be cast
out before the children of Israel, e.g., Exod. xxiii. 28.
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 299
Another class of unintentional variation due to inattention
are those in which synonyms are interchanged. The most
frequent are those in which the prepositions by and ?N are
put the one for the other. Though they are not precisely
synonymous they are nearly so ; it is impossible to give more
than examples in which either ba of the Massoretic is repre-
sented by by in the Samaritan, e.g., Gen. xxxvii. 35, xlii. 25,
Exod. xxviii. 7, or the converse as in Exod. xxv. 37. Another
set of approximate synonyms is formed by *>»x 'amar, and
"m dabhar, e.g., Exod. ix. 1 (Samaritan) has m»N instead of
JVQT as in the Massoretic, whereas in Lev. xx. 1 the con-
verse appears. Two terms, the interchange of which has
caused some controversy, are the Divine names tfnM
"Elohim" and np) "JHWH." The cases of this substitu-
tion are not very numerous, not numerous enough to affect
seriously the question regarding the Pentateuchal documents,
e.g., Exod. iii. 4 (Samaritan) has Dt6n " Elohim " instead of
JW "JHWH," and in Exod. vi. 2 the converse is found.
Other instances might be noticed, as Exod. i. 18, in which
the Samaritan has " Pharaoh," while the Massoretic gives
"King of Egypt"; and ii. 10, in which na'ar, "youth"
(Samaritan), represents yalad, " boy " (Massoretic). These
variations may most easily be explained by a momentary
inattention on the part of the reader or scribe, whether
Jewish or Samaritan.
Another class of variants is that in which either ordinary
additions, which in a given case ought to be omitted, are
inserted ; or conversely, a customary addition may be omitted
where it ought to be inserted. A not infrequent addition to
the covenant name JHWH is "thy God"; in Deut. vi. 12
and 18, the Samaritan inserts this, but the Massoretic omits
it. In regard to the land of Canaan, the epithet "good" is
followed by the further epithet " broad " in Exod. iii. 8 in
both recensions; in Deut. viii. 7 the Samaritan alone has
the second epithet, agreeing in this with the Septuagint.
Sometimes the additions are of greater length ; in Gen. i, 14
the Samaritan, in agreement with the LXX., inserts as the
primary purpose of the " greater lights " being set in the
firmament "to give light upon the earth" as in the verse
which follows ; Jerome and the Peshitta agree with the
300 THE SAMARITANS
Massoretic. Another case is specially interesting, as it is
one of the few in which Gesenius acknowledges that the
Samaritan has preserved the correct reading. In Gen. iv. 8,
after the words rendered, " And Cain talked with Abel his
brother," the Samaritan inserts, " Let us go into the field " ;
all the versions in this support the Samaritan. In Gen.
xliii. 28 the Samaritan and the LXX. narrate that when
Joseph's brethren informed him that his father was yet alive,
he answered, " Blessed be that man with God." x As there
does not seem to be any motive for the insertion of the
phrase, a phrase which might be omitted without marring
the sense, it probably is genuine as it might have been
accidentally omitted by the Massoretic scribe. Where two
successive clauses begin with the same word, the reader
might unconsciously omit one of them ; thus, in Exod. iii. 22,
the word J1N», occurring in two successive clauses, seems to
have led to the omission of the words, " A man shall ask of
his neighbour" preceding "and a woman shall ask of her
neighbour." The insertion may of course have been occa-
sioned by the reader feeling it difficult to understand how
all the " borrowing " could be done only by women ; and
so may have been an intentional addition.
In Gen. x. 19, there is a passage which, while difficult to
understand in either recension, seems explicable in both cases
only on the supposition of more than one cause of blunder
being at work. The Massoretic text is rendered in our
A.V. "The boundary of the Canaanite was from Zidon as
thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza, as thou goest to Sodom
and Gomorrah, and Admah and Zeboim, even unto Lasha."
The confusion in the passage is to some extent hidden in
this rendering, as the word for " comest " is the same as is
translated "goest" in the following. The probable meaning
is that " as thou goest Gerarwards " was equivalent to going
to the south, and that the southward progress was to stop
1 A very similar phrase occurs not infrequently in the Tarikh of
Samaritan codices of the Torah, or in the records of their purchase
when the name is mentioned of some deceased ancestors of the scribe
or purchaser. This fact may be regarded as militating against the
authenticity of the sentence. But the fact that it is found in the
Septuagint is strong evidence in its favour.
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 301
at Gaza, whence the boundary line turned eastward to the
valley of the Jordan. The expression found in the Samaritan
is : " The boundary of the Canaanite was from the river of
Egypt to the Great River, the river Euphrates, even unto
the hinder sea." In comparing these two, one thing is clear ;
to begin with, p5JO has been confused with D"n¥D ; here then
daleth and resh and mem and nun have been mistaken one
for the other. The concluding phrase in each of the versions
recurs elsewhere; the concluding enumeration of the cities
of the plain in the Massoretic is in the stereotyped order
which is found in Deut. xxix. 23, and with the addition of
the royal names in Gen. xiv. 1 ; the concluding phrase of the
Samaritan is found in Gen. xv. 18. Whichever is the primi-
tive, the latter portion of the other is due to scribal inattention,
ending a sentence not in accordance with what was the true
ending but with a customary formula. Although it might be
argued that because minnahar began with the same letter as
Mitzraim, it might be passed over by the reader ; still the
balance of probability seems to be that it was the Samaritan
reader who took refuge in a formula.
The varieties of accidental variants, which we have just
been considering, have differing degrees and directions
of evidential value. Mistakes due to deficient attention,
whether on the part of the reader or the scribe, have, as
has already been indicated, little value as evidences of date,
since mistakes due to this cause do not differ in character
from age to age. Mistakes due to mishearing, as the}- reveal
peculiarities of pronunciation, which may to some extent be
dated, have more value. It is, however, mainly to mistakes
due to confusing one letter with another like it that most
definite information may be gleaned. In regard to the
chronology of Semitic scripts, there is now a body of
inscriptions extending over more than a millennium.
Variants due to Intention. — All variations of one recension
from the other are not to be put down to inadvertence ; in
not a few cases, the intention of the scribe or reader may be
traced. When, however, the term " intention " is used, there
are to be included semi-conscious acts of tongue and eye
in dictating from a manuscript, and the equally semi-conscious
action of the hand of the scribe in writing to dictation. A
302 THE SAMARITANS
person reading from a document written in an archaic style
would be prone to correct ancient grammatical constructions
into those in common use. Thus a person reading from a
manuscript written in the language of our Authorised
Version would be prone, when he came to cases in which
the relative " which " was used of persons, to correct it into
" who." The scribe, writing to dictation, if accustomed to
spell correctly according to modern usage, would be apt to
continue to do so, although he may have got general
directions as to the antique mode of orthography. This is
the result of habit ; and habit is the result, built into the
system, physical and mental, of repeated acts of intention,
which have been completed in action. Variants with such
an origin may be looked upon as the indirect products of
intention. But there are also cases of difference which must
be due to direct intention.
The variations between the Samaritan Recension and that
of the Massoretes due to purpose, direct or indirect, may be
arranged under three heads: — (i) Grammatical corrections
of archaic spelling, verbal forms, and forms of nouns, usually
classed under accidence and syntax. (2) Logical corrections.
Under this head would be classified the removal of contra-
dictions actual or only apparent, by modification of
statement, or by additions. In the case of words which
had fallen in repute so that the employment of them
involved a sin against propriety, these were changed into
others not under this condemnation. Such alterations might
be regarded as due to rhetoric, were it worth while to form
such a class. (3) Doctrinal or theological corrections. Under
this category fall to be considered not only such phrases as
have a special bearing on the tenets of the Jews or
Samaritans respectively, but also such as they held in
common, as the Unity, the Spirituality, and absolute
Supremacy of JHWH. In considering each of these classes
of variants, it is incumbent on the investigator to beware of
assuming that it necessarily was the Samaritan which varied
from the Massoretic, as if it were the primitive form of
the text.
(1) Intentional Variants affecting Grammar. The fact
that syntax, accidence, and orthography, all three, are the
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 303
result and expression of custom, renders it possible that
geographical situation as well as point of time may have
had to do with any given variation. There are evidences
that in the days of Queen Anne certain words were
pronounced differently from what they are now, differences
which affected the spelling ; for instance, such words as
" frolic" and " public " had a final k added to emphasize the
last syllable. Such features are liable to be removed in
reprints. Sometimes peculiarities of spelling are regulated
by geography, such words as "theatre" and "labour" are
spelt differently in Britain and America ; in reprints in one
country of books published in the other, these differences are
usually removed. Similar differences seem to have existed
between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel.
The peculiarity which differentiates the Samaritan orthog-
raphy from that of Judea is its predilection for the
introduction of matres lectionis, especially 1 vav and * yodh
to emphasize the u and o sounds, and the e (ee) and a (ay)
sounds respectively. While in the majority of cases the
Samaritan has these when they are wanting in the
Massoretic, there are fairly numerous instances of the
converse. The presence of matres lectionis is rarer the
further back investigation is carried, till in the earliest
inscriptions they are almost entirely absent. This would
imply the relative recency of the Samaritan. Another
peculiarity of the Samaritan, grammatical rather than ortho-
graphic, is the more regular use of DS eth the sign of the
accusative ; though there are cases in which the Massoretic
has this while the Samaritan omits it. According to
Petermann's list, there are in Genesis twenty-five cases in
which the Samaritan inserts T)H when it is omitted in the
Massoretic, and there are three cases of the converse.
Another common particle is the conjunction 1"and"; in
Hebrew, when there is a list of substantives or adjectives, it
is the rule to insert 1 before each substantive or adjective,
not merely before the last member of the list, as in the
classic and modern European languages. Breaches of this
rule are more frequent in the Massoretic than in the
Samaritan ; thus Gen. vi. 9, according to the Massoretic,
the verse reads, " Noah was a man just, perfect in all his
304 THE SAMARITANS
generations"; the Samaritan inserts "and" between "just"
and " perfect " as do our English versions. So in the
following verse, " Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and
Japhet," the Samaritan inserts " and " before " Ham." While
in this matter the Samaritan is generally more in accordance
with ordinary Hebrew grammar, there are cases of the
converse ; thus, in Gen. ix. 5, the Massoretic reads " and at
the hand of every man's brother," while the Samaritan omits
" and." The tendency to omit particles is observable in
every language as it grows in age. It would therefore seem
more probable that the Jewish scribes omitted these particles
with a subconscious intention than that the Samaritans
inserted them. As to pronouns, the change of the usage
in the two recensions took place as much in the southern
district of Palestine as in the northern. In regard to the
1st pers. pron. sing., while generally agreeing with the
Massoretic the Samaritan sometimes prefers the longer form
when the Massoretic has the shorter, e.g., Gen. xiv. 23.1
A more frequent example of the preference shown by the
Samaritan for the older and more lengthened forms is seen
in the 1st and 2nd pers. pron. plur., in preference to the
shorter as found in the Massoretic ; this is noted by Gesenius,
as in Gen. xlii. II, Exod. xvi. 7, 8, Num. xxxii. 32. The
Samaritan prefers the longer form of the 2nd pers. sing,
fern. Vis atti instead of ns att ; this form is declared by
Gesenius to be archaic. As already observed, all the cases
where atti occurs in the rest of Scripture are connected with
the North, except in two poetical passages in Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. What was an archaism in Judah and the South was
perpetuated in the ordinary speech of the North. In these
cases, the correction and modernisation has taken place in the
Massoretic, not in the Samaritan. The identification of the
3rd pers. pron. fem. with the 3rd mas. in the Massoretic is due
to a blunder on the part of the scribe of the k'thibh. There
are other pronouns in which the Samaritan differs from the
Massoretic. While in the Massoretic nE>n and Drt are used
indiscriminately, the longer form is in the Samaritan generally -
represented by the shorter ; thus, in Gen. vi. 4, vii. 14, the
1 According to the Polyglot text which Blayney follows without note ;
von Gall has "OK.
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 305
Massoretic has nen hemma and the Samaritan Dn em.
There is another pronominal form which is practically
restricted to the Pentateuch, ta el for rha eleh ; in the
Samaritan it is invariably the longer form that is used.
The evidence thus appears to be contradictory ; though the
longer forms are usually the more ancient and the shorter the
more recent, the Samaritan prefers the shorter form of the
3rd pers. pron. plur. but the longer form of the dem. pron. plur.
mas. No conclusion as to date can be drawn from these
peculiarities, which are probably due to localisms.
In regard to pronominal suffixes, it would seem that the
suffix of the 3rd mas. n oh is really due to mistake on the
part of the scribe of the k'thibh, who, copying from a
MS. in Samaritan script, confused vav and he, as the
Samaritan always has the regular suffix in 1 vav. The rule
with the prepositions by and ?K is to insert tsere with yodh
between the preposition and the suffix. In a number of
cases in the Massoretic, the vowel is written defective, but
never so in the Samaritan. This, however, is merely a
matter of orthography ; it only shows that the Samaritan
was more carefully accurate than the Massoretic.
There is a difference in regard to nouns which forms
a distinction between the two recensions. In the Massoretic,
the noun *iy3 ndar, " a youth," is epicene in the Massoretic
of the Pentateuch ; not, however, in the Samaritan in which,
whenever the reference is to a young woman, the word is put
in the feminine. It is to be observed that the qri makes
the same correction of the Massoretic k'thibh as does the
Samaritan.
Gesenius occupies a considerable section of his treatise
with instances in which he assumes the Samaritan scribes
to have assimilated the grammar of the Pentateuch to that
of Samaria. He never considered the converse possibility,
that the assimilation took place from the other side. We
have elsewhere considered the question of the relative
priority of koth'noth, " coats," in the Massoretic and kittinoth
of the Samaritan, and concluded that on the whole the
Samaritan was the more likely to be the primitive form.
Another case is q'dishim (Samaritan) for q'doshim of the
Massoretic. In this case, there probably was a difference
U
306 THE SAMARITANS
in the way the word was pronounced in the South and
the North ; there is no means of fixing which is the
primitive ; if the Samaritan suggests Aramaic affinities, the
Massoretic hints at Arabian. It is to be observed that
according to von Gall's text in every case noted by Gesenius
the word D^KHp is written defective. There is one case in
which the contention of Gesenius appears to be justified ;
in Gen. xi. 3, by identifying hemer, " bitumen," with homer,
"clay," the Samaritan has lost the point of the distinction
between the two substances when used as mortar. Gesenius
enumerates several other instances of what he regards as
grammatical variations introduced by the Samaritan ; some-
times one recension, sometimes the other, exhibits the more
primitive form. From this it would seem probable that
a process of change was going on both in the North and the
South.
(2) Intentional Variations involving Logical Content.
The same mental mood, which led the scribe, Jewish
or Samaritan, to replace obsolete grammatical forms or
modes of spelling by those in common use, led him occasion-
ally to make changes of a more important character in
which more than mere form was involved. Sometimes the
change is occupied with individual words, omitting words
that had become obsolete and so unintelligible, supplying
words that seemed necessary to complete the sense,
changing terms for their synonyms either where a repeti-
tion is presupposed (that the repetition should be
obviously exact), or to vary the phraseology to avoid
monotony. Sometimes where terms are ordinarily asso-
ciated, if at a time one of these occurs alone, the other
may be supplied. It is to be noted that all these cases
may come under the category of the results of inattention,
and be the consequence not of intention but of blunder
through unconscious cerebration. The most important
alterations are those made from a sense of what ought
to be. Since there is always a dubiety as to the origin
of variants belonging to the class at present under con-
sideration, "much time need not be occupied with them.
As an example of a term which is ordinarily united with
another, but which is omitted in one recension, supplied in
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 307
the other, Exod. vi. 27 may be taken ; in the Massoretic
of that passage, it is said, " These are they which spake
to Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to bring out the children of
Israel from Egypt " ; the last clause in the Samaritan is
" the land of Egypt " ; in this case the insertion might
be due to the mechanical completion of the customary
phrase, or the reader might think the omission due to
blunder and intentionally supply what had been omitted.
Of course, mutatis mutandis, this applies also to the Masso-
retic reader or scribe. An instance of the converse is found
in Exod. xi. 6 where the Massoretic has, " And there shall
be a great cry in all the land of Egypt," but the Samaritan
omits " all the land of." The arguments used in regard to
the former passage apply to this also.
There are a few cases in which foreign words and
names appear to be modified so as to give an appearance
of intelligibility in Hebrew. The most interesting case is
in regard to the name that Pharaoh gave to Joseph
(Gen. xli. 45), which seems to have been modified in both
recensions to emphasize the root JBX tzaphan, "to hide,"
from the idea that the name meant " revealer of secrets," as
Onkelos and the Samaritan Targum translate it. Jerome
renders it " Salvator Mundi."
The most important logical differences are those that rest
on a theory of what ought to be. The earliest instance
is Gen. ii. 2, where the Massoretic names " the seventh day "
as that on which God finished the work of Creation, whereas
the Samaritan, in this agreeing with the LXX., says " the
sixth day." On whichever side lies the responsibility of the
alteration, it must have been the result of intention. Either
the Massoretic scribe or reader, finding " the sixth " set down
as the day on which the Creator " finished His work," argued
that the work could not be considered "finished" until "the
sixth day " was ended, and therefore "the seventh" begun,
altered the numeral accordingly ; or the Samaritan scribe or
reader, thinking that any work must be reckoned as finished
on the last day in which he that wrought the work was
engaged with it, changed the "seventh" of the MS. before
him into " sixth." The probability is in favour of the
Samaritan being the original, as both the LXX. and the
308 THE SAMARITANS
Peshitta have this reading. Jerome here follows the
Massoretic.
In Gen. iv. 8 — a case already referred to — after the words
rendered " And Cain talked," or to translate the word in its
ordinary meaning "said unto Abel his brother," the
Samaritan followed by the LXX., the Peshitta, and the
Vulgate, adds, " Let us go into the field." This has been
regarded as an addition to the text in order to complete the
sense ; the natural explanation, however, is that the Masso-
retic scribe, misled by the word " field " standing at the end
of both clauses, omitted the first of them ; hence this ought
rather to be reckoned among the blunders than among
intended variations.
More important are the variants in regard to the ages of
the antediluvian patriarchs. According to the Massoretic
" the days of the life of Adam " were exceeded by the years
of three of his descendants, Jared, Methuselah, and Noah ;
whereas in the Samaritan his life is longer than that of any
of those dying before the Flood. Even in the Massoretic
there is a general decline in age to Mahalaleel, with the
exception of Cainan, whose life, while shorter by two years
than his grandfather's, is seven years longer than that of his
father. The Samaritan carries on the process of a progres-
sively diminishing lifetime, Enoch being the only exception.
Behind this arrangement there seems to be in the mind of
the scribe the theory that the growing moral degradation
would express itself in growing physical degeneracy, and
that this would be exhibited in the shortening of life. In
this the Samaritan has the support of none of the
versions.
Another set of variants in which the Samaritan has not
the support of the versions appears in the genealogy of the
post-diluvian ancestors of Abraham (Gen. xi. 10-26). To
bring this second genealogy into line with the earlier, to
the years of the Patriarch's life after the birth of his eldest
son, is subjoined the total number of the years of his life. It
is possible that on the MS. from which the Samaritan was
copied, a previous scribe had noted at the side of the column
containing the text the total years of the life of each patriarch
from Shem downwards, and that his successor had engrossed
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 309
it in the text. But it seems more probable that the Samaritan
scribe or reader regarded this summation as a thing which
ought to be there, and so supplied it. This at all events is
more probable than that the summations should have been
omitted either by accident or intention.
When the plagues of Egypt are recorded, in the Massoretic
sometimes the actions of Moses and Aaron are described when
the command is given them to go in to Pharaoh, sometimes
it is given as the history of what they did. Thus in Exod.
vii. 15-18, God commands Moses and Aaron to give to
Pharaoh His message, and tells them to say to Pharaoh
that if he will not let the people go, " I will smite with
the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in
the river, and they shall be turned into blood." It is to be
presumed that they did deliver this warning, but it is not
expressly stated that they did so. In verse 19, without any
word of Pharaoh's rejection of the warning, JHWH com-
mands Moses and Aaron to carry the threat into execution.
The lack is supplied by the Samaritan. This occurs also in
the account of the plagues of frogs, flies, murrain, and hail.
In the account of the eighth plague, that of the locusts, it is
related that Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and
threatened him with the coming of the locusts, but there is
no word of JHWH having commanded them so to do; it is
to be presumed that they had been so commanded, but it is
not stated. Here again the Samaritan supplies the lack.
The fact that in none of the versions the Samaritan additions
are found, may seem conclusive against their authenticity :
further there is the critical maxim that, other things being
equal, the shorter reading is to be preferred. Too much
stress must not be laid on these arguments against the
Samaritan, because Oriental literature is too simple and
naifve to expect deductions to be made. Thus in regard to
Pharaoh's dream, it is first related in full when it appeared
to the king ; then when Joseph comes before him, Pharaoh
himself tells it in almost the same words. This is precisely
parallel with the method pursued by the Samaritan writer
in the narrative of the plagues. Whether this is a case of
omissions by the Massoretic or insertions by the Samaritan
the divergence is the result of intentional variation.
310 THE SAMARITANS
There are also cases of intentional variations from
harmonistic reasons. One of these may be given. When
the Egyptian army is pursuing the Israelites, and has shut
them in, with mountains on either side of them and the sea
before them, cowering in terror the Israelites cry out (Exod.
xiv. 12), " Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt ;
let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it is better
for us that we should serve the Egyptians than that we
should die in the wilderness." In the Massoretic text there
is no account of this complaint ever having been made, but
in the Samaritan there is an addition made to Exod. vi. 9.
Moses had been telling the people that God would deliver
them, and bring them to the heritage which He had promised
to their fathers ; " but they hearkened not to Moses from
anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage " ; at this point the
Samaritan adds, " and they said to Moses, Let us alone that
we may serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve
the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness."
Although the versions agree with the Massoretic something
may be said for the Samaritan. Another instance may be
stated. A passage from Deuteronomy has been introduced
into the account of Jethro's advice to Moses and his accept-
ance of it (Exod. xviii. 25), modified into the narrative style
of Exodus in which Moses is always a person spoken of.
This is done in preparation for the statement of Moses him-
self (Deut. i. 9-18). Less important and less numerous are
the alterations made from reasons of propriety. In most of
these cases, the Samaritan has put in the text what the
Massoretic has in the qri.
(3) Intentional Variants involving Questions of Religious
Doctrine. While changes which involve theological differ-
ences may be regarded as "logical," there is a difference
sufficiently important to make it advisable to consider such
cases under a separate head. With regard to logical variants,
it is the form that is considered — the formal agreement of
part with part ; in the case of the theological variants, it is
the matter — the content — that is important. The variants of
this class have resulted from an effort to remove from the
record everything which is, or seems to be, out of harmony
with the religious systems of the readers contemplated. As
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 311
the doctrinal systems of the Jews and the Samaritans were
in most essentials identical, these changes might as well have
proceeded from the Jews as from the Samaritans. This may
be seen by comparing the Samaritan Pentateuch with the
Targums of Onkelos and of the pseudo-Jonathan. There is
one point in which the Samaritans most distinctly differed
from the Jews, the sanctity which the former ascribed to
Mount Gerizim.
(ez) Variants due to Doctrines common to the Jews and
the Samaritans. The most prominent doctrine of Judaism,
and therefore of the Samaritans, was the Unity of God.
This doctrine is emphasised grammatically by the plural
noun EloJiijii, when used of the Supreme, being joined to a
singular verb. There are, however, four cases in the Mas-
soretic Pentateuch in which the verb is plural, all which are
corrected in the Samaritan. The first of these is Gen. xx. 13.1
When Abraham tried to explain to Abimclech his equivoca-
tion regarding Sarah, he begins, " When God caused me to
wander" U'^n the verb in this case is plural. All the versions
have the singular ; Onkelos has the plural, but inserts another
nominative for the verb ; he renders, " When the peoples went
astray, etc." The reading of the Massorctic may be excused
on the ground that Abraham, speaking to a polytheist, ac-
commodated himself to him. Most probably, however, the
plural is a mistake of the Massoretic scribe, who, reading
from a MS. written in Samaritan script, substituted 1 vai> for
n he, as these characters are very like in Samaritan MSS.'2
This implies the .Samaritan reading to be primitive. The
same explanation is applicable to Gen. xxxv. 7. Another
explanation may be given of Gen. xxxi. 53. Laban and Jacob
swear by the "God of Abraham and the God of Xahor," and
call upon God to judge between them ; in this case, the verb
is in the plural in the Massoretic but in the singular in the
Samaritan. The alteration seems to have been made by the
Jewish scribe unwilling to admit that the God of Xahor was the
same as the God of Abraham. Another instance is found in
1 This passage has already been referred to (Chap. VII., p. 176) in
connection with Samaritan theology.
2 For this, Gesenius himself is evidence in his prolegomena to the
Carmina Samaritana, p. 6.
312 THE SAMARITANS
Exod. xxii. 8, 9, treating of theft of goods entrusted to
another ; in such a case, the person who had received the
goods, from whose custody they were stolen, was to be
brought Dv6Nn~7K which may mean either " to the judges "
or "to God." The former rendering is that of the A.V.,
following the Peshitta and Onkelos ; the Samaritan, by
putting the verb in the singular, assumes the second to be
the meaning; in this it is followed by the LXX. and the
Revised. From the fact that in verse 11 in an analogous
case "the oath of JHWH" being between the parties, is
supposed to conclude the matter, the alteration must be put
to the credit of the Jewish scribe.
Belonging to the same class is the tendency to remove
anthropomorphisms. These alterations are not so numerous
as in the Targums. An example of this occurs in Exod.
xv. 3, where JHWH is called ncrfy? K*N "a man of war";
this in the Samaritan is non^sn "run " hero of war," a term
applied to spiritual beings.
To maintain the majesty of JHWH, there is a tendency
to introduce intermediaries between the Almighty and those
with whom He has to do. When Balaam is brought to
the mountain-top to curse Israel (Num. xxiii. 4), in the
Massoretic it is said, " And God met Balaam " ; in the
Samaritan it reads, "The Angel of God found Balaam."
See also verse 16 of the same chapter. In these
instances Onkelos has " The word from the presence of
the Lord." These cases have already been noted in
another connection.
{&) Variants due to Doctrines peculiar to the Samaritans.
All the essentially Samaritan doctrines centre round the
supreme sanctity ascribed to Mount Gerizim. There are
passages in the Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch which
affirm the unique position occupied by Gerizim ; these are
not found in the Massoretic. Sometimes the difference
extends merely to a single word. The earliest instance of
this appears in Gen. xxii. 2, where the Samaritan has " Moreh "
rente and the Massoretic "Moriah" npb. (Dean Stanley
here prefers the Samaritan reading.) When Abraham
entered Palestine, he first settled at Shechem, at the foot
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 313
of Mount Gerizim ; hence there is nothing intrinsically
improbable in the idea that the mountain on which Isaac
was to be offered should be " one of the mountains " in " the
land of Moreh" instead of "the land of Moriah." The
Peshitta in this case agrees with the Massoretic ; but Jerome
renders in terrain visionis, a rendering which shows that
he probably had the Samaritan reading. Consonantally,
the Massoretic name suggests "contumacy" as that of the
Samaritan suggests " vision." The reading of the LXX.
suggests that in the text before the Alexandrian translators
the first letters were transposed, for they translated
t*]v ytjv vxlfrjXtjv, "the Highland." Dean Stanley appears to
think that geography suits the Samaritan reading ; in his
mapping out the days' journeys, in order to show that
his theory squares with geography, the Dean forgets that
Abraham was accompanied by a laden donkey, and that
consequently his rate of travel would be at the ordinary
muleteer's pace of three miles and a half an hour, and
six hours a day. At that rate, starting from Beersheba
and betaking himself to the Philistine Plain, it would be the
morning of the fifth day, not the third, before he saw Mount
Gerizim. Had Abraham been in Hebron, it would have
been a different matter. Hebron is a full day's journey, at
muleteer's pace, from Jerusalem ; another long day would
enable him to reach Lubban (Lebonah) from which Mount
Gerizim would be in sight. It is clear then that if Abraham
came from Beersheba it must have been Moriah to which
he came, not to Mount Gerizim.
Sometimes the belief in the sanctity of their Holy
Mountain has led the Samaritans to make more extensive
additions to the text There is inserted at the end of the
decalogue (Exod. xx. 17): "And it shall be when JHWH
thy God shall bring thee to the land of the Canaanite which
thou art entering in to possess it, that thou shalt set up for
thee great stones and shalt plaster them with plaster ; and
thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law ;
and it shall be when ye have crossed the Jordan that ye shall
set up these stones, which I command thee this day, on
Mount Gerizim. And thou shalt build there an altar to
JHWH thy God ; an altar of stones, thou shalt not lift iron
314 THE SAMARITANS
upon them. Of whole stones shalt thou build the altar of
JHWH thy God. And thou shalt offer upon it sacrifices to
JHWH thy God; and shalt sacrifice peace-offerings and eat
there and rejoice before JHWH thy God. That mountain is
on the other side of Jordan westward (after the way of the
going down of the sun) in the land of the Canaanite who
dwells in the desert over against Gilgal, beside the oak of
Moreh over against Shechem." This passage, as is readily
seen, agrees in the main with Deut. xxvii. 2-7 ; the most
striking difference is that the mountain on which the stones
are to be set up is Gerizim not Ebal. Another difference
is that the land is called the " land of the Canaanite," and
there is not a repetition of the description of it as " a land
flowing with milk and honey " ; this clause appears in its
place when the passage is repeated in Deuteronomy by the
Samaritan. It is to be observed that in the 12th verse of the
chapter in Deuteronomy, Gerizim is the Mount of Blessing,
whereas Ebal is that ot Uursing ; it mignt easily seem
more natural that on the Mount of Blessing the memorial
stones should be set up. The Massoretic scribe might as
readily have made the change out of hatred to the
Samaritans, as the Samaritan to glorify Mount Gerizim.
The fact that, in the parallel passage in Deuteronomy, none of
the versions agree with the Samaritan in reading Gerizim for
Ebal may be regarded as conclusive. The insertion of this
passage at this point, when "the children of Israel" were
gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai, has not the geographical
suitability which it has in Deuteronomy when it was
delivered by Moses within sight of the twin mountains, Ebal
and Gerizim, and where the superior height of Ebal would
be observable. From such a position it would seem natural
that on Ebal, as the most conspicuous mountain visible on
the other side of Jordan, there should be set up the law-
inscribed stones. Another result of this tendency is that,
in the Samaritan, all the twenty passages in Deuteronomy in
which the future national shrine is designated as " the place
which JHWH thy God shall choose" have the verb in the
preterite. This use of the preterite has an evident reference
to the designation of Gerizim in Exod. xx. 17, Deut. v. 21,
xxvii. 4, as the national sanctuary. In this change of the
SAMARITAN AND MASSORE'TIC PENTATEUCH 315
future into the preterite, the Samaritan is without the
support of the versions.
Even had the evidence from the versions not been so
strong, the fact that, throughout the history of the Northern
tribes, as recorded in the books of Kings, although there
probably was a High Place on Mount Gerizim, it is not
important enough to be mentioned, while Bethel, Dan, and
Gilgal are repeatedly referred to, seems conclusive against
the designation of l: Gerizim " being part of the original text
of the Torah. That David and Solomon chose Jerusalem as
their capital, and Mount Moriah beside it as the site on
which to erect the national shrine, might be explained by
tribal preference ; but even so it is hard to explain why the
" Man after God's own heart " should deliberately arrange
that his son should build the temple, not on the site
prescribed by God but near his own palace on Mount Zion.
When Jeroboam headed the revolt of the Ten Tribes, why
did he not point to the passage in the Torah, and erect a
temple on Mount Gerizim which could claim a sanction
superior to that of Zion, rather than endeavour to prevent
the worshippers from going to Zion by erecting shrines at
Bethel and Dan ? No one of the successive usurpers that
mounted the throne of Israel ever thought of strengthening
his position by building a temple on Mount Gerizim. These
interpolations must have been made at earliest when Manasseh
fled to his father-in-law Sanballat. Gesenius would place
them much later, because the Talmud does not note them.
The silence of the Talmud is no evidence ; one needs only
to read the Talmudic account of the Septuagint, and the
alterations the translators are alleged to have introduced
into the Torah to see that. Most of the variations which
the Talmud says were introduced into the Septuagint are
not to be found in it, as may be seen by any reader
of the LXX. ; on the other hand, there are scores of
differences met with in every chapter which are not
referred to.
To sum up : the relation of the two recensions to each
other does not seem to be one of dependence, either of the
Samaritan upon the Massoretic or vice versa. As to the
date of the divergence, a study of the various classes of
316 THE SAMARITANS
variants throws some light on this. The first leading class
of variants comprises those due to mistake. Of these, the
first group is formed by those due to mistakes in hearing. As
has been seen, these are largely the result of the fact that
the Samaritans did not, as they do not now, when reading
Hebrew, pronounce the gutturals. This loss of the gutturals
cannot have occurred under the Arab domination, or in
consequence of it, for Arabic is peculiarly rich in gutturals.
The Samaritans have spoken Arabic now for more than a
millennium, and in doing so pronounce all the gutturals they
eschew in reading Hebrew. Nor could it have occurred
under the rule of the Greeks ; they had the x and the rough
breathing, not to speak of y, which, by the time of the
Lagids, was pronounced like the Arabic ghain, as it is by the
modern Greeks. Under the civil rule of Rome, the cultural
influences were wholly Hellenic. Under the Persians,
Aramaic was the language in which the rulers communi-
cated with their subjects ; it, too, is rich in gutturals. The
Assyrians, though occasionally said to have no gutturals,
had at least n, as may be seen in the names Sennacherib
and Esarhaddon. This peculiarity must thus go back before
the days of Sargon. The Phoenicians were a nation who
spoke Hebrew and like the Samaritans did not pronounce
the gutturals. When they gave the Greeks the alphabet,
they must have had no gutturals, as the Greeks had to make
use of various devices to find symbols for their gutturals,
while they occupied the guttural places in the alphabet by
vowels, adopting for their symbols those used in Semitic
languages for the omitted gutturals. In the time of
Ahab, the Northern tribes were closely associated with
the Phoenicians and had largely adopted their worship
of Baal. That may be said to be an indication of a
probable date.1
As to mistakes of sight, the second group of unintentional
variants, these have had various origins. As has been shown
above, all instances due to confusion of letters closely
resembling in the square character, have been blunders
made by Massoretic scribes. Those due to confusions
1 This we have already indicated elsewhere in connection with the
Samaritan pronunciation of Hebrew.
SAMARITAN AND MASSORETIC PENTATEUCH 317
arising from resemblances in the Samaritan script are
restricted to only a few of the Samaritan MSS. Inquiries
are thus driven back to the script which preceded the
Samaritan. It has been shown that some of the confusions
have been due to resemblances only to be found in this
angular script and to early forms of it, such as that on the
Moabite Stone, in the Ba'al-Lebanon inscription, and in that
in the Siloam conduit. This may be held as showing that
in the ancestry of the manuscripts of the Samaritan Penta-
teuch there has been a stage in which the MSS. were written
in an early form of the above-mentioned angular script. As
this script has been found on the jar handles in the founda-
tions of Ahab's palace, it would imply that the divergence
must be dated as far back as the reign of the dynasty of
Omri.
Mistakes due to inattention have not so much evidential
value, as there is no chronology of carelessness. Yet, as has
been seen, there are cases in which, to a limited extent,
temporal data may be deduced : such are those in which the
Samaritan has the better reading although all the versions
agree with the Massoretic. This would prove that the
divergence took place before the translation of the
LXX. This fact, however, is now admitted, even by
those who put the date of the Samaritan Recension at
the latest. The earliest date claimed for the Septuagint
is the reign of Ptolemseus Philadelphus, which began
nearly half a century after Alexander's march through
Palestine, and this, according to Josephus, synchronised
with the flight of Manasseh from Jerusalem to Sanballat
his father-in-law in Samaria, when it is alleged he took
the Torah with him.
The intentional variants, whether due to desire to
accommodate the grammar to later usage, to harmonise
statements which seemed to be discrepant, or to conform
the letter of the Torah more to their doctrinal ideas,
while interesting, have less value as evidences of date.
The fact that in both recensions there are archaic forms
surviving, while both have removed several, proves not only
the age of the whole document but dialectic differences
between the North and the South. Since both sets of
318 THE SAMARITANS
archaisms are wanting in the rest of Scripture, something
may be deduced as to the relative age of the Torah in
relation to the other books. Variations due to harmonistic
or theological intentions seem to be always owing to the
Samaritan scribes.
CHAPTER XI
THE RELATION OF THE SAMARITAN RECENSION
OF THE PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT
The wisdom of the choice which Alexander the Great made
of a site for the new capital of Egypt was manifested by
the rapidity of its growth, and the great size to which
it attained. It attracted all nationalities to it, so that
it soon became the commercial and intellectual metropolis
of the Greek world. Among the nationalities represented
were the Jews. If we are to believe Josephus, they were
out of all proportion the most numerous and influential.
They formed one of the three great divisions of the inhabitants,
the other two being Egyptians and Greeks. The Israelite
inhabitants of Egypt were not confined to the colonists
invited by Alexander, or to those compulsory colonists
conveyed to Egypt by Ptolemaeus Lagi as captives, on
his conquest of Judea. There were Israelite communities,
probably many of them, like that the existence of which
we have learned from the Assouan papyri. From the days
of Solomon downward, Egypt was the common refuge of
every one who fell into bad odour in his home in Palestine.
Before the advent of Alexander their language seems to
have been Aramaic, although the presence of such large
bands of Greek mercenaries, as are mentioned by Herodotus,
would tend to make Greek very generally known among the
business class, to which the Jews naturally belonged. At
all events, surrounded by Greeks on every side, they very
soon abandoned the Aramaic they had been accustomed
to speak for the language of the conquerors.
While the Jews were, then as now, eager people of
819
320 THE SAMARITANS
1
business, they at the same time were zealous for their
religion, and maintained it by the worship of the synagogue.
As in Palestine, the reading of the Law in Hebrew would
be accompanied by an interpretation in Aramaic. The
general abandonment of Aramaic for Greek would soon
render it as unintelligible as was the Hebrew of which it
was the explanation. Certainly many of the Jews in Egypt
continued to understand Aramaic, and wrote it, as is proved
by the evidence of the ostraka and papyri which are so
frequently turning up. Yet it would seem that in Alexandria,
where Greek was the language of business and of social
intercourse, many even of the learned class among the Jews
understood neither Hebrew nor Aramaic. Philo, a learned
and religious man, appears to have known no Hebrew,
and as little Aramaic. A translation was therefore needed.
When, however, it is remembered how extremely conserva-
tive all nations are, and in particular the Jews, in matters
of religion, it would seem unlikely that they would of their
own motion have thought of rendering the Law into Greek.
It seems at least a probability that some external authority
had stepped in. In a Jewish community as large as that
in Alexandria which had a separate constitution, with an
Alabarch, and probably a sanhedrin, questions of law
would be continually emerging, and these would have to
be decided by reference to the books of Moses. As the
Jewish residents in Alexandria did not understand Hebrew,
and the Aramaic Targum was not committed to writing,
a translation was imperatively necessary, and would be
demanded by the Egyptian authorities.
The story given by Aristeas and Aristobulus, that
Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, moved by Demetrius Phalereus,
desired to add to his great library the Law of the Hebrews,
and summoned seventy-two men from Jerusalem, selected
by Eleazar the High Priest, to translate it, appears to be
a highly ornamented version of a transaction that had some
foundation in fact. We find the narrative also given in
Josephus, repeated in a confused form in the Talmud, and
in a shape scarcely less confused declaimed by the Christian
Fathers. The greater care manifested in the translation
of the Law, and its superior accuracy as a version, when
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 321
compared with the translations of the other books of the
Hebrew Scriptures, makes the tradition at all events plausible,
that the Law at least was translated into Greek at the
instance of authority. At the same time, it does not
seem likely that Philadelphus would send to Jerusalem
for men to translate the Law into Greek, unless they were
to be regarded as assessors to the Alexandrian translators,
as guardians of the genuine Hebrew text, and guarantors
for the accuracy of the translation. Something may be said
for Eichhorn's theory that the seventy-two elders were
the Sanhedrin of the Jewish community of Alexandria.
Whatever its historic origin, all over the Greek speaking
world wherever there was a Jewish community — and that was
practically in every important city of the Roman world —
this Alexandrian translation was welcomed and generally
used. It would seem to have been used in the synagogal
readings, probably replacing the Targum. Even in
Palestine, it may have been so used, at all events in
synagogues formed for the accommodation of Greek speak-
ing foreign Jews. A striking evidence of the general use of
the Septuagint in Palestine is the fact that the evangelist
Matthew, while he always translates from the Hebrew when
he himself quotes from the Prophets or the Law, when
our Lord is the speaker it is always from the Septuagint
that He quotes. This cannot be explained by the fact that,
as Matthew wrote in Aramaic, the Greek of the New
Testament is a translation ; for whoever the translator —
it probably was Matthew himself — he must have had some
reason for the distinction which he made ; and the only
likely reason is that it represented a fact. The Apostle
Paul's use of the Septuagint in all his Epistles shows how
universal was the acquaintance with it among the Jews
all over the Greek speaking world, and that was practically
the whole Roman Empire. Peter, who addresses his first
Epistle to the whole Diaspora, also makes exclusive use of the
Septuagint in his quotations from the Old Testament.
The relation of later Talmudic Judaism to the Septuagint
is somewhat uncertain. Some of the Rabbin regard the
translation of the Law into Greek as a disaster comparable
to the dishonour done to the temple when Pompcy pressed
x
322 THE SAMARITANS
into the Holy of Holies. Others again decided that while
it was not lawful to translate the Torah into the tongues
of the Gentiles, an exception ought to be made in regard
to the tongue of the Yavanim. " Rabbi Shimeon ben
Gamliel said it is permitted to translate the Law but only
into Greek " (Megilla, gb). The Talmudic account is founded
on the story of Aristeas but modified more Talmudico. It
immediately precedes the dictum above given. Tolmai
brought from Jerusalem seventy and two elders and said
to them, " write for me the Torah of Moses your Rabbi " ;
and they did so, but they varied from the original in fifteen
different cases. Everybody knows that the points in which the
Septuagint of the Pentateuch differs from the Massoretic are
far more than fifteen. Singularly enough, of these;fifteen cases,
only three indubitably agree with any of the actual differ-
ences. The fifteenth case is interesting from its mingling of
sense and nonsense. They did not, says the Talmud, write
the word arnebeth, " hare," because the wife of Tolmai was
so called, so they wrote instead tzeerath ha-regaleem,
" smallness of feet" The latter word seems an attempt to
transliterate, and at the same time make something of
sense in Hebrew of the odd word xoipoypt/XXto?, which the
LXX. have used instead of Xaywq, which happened to be
the name of Ptolemaeus Soter's father ; the word tzeerath
appears to have been added to complete the sense. It may be
observed that the Talmudists do not seem to know the
difference between transcription and translation, and speak
as if the changes were made in the Hebrew. The above
is from the Talmud Babli ; in the Talmud Yerushalmi the
number of differences is reduced to thirteen. According
to it, arnebeth was the name of Ptolemy's mother.
Along with the Jews there was a considerable body of
Samaritans in Alexandria, who continued bitterly opposed
to those who were so close to them, who had the same sacred
books, and worshipped the same God with the same rites.
There are references by Origen to a Satnariticon which
seems to mean a version of their recension of the Torah in
Greek. It has been maintained that there was no Greek
version of the Samaritan Hebrew, but that the Greek
quotations referred to the Samariticon are merely transla-
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 323
tions of the differences of this Hebrew from the received
text. It seems hardly probable that the Samaritans
would remain without having in Greek the Law accord-
ing to their recension. Moreover Origen, had it been
the Hebrew, would have transliterated, at least occasionally.
In the work of Abul-Fath, the Samaritan annalist, there is
an account of the translation of the Torah into Greek.
Tolmai (Ptolemy) sent to the Samaritan High Priest, as
well as to the Jewish, and got scholars both from Samaria
and from Jerusalem to render the Law into Greek. The
two bands were lodged in separate quarters, and when their
work was completed, each party presented the result to the
king. According to the Samaritan annalist, Ptolemy declared
the Samaritan version to be the superior.1
It is well known that in a very considerable number of
instances the Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan against
the Massoretic. When attention is directed to these alone,
by a natural psychological law, these differences from the
Massoretic and resemblances to the Samaritan bulk more
largely in the eye than they have any legitimate claim to
do. It is overlooked that these cases are balanced by the
more numerous cases in which the Samaritan agrees with the
Massoretic against the Septuagint. There are also cases in
which the LXX. and the Massoretic agree against the
Samaritan ; there is still another set of cases in which all
three differ from each other. As a consequence of this, all
1 The present writer received from the Samaritan High Priest
another account. While the Jews sent seventy-two translators the
Samaritans sent five, each of whom made an independent translation ;
they all agreed, not verbally (he did not claim that), but in meaning they
did so ; moreover that all five copies were preserved with them in
Nablus. Not to seem incredulous, I declared these would be immensely
valuable, and asked if they had showed them to any scholar. " Yes,"
he said, "they had been shown to Dr Merx." My answer was that if
Dr Merx had seen them, every scholar in Europe and America would
have known about them in three months, and in six, examination papers
would be set upon them. To this he returned no answer — only smiled
benignly at me through his beard and remained silent. Although the
latter portion of the High Priest's statement is palpably untrue, there
yet seems a likelihood that the first part of it represented one form of
the Samaritan tradition.
324 THE SAMARITANS
the theories that have been devised to explain the relation-
ship of the Samaritan and the LXX. which take into account
only the instances in which they agree against the Mas-
soretic are insufficient. Another point is that these theorists,
largely Jews, fail to remember a fact already dwelt on — the
comparative recency of the Massoretic text ; this tends to
limit their views and vitiate their conclusions.
A study of the Massoretic text reveals not a few
phenomena which tend to lower very considerably its
critical value. The fact that the written text is a slavishly
accurate copy of a blundering manuscript which by some
chance gained a certain amount of interest, does not make
for respect of the critical methods of the editors who adopted
it, though they corrected from at least one other MS.
When it is remembered that the Massoretic text received
its final form some eight hundred years after that used by
the LXX., and approximately a millennium after the date of
Nehemiah, when according to a majority of critics, Manasseh
conveyed to the northern portion of Palestine what became
the Samaritan Recension, the relative value of the Massoretic
becomes very considerably lowered. When study reveals
the eminently unscientific methods of the Massoretes, it
would seem to be an assumption in the highest degree
hazardous to take it as representing the genuine text of the
Torah. The Palestinian text of 280 B.C. must have differed
considerably from that even of the days of Origen.
There is an uncertainty on the other side as to the precise
text of the Septuagint. Our earliest manuscripts, if a few
papyrus fragments are excepted, date from the fourth and
fifth Christian centuries; that is to say, manuscripts that
have passed through the transcriptions of five or six
centuries. In imitation of the Jewish Rabbin, Christian
scholars have, in relation to the Greek of the Old Testa-
ment, been in the habit of perpetuating one text, that of the
Vatican Codex, removing only the more obvious blunders.
The text of the Codex Alexandrinus exhibits many differ-
ences from that of the Vatican. We must also take into
account the changes introduced by editors. It is not known
what method Lucian pursued in his recension of the Septua-
gint text as only fragments of its results have been preserved.
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 325
More, however, is known of the methods followed by Origen.
Unfortunately he appears to have regarded the Hebrew
text of the Old Testament which he found in Palestine as
correct, and consequently he was always liable to alter the
Greek so as to conform it to the Hebrew of Palestine.
Hence our present text of the Septuagint is in closer
agreement with the Palestinian text, which immediately
preceded the Massoretic, than was the original. Thus,
on the side of the Greek as well as of the Hebrew,
the question of the relationship of the Septuagint to the
Massoretic text is involved in uncertainty. Whatever
the point of time from which the existence of the Sama-
ritan text as distinct from the Judaic began, its true
history is quite unknown. Holding as we do that the
original Samaritan text is to be dated in the time of Ahab
at latest, we have nevertheless to admit a drastic revision
of it. Presumably with the arrival of Manasseh, as we have
already suggested, to give the New Temple the sanction of
scriptural authority, there was the insertion of the passages
in Exodus and Deuteronomy in which Mount Gerizim is
designated as the place in which there was to be erected
the stone on which the Law was to be inscribed. Probably
also then it was that the future in Deut. xii. 5, 14, 26, etc.,
was changed into the preterite, so that it should no longer
be " the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to put
His name there " but " the place which the LORD thy God
hath chosen." It may also have been then that the ages of
the antediluvian patriarchs were adjusted to Samaritan ideas
of fitness, and the genealogical table of the descendants of
Noah made symmetrical with that of those who lived before
the Flood. The Textus Receptus of the Samaritan Penta-
teuch, which is taken for granted in most discussions of the
questions involved, is that of Walton's Polyglot. It seems
to have been printed from one manuscript, and that a very
defective one. In the main it agrees with the MS. numbered
by Kennicott 183 (designated G by v. Gall), but occasionally
Walton inserts a blunder which 183 avoids. In these cir-
cumstances any absolute conclusions from it are impossible.
If, however, the comparison, in regard to the Septuagint
on the one side, is to cases where the Alexandrine text
326 THE SAMARITANS
agrees with the Vatican, and on the other where the
Samaritan text is well supported by diplomatic authority,
conclusions may be arrived at of at least probable accuracy.1
In studying and estimating the differences between the
Septuagint and the Massoretic text on the one side, and
those between either and the Samaritan on the other, the
first thing that strikes the reader is that a large number of
the differences between the two Hebrew texts cannot be
transferred to the Greek. As has been already observed
elsewhere, the great majority of the differences between .the
Massoretic and the Samaritan are due to the insertion or
non-insertion of vav and yodh, that is to say, due to the use
in one but not in the other of two different, but equally
correct modes of spelling. It is for instance quite as correct
to write nri'lK as rnx, or for that matter rriix or rniK. These
variations cannot be rendered in Greek, the words are
the same whether they are written with the vowels plene
or not. In regard to such variants the statement of
Ginsburg has to be borne in mind. Quoting from Jehudah
Chayney ibn Ezra, he says, "It is perfectly certain that the
presence or absence of the ahevi letters is entirely due to
the idiosyncrasy of the scribes" (Introd., p. 137). Many
other variants are due to the fact that the fern. 3rd pers.
pron. is by the Massoretic generally written the same
as the masculine, whereas in the Samaritan the distinction
of gender is maintained. As has been already shown, this
is in all likelihood due to a blunder of the scribe to whom we
owe the Kthibh of the Massoretic text. That difference can
as little be represented in the Greek. On the other hand,
while in ordinary cases of translation the order of the words
of a sentence in the original can rarely be more than guessed,
anyone reading the Pentateuch in the Greek of the LXX.
will not fail to observe how closely the order of the Hebrew
words is followed to the neglect of the normal Greek order.
The general Hebrew order is to begin the sentence with the
verb, then take the subject, and last the object ; whereas in
the Greek, as in English, the general rule is to place the
1 On account of the war and the consequent impossibility of getting
books from Germany, I have only been able to make use of von Gall's
edition in regard to Genesis (19 17).
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 327
verb about the middle of the sentence, with the nominative
first and the object last. Observation will show the reader
that the great mass of the sentences in the Septuagint
Pentateuch begin with the verb, except where, as in Gen.
iv. i and vi. 8 (9), the subject is placed first in the Hebrew.
The only cases in which the Hebrew order is not followed
are where, for an indication of emphasis, the subject is placed
at the beginning. In this way the order of the words of a
sentence, which is sometimes different in the two recensions,
may show the agreement of the Greek with one rather than
the other.
By writers on the Samaritan question, as has been hinted
above, the resemblance between the Samaritan and the
Septuagint has been greatly exaggerated, and limiting
considerations have been overlooked. If the problem were
simply to account for resemblances between the Samaritan
and the LXX. against the Massoretic, and if there were no
disturbing instances in which one of the two agreed with
the Massoretic against the other, or where all three were
different, the discussion of the question would be very much
simplified. For one thing, the theories possible would be
reduced to three: either (1) the Samaritan originated by
retranslation from the LXX. ; (2) or the LXX. was a
translation from the Samaritan ; or (3) both the Samaritan
and the LXX. were drawn from a common source, which
differed from the Massoretic. There might be, besides, the
theories which regard the resemblances as secondary pheno-
mena ; that the Samaritan was modified from the LXX., or
the LXX. from the Samaritan. The first three are regarded
by Kohn as all that are possible.
The first of these theories, i.e., that the Samaritan origin-
ated by retranslation from the LXX., is attributed to Frankel,
though scarcely quite accurately. Whoever was its author,
the theory is an impossible one. Had there been any excuse
for it, the Jews would certainly have reproached the
" Cuthaeans " with drawing their Torah from the Yavanim;
yet among the many contemptuous statements made by the
Jews of " the foolish people who dwell in Shechem," this is
not one of them. Irrespective of the numerous cases in
which the differences between the Samaritan and the
328 THE SAMARITANS
Massoretic are of a nature which cannot have been trans-
lated from the Greek, there are cases in which the Septuagint
agrees with the Massoretic against the Samaritan. Thus in
Gen. xvii. iy ; while the Massoretic has the verb "6* in the
Niphal, so that the sentence reads " Shall a son be born to
one who is a hundred years old," the Samaritan has the
Hiphil so that it read, " Shall I who am a hundred years old
beget a son?" In this case the LXX. supports the Masso-
retic against the Samaritan. Another instance is Gen.
xix. 12 in which the Massoretic has, in regard to the Divine
messengers who had come to destroy Sodom, DtWK 'anasntm,
" men," while the Samaritan has D^n&d maFachim, " angels " :
in this case also the Septuagint follows the Massoretic in
preference to the Samaritan. There are, further, instances
in which the Samaritan and the Massoretic are agreed
against the Septuagint. There is an instance of this in the
1 6th verse of the chapter before us, Gen. xix. ; here the
LXX. has ayyeXot, whereas the Massoretic and the Samaritan
have insfaM 'anas/iz'm.1
There is an element of something like absurdity in this
hypothesis, as in a comparatively short period after the Law
was translated into Greek in Alexandria, that language
became commonly known, the lingua franca, in the dominions
of the Diadochi ; consequently to translate any work from
Greek into Hebrew was needless.
Another hypothesis referred to by Gesenius {De Penta-
teuchi Samaritani Indole, etc., p. 1 3) and Kohn {De Pentateucho
Samaritano, p. 29) and credited by them to a certain Rabbi
Asaria de Rossi, a Mantuan Jew of the sixteenth century, is
that the Alexandrian Greeks, moved by hatred of the Jews,
corrupted the version of the LXX., and so changed the
sacred Torah. Only Jews, a people thrown in upon them-
selves by their ritual separation from other peoples, could
have been vain enough to think that they or their Law,
barbarians as they were in the eyes of the Hellenic peoples,
would be important enough for the Greeks to attempt to
adulterate it ; or that, whatever their hatred of the Jews, they
1 Blayney has 'anashim apparently supported by all his MSS. ; von
Gall does not give malachim among his various readings.
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 329
should take such an indirect way to injure them. Moreover,
it implies no very high esteem for the Jews of Alexandria
that they would suffer any Gentile to insert interpolations into
their Law. Had any one, Greek or Egyptian, determined to
introduce false elements into the Greek version of the Jewish
Law, he would have done this to a greater extent and to
more purpose than merely to introduce the unimportant
variations from the Massoretic to be found in the Septuagint,
and derived from it in the Samaritan.
A modification of the two hypotheses just mentioned is
held by Frankel, who supposes that the Samaritans inter-
polated passages into their recension of the Law from the
Septuagint. It is difficult to understand what motive would
induce them to make these interpolations. As has been
pointed out by Kohn, this hypothesis does not serve much,
as there are many difficulties in the relation between the
two left unsolved. The treatment of the genealogies of the
patriarchs, for instance, is very different in the Samaritan
and in the LXX. All the differences between the Masso-
retic and the Samaritan connected with the consecration
of Mount Gerizim are, of course, left untouched.
The converse of these above hypotheses, which all
assume the dependence direct or indirect of the Samaritan
Recension on the Septuagint, Dr Kohn with all the emphasis
of extended type maintains in his inaugural dissertation.
These are his words (p. 36) : " The Samaritan Codex, although
a false (mendosa), manufactured {emendata), interpolated
{adulterate?) edition of the Jewish Codex, is nevertheless the
foundation of the Alexandrine version." He thinks that
the Septuagint, as we have it, does not accurately represent
the version in its original form. Had the Greek text been
preserved in its primitive form, it would have been found
to be further removed from the Massoretic and nearer the
Samaritan. In agreement with an opinion which has been
hinted at earlier in the present chapter, he holds that the
efforts of Origen to bring the Greek of the Septuagint into
closer conformity with the Palestinian Hebrew, and with
the other Greek versions which had been constructed with
a view to represent more accurately the Hebrew, have
largely changed its character. He maintains that Lucian
330 THE SAMARITANS
and Hesychius continued the process. Other scholars have
regretted the work of Origen and his successors, as destroying
the authenticity of the Septuagint by conforming it to the
then Palestinian Hebrew text. Kohn further thinks that
the Alexandrine text as printed by Grabe more nearly
represents the genuine Septuagint than does the ordinary
Vatican text. His hypothesis as stated by himself is " that
the LXX. version of the Pentateuch is not a first hand
{primitivarn) genuine production, but that it has been con-
cocted (confecta) in accordance with some Graeco-Samaritan
version " (p. 38) : or as he puts it otherwise, " The LXX.
translators in translating made use of a Samaritan Greek
version." The history of this Samaritan version, according
to him, was of this sort. There was a large community
of Samaritans in Egypt, and especially in Alexandria,
who quickly adopted the manners and language of the
Greeks, but still did not wholly abandon their religion. For
their use a translation was made from their recension of
the Law. When they had for their own needs made this
translation, the Jews who were staying alongside of them,
and began to feel the same need as they, were willing
to make use of their version, as their religion and that of
the Samaritans was the same. This they did for some time,
till they observed that it had in it many blunders ; they then
determined to have a translation of their own. They had,
however, been so accustomed to the Samaritan version that
it influenced their translators in making one for themselves.
It was thus only an emended edition of the Samaritan that
resulted.
There are, however, several difficulties in way of adopting
this hypothetical history. It is known that the Jewish
community in Egypt, and above all the Alexandrian, was
very large and influential ; but we have no reference to
a Samaritan community at all commensurate with that
of the Jews, nor any notice that they sooner, than the Jews,
hellenised. There is further the chronological difficulty ;
there is not time before the date of the translation of the
Septuagint, and after the founding of Alexandria, for the
Samaritans to become so hellenised as to need a translation
of the Law, and thereafter for the Jews to have become
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 331
so habituated to it that they were unable to escape its
influence in translating for their co-religionists. This
hypothesis is quite at variance with every Jewish tradition,
whether preserved in Josephus or the Talmud. It has,
moreover, no support from any record of Samaritan tradition.
Such a fact as that the Jews had to depend on them for their
Greek version of the Torah would not readily have dis-
appeared from Samaritan memory.
Some of the evidence Kohn adduces in favour of his
view might be used to support a totally different thesis —
namely — not that the LXX. was translated from the
Samaritan Recension, but that the translators used a
manuscript written in Samaritan characters. He deduces
that the LXX. had before them a Samaritan MS. because
they read (Exod. xiv. 2) for rrfnn ha-Hirotk, " the caverns,"
rnvnn ha-Hatzeroth, " the courtyards," being led into the
blunder by the resemblance between yodh and tzade in the
Samaritan script. As the Samaritan text has not this
reading, this is, so far from being an evidence in favour
of his thesis, rather against it. Further, the resemblance
between these letters is not so great in the form which these
letters assume in MSS. as in the Samaritan alphabet
devised for the Polyglots. Yet once more, as etravXis, the
word in the Septuagint is a translation, not a transliteration,
of the name in question, which is Egyptian (the presence
of the Egyptian definite article pi is evidence of this) ; any
deduction from it as to the precise form of the word in
the Hebrew text is highly hazardous. The meaning of the
Egyptian word intended is very doubtful. It is extremely
difficult to identify accurately a word in one language from
the transliteration of it in another. But even the Greek
word presents difficulties. The Greek term is in the singular,
but the Hebrew which Kohn suggests is plural. Sayce thinks
that the " dwelling," e7ravAt9, in question was a country house
of Pharaoh, and he maintains that the Pharaoh had such
a country house at Thukot (Succoth). With so much of
dubiety, the evidence for a various reading of the sort
Dr Kohn asserts is scarcely demonstrative. He brings
forward another instance of mistake due to resemblance
332 THE SAMARITANS
of Samaritan characters ; Qa(ro(3av is the transliteration of
}3¥N Ezbon (Gen. xlvi. 16). This he regards as due to
the resemblance between aleph and tau, in the Samaritan
script. This, however, only proves what is otherwise
not unlikely, that the Hebrew manuscripts used by the
translators were written in Samaritan characters. The
inscriptions on the coins of Simon the Maccabee are in
a script closely akin to the Samaritan epigraphic script.
Further, the Samaritan text here has pjQVN 'Etzb'aon; the
inserted V ain would certainly have left its trace as it has
in "ITJ&X EXea^a/j, Eleazar, and in Djfa fiaXadu, Balaam. If
this example proves on the one hand that the translators of
the Septuagint used a manuscript in Samaritan character, it
also shows that it was not an exemplar of the Samaritan
Recension.
The third hypothesis of those classified by Dr Kohn :
That the LXX. and the Samaritan were drawn from one
vitiate source need not detain us long. This hypothesis
might explain the phenomena if these embraced only differ-
ences of the two in common from the Massoretic. It is not
so good an explanation when it is discovered that very
frequently, as mentioned earlier, one of the two agrees with
the Massoretic against the other. Not infrequently, all three
differ.
It would seem that the only possible hypothesis which
will meet all the difficulties is that all three recensions —
the Samaritan, the text behind the Septuagint, and the
Massoretic — are independent offshoots from one original, the
oldest of these being the Samaritan, and by far the most
recent the Massoretic If chronology were the only thing
to be taken into account, the probability would be that the
Massoretic had diverged furthest from the original. The
evidences, however, of exceptional care and conservatism
may to a considerable extent modify this conclusion. When
the state of the Egyptian Hebrew MSS. of the other books
of Scripture is considered, a suspicion is thrown even on the
books of the Law, although it would doubtless receive
exceptional treatment Consequently, the MSS. behind the
Septuagint may have varied more than the others. The
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 333
number of blunders of which the Samaritan scribes have been
guilty, especially as compared with the accuracy with which
the Massoretes have perpetuated even blunders, is significant
— though some Samaritan MSS. have been carefully executed.
Taking all things into consideration, the Samaritan text may
be regarded on the whole as the best, the Massoretic next, and
last the LXX.
In order to investigate the matter independently and
form an estimate of the relationship between the LXX., the
Samaritan, and the Massoretic, probably the simplest method
will be to take a couple of consecutive chapters in Genesis.
As those with which most people are best acquainted, the
chapters that first suggest themselves are the opening
chapters of the book. Gen. i. 9, after the phrase i^prn "and
it was so," the LXX. inserts " and the water which was
under heaven was collected into its meeting-places and the
dry land appeared." This addition is found neither in the
Samaritan nor the Massoretic. In Grabe's edition there is
the marginal sign which shows that it was not in the
Palestinian Hebrew in Origen's day. After the words
" and it was so " the addition is pleonastic ; but if those
words were omitted, it would be quite in the Oriental
manner to repeat, after the command, its fulfilment. In
verse 14, the Samaritan and the LXX. insert "to give light
upon the earth"; in some MSS. of the LXX. there is the
further addition, in which it has the support of the Armenian,
Ethiopic, and the Palestinian Aramaic translations from the
LXX. "To rule the day and the night." This last phrase is
neither in the Samaritan nor in the Massoretic. The majority
of the remaining cases of variation between the Massoretic
and the Samaritan in chapter i. are such as do not show in
translation. The first variant in chapter ii. is in verse 2,
"sixth" instead of "seventh"; in this the Samaritan and
the LXX. are agreed against the Massoretic. Chapter ii. 4
reads in the LXX., " This is the book of the generation of
the heaven and earth," whereas the Massoretic and Samaritan
have " These are the generations of the heavens and the
earth." Inverse 12, the Samaritan adds after "gold" the
word " exceedingly," which is found neither in the LXX. nor
334 THE SAMARITANS
in the Massoretic. The 19th verse reads in the Samaritan
and the LXX., " The LORD God further created from the
ground every beast of the field " ; the Massoretic does not
insert " further." In verse 24 there is a case in which there
is a quotation in the New Testament (Matt. xix. 5 ; Mark
x. 8) which follows the LXX. and the Samaritan inserting
"twain," reading against the Massoretic "and they twain
shall be one flesh."
When the results are summed up, it is seen that in four
cases the Samaritan Recension agrees with the Septuagint
against the Massoretic ; in three cases the Samaritan and
the Massoretic are agreed against the LXX. ; and one case
in which the LXX. and the Massoretic agree against the
Samaritan. It is to be observed that the instances in which
the Septuagint stands alone involve greater differences than
when either of the other two stand alone, with the exception
of ii. 2, in which the Massoretic alone has "seventh."
There is here no proof of any one of those recensions being
dependent upon either of the other. In these two chapters
there is every possible combination of two against one, an
evidence' of complete inter-independence.
In order that the induction should not have too narrow
premises, the above method may be applied to the first
twelve verses of chapter x., which is made up largely of
proper names. In verse 2 the LXX. inserts EXtcra between
Iwvav and 0o/3eX against the Samaritan and the Massoretic ;
however, the Samaritan and LXX. agree against the Mas-
soretic in reading "fiDio Mocro'x instead of r\uq. In verse 3
the Samaritan has HQ'h x against the Massoretic nsn which is in
this case supported by the LXX. ; in verse 4 by dropping
n in Elishah the Samaritan stands alone ; the Massoretic is
in opposition to the Samaritan and the LXX., in reading
ttTp against OTh of the Samaritan and 'FoSiov of the LXX.
This is one of the few instances in which Gesenius thinks the
Samaritan reading to be the better. In verse 5 the LXX.
stands alone in having "land" instead of "lands." In verse
6 the LXX. alone reads Mesrain and Phoud instead of
1 This is according to Walton's text ; von Gall does not give it among
his various readings.
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 335
Mitzraim and Phut ; the first of these variants may be
regarded as due to the resemblance between mem and nun
in the earliest form of angular. In verse 8 the LXX. in
reading "Nebrod" instead of "Nimrod" merely gives
evidence of a defective pronunciation on the part of the
translator who dictated the version. In verse 8 by rendering
eyivvtjcre the LXX. supports the Samaritan T^n against the
Massoretic "6j; the LXX. inserts "God" after "LORD" in
opposition to the Samaritan and Massoretic In verse 12
the LXX. by confusing daleth and resh and mem and nun
reads Dasem instead of Resen. This affords evidence
that the MS. used by the LXX. had in its ancestry a MS.
written in the angular script. In these twelve verses, there
are five cases in which the LXX. stands alone against the
Samaritan and the Massoretic ; three in which the Mas-
soretic stands alone ; two in which the Samaritan is opposed
to the LXX. and the Massoretic. In these verses also there
is therefore no evidence of any special connection between
the LXX. and the Samaritan. There does seem to be proof
that while the actual manuscript from which the Pentateuch
was translated had been written in the Samaritan script
it was not a Samaritan MS. but one that had a different
descent. One thing to be noted is that in very few cases
have the confusions of letters which have occasioned the
variants been traceable to the Egypto-Aramaic script of the
Assouan papyri. Not improbably synagogue rolls of the
Law would be written in the Samaritan script, and these,
being the ancient Hebrew writing, might be regarded as
sacred, much as the Jews at present, who, though they write
the synagogue rolls in the square character, write their
letters in a much more cursive script.
The decision just arrived at, that there is no special
relationship between the Samaritan and the LXX., is con-
firmed by a study of the more striking differences between
the Massoretic and the Samaritan. In the antediluvian
genealogies all three recensions differ. No one has ventured
to assert that the LXX. copied its version of the ages of the
pre-diluvial patriarchs from the Samaritan. Nevertheless,
Dr Kohn says "that in almost every case (paene semper)
336 THE SAMARITANS
where the two Hebrew recensions differ the Septuagint
agrees with the Samaritan." He does not discuss this
notable exception, a fact all the more remarkable from
the chronological differences involved. He grants that
the additions which refer to Mount Gerizim have not
been admitted into the Septuagint, but explains this by
saying that these errors had been observed, and formed the
occasion for the revision of the Greek translation. There
could, however, have been no principle involved to prevent
the Egypto- Hellenic translators from inserting the summation
of the ages of the patriarchs that immediately followed the
Flood. Yet although this summation is found in the
Samaritan it is not transferred to the LXX.
Dr Kohn devotes several pages to further proof of his
thesis. He brings example after example in which the
LXX. agrees with the Samaritan, and from this would argue
the dependence of the former on the latter. He does not
even consider the possibility that all three recensions —
the Massoretic, the Samaritan, and the Hebrew behind the
Septuagint — spring from a common source. As above
noted he, like most Jews, is so blinded by national prejudice
that he regards it as an axiomatic truth that the Massoretic
text must always be assumed to be correct. Such a prejudice
as this renders him practically incapable of coming to a
correct conclusion on the question at all. What is meant
will be best seen by an example. In Gen. xlix. 6, Jacob,
in speaking of Simeon and Levi, says, " O my soul, come not
thou into their council ; unto their assembly my glory be not
thou united " (R.V.). The Samaritan of the last clause might
be rendered " In their assembly let not my liver become
hot." x If the insertion of vav be neglected, the differences
are two ; by the change of daleth into resh the verb translated
" joined " becomes " grows hot." Further, the verb in the
Massoretic is in the feminine, although 133 is masculine. The
meaning of the figure, on either rendering, is not very clear ;
the word translated "honour" may as well be rendered
" liver " ; the " liver " to the Hebrew had much the same
meaning which we attach to "heart." The idea suggested
1 Gesenius would render kabhdd, "liver," in Ps. xvi. 9; lvii. 9 (E.V. 8);
cviii. 2 (E.V. 1).
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 337
by the Samaritan is of a person getting excited in an
assembly of heated persons. This is as intelligible as the
Massoretic reading ; so the blunder may as well be on the
one side as the other. The LXX. certainly takes kabhdd
to mean "liver" (the meaning which appears to suit best
with the rest of the clause in the Samaritan), but with regard
to the critical verb tehad or yahor it would seem by the intro-
duction of sustasis as if the LXX. followed the reading of the
Massoretic The evidence in this case is scarcely convincing
that the LXX. followed the Samaritan.
Another instance brought forward by Dr Kohn is, as it
seems to us, inappropriate. It is said in Exod. xiii. 18,
"And the children of Israel went harnessed" (armed, R.V.)
D^Dn hamushim : the Samaritan scribe wrote D^Drj
kamishhn, which may either mean " by fifties" or " in the fifth
generation," which latter is the meaning the LXX. has pre-
ferred. In general, when there is difference between the two
recensions of vav in the one and yodJi in the other, the
blunder has been made by the Jewish scribe copying from a
MS. in the early square character. Hence it is probable that
the Samaritan text, which agrees with the Septuagint, is
correct. It was promised to Abraham (Gen. xv. 16) that
" in the fourth generation " his seed should return to
Palestine from the land of bondage ; a prophecy that would
be fulfilled, if, while the great majority of the mature
members of the nation were of the fifth generation, a con-
siderable number of the generation preceding still survived.
Even among ourselves, cousins-german may be separated
from each other in age by more than half a century.
According to the chronology of the Samaritan Recension
and of the Septuagint, the residence of the children of Israel
in Egypt was 215 years.1 Whether or not the reading of
the Samaritan Recension is correct, there is no proof that the
reading of the LXX. was derived from it. A manuscript in
the Maccaba^an script would distinguish too clearly between
vav and yodli for a scribe to confuse them.
1 In Gen. xv. 13, the stay of Israel in Egypt is put at 400 years,
an estimate that certainly does not harmonise on our chronology with
"the fourth generation." Possibly the generation was reckoned by the
extreme limits of individual life, in which case the century might
Y
338 THE SAMARITANS
What Dr Kohn calls " a wonderful example of how badly
the Greek interpreters understood the Samaritan Codex "
is found in Num. xxi. 30, which is rendered by the English
Versions, " We have shot at them ; Heshbon is perished even
unto Dibon, and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah,
which reacheth unto Medeba." It may be observed in
passing, that with regard to the first clause, the Samaritan
and the Massoretic are agreed practically, save that the
Massoretic by dropping the n he at the end of 'abadh, has
made Heshbon, contrary to Hebrew usage, masculine^ In
the latter clause the differences are that the Samaritan reads
eshy " fire," instead of asher, " which," and hv 'a/, " upon,"
instead of iy adh, " to." The rendering of the LXX. is very
different from either. " And their seed shall perish from
Esebon unto Daibon ; and their women have yet kindled
a fire against Moab." While it is true that the word
translated " we have shot at them " is identical, consonantally,
with a word which would mean " their lamp," and it is also
true that in regard to David, and David alone it is used four
times (1 Kings, xi. 36, xv. 4 ; 2 Kings viii. 19 ; 2 Chron. xxi. 7)
in a sense which indirectly means " progeny," we doubt if
this be the true occasion of the LXX. rendering. We would
venture to hazard another explanation. In the script of the
Assouan papyri nun is not unlike zain, and yodh is like ain ;
the reader, when a manuscript, ancestor of that used for the
translation into Greek, was being transcribed, unable to
understand the rare word before him, resolved it into zaram,
"their seed." The Samaritan Targum derives the word
in question from rtitn, " to lift up," and renders " we have
lifted up to destroy Heshbon unto Dibon." Dr Kohn assum-
ing without any evidence that the Samaritan reads venashim,
" and women," instead of vannas/um, " we laid waste," holds
that the LXX. followed it. As neither text was vowelled
be reckoned to a generation. It has been asserted, on what evidence
we know not, that the earliest Babylonian year was reckoned from
solstice to solstice, consequently every year consisted of approximately
six lunations. The 400 years of Abraham's vision would then roughly
coincide with the period of their stay according to the chronology of
the Samaritan and the LXX. It may be noted that in this hypothesis
the ages of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would cease to be abnormal.
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 339
in those days, the LXX. reader would have been liable
to make the blunder, if blunder it be, as much from the
Massoretic as from the Samaritan. The more important
variation of "Moab" for "Medeba" calls for explanation.
In the script of the papyri, yodh and daleth, written carelessly
might coalesce into a form not unlike aleph. The ' 'asher' ' adh
of the Massoretic is a blunder ; the qri marks the resh
doubtful, and the daleth of 'adh differs from lamed by the
thin line rising from it, which often disappears in MSS. ; and
thus, if the word was originally W, it becomes 'adh. So far
from this example proving the dependence of the LXX. on
the Samaritan, all it does prove is that the MS. from which it
was translated had in its ancestry a manuscript written in the
characters found in the Assouan papyri, and therefore from
a source independent of both the Massoretic and Samaritan.
Several of the instances that follow in Dr Kohn's list,
however interesting they may be in relation to the genesis of
the LXX. rendering, have no bearing upon the relation of
the Samaritan to it, as the Greek may as readily have been
translated from the one as from the other. Sometimes the
evidence he brings would prove too much and therefore
proves nothing. In Deut. xxvii. 26, Dr Kohn argues that
the LXX. has translated from the Samaritan because the
latter inserts ho/, " all," before dibr2 hat- Torah, and the former
renders ttolcti to?? Xoyot?. By parity of reasoning, it would
follow that the English Authorised was also translated from
the Samaritan : " Cursed be he who confirmeth not all the
words of this law to do them." Luther translates Verflucht
set, wer nicht alle Woerte dieses Gesetzes erfuellet ; therefore his
version also must have been translated from the Samaritan.
The instance in Deut. xxxii. 35 involves more elements
than Dr Kohn adverts to. It is rendered in the Authorised,
" To me belongeth vengeance and recompense." The
Samaritan has instead of h It, " mine," D'vi? /yom, " to
the day " ; this clause is made dependent on DW3 kanils
(v. 34), "to collect,"1 the Divine wrath is laid up in store
1 As DflD3 kamus, the word in the Massoretic, occurs only in this
passage it is probably to be regarded as a blunder, due to the likeness
of mem and nun in the angular.
340 THE SAMARITANS
" to the day of vengeance and recompense." The probability
that the Massoretic is at fault is confirmed by the fact that
the LXX. while it agrees with the Samaritan in reading lyom
differs from it by reading D^S ashallem instead of a?& shillem;
the verb " I will repay " instead of the noun " recompense."
In the epigraphic script of the Samaritan vav and aleph are
somewhat like. This supports the thesis maintained above,
that the LXX., though translated from a manuscript written in
Samaritan, or what is practically the same thing, Maccabaean
characters, was not translated from an exemplar of- the
Samaritan Recension.
Among the instances which Dr Kohn advances, there are
some in which the Massoretic has omitted, by homoioteleutony
a clause or portion of a clause. An example of this is found
in Deut. xiii. 6 ; which, speaking of temptations to idolatry,
commands that even the nearest and dearest should be
slain, if they should endeavour to tempt them to worship
other gods ; the verse begins : " If thy brother, the son of
thy mother, or thy son, etc.," so it stands in the Massoretic.
There is a want of completeness in this, for it would seem
to imply that solicitations to idolatry, when offered by a
paternal half-brother, would not be guilty or punishable
actions. The Samaritan and the LXX. avoid this : " If there
tempt thee thy brother, the son of thy father or the son of thy
mother, etc.," the enclitic pronoun being the same, and the b
sound and the ;« sound being so closely cognate that the
scribe who wrote to dictation might readily miss the former of
the two terms. The blunder must have been an ancient one,
as it is found in the Peshitta, not to speak of Jerome. It
is, however, needless to follow Dr Kohn through all his
examples, none of which really proves any dependence of the
LXX. on the Samaritan Recension. While one or two of
them render it almost certain that the translation was made
from a manuscript in Samaritan script, they at the same
time, by the differences they exhibit, show that, as said
above, this MS. was not an exemplar of the Samaritan
Recension.
One passage, Exod. xviii. 6, 7, is worth being looked
into because of certain peculiarities. It almost seems as if
Dr Kohn had forgot that his thesis was to prove the depend-
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 341
ence of the LXX. on the Samaritan, because this instance
might be cited as evidence of the converse, of its complete
independence. Jethro had come to meet Moses and to bring-
to him the wife who it appears had deserted him when he
went back to Egypt. Verse 6 : " And he said unto Moses, I,
thy father-in-law Jethro, have come unto thee, and thy wife
and her two sons with her." Verse 7 : " And Moses went to
meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him,
etc.," yet in the previous verse Jethro had already talked
with him. Jerome avoids the difficulty by a paraphrase.
The difficulty is really due to the introduction of *:x ani,
"I," instead of 7\ir\ hinneh, "behold," as in the Samaritan,
which therefore might be rendered " One said to Moses,
Behold, thy father-in-law Jethro has come," etc.1 The
LXX. appears to have had ibtf? Icnior, "to say." In verse 7
the LXX. follows the Massoretic exactly and omits the
phrase nvb? I'Mos/ie, " to Moses," found in the Samaritan ; an
addition which saves the dignity of Moses by saying that
Jethro did obeisance to his son-in-law. This would prove
that the Alexandrian translators had their own text, which
sometimes agreed with the Massoretic and sometimes with
the Samaritan.
As an indirect method of throwing light on the question
of the relation in which the Septuagint stands to the
Samaritan Recension, it will be advantageous to consider
the peculiarities of the Alexandrian version. It has been
seen above that many of the differences between the LXX.
and the Massoretic, and also between it and the Samaritan,
have been due to mistakes of hearing, consequently that it
is nearly certain that the translation was written to dictation
— one man reading the Hebrew while another translated as
he wrote. There seems to have been a tradition which
implied something of this sort. In contradistinction to the
account given by Irenaeus, according to which each one
of the seventy-two translators occupied a separate cell,
Epiphanius tells that they were distributed in thirty-six
cells, two in each, an arrangement which would suit a
method of translating such as has been indicated above.
1 This is the rendering of the Peshitta.
342 THE SAMARITANS
The effect of mistakes of hearing will naturally be more
observable in the transliteration of proper names, than in
cases of real translation. In considering this, the fact that
there are peculiarities of two languages to be taken into
account complicates the problem ; not only has the
pronunciation of Hebrew to be considered but also that of
Greek. As, however, the pronunciation of a language is
perpetually changing, the mode of pronouncing given letters
at a given time must, where it can be ascertained, be thought
of. It has already been noted that the Samaritans .pro-
nounced no gutturals ; the question will accordingly present
itself: Are there any traces of mistakes attributable to this
fact to be seen in the LXX. ? It is evident that the person,
whose office it was to read the Hebrew, did pronounce some
of the gutturals. In regard to the letter y ain, it seems certain
that two sounds were expressed by one sign. In Arabic
there are two sounds of the letter, one little more than a
catch in the breath, the other a burred r, such as one hears
in Northumberland. This latter is distinguished from the
character for ain by being dotted, and is called ghain.
One phenomenon which strikes anyone who studies the
transliteration of Hebrew names into Greek, is the appar-
ently capricious way in which ain is represented sometimes
by no consonant at all, sometimes by y gamma. It is
necessary at this point to consider the pronunciation of
the Greek gamma. The Greek priests in Palestine at the
present time pronounce that letter precisely like the
Arabic ghain. There are two names which, as written in
Hebrew, begin with the same syllable PTQV and rnby the
one is transliterated by the LXX. A/uloXck (Amalek) and
the other Tofxofipa (Gomorrah), which as adopted by Jerome
have been passed on to us. Another example is specially
worthy of note, as the modern Arabic name represents the
distinction above mentioned. The southmost of the Philistine
cities is in Hebrew njy transliterated Tafa (Gaza) in Greek,
but in Arabic the opening letter is ghain, and so pronounced.
These differences have usually been preserved by Jerome ;
there are, however, exceptions to this. The daughter of
Jezebel, wife of Jehoram of Judah, in Hebrew n^ny becomes
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 343
ToOoXta (Gotholia) in Greek, but Jerome writes the name
Athalia, a fact that indicates a change in the pronunciation.
When the letter in question occurs in the middle of a word
there is the same variety in transliteration, thus Djta becomes
in Greek BaXaajm (Balaam) ; but Chedorlaomer in Hebrew
ipi?W]3 is Greek XoSoXXoyo/nop (Chodollogomor) ; in the
Vulgate this appears as Chodorlahomor, from which our
English has been modified, following Luther. Another
example may be taken from the names of these four kings ;
Tidal 7jnn. which the LXX. mistaking "i for 1 have rendered
QapyaX (Thargal), Jerome Thadal, Luther more accurately
Thedeal. The strongest guttural n heth is normally repre-
sented by X as f\~\2n becomes Xe/3/otoj/ and nn Xer. Very
frequently, heth is represented by the soft breathing ; there
seems to have been no regulating principle employed. A
similar want of law or principle is observable in our own
language in regard to the silence or pronunciation of h in
words derived from Latin through French ; we have " habit,"
" herald," " hautbois," in which h is pronounced, and " heir,"
"hour," "honour," in which it is not, yet they all equally have
Latin roots and come to us through the French. A similar
usage seems to have sprung up in Egypt with regard to
the pronunciation of Hebrew. With regard to n he, it is
frequently represented by the rough breathing, as 'Aya/j
for "Un Hagar and 'OSofipas for DYin Hadoram. From the
above it is clear that the Septuagint was not translated by
one who read Hebrew as the Samaritans did, dropping all
the gutturals.
Another peculiarity of the Samaritans was that, like the
French and Germans, they could not pronounce th, but the
LXX. translator had no difficulty about Togarmah which
they wrote Qoyapfxa, Thogarma, so also with Tarshish which
becomes Qapaeis, Tharsis. So we find QapyaX, Thargal.
Thus all evidence points to the fact that the reader for the
Alexandrian translator did not labour under the disabilities
as to pronunciation which affected the Samaritans. There
is therefore little likelihood that the Septuagint was merely
edited from a Samaritan version, or that the manuscripts
employed by the LXX. represented the Samaritan Recension.
344 THE SAMARITANS
There are cases, as has already been observed, in which
both the Samaritan and the LXX. differ from the Massoretic
but do not agree with each other. The amount of difference
sometimes varies in extent, being greater in one than in the
other. The most important instances of this are the gene-
alogies in Gen. v. and xi., to which a passing reference has
already been made. Even a casual consideration of the
genealogy of the antediluvian patriarchs reveals that there
must be a principle at the back of the variations. In dis-
cussing the relation of the Samaritan Recension to that of
the Massoretes, it was suggested that there was the idea that
there must have been a progressive shortening of human life
from Adam downwards. Each son dies at an earlier age
than his father. Enoch and Noah are exceptional persons,
as of each it is said that he " walked with God " ; if they are
excepted, in the Samaritan genealogy, then the only other
exception to this is that Cainan has a longer life than Enosby
five years. The difference from the Massoretic extends only
to three of the patriarchs — Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech.
In the genealogy, as it appears in the LXX., there are
evidences of a principle at work differing from that which
influenced the Samaritan scribes. The peculiarity of the
Septuagint version of the antediluvian genealogy is that a
hundred years is added to the age of each of the first
five patriarchs before the birth of his eldest son. The
motive for this change may well have been apologetic.
The length of life ascribed to those who lived before
the Flood might easily be a stumbling-block to those
living among the critical and philosophic Greeks, who
would be ready enough to ridicule anything that emanated
from barbarian sources. An answer readily suggesting itself
would be that though the age was reckoned in " years," these
years were really only " months." This hypothesis was all
the easier to the Alexandrian Israelites, since the Hebrew word
for "year" rut? s/iana, really meant "repetition." The repe-
tition which would be earliest recognised, after the succession
of day and night, would be that of the phases of the moon.
Those who had little or no knowledge of artificial light
would be much more dependent on the light of the moon
than we naturally imagine. Moreover, in Egypt and South-
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 345
Western Asia, moonlight has a splendour rarely seen in our
more cloudy atmosphere. This might easily lead to reckon-
ing by moons ; these, however, would be felt to be cumbrous
from their number, so they were grouped, sometimes in tens,
as in Rome, sometimes in twelves, as in Babylon. At this
point, a greater repetition was discovered, the succession of
the seasons. A study of the stars revealed the fact that
the constellations had a succession of times in which one
after another of them dominated the midnight sky. The
phenomenon of solstice would be observed. The agricultural
stage, when reached, would lead to the succession of the
seasons of seedtime and harvest being emphasized; and the
fact that twelve moons so nearly coincided with the revolu-
tion of the heavens would lead to that being adopted. The
answer to the supposition that the " years " in the patriarchal
ages were only "months" was open to one difficulty on the
received Massoretic text. If the age of the patriarchs at
the birth of their eldest sons is divided by twelve the result-
ant age is in many cases too young for paternity. Leaving
out Adam, since presumably he was created full-grown, Seth
was at the age of 105 a father. This number, if divided by
twelve, gives an age of eight years and nine months. The
ages of these antediluvians when their eldest son is born is
a diminishing quantity, till in regard to Mahalaleel it is
recorded that he was sixty-five years at the birth of Jarcd ; on
the mode of calculation above adopted he would only be five
years and five months old. If, however, a hundred months
are added, that is to say, eight years and four months, the
age becomes no longer an impossible one, at least, in the
precocious East.
In the genealogy of the post-diluvian patriarchs who
preceded Abraham, the LXX. is in closer agreement with
the Samaritan than in regard to the antediluvians ; both add
a century to the age of the patriarch as given in the Mas-
soretic before the birth of his eldest son ; this is the case in
regard to all those before Serug, and including him. Although
there is this agreement in the ages before Nahor, there are
yet differences enough to prove independence. The LXX.
adds to the life of the elder Nahor before he becomes a father
a century beyond his age, as given in the Massoretic. More-
346 THE SAMARITANS
over, the LXX. inserts Cainan between Arphaxad and Sala
(Shelah). It is, however, in the latter portion of the lives of
these patriarchs that the greatest difference appears ; only
in one case do the LXX. and the Samaritan coincide in
regard to this ; in both, Eber lives 270 years after the birth
of Peleg. In the Samaritan, there is on the whole a con-
tinuance of the shortening of life which had characterised the
antediluvian genealogy. Another point of difference is that
the LXX. gives no summation of the years of the life of these
post-diluvian patriarchs as the Samaritan does. It seems
obvious that the two recensions are quite independent the
one of the other.
The limitation which Dr Kohn sets to his theory of the
dependence of the LXX. on the Samaritan ought to be
remembered. He maintains that the Jews corrected the
more obvious errors of the Samaritano-Greek version, but the
smaller and obscurer variants were not observed. In the
case, however, of these genealogies the Jewish revisers of his
hypothesis do observe and do alter ; they do not, however,
endeavour to bring the Greek they are to use henceforward
into conformity with the Massoretic, but introduce an in-
dependent set of variants. If the Jewish scribes did not
retain the reduplications in the account of the plagues of
Egypt to be found in the Samaritan, they made, or found in
their MSS., various additions not to be found either in the
Samaritan or the Massoretic. When a catalogue of the
descendants of Jacob at the time they went down to Egypt
is given (Gen. xlvi. 20) after the sentence which occurs alike
in the Massoretic and the Samaritan, " And unto Joseph
were born in the land of Egypt, Manasseh and Ephraim,
whom Asenath the daughter of Potipherah the priest of On
bore to him," the LXX. adds, " And there were sons born to
Manasseh, whom his Syrian concubine bore to him, Machir,
and Machir begat Galaad. And the sons of Ephraim the
brother of Manasseh, Soutalaam and Taam, and the sons
of Soutalaam, Edom." There is nothing of all this in the
Samaritan. To some extent, the information may have been
got from 1 Chron. vii. 14-19, but the passage there is very con-
fused, as it appears in the rendering of the LXX., " The sons
of Manasseh ; Esriel, whom his Syrian concubine bore, and
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 347
she bore also Machir the father of Galaad " ; then follows the
account of other sons. It is to be observed that in the
addition before us there is no word of " Esriel " (Ashriel).
The portion of the verse about Ephraim suggests the same
source, but the passage here is further from the Hebrew of
the Massoretic as it is reflected in the Greek of Chronicles.
Instead of the numerous sons attributed to him in I Chron.
vii. 20-27, there are only two, and their names are difficult
to identify with any of those in 1 Chron. vii. By somewhat
of a stretch Soutalaam may be recognised as intended to
represent Shuthelah ; as for Taam, it is very difficult to
imagine it as an attempt to transliterate Tahath. The
Greek in Chronicles is much closer to the Hebrew, writing
Sothalath and Thaath. It would almost seem as if the names
had been written down memoriter on the margin of some
early copy, and had slipped into the text. One thing is clear ;
the names have not been taken from the Hebrew direct, but
have been written down from a confused memory of the
Greek of Chronicles.
Further, in the later chapters of Exodus, according to the
Septuagint, there are changes in the position of the sections
when compared with the Massoretic which have no support in
the Samaritan. A great portion of the 39th chapter according
to the Massoretic and Samaritan occurs in the 36th of the
LXX. ; the rendering is by no means so close as in other parts
of the Pentateuch ; the breast-plate is called logeion, " the
Oracle," which is rather an explanation of the use made
of the Urim and Thummim which were placed in it than
a translation of the word hoshen. Chapter xxxvii. of the
LXX. agrees in the main with chapter xxxvi. of the
Massoretic and the Samaritan, beginning at verse 9 :
chapter xxxvii. (LXX.) agrees in the main with xxxvii. of
the Massoretic and Samaritan. The opening verses (1-10)
of chapter xxxix. (LXX.) coincide with xxxviii. 24-30 (Masso-
retic and Samaritan). With xxxix. 42 (Massoretic and
Samaritan), agrees xxxix. 11 (LXX.), but two verses are
added which do not represent anything in the Hebrew
of either recension : " The rest of the gold which remained
of the offering, they made into vessels for ministering in
them before the LORD ; and the blue that was left, and
348 THE SAMARITANS
the purple and the scarlet, they made into ministering
{leitourikas) garments for Aaron, in order that he might
minister in them in the holy place."
While in the above instances of dislocation, the Masso-
retic and the Samaritan are agreed against the LXX., there
are cases in which the Massoretic and the LXX. agree
against the Samaritan. The ten verses which describe the
altar of incense are placed in the Samaritan Recension
between the 35th and 36th verses of chapter xxvi. of the
Massoretic, whereas the Massoretic and the LXX. place them
at the beginning of chapter xxx.
All this confirms the decision to which we have already
come, that the Septuagint was not translated from a
manuscript which was an exemplar of the Samaritan
Recension. On the other hand, the differences from the
extant Massoretic Recension are too many and too important
to render it at all probable that MSS. from Jerusalem were
those from which the translation was made. It may
be urged that as the Massoretic did not reach its present
form till the fourth or fifth century A.D., the text then in
use in Palestine would be older than the Massoretic by six
or seven hundred years, so that it might differ very much from
what it had been in the days even of Ptolemy Philometer. Still,
the rate of change, as measured by what is to be observed
between that behind Aquila and the Massoretic, is so slow,
that the difference from the text of Aquila and Symmachus
and that from which the Septuagint was translated need
not have been very great. That the Samaritan differs from
the Massoretic so much less than the LXX. is confirmatory
of this. From these grounds we are led to assume that
the LXX. was translated from MSS. already in Egypt,
which probably had a long Egyptian descent.
Can anything be discovered as to the character of those
manuscripts ? It is a matter of some importance to find out
so far as may be possible the character and age of the MSS.
used by the " Seventy," whoever they were, when translating
from the Hebrew. From the number of instances in which,
as shown by Dr Kohn, differences of the Greek from the
Hebrew can be explained by mistakes due to resemblances
of letters in the Samaritan script, it may be assumed that
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 349
the MSS. immediately used by the Greek translators were
written in Samaritan, or what is the same thing, Maccabaean
characters. This, however, is a very different matter from
saying that they were exemplars of the Samaritan Recension.
The Jews certainly did not write in the square character
in the days of the Lagid supremacy. The coins of Simon
the Maccabee more than a century later had their inscrip-
tions in a script analogous to that of Samaria. As the
object of the superscription was to inform the public of the
value of the coins in question, it would be in the style of
writing ordinarily in use. If the translation was made
in the days of Philadelphus (approximately 280 B.C.), nearly
a century and a half before Simon first struck coins, the
MSS. used would be written in a similar script. Fully
a century before Philadelphus was the inscription cut on the
sarcophagus of Ashmunazar. The script on this last, though
distinctly angular, yet approximates to that on the Macca-
baean coins. Hence the script of even Jerusalem MSS.
would be very like that of the Samaritan codices to which
Dr Kohn refers. The differences are, as already stated,
too great for one to hold that the LXX. has been translated
from Palestinian MSS., and as there is no evidence that they
were Samaritan — indeed the evidence is distinctly hostile
to that view — we are forced to maintain that the translation
was made from a manuscript, or from manuscripts, already
in Egypt which had been copied from Egyptian codices.
This is confirmed by evidence which appears to prove
that the manuscript used had in its ancestry one written
in the script of the Assouan papyri. Further, there are
traces in the Septuagint of the influence of the earlier
angular script to be found on the Siloam inscription.
This would suggest that the ultimate ancestor of the
Egyptian MSS. was brought down into Egypt by Jere-
miah, at all events by some one about his date. The
number of exiles that were carried down into Egypt, by
Johanan the son of Kareah, along with Jeremiah, must have
been very considerable. They must have had the Law
and known its contents, as Jeremiah rebukes them for not
obeying it (Jer. xliv. 23)- If that is so, there is evidence of
the totality of the Law long before the mission of Ezra.
350 THE SAMARITANS
If the script of the Assouan papyri was that in use in
Egypt, how is it that the characters confused belong to the
Samaritan or Maccabaean script ? The answer to this can be
found in the present habits of the Jews ; copies of the Torah,
engrossed for use in the synagogue, are written in square
character, whereas in the private letters, though written
in Hebrew, the script is totally different. The Assouan
papyri are copies of letters and deeds. From the Talmud
{Sank. 21 £) we learn that the script of Samaria was regarded
as that in which the Law had been given at first, and therefore
it might well be reckoned sacred. Before there were
regular synagogues, the Torah might be copied, like other
documents, in the script of Assouan ; hence the confusions
traceable to it, although the synagogue rolls would
always be written in Samaritan script — or to give it its
Talmudic name — Ibri character.
If the differences between the Samaritan and the Masso-
retic suggest a common source dating from a more or less
remote antiquity, it might be argued that the greater the
differences the greater the antiquity of the common source.
Then, as the differences of the LXX. from the Massoretic
are so much greater than the differences of the Samaritan,
it might be argued that the Septuagint is older than
the Samaritan ; that is to say, moved away from the
common source at a much earlier period. Whether or not
there is any truth behind the Talmudic legend of a statutory
copy which was regarded as the model to which all copies
of the Torah must conform, the chances of accuracy were
greater in Palestine than in Egypt. The knowledge of
Hebrew even among the Jews resident in Egypt would
not be that of Jews in Palestine or Samaritans who always
retained Hebrew alongside of Aramaic Moreover, the
knowledge of the Law was much more diffused in Palestine
than in Egypt, consequently the possibility of blunders was
limited both in extent and degree. From this it follows that
the copying of Hebrew documents would not be so carefully
done in Egypt. Further, in translating, even if the
translators were Jews, they would not have the knowledge
due to what may be called customary knowledge to guide
them. Consequently in a given time the variants in the
PENTATEUCH TO THE SEPTUAGINT 351
Egypto- Hebrew manuscripts would be greater than in
Palestinian ones, whether in Judea or in Samaria.
To sum up the result of the present investigation into
the relation between the Samaritan Recension and the
Septuagint ; it is clear that the one is no mere repetition of
the other; they are independent witnesses, alike testifying
to the integrity of the Law (or, to give it the Greek name so
generally used, the Pentateuch) from a period long before
the advent of Ezra in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER XII
THE BEARING OF THE FOREGOING ARGUMENT ON
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM
As will doubtless have been guessed by the reader all that has
preceded has been intended to lead up to certain conclusions
which have a bearing on the criticism of the Pentateuch. In
order that the force of the argument should be apprehended,
it will be well to sum up seriatim the various points involved
and discussed. In the first place it has been shown that the
claim of the Samaritans to be Israelites is well founded.
From the ordinary methods of the Assyrians, and from the
express statements of the inscriptions of Sargon, it is clear
that only a small portion of the people were deported.
Their home so closely contiguous to Judea places their
knowledge of Israelite ritual beyond dispute. The minute
points in which the Talmudists find fault with those whom
they call " the foolish people who dwel] jn ^h^h^fla" is
evidence of the general accuracy of their ritual. In the next
place, a study of the history of the Samaritans evidences the
faithfulness with which they held to the worship of JHWH
despite the most savage persecutions inflicted on them by
Jews, Romans, Byzantines, and Moslems. It has been
further seen that their Mosaism, their ritual of worship
in accordance with the Mosaic Law, did not begin under the
Persian rule, but stretched away back to times before the fall
of the Northern Kingdom. The evidence of the prophets
is clear on this point. Yet again, the apparent antagonism
between the worship of JHWH in the Northern Kingdom
and that on Mount Zion has to be explained. The source
of the difference is shown to be connected with the influence
of the prophets and of prophetism. As the Samaritans
352
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 353
claim to have maintained their original ritual of worship
from the times of Eleazar the son of Aaron to the present
day, it is necessary to stud)' their acts of worship and their
ceremonial rites. As the religion of Israel, like Christi-
anity, rests upon history the views entertained as to sacred
history have to be ascertained. Religion expresses itself not
only in ritual but in forms of thought, that is to say,
a theology emerges. Consideration of Samaritan theology
shows it to consist of doctrines practically identical with
those of Judaism but attained by a different route. As
bearing on the age of the Samaritan Recension, it is needful
that the evidence of age afforded by the Samaritan script
be carefully considered. It was seen that certain symptoms
pointed to the mother roll, from which originally the
Recension took its rise, having been written in the script
of the Siloam inscription if not earlier. The peculiarities of
the Samaritan pronunciation of the Hebrew have a chrono-
logical bearing and must not be omitted from consideration.
The form Aramaic assumed when spoken and written by
the Samaritans has a bearing on the questions at issue, and
also their literature and the poetic form the Samaritans
affected. As the question of the relation of the Samaritan
Recension to the received Massoretic text is of the highest
importance for criticism, there has been a careful examination
of the resemblances and differences between them. It has
been long recognised that there are many and striking
cases in which the Samaritan Recension resembles the
LXX. ; that also has been compared.
After the foregoing recapitulation, the results of the
study may be more concisely summed up. The feature most
prominent is the independence of the Samaritans as regards
the Jews — an independence that assumed the form at times
of meaningless antagonism ; an independence which was
maintained although Judaism surrounded them on every
side, not only to the south in Judea, but to the north in
Galilee, and to the east across Jordan. Their stern faithful-
ness to the ritual and creed of the religion received from
their fathers, renders the idea of change of faith foreign
to them. When the ritual of the Samaritans is compared
with that of the Jews, while the essential identity is patent,
z
354 THE SAMARITANS
there are many minor differences, and all these are on the side
of greater simplicity, and therefore of greater primitiveness.
This characteristic is specially obvious in regard to the most
essential rites of the reaffirm nf Tsrnpl, rirrnmrision an<j
the Passover. In regard to the latter the primitive character
is naturally more obvious. Although it is in some respects
difficult to discover the exact way in which the Jews
of the century before the destruction of the Temple
celebrated the Passover, yet much can be gathered from
Josephus and the New Testament ; the evidence of the
Talmud is not quite valueless although it is late. One
very marked difference is that while the Jews, in the period
before the destruction of the Temple, when they could still
celebrate the Passover, kept the feast within doors ; the
Samaritans celebrate it out of doors on the top of Mount
Gerizim. Certainly the Jewish method is more like the
account given in Exod. xii., whereas the Samaritans appear
to have perpetuated the modifications which the ordinance
would have to undergo in the wilderness, when the house
was a tent and there were neither lintels nor door-posts
(Num. ix. 5 ; see also Josh. v. 10). The pit oven in which the
lambs are roasted among the Samaritans points to the
habits of a village community, or the encampment of Bedu
in circumstances in which they had to be careful of fuel.
This mode of roasting, as is proved by their monuments, was
practised neither by the Egyptians nor by the Assyrians.
The Samaritan mode of celebration has the look of being
a survival of the time before the central shrine was adopted
by the Israelites. The view they have of sacred history is
certainly a late travesty of the truth. It however evidences
the necessity the Samaritans felt to have their faith based like
that of the Jews and Christians on history of some sort. Yet
this must be said that the Samaritan travesty is not any
wider from the truth of fact than are the stories to be found
in the Talmud. As to doctrine, the mutual reproaches which
Jews and Samaritans cast at each other, and the erroneous
accounts which they give of each other's faith, are con-
vincing evidence that neither borrowed from the other, to
any great extent. The Samaritan angelology is a case
in which this is obvious ; the names given to the angels
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 355
by the Samaritans differ from the Jewish names ; indeed are
constructed on a different principle.
Another aspect of the questions involved emerges with
the consideration of the Samaritan script. The Talmud, as
has already been shown, acknowledged the Samaritan script
— the characters of the Samaritan alphabet — as being more
ancient than the square character used by the Jews ; indeed,
they seem to have regarded the script of Samaria as that
in which the Law was first given. This confirms the con-
tention that the Samaritan aspect of the religion of Israel
was not dependent on Judaism, and in not a few features
it is the more primitive. The aspect of independence is
exhibited from another side by the form which Aramaic, the
lingua franca of South- Western Asia, assumed in their lips ;
it is much more Hebraistic than is Jewish Aramaic — a
symptom that seems to indicate that the Samaritans
spoke Hebrew longer than did the Jews, and were less
exposed to foreign influences. The poetry of the Samari-
tans has features like that of the Jews, but what is
regarded as the essential characteristic of Jewish versifica-
tion — parallelism — they do not use ; they indulge very
largely in acrostics involving the whole alphabet, a poetic
form of which the Jews made occasional use ; rhyme, of
which the Jews have no indubitable examples, at least
in the classic period of the Hebrew language, is a very
favourite mode with the Samaritans.
More important is the relation in which the Samaritan
Pentateuch stands to the Massoretic Recension. We have
seen that many of the differences between the two recen-
sions are due to blunders of the Jewish scribes ; while
others are due to mistakes on one side or other in conse-
quence of resemblances of letters, as has been observed in
an earlier chapter, in a script like that of the Siloam
inscription, or even an earlier. A comparison of the
Samaritan Recension with the Septuagint shows that though
the translation was made from a manuscript written in
Samaritan characters, it was not made from an exemplar
of the Samaritan Recension. There further seemed to have
been manuscripts written in the angular script, with at least
one in the script of Elephantine.
356 THE SAMARITANS
One point is clear from all this : when the Samaritans
got the Torah it was complete in all its parts ; if it is a
compilation, then the compilers had completed their work.
All the proofs alleged by critics that the Pentateuch is made
up of different documents are to be found in the Samaritan,
as much as in the Massoretic. It is certainly the case that
the Samaritan has, in a few instances, JHWH, when the
Massoretic has Elohim, and vice versd, but these are not
frequent enough to affect the issue seriously. The same
thing may be said of the Septuagint, although the variants
from the Massoretic are more numerous and important.
In these circumstances it is all-important to fix the date
at which the religious separation between the Jews and
the Samaritans took place. This is all the more important
that it will fix the latest date at which the alleged editing
can have taken place.
Before entering on the critical theory of the constitution
and origin of the Pentateuch, or — to give the collection of
documents in question the name most in favour with the
followers of Wellhausen and Kuenen — the Hexateuch, it
might be well to endeavour to realise how things would
appear to one untrammelled by previously formed opinions.
That the book in question was to be separated into super-
incumbent strata, the lines of stratification running through
the whole six subsidiary portions, would never occur to
him. After a perusal more or less careful he would be
inclined to regard the first book and the fifth as differing
from those three books that come in between. As decidedly
he would put the sixth book in a separate category. In
regard to Genesis, presuming the investigator here imagined
to have put to the one side all the claim it makes to be
a record of God's revelation of Himself to man, he would
find it composed mainly of legendary stories. These
narratives are connected chiefly with the lives of four
successive individuals, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
The stories are simple and naive ; even when the scene
is transferred to Egypt, we seem to be sitting at a tent-
door hearing tales of his ancestors told by a hoary bearded
sheikh in the clear moonlight of the East. The three books
which follow are legal and ceremonial. They form a unity ;
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 357
there is a historical preamble, and historical episodes, but
there is not much of the purely legendary ; with all their
contents these three books form one law-book. Were it
not for the formula in which JHWH is declared to be the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which occurs about
a dozen times in those books, mainly in the beginning of
Exodus, and a casual reference to Joseph in the first
chapter of Exodus, and a notice of the removal of his bones
in the thirteenth, these books might be regarded as totally
independent of Genesis, the literary atmosphere is so
perfectly different. The frequently recurrent phrase of
Genesis "the generations of" practically disappears in the
ceremonial books. Another phrase takes its place, and
occurs with greater frequency, " The LORD spake unto
Moses saying." When the reader we have imagined
proceeds to Deuteronomy, he again is conscious of a change
of atmosphere. The whole book has the semblance of
having been spoken by one man, by Moses on the Plains
of Moab ; it is a recapitulation of the history and legislation
of the three preceding books with alterations. In its literary
form Deuteronomy agrees with not a few specimens of
Egyptian and Assyrian literature. Indeed the structure of the
book from a purely literary point of view strongly resembles
that of the Memoirs of Sunhit ; it, like Deuteronomy, begins
with a designation of the author and concludes the opening
paragraph with the word " saith." In regard to the sixth
book, the student we have presupposed would be conscious of
yet another change of atmosphere. It certainly implies the
books which have preceded, but it is widely different in style.
Though JHWH promises to be with Joshua as He
was with Moses, there is a distinct difference in the attitude.
The phrase so common in the Lawbook, vyedabber JHWH
el Moshe lemor, practically disappears ; it is found only
once. Joshua does not enjoy the frequent intercourse
with JHWH that Moses did. While Moses is frequently
referred to, it is by a new designation, " Moses the servant
of JHWH." Another thing our investigator would not fail
to observe would be the disappearance of the archaisms
frequent in the preceding five books. All these resem-
blances and differences would seem to preclude the
358 THE SAMARITANS
hypothesis of lines of stratification running through all
the six books.
This last named hypothesis is that, notwithstanding,
which has been adopted by the most influential school of
Biblical critics at the present time. This theory of parallel
documents was suggested, with much diffidence and after
much hesitation, by Astruc, a French physician of the
eighteenth century. While he had observed the stratification
mainly in Genesis, and pointed it out there, from dogmatic
reasons he carried it on into the opening chapters of Exodus.
His hypothesis was that Moses had before him two docu-
ments or sets of documents, the one characterised by the
use of the Divine Name JHWH, the other by the use of
Elohim, and that from these he made extracts, which he
introduced without change into his own narrative. This
peculiarly Eastern method of literary procedure was not
unknown among classic writers ; Diodorus Siculus has
extracted long passages from Polybius and other writers
without acknowledgment or alteration. Eichhorn, writing
about half a century later, recognised this stratification as
extending through all the books of the Pentateuch. Stahelin
and de Wette saw these documents in the book of Joshua
also. It was found by later students that matters would
be simplified critically if it were recognised that there was
not merely one but that there were two Elohists ; the one
annalistic like the Jehovist, the other drier in style and
interested more in ritual than in legends. This second
Elohist was designated P, and his work was described as
the " Priestly Code " ; the symbol of the Jehovist became J,
and of the Elohist E. By some scholars it was felt that
certain chapters in the " Priestly Code " suggested another
hand ; these were segregated under the title of " The Law
of Holiness," and were designated by the letter H. Keener
sighted critics saw the hand of members of the Deuteronomist
school expanding statements ; as the writer of Deuteronomy
was represented by the letter D so those followers of his
were also symbolised by the same letter, only distinguished
from him by an added numeral. Later critics distinguished
later hands among the priestly writers, so there are P2 and P3.
There were also discovered to be second and third Elohists
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 359
and second and third Jehovists. Such in rough is the
history of the origin and evolution of the critical theory
of the structure of the Hexateuch.
Having narrated the origin and development of the
ruling critical theory, it is needful to consider it as a
completed whole. Succinctly stated, it is the hypothetical
history of the origin and evolution of the Five Books of
Moses and the book of Joshua ; or, as it is called, the
Hexateuch. In considering the relation of the Samaritan
Recension of the Torah to the critical discussions, the extent
assigned to it is the first question to be settled. It is an
essential part of the critical theory that it is a Hexateuch,
and that Joshua is an integral part of it. It is beyond
denial that the Samaritans never since the days of Sanballat
have had the canonical book of Joshua. The settling of
this question is to a great extent independent of the
Wellhausen hypothesis. Astruc never could have thought
of his theory had he begun his study with Joshua. By
Bennett (Polychrome Bible, "Joshua") the first two verses of
the first chapter of that book are ascribed to the Elohist, yet
the Divine Name introduced is JHWH, and it appears
twice. In fact very rarely in the whole book does Elohim
make its appearance, except as an attributive after JHWH.
Above, in a previous chapter, a reason has been
suggested why, with all the motives the Samaritans had for
holding Joshua in high honour, they yet had not the book
which related his exploits. Traditions of him remained, and
he was spoken of as " King Joshua." It is clear then that
if the Samaritans got the Law through the fugitive priest
Manasseh, whether he fled to Samaria in the days of
Artaxerxes Longimanus, or a hundred years later in the
days of Alexander the Great, "Joshua" was not regarded at
that time as part of the Law. Manasseh had no reason to
withhold it, and the Samaritans had every reason to wish
for its possession. As has elsewhere been pointed out,
Joshua was the great hero of the Northern tribes : legends
had gathered round him, and his tomb was with them.
It admits neither of doubt nor denial that the Jews put
the book of Joshua on a different plane from that on which
they placed the " Five Fifths of the Law," and a much lower
360 THE SAMARITANS
one. It is regarded as a palmary argument against the
authenticity, and consequent historicity, of the book of
Daniel, that the Rabbin of the third or fourth century
excluded it from the " Prophets " and relegated it to the
Kthubhim : yet the far earlier decision of the Jewish
teachers, that " Joshua " is quite separate from the Law and
is to be reckoned among the Prophets, is overridden without
scruple.1 The critical reason assigned for this exclusion is
that there is nothing in "Joshua" bearing on conduct. If
this were the principle which governed the inclusion of
matters in the Law, or exclusion from it, then Genesis ought
to have been excluded as well as Joshua ; this argument
proves too much, therefore proves nothing. But it is not
strictly true. The treaty which Joshua is related to have
made with the Gibeonites is expected to regulate the
conduct of the Israelites in regard to these Gibeonites in
the days of Saul and David. Again, the territories to be
occupied by the different tribes were arranged by Joshua ;
this had an abiding effect on the conduct of the Israelites of
later days. The story of Naboth and his vineyard shows
the sanctity with which the pious Israelite endowed the
inheritance he had received from his fathers, and his relation
to it. Its want of relation to conduct cannot be the reason
for the exclusion of "Joshua" from the Torah. One further
reason is suggested, a literary one, why " Joshua " should be
considered part of the Law despite its exclusion from it by
the Jews. The Pentateuchal history stops at a very awkward
point ; Israel is encamped in the Plains of Moab, preparing
to cross the Jordan, and it needs the book of Joshua to
1 The case against " Daniel " is peculiarly weak, its exclusion from
the Prophetic books is so very late. It is among the " Prophets " in the
Canon of Alexandria. Our Lord quotes Daniel as a prophet (Matt. xxiv.
15 ; Mark xiii. 14). Josephus includes " Daniel " among the " Prophets,"
since the four books of the ICthubhim described by him cannot fit
" Daniel " {contra Afiionem, i. 8) ; moreover, he distinctly calls him a
prophet {Ant. X. xi 7). In the Canon of Melito, which by its exclusion
of the Apocryphal books of the Alexandrian Canon shows its Jewish
origin, " Daniel " is reckoned among the Prophets (Euseb., Eccl. Hist.%
iv. 26) ; his date is circa a.d. 180. The earliest notice of Daniel not being
among the Prophets is in Jerome's preface to Daniel written about two
hundred years after Melito.
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 361
complete it. This is no argument, else the fact that
Thucydides ends his history in the middle of a sentence
would be proof that he wrote also the Hellenika which
continues the history and begins " After these things." This
much at all events is clear, that not only must the exclusion
of "Joshua" from the Law have been effected before the
flight of Manasseh to Samaria, but so long before that the
fact of its previous inclusion had disappeared from memory,
consequently long before the advent in Jerusalem of Ezra,
who by hypothesis brought the Law.
We have already considered the evolution of the ruling
critical theory, it is now necessary to describe the evolution
of the Pentateuch according to it. Somewhere about the
time when Jehoshaphat was reigning in Jerusalem, a Judaean
began to collect the legends of the origins of the Israelite
race. About a century later, an Ephraimite, when the
Northern Kingdom was tottering to its fall, if it had not
already fallen, commenced making a similar collection. The
Southern writer preferred to speak of God by His Covenant
name of JHWH, while the Northerner used the more general
term, Elohim. The Judaean document is designated by the
letter J, the Ephraimite by E. Not quite a hundred years
after the Northern Kingdom had fallen, during the reign of
Josiah, a Redactor combined the two narratives, dovetailing
one into the other.
These histories were prophetic in their origin, but in
Jerusalem prophetic activity found another outlet. Under
the zealous young king Josiah the Temple was undergoing
repairs so thorough that they involved the masonry of the
building. While these repairs were proceeding "the Book
of the Law " was found, or was alleged to be found. Hilkiah
the High Priest brought to Josiah the roll alleged to con-
tain the Law. According to the critics this was its origin ;
certain members of the prophetic school, seeing the evils
which resulted from the many High Places, composed this
book. It professed to be written by Moses, his last words ;
so it gave Mosaic authority to the reform which it was
desired to see instituted — a reform which would involve the
destruction of all those local High Places. When it was
written it was duly hid in the temple, with, it might be, the
362 THE SAMARITANS
connivance of Hilkiah, in a place where it might opportunely
be found. As arranged it was found and produced the effect
desired. This book so found is the book of Deuteronomy in
the Pentateuch. The letter used to designate it is D. A
later Redactor combined this Law book with the book which
contained the narratives of J and E united, known as JE ;
he at the same time expanded the JE narratives and adjusted
them to Deuteronomy. The Deuteronomist was followed
by many of the same spirit who are credited with operating
on the other books of Scripture, and inserting passages which
do not suit criticism ; these are denoted by D2 and D3.
Such was the position of things when Jerusalem was
taken and Jeconiah and many of the inhabitants were carried
into captivity. Among these captives was the prophet-priest
Ezekiel. He was full of patriotic enthusiasm and eager to
keep Israel pure and separate from the heathen. Moved by
this desire, he and those influenced by him devised the
" Law of Holiness." This as already mentioned is denoted
by the letter H. In the " Law of Holiness " there is
republished from Deuteronomy, with variations, the list of
clean and unclean animals. The remainder of the book is
mainly occupied with marriage relationships. Later the
captive priests, guided it might be by remembrances of the
temple worship, supplemented this " Law of Holiness " by an
elaborate system of washings and sacrifices. The Law of
Holiness thus supplemented became the Priestly Code.
Meantime the combined document JE and D arrived from
Jerusalem at Babylon. Whether after the book reached
Babylon or before it left Jerusalem, later Jehovists had made
additions and alterations ; according to some, later Elohists
also have left traces of their activities. We have thus to do
with a J2 and a J3 and possibly an E2 and an E3 besides a
relay of D's. The first chapter of Genesis is attributed to P,
but the second chapter is assigned to J with additions by J2.
The story of the Flood, with long passages attributed to P,
is largely assigned to J2. Among the passages attributed
to J2 are the opening verses of Gen. vii., in which there is
reference to the purely Levitical distinction of animals clean
and unclean ; in the account of Noah's sacrifice with which
the story of the Flood ends, also ascribed to J 2, there is the
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 363
same distinction brought into prominence. To P are
attributed most of the genealogies except those of Cain in
Gen. iv., and those of Cush and Eber among the genealogies
in chapter x. Such was the constitution of the Torah as
it was brought to Palestine by Ezra, according to the
Wellhausen theory. Even then it was not complete ; there-
after additions were made to it ; there are a series of priestly
writers P2, P3, and so on.
With all its undeniable cleverness, this theory of the
evolution of the Pentateuch inevitably suggests the cycles
and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy ; as by the pre-
Copernican astronomers, epicycle was imposed on epicycle,
to explain aberrant phenomena, so by the critics are
new authors supposed, in order by them to explain
difficulties as they are realised. May it be thought dis-
respectful to the German professors and their followers to
suggest that they might take an example from astronomers,
who found a solution by abandoning their epicycles, and
betaking themselves to simplicity by seeking for a new
centre ? Meantime a further hypothesis is needed to explain
the non-existence of any trace of the Torah in its more
primitive state before D or P had operated upon it. Of the
Epistles of Ignatius we have not only the long Greek
Recension but also the short Greek and the Syriac. In
Egypt, as proved by the Assouan papyri, there were ancient
Israelite communities ; it may be that some shorter recension
of the Torah may be found in the rubbish heaps left by their
villages. The original recension of the Hebrew of the
Egyptian book of Daniel must have been very different
from the Palestinian text. However that may be, it is
certain that when the Pentateuch reached Samaria it was
complete in all its complexity of parts. The differences
between the two recensions are slight, and can scarcely be
said to involve any critical points. The sole point on which
the Samaritan Recension can throw light is the date at
which this compilation, if compilation it is, was completed.
It is an essential part of the critical hypothesis that
Ezra brought the completed Law to Jerusalem. Since
the Samaritan Recension contains, as has already been
observed, all the constitutive elements of the Torah, J, E, D,
364 THE SAMARITANS
and P, with all the series of these letters followed by
distinctive numerals, it follows of necessity, if this be so, that
the Samaritans only received the Law after the last of
these increments had been introduced into it. It is assumed
that Manasseh, to give him the name by which Josephus
designates the son-in-law of Sanballat, took with him, when
he fled to his father-in-law, a copy of the completed Torah.
It is not said that he did so either in Josephus or Nehemiah :
still let it be assumed that he did so. Josephus says that he
was the great-grandson of Eliashib, and brother of Jaddus or
Jaddua the High Priest, who, according to Josephus, met
Alexander the Great when he came to Jerusalem. Eliashib
was an old man when Nehemiah came as Tirshatha to
Jerusalem, as he had a grandson of age to be married. This
grandson, as has been noted in an earlier chapter, Nehemiah
chased from his presence because of his marriage ; this
occurred at latest in the year 433 B.C. Here we must ask
permission to repeat a historical argument which we have
given in a previous chapter in another connection. According
to Josephus, Manasseh, a nephew of this man repeats his
offence, something less than a century later, also with a
daughter of Sanballat, and is banished by the Sanhedrin as
was his uncle by Nehemiah. The unlikelihood of such an
exact repetition of persons and punishments is elsewhere
commented on. Another of his nephews is Jaddua, who,
according to Josephus, was High Priest when Alexander the
Great entered Palestine in the year 332 B.C. It is clear
that Jaddua could not have been the contemporary of
Alexander the Great unless Jonathan (called John by
Josephus, and Johanan in Neh. xii. 22) was very much
younger than the fugitive from Nehemiah ; but this is highly
improbable since the High Priesthood normally followed
the line of primogeniture. Josephus is not the only
authority for the meeting of Alexander with the Jewish High
Priest ; the Talmud (Yoma 69a) describes the meeting, but
says that the High Priest was Simeon hatz-Tzaddiq, the
grandson of Jaddua.1
1 Both Josephus and the Talmud, the latter inferentially, declare
Simon I. to be Simeon hatz-Tzaddiq ; but critical opinion asserts that
not he but his grandson Simon II. had the title; this grandson
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 365
That Simon I. was High Priest at the time of Alexander's
invasion of Palestine is chronologically probable ; the date
of his grandfather's pontificate would probably be about
390 B.C., leaving forty years for the last years of the
High Priesthood of Eliashib, and the High Priesthood
of Joiada. He was succeeded by Onias I. the father of
Simon (Simeon) I. Alexander was in Palestine in 332 B.C.
Josephus dismisses with a single sentence (Ant. XII. iv. 10) as a person
of no account. The sole authority quoted for this identification by
Cheyne, except a reference to the Talmud which is not decisive, is
Derenbourg (Hist, et Geog. de la Pal., p. 47). This latter asserts
this identification and supports it by a passage from Yoma. Derenbourg
declares that "nothing in the history of this pontif," Simon I., "or in
the circumstances which surrounded him, either justifies or explains why
this title 'the Just' should have been given to him. . . . Simon the
Just lived in an extraordinary time when ancient institutions were
crumbling, and when the gradual enfeeblement of religious sentiment
in the priesthood was punished by visible signs of Divine displeasure."
Then follows the quotation from Yoma 6q# : " During the forty years of
the pontificate of Simon the Just, on the Day of Atonement the lot
for the goat destined for Jehovah always fell to the right hand ; after-
wards it was sometimes the right and sometimes the left. In his time
the red thread which surrounded the head of the goat destined for
Azazel became white, which indicated that the sins (of the people)
had been pardoned ; afterwards it sometimes became white, and
sometimes did not. Under Simeon, the lamp lighted at the west of the
temple shone always ; after him it at times went out. While he lived,
the wood once arranged upon the altar, the flame remained always
strong and the priests had only to bring a few faggots of small wood
to fulfil their duty ; after him the flame often went down, the priests
were busy the whole day carrying wood to the altar." I submit that
all this proves precisely the opposite of what Derenbourg says it does.
What the Talmudic writer evidently means to teach is that the period
when Simon the Just was High Priest was one of strong faith and
unswerving faithfulness, which was rewarded by numerous signs of
Divine favour which ceased in the age which followed. Yet this is the
passage which Cheyne quotes as proving his point. Dean Stanley
(Jewish Church, iii. 247, note 4) says : " Derenbourg has conclusively
established that the Simon of Ecclesiasticus was Simon II." If that
is the critical idea of proof we shall not be surprised, should they direct
their attention to the history of the Tudor period, that they would
" establish " from Foxe's Book of Martyrs that Bishop Bonner was a
kindly ecclesiastic with a leaning toward Protestantism. Yet it is
something like an axiom of scientific (?) criticism that Simon II. is
Simon the Just.
366 THE SAMARITANS
The evidence of Josephus is unreliable with regard to
this period, because, as elsewhere noticed, he drops a
whole century ; misled by the confusing succession of
kings who bore the names of Artaxerxes and Darius
almost alternately, he seems to have concluded that there
was only one Artaxerxes and only two Dariuses. The
efforts he had to make to adjust historic facts to his
shortened chronology have already been adverted to. The
existence of the Sanballat contemporary of Nehemiah is
confirmed by the Assouan papyri, in which the "sons of
Sanballat" are referred to as the authorities in Samaria.
If it was to the Sanballat of the reign of Artaxerxes
Longimanus that Manasseh fled, then the Darius of whom
permission was asked to build the temple on Mount Gerizim
was not Darius Codomannus, as assumed by so many, but
Darius Nothus, the son of Longimanus. The critics have
accepted as correct the assertion of Josephus that Jaddua
was the contemporary of Alexander. The authority of
Josephus is accepted on this point without question, yet
when he declares that Simon I. is Simon ho dikaios, it
is without any value. In short, to "scientific" criticism
Josephus, as an authority, is reliable or the reverse as it suits.
While the legal dictum as to the testimony of a witness,
falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, would if pressed put out
of court almost every witness as to any event in the more
distant past, yet with a witness like Josephus one must try
his testimony by probabilities, and consider whether his
own reputation or that of Israel were involved on one side
or other; whether, in short, he had any motive to depart
from strict accuracy.
Let it be assumed that the son-in-law of Sanballat, who
fled to Samaria, was the grandson of Eliashib !~whom
Nehemiah drove from his presence, that- Tt was for him
that the temple was built on Mount Gerizim, and that
he arranged the ritual of worship set up in it, presumably
in accordance with that in Jerusalem to which he had been
accustomed. Let it be further assumed that he took the
completed Torah with him to Samaria and Shechem. Then
on the acceptance of this hypothesis certain results follow.
The Book of the Law, which Manasseh took with him
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 367
to Samaria, must have been that edited by Ezra. In that
case, all the alleged post-Ezrahitic elements in the Priestly
Code must be dated earlier than this flight ; along with
them, most of the activities of the Deuteronomic Redactor
must also be antedated, as they are all in the Samaritan
Pentateuch. The enmity between the two peoples, and
the rivalry between the two shrines preclude the possibility
of these additions and alterations being inserted later.
Even without these additions, sufficient difficulties emerge
in regard to the Priestly Code as a whole, and its easy
acceptance by the priests in Jerusalem, before it could be
transferred bodily to Samaria. On the critical hypothesis,
practically the whole of Leviticus was made known for
the first time to the priesthood in Jerusalem by Ezra. For
about a century they had been sacrificing on the altar set
up by Zerubbabel on the site of the temple. For nearly
three-quarters of a century, in the rebuilt temple, there had
been maintained a regular ritual of sacrificial worship.
Suddenly Ezra, a priestly scribe, arrives from Babylon with
a new book of the Law. Priest though he is, he has never
taken part in a sacrificial act, indeed has never in all his
life seen a legitimate sacrifice offered. Yet this man comes
to Jerusalem intending to revolutionise all the ritual that had
been in use beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants.
Though it is true Ezra had behind him all the authority of
the Great King, and was supported in every way by the local
governor Nehemiah, still his success seems almost incon-
ceivable. It needed all his own personal influence, backed
by all the authority of the Tirshatha to carry into effect
his interpretation of the marriage law. Important as this
was, a change in the ritual of worship was a more serious
matter. The Jews have always been specially conservative
in regard to everything connected with the temple worship.
When Aristobulus, the Hasmonaean High Priest, ventured
to introduce some slight change in the ritual, he was
pelted with citrons. Yet by hypothesis this extensive
change in ritual was carried through without the slightest
difficulty. It is true that the memory of those who had
seen the temple services might be invoked in Babylon,
but the last of them must have passed away long before
368 THE SAMARITANS
the days of Ezra. The elaboration of the sacrificial ritual
as seen in Leviticus is far beyond the power of memory
to carry over the half century during which there was
neither temple nor sacrifice to keep the memory green
and effective. The priests when they came to Jerusalem
with Zerubbabel would elaborate a ritual for themselves ;
and this had already been hallowed by the experience of
more than two generations when Ezra arrived. Ezra's
success in the alterations which by hypothesis he in-
troduced does not seem likely. One has only to read
Josephus to see what slight matters, if the ritual of worship
were involved, were sufficient to rouse the Jews against
the power of Rome, a power much more tremendous than
that of the Great King. This alleged overriding of the
past by the single influence of Ezra is not to be explained
by the reverence which the Jews gave to Rabbin and Doctors
of the Law ; for that was a thing of a much later day.
So far is Ezra from occupying the pre-eminent place in the
memory of the Jewish people, which necessarily he would
have had if the Wellhausen critics are right, his name is not
even included by ben Sira in his " Hymn of the Fathers."
Surely if Ezra, like a second Moses, had brought to the
Jerusalem Jews the laws of legitimate sacrifice, which though
revealed to Moses their fathers had lost, his name would
not have been forgotten when that of Zerubbabel and of
Joshua the High Priest, nay that of Ezra's contemporary
Nehemiah, are commemorated. For these historical reasons
we venture to think that it is highly improbable that the
Priestly Code is anything like so late as the time of Ezra.
Even should it be granted that despite all these im-
probabilities the priests in Jerusalem did submit to Ezra,
and were willing to alter their modes of worship and their
ritual of sacrifice at his bidding, yet the case of Manasseh
and the ritual on Mount Gerizim presents further difficulties
quite independent of those involved in the conservatism
of the Jerusalem priests. By a rigorous interpretation of
the newly promulgated law as to marriage, Manasseh is
banished from Jerusalem by the influence of Ezra and
Nehemiah. He would be little prone to inculcate in Samaria,
whither he had retreated, the newly introduced precepts,
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 369
under which he had suffered the indignity of banishment.
Surely not the most credulous critic would believe this to
be at all likely. Would any one maintain the verisimilitude
of a tale which represented a Puritan, who had suffered at the
orders of Archbishop Laud fine and imprisonment, when
he had made his escape to New England, eagerly setting
about a propaganda in order to establish there a High
Church Episcopacy with all the Laudian ritual ?
Even if Manasseh had been so singularly constituted
as to be willing to convey to Samaria the Ezrahitic
Recension of the Law, another difficulty emerges on the
other side : would the Samaritans have been willing to
receive it? Even if the name "Samaritan" be restricted to
the Assyrian colonists, yet even they could claim that for
two centuries they had been worshippers of JHWH, taught
by the priests who had been sent by Esarhaddon "the
manner of the God of the land." If we are right in maintain-
ing that the name had a wider application ; that not merely
were the colonists so called but also the Israelite majority
of the population, then their worship would be carried back
to a remoter past. In these circumstances, even the influence
of Sanballat would have proved insufficient to have enabled
Manasseh to carry out his reform. Would the Samaritans
be at all likely to listen to a priest urging them to abandon
a system of sacrificial ritual, which they had been taught by
accredited priests, and to which they had become accustomed,
and agree to adopt another from Jerusalem — one from which
the man who taught it himself had fled ?
If, on the other hand, Ezra had merely brought a copy
of the Law which the Jews recognised as sacred, but had
failed to observe with the strictness which Ezra demanded ;
if the sin-offerings, the peace-offerings, and the heave-
offerings were all quite well known, but the ritual appropriate
to each had not been quite rigorously attended to, and
Ezra had directed attention to these shortcomings, in that
case the matter becomes quite simple, and the submission of
the people quite intelligible. This would be the case with
regard to the Jews of Jerusalem. As to Samaria, if the
worship on her High Places was essentially the same as that
on Mount Zion, the adoption of that ritual in the newly
2 A
370 THE SAMARITANS
erected temple on Mount Gerizim, when national worship
was concentrated there, would be perfectly natural. The
influence of Josiah's reformation would make it all the easier,
at least for the Israelite remnant who remembered, perhaps
very vaguely, what their fathers had said of the worship on
Mount Zion, to join in that on Mount Gerizim, if it retained
the more prominent features of the old worship.
The picture of the state of matters in Jerusalem presented
to us in Ezra and Nehemiah suits the conclusion to which
we have come. There is no suggestion that the people are
resisting or resenting the introduction of something new.
On the other hand Ezra utters no word of blame to the
people because of failure in the ritual of sacrifice, the thing
he does blame is their non-Israelite marriages. The Feast of
Tabernacles appears to have been neglected, but if Ezra
originated the " Priestly Code " the feast was not introduced
by him, as it forms part of the Deuteronomic legislation.
Only as we may see when the reference to it occurs in
Deuteronomy it seems to imply that the directions in
Leviticus have preceded. However this may be, the
adoption of the Levitical regulations by the Samaritans
without difficulty or demur in their temple worship implies
that the Priestly Code was known to them long before the
coming of Ezra to Jerusalem.
The evidence afforded by the Samaritan Pentateuch of
the relative age of the book of Deuteronomy has to be
looked into. Reference has already been made to the
marked difference of style and atmosphere which dis-
tinguishes the " Second Law " from the rest of the Torah.
There is therefore a certain a priori plausibility in the
critical hypothesis which assigns it a very different origin.
The critical theory is that Deuteronomy is " the Book of the
Law" found by Hilkiah in the temple during the repairs
instituted by Josiah. If this is correct it is clear that the
Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch must be dated long
after the coming of the priests sent by Esarhaddon as it
contains Deuteronomy. But is there valid proof of its
correctness? It is unfortunate for this hypothesis that the
language of the narrative implies that the Law was well
known to be written in a book, and Hilkiah had no difficulty
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 371
in recognising the book which he found, to be a copy of it.
It is in some way an individualised copy, for he calls it "the
Book of the Law." This recognition is all the more
mysterious that by hypothesis, the Jews have, at this time,
no law-book at all ; J and E had been united in one " Book
of Origins " but there was little of a legislative nature in it.1
Had Hilkiah's message to the king been that they had found
a book of Moses, his words would have been intelligible. It
is true that Josiah reads the book as if it were a new thing
in Israel ; yet the depth of his repentance would seem to
imply his belief that he and his people ought to have known
those statutes, the transgression of which had involved them
in such guilt, and had brought down upon them to such a
degree the wrath of God. The sole evidence adduced that
Deuteronomy was a pious fraud is, that the doctrine of that
book required that only in Jerusalem could legitimate
sacrifices be offered, and that this was acted on by Josiah
alone, and by him only after the finding of the book. This
assertion is not accurate on either side. Deuteronomy does
1 The combined document JE could never have been recognised as
a law-book. Imbedded in the mass of traditional narratives there is
certainly the "Book of the Covenant," in all about three chapters
(105 verses), preceded and succeeded by narrative. Moreover, though
there is nothing impossible in the Southern prophetic schools collecting
patriarchal legends, and those in the North following their example ;
and still less improbability, if after the fall of the Northern Kingdom,
it became to a certain extent civilly, and still more religiously,
joined to the Southern, a Redactor should arise who would combine
the two collections : there is improbability in another direction.
How did this collection ever get a Mosaic origin attributed to it ?
The separate collections would be perfectly well known, the dove-
tailing of these so as to form one narrative would also be public
property. Before JE could be received as Mosaic some legend
would have to be invented of its discovery in some secret place,
in a jar filled with oil of cedar, like that in which Joshua, in the
"Assumption of Moses," is ordered to conceal the revelation he had
just been given from the lips of the great lawgiver. There is not a
single hint of such a thing. By hypothesis the Jerusalem Jews had no
idea that there was extant any book of Moses, or any book of Mosaic
legislation, till Hilkiah found "the Book of the Law." The critical
hypothesis is made all the more difficult by the fact that according to
it the publication of JE must have been nearly contemporaneous with
Hilkiah's discovery.
372 THE SAMARITANS
not absolutely forbid sacrifice elsewhere than in Jerusalem.
It is expressly mentioned " if the place which the Lord shall
choose be too far"1 (R.V., Deut. xii. 21), then the Israelites
were to be free to kill and eat of their flock and of their herd.
This is clearly a sacrificial killing and eating, otherwise the
distance from the sanctuary would not be important. Hence
the temples at Heliopolis and Assouan, the erectors of which
were unconscious of any breach of the Law. Important or
public sacrifices were only to be offered at the national altar
which represented the unity of the nation. But further,
this change, whatever its scope, was not introduced by Josiah ;
a couple of generations before Josiah was born, Hezekiah
had instituted the same reform (2 Kings xviii. 4). Rabshakeh
endeavours to undermine the trust of the Jewish people in
God by referring to these reforms of Hezekiah and the
wholesale destruction of the High Places (Is. xxxvi. 7
2 Kings xviii. 22). Mr Addis attributes these statements of
Hezekiah's destruction of the High Places to the Deuteron-
omist. If that useful individual wrote during the reign
of Josiah, all his readers would know whether or not he
spoke the truth when he attributed the destruction of the
High Places to Hezekiah. Burney (2 Kings, loco) would split
up the narrative into four different strands. But the writing
of these and the weaving of them together involves time, and
the Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch must have been
complete in the days of Nehemiah. The conclusion cannot
be avoided that the law of one sanctuary is as old as
Hezekiah at the latest.
The Jewish tradition was that Deuteronomy was, in
accordance with its name, Mishneh hat- Torak," The Republi-
cation of the Law," or in Greek Deuteronomion, whence our
" Deuteronomy." Although it is heresy even to hint such
a thing, yet it would seem that a fairly good case can
be made out for the traditional view. Reference has
1 Singularly enough, the A.V. of this verse appears to have been
translated from the Samaritan Recension, not the Massoretic — a
blunder which has been taken over from Luther, who seems to have
had the Vulgate in his mind but to have taken Jerome's elegerit for
perfect subjunctive instead of future perfect. The Douay agrees with
the R.V.
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 373
already been made to the peculiar dramatic and topo-
graphic suitability of Moses in the Plains of Moab choosing
Ebal and Gerizim and the valley between them as the
theatre of the solemn ceremony of the blessing and the
cursing, and the unlikeliness of any Jerusalem Jew making
such a choice. There was a dramatic suitability in Moses, as
his solemn farewell of the people whom he had led so long,
repeating the heads of the Law he had enjoined on them,
and reminding them of the leading events in their previous
history under his command. But a Jerusalem Jew, obsessed
with the glories of David and yet more of Solomon, would
have difficulty in orienting himself to the implied circum-
stances. Further, his efforts after topographic and dramatic
fitness, even if most successful, would neither be recognised
nor appreciated. The magnifying of the valley of Shechem
above Mount Zion would tend to excite prejudice against
the moral lesson to be taught. A moral teacher, especially
if a Jew, as any one may learn from the Talmud, when
devising a tale which is to be the vehicle of instruction
would place every probability on one side in favour of the
moral to be inculcated. It must never be forgotten that the
artistic necessity of local colouring is a purely modern
thing.
Then there are numerous signs of what to a plain man
appear to be repetitions of what had already been narrated
in the earlier books of the Law. The historical sections
are avowed references to events recorded in Exodus and
Numbers ; in the J and E documents certainly, but thus far is
revealed the writer's intention to repeat what had already been
recorded. But P has historical portions also ; in Num. xxxiii.
1-49, there is an account of the journeys of the Children of
Israel ; in Deut. x. 6-y, there is an extract from it ; the
account of the journeys is assigned to P. In that same
chapter of Deuteronomy there is an account of the making
of the Ark of the Covenant which has all the appearance
of being a compendious reference to the fuller account
in Exod. xxv. 10-22 ; but that whole section in regard to
the Tabernacle and its furniture is part of the P document.
A more striking case is Deut. xxiv. 8-9, " Take heed in the
plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do accord-
374 THE SAMARITANS
ing to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you : as
1 commanded them, so shall ye observe to do." That
there is a reference to some commands already given to
the Levites is indubitable ; any one but a critic would
see these instructions to the Levites in the elaborate
directions given to the priests by which they were to
detect the disease, and the ceremonial restrictions under
which they were to place the person infected to be found
in Lev. xiii. and xiv. To avoid the deduction that there
is a reference to the Levitical Law concerning leprosy,
Dr Driver {Com. Deut., p. 275) thinks it enough to say : " The
Law, as it stands here, cannot be taken as a proof that
Lev. xiii. and xiv. existed in its present shape at the time
when Deuteronomy was written " ; however, he admits that
" it is sufficient evidence both that a Torah on the subject
was in the possession of the priests, and the principles
which it embodied were of recognised authority, and referred
to Divine origin." Here is a divinely revealed Torah, in
the hands of the priests, the principles of which were gen-
erally known — all this would suit Leviticus as a book known
and read ; Dr Driver advances no reason why it may not
be here intended ; and there do not seem to be any save
the exigencies of the Wellhausen theory. Again, the Feast
of Tabernacles is enjoined in Deut. xvi. 13-15, but no word is
said as to how it is to be observed, the audience addressed
are supposed to know all about the way in which it is to
be kept, of what the booths were to be made, and the holy
convocations connected with the feast. All these are fully
given in Lev. xxiii. 33-44, which Dr Driver assigns partly
to H and partly to P. He introduces two passages from
Exodus, ascribed to JE (Exod. xxiii. 16 ; xxxiv. 22), as if
they were the source of the Deuteronomic legislation ; but
these say nothing about "booths." He {Com. Deut., p. 197)
admits that the explanation of the term " booths " is given
in Leviticus ; why the Deuteronomic passage may not be
held as referring to it is difficult to see, unless that it is
contrary to the theory. These are by no means the only
passages that might be quoted, in which to all but critics,
there are references in Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code.
On any reasonable system of evidence it must be held as
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 375
proved, that so far from the Priestly Code being composed
a century and a half after Deuteronomy, the converse is the
case, at least in regard to relative priority. Hence the
presence of Leviticus in the Samaritan Recension of the
Torah affords no reason for post-dating that recension.
But if the Law was brought by the priests sent by
Esarhaddon then the Book of the Law contained
Deuteronomy ; but this contradicts the hypothesis of the
critical school, that it was composed in the reign of Josiah
and was palmed off upon him as an ancient document.
Thus there is necessitated a further consideration of this
discovery of the Law. How was this book found ? There
is no evidence that at that early date there was a library
in the temple. It is against all criticism to believe even
in Nehemiah's library (2 Mace. ii. 13). If there had been
a library, of course the roll of the Law might have been
found by Hilkiah as Bryennios found the MS. of the Didache
in the library of the Patriarchate in Constantinople. But
if that were so, the individualising of the copy has to
be explained ; it is the Book of the Law, it is a copy defined
and separate from all other copies. Some people seem
to picture to themselves that among the rubbish of broken
utensils, worn-out robes, etc., which would be turned over, in
the course of the repairs a roll turned up, the like of
which they had not seen before, and was found to be
Deuteronomy. Still this leaves unexplained on the one
hand what made it so interesting and special, on the other
wherein consisted its novelty.
May not the suggestion of Dr Edouard Naville be worthy
of more consideration than it has received ? Arguing from
the custom among the Egyptians to place in the foundation
of their temples portions of the "Book of the Dead," he
maintains that the Book of the Law found by Hilkiah was
the copy of the Law placed in the foundation of the temple
by Solomon when it was founded. This would explain the
individualisation of the copy. The finding of it is explained
by the fact that masons were employed, which implies that
the structure of the building needed looking to. The stone
of which the temple was built was limestone, and no stone
is more unequal in its consistence ; sometimes it is hard
376 THE SAMARITANS
and crystalline, at others it is soft and friable. It might
easily happen that some of the huge foundation stones
might be showing signs of decay. The replacing of them
might reveal the Book of the Law that had been placed
there by Solomon. That Solomon would follow the
Egyptian fashion is extremely likely from the affinity he
had made with that country in marrying Pharaoh's daughter.
If the practice continued, as it may well have done, the roll,
if roll it was, would, when found, be at once recognised.
There might be difficulty in reading it as the script
would have become by that time archaic. Hilkiah passes
it to Shaphan, a professional scribe, to decipher. The
effect the perusal has on Josiah is due to the interest excited
by the ancient copy coming to light ; he had known that
there was a law, but probably regarded it as a matter for
the priests. The archaic lettering, that compelled attention
to every word, would serve to deepen the impression
conveyed by the contents.
There is nothing to indicate that it was only Deuteronomy
that was found. We have seen reason to believe that the
writer of that book expected the P document to be known
to his readers ; the knowledge of J and E are yet more
clearly presupposed. So far as the narrative of the discovery
is concerned, the whole Torah might have been inscribed
on the roll which was found. The objection to this urged
by some, is that the whole Law could not be read in the ears
of the people (2 Kings xxiii. 2) in the course of a day.
This, however, is not strictly true, as the whole Penta-
teuch could be read through in sixteen hours.1 But there
is no need to press the word "all," as Orientals are not
so scrupulous in the use of words denoting totality ; it
would be enough if all the parts that mattered for the royal
purpose of making the people recognise their serious condi-
tion were read. But it must be observed that it is "all
the words of the Book of the Covenant" that were read.
1 The rate at which this is calculated is that at which the Scripture
is read in church. In the synagogue the rate of reading is much
more rapid. The Samaritans claim to read the whole Law, inter-
spersed with hymns, in the synagogue, between sunset and sunrise
(see Chap. V., p. 134), on the Day of Atonement.
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 377
If this "Book of the Covenant" coincided with what critical
opinion has denoted by that title, then it could have been
read, at the rate above taken, in less than half an hour.
The effect this reading had on king and people was due,
not to the fact that the contents were absolutely novel,
but to the realisation for the first time that the precepts
were meant to be obeyed and had not been, and that in
consequence a curse was impending.
If the idea of Xaville that the copy of the Law found
was that placed in the foundation of the temple by Solomon
be pressed, then the Torah must have been already sacro-
sanct in the days of Solomon. This inevitably leads us
back to the days of Samuel the Prophet at the latest.
As an alternative theory to the traditional view that Moses
wrote the whole Pentateuch, it might be suggested that
it was under the Inspiration and Guidance of Samuel that
the stories of Genesis were collected and the priestly and
Levitical duties systematised. If the book of Deuteronomy
in the main be assigned to Moses, and the other portions
directly assigned to him are put to the one side and admitted
to be Mosaic, at least in the main, then the Jehovist of
the South and the Elohist of the North, with the writer
of the Priestly Code are all to be dated between the Mosaic
period and the time of Samuel, and consequently all be
antedated by nearly three-quarters of a millennium. Samuel
had formed the schools of the prophets ; these a couple
of centuries later became powerful political instruments in
the hands of Elijah and Elisha. A similar development of
a political agent from a religious order is seen in the history
of the Egyptian monks of the fifth century. Religious and
contemplative at the beginning, under the guidance of Cyril
of Alexandria, and still more of his successor Dioscorus, they
became formidable instruments in ecclesiastical politics.
But the monks had other activities; most of the greater
monasteries had libraries, and these were replenished mainly
by the pens of the inmates. Unless the " Sons of the
Prophets" had some literary activity of this sort, it is
difficult to understand why they were gathered together
into communities. If, like the mediaeval monks, man)- of
the members of the prophetic schools became scribes, then
378 THE SAMARITANS
the recording of the events in Genesis and Exodus might
readily be understood.
These prophetic compilations need not have been merely
the fixing in written form of popular legends floating about
among the people. For much that is recorded there may
have been documents. If Conder's theory is correct these
primitive documents would be written in cuneiform, and
some of them, at any rate, brought from Mesopotamia. It
seems extremely probable that the accounts of Creation, of
the Garden of Eden, of the Flood may have been on clay
tablets in the possession of Abraham, as also the genealogies
of the earlier patriarchs. In a similar way the histories of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Joseph may have been
preserved. Probably stone tablets would take the place of
those of clay, if not before, at all events during the Wilderness
journey. This may be regarded as indicated by the fact that
the " Ten Words " were written on " tables of stone " ; if so,
the events of the forty years would be in that way recorded.
Events connected with the conquest of Canaan not un-
likely would thus also be preserved in memory. The
statement of the boundaries of the different tribes, and the
towns assigned to them, has the aspect of being an official
document. The book of Judges certainly has more the look
of a collection of legends ; yet when it is compared with the
ordinary tales of Orientals, as seen in the " Thousand and
One Nights," the stories have a sobriety and restraint which
suggest documents behind. Moreover, the Song of Deborah,
the Story of Micah and the Danites, and that concerning
the matter of Gibeah, have all the appearance of having
existed independently, like the book of Ruth, which seems
to have been, at one time, conjoined to the book of Judges.
Later events would be recorded by the prophets as they
occurred.
There is a circumstance to be noted here, referred to
and somewhat developed in an earlier chapter, which has
a bearing on the chronology of the evolution of Pentateuchal
doctrines. While the writer of the book of Judges has no
scruple in recording the deeds of Gideon under the name
of Jerubbaal, and as may be learned from the book of
Chronicles, Saul and Jonathan were deterred by no religious
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 379
scruple from calling their sons by names involving " Baal,"
in the next generation all this is changed, and " Baal "
(Lord) becomes bosheth, "folly." Israel began to obey
literally the precept of Exod. xxiii. 13, "Make no mention
of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of
thy mouth." This cannot be ascribed to scribal redaction,
otherwise " Jerubbaal " would not so freely appear in the
book of Judges. The reign of David appears to be the
dividing line ; before this the command was neglected, but
after his accession it is observed. With David too begins
reference to the Law; he urges his son Solomon (1 Kings
ii. 3) to "keep the charge of the Lord thy God ... as
it is written in the Law of Moses." After this the references
to the Law are not infrequent in Kings. Of course all these
cases are called interpolations, and credited to the Deuter-
onomic Redactor. The sole evidence against these incrim-
inated passages is the exigence of the theory ; equally of
course, this is not admitted. This method of ruling out
everything that tends to the disproof of a theory is surely
utterly unscientific. A free, and it is to be admitted a some-
what extensive application of it to Alison's History of
Europe would enable one to justify the assertion that in
that voluminous work there is no mention of Napoleon
Bonaparte, all the hundreds of pages devoted to his
exploits being ascribed to a Bonapartist Redactor. Only
a little step and the work so expurgated might be quoted
in support of Whately's Historic Doubts of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Before such a method can claim to be scientific,
those who use it must bring forward an analogous case in
which a whole literature has been adulterated wholesale
in the interest of certain opinions.
The subject, however, can be approached from another
side — from the side of Samaritan history. Earlier by a
generation than Josiah's renewal of his great-grandfather's
effort to secure unity of worship was the mission of the
Israelitish priests, under Esarhaddon's orders, to teach
the Assyrian colonists the " manner of the God of the land."
It is certainly not said that they brought with them a " Book
of the Law," any more than it is said that Manasseh carried
a copy with him to Samaria. The probability is rendered
380 THE SAMARITANS
considerable in the case of the priests by the fact that,
as is well known, both Esarhaddon and his son Asshur-bani-
pal were great collectors of rituals of worship, and of
religious formulae. This tendency on the part of these
monarchs implies a similar tendency widely spread among
their subjects. If that is so, neither would Esarhaddon, who
sent these priests, nor would the colonists to whom they
were sent, regard them as properly equipped if they merely
could convey a verbal tradition as to the true ritual of
JHWH's worship, but had no authenticating documents.
When, a century and a half later, the Samaritans desire
to co-operate with the Jews in rebuilding the temple, they
claim that they have been worshipping JHWH since the
days of Esarhaddon, and their claim is not disallowed. It
has been shown to be impossible that Manasseh could
have conveyed to the Samaritans their first knowledge
of the Pentateuchal Law ; hence that Law must have been
brought to them at the latest by those priests from Assyria.
As, however, the Law which the Israelite priests brought
with them .from Assyria must have been that/with which they
had been acquainted, before they had been carried away into
captivity, the Mosaic Law must have been obeyed in Israel
before the fall of Samaria. This being so the question
falls to be answered : When did they get the Torah ? The
Mosaic Law could not have been introduced by the dynasty
of Jehu; even the greatest of that House, Jeroboam II., was
at odds with the religious part of the nation. As has been
shown in an earlier chapter, from the prophecies of Amos,
the Mosaic ritual was quite understood in the time of
Jeroboam II. Still less could Mosaism have been introduced
by the dynasty of the House of Omri, with their sympathy
with Baal-worship. The introduction of the worship by the
calves at Bethel and at Dan renders any share in this
revolution by Jeroboam the son of Nebat inconceivable.
So the line is led again by another route through Solomon
and David back to Samuel. The very eagerness with which
David and Solomon pressed towards the erection of a
central shrine proves the power over them of one of the
ruling ideas of the Deuteronomic legislation. Their desire
that the central shrine, the sacred hearth of the nation,
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 381
should be a temple not a tent only emphasizes this. The
ritual of sacrifice followed by Solomon in the dedication
of the temple is in strict accordance with the Priestly Code,
even embracing the distinction between priests and Levites —
a distinction that, according to critical opinion, was not
recognised by the Deuteronomists ; Dr Burney (Kings,
p. 105) admits that the whole dedication ceremony is from
the standpoint of P. As all Israel was present at the
dedication of the Great Temple to JHWH, all the ceremonies
would be observed and known to the whole people and
have been acquiesced in by them. This is corroborative of
Naville's suggestion that a copy of the Law, not merely
Deuteronomy as he says, but the whole Law, complete in
all essentials, was placed by Solomon in the foundation of
the temple.
The completed law-book would seem, as has been
shown above, to date back to the days of Samuel. But
Samuel and the prophets were not authors so much as
editors, so far as the Pentateuch is concerned. Further into
antiquity the search for origins cannot be carried, unless the
mounds of Egypt or the Tells of Palestine yield up from their
hidden hoards of ostraka, clay tablets, or papyri information
bearing on the question. There may have been collections
of tales of the patriarchs preserved among the different
tribes ; and these may have mainly been segregated in
Northern and Southern groups, comprising the E and the
J documents respectively. While the components of Genesis
may be divided perpendicularly and geographically into
those from the North and those from the South, there are
also traces of chronological strata. The traditions of
Abraham have more of the primitive about them, more
of the free air of the desert, than have the tales about
Jacob, still more than those of Joseph. Nothing more
perfectly primitive and Oriental can be conceived than the
narrative of Abraham's purchase of the Cave of Machpelah.
The contest in wits between Jacob and Laban is Oriental
and primitive, but the primitive element is not so marked
as in the Abrahamic narratives. A comparison of the
histories of Genesis with Arabic traditional tales, reveals the
brevity and still more the sobriety of the Bible narratives.
382 THE SAMARITANS
This implies that they were early committed to writing ;
probably the writing was cuneiform and incised on clay
tablets originally : not impossibly in Canaan they adopted
the script of the region. In default of clay suitable for
tablets, the writing might be scratched on slabs of limestone,
or plates of metal. In regard to these primitive narratives
readers in these later days may see the influence of Divine
Providence in the selection, composition, and preservation
of them.
The stories of Creation and of the Flood probably were
brought with the patriarchs from Mesopotamia. They,
however, represent the tradition in a much more primitive
form than they appear in the Creation tablets of Nineveh.
Few narratives are more grotesque than the Babylonian
story of the Creation by the splitting of Tehom, the mother
of the gods, longitudinally into halves by her own grandson
Marduk. One can more easily see the evolution of the
Babylonian tale from the Hebrew than the reverse. The
Babylonian narrative is much the longer and more elaborate.
It is a maxim of criticism generally acknowledged, that
other things being equal the shorter and simpler form of
a legend is the more primitive. The likeness between the
Babylonian tradition of the Flood and the Hebrew story
of the Noachian Deluge is much greater than between the
two Creation stories ; but this only brings out more
clearly the relatively primitive character of the Hebrew
narrative ; the Babylonian Noah brings into his ark with him
his wealth and his slaves, an evidence of a much more
developed state of society. Not unlikely the ethnological
tables of Gen. x. were also equally primitive, though as
they seem to reckon the nations from Palestine as a centre
they probably were not of Babylonian origin. Most of this
chapter is assigned to P and therefore must, in accordance
with the critical hypotheses, have been written in Babylon
notwithstanding its Palestinian outlook.
To thus placing the origin of the priestly document away
back in the earlier limits of historic time there are several
objections which have to be met The most obvious and
important is that prominent persons, so far as their actions
are recorded in the historical books, ignore the prescriptions
PENTATEUCHAL CRITICISM 383
of the Levitical Law and Deuteronomic Code, and so it may
be argued that the Law was unknown. There is no word of
Elijah, zealous though he is for JHWH of Hosts, going to
worship at Jerusalem ; the same thing must be said of
Elisha. Though the argumentum e silentio is not at any
time a safe one, yet with the full records of their lives given
in the books of Kings the absence of all reference to the
temple on Mount Zion is singular.1 Further, Elijah's sacrifice
on Carmel seems an intrusion on the priest's office. As to
this last the relation of the prophetic to the priestly office is
not defined ; we do not know how far the divinely inspired
seer might supersede the more customary action of the
priest. In the Divine economy there is always room for the
miraculous. This has been discussed above in a previous
chapter.
But the ignoring of a law cannot be assumed as evidence
that it was unknown, else it might be reasoned that the
decalogue, or at all events the second commandment is
unknown in all Roman Catholic Christendom. The second
commandment forbids the making of images and worshipping
them. Yet in every Catholic Church of any pretension there
are images of the Saints, especially of the Virgin Mother,
and before them kneeling worshippers. This is acquiesced
in by men of whose piety there can be no doubt. We never
read of St Anselrri, St Francis of Assisi, or Blaise Pascal
denouncing this disregard of the Law of God. They excused
the practice by drawing a distinction between the worship
offered to the images of the Saints and that offered to God.
The prophets might justify their acquiescence in modes of
1 The argumertum e silentio is peculiarly unsafe in regard to such
annals as are found in the books of Kings. Although the accounts of
the activities of the two conspicuous prophets Elijah and Elisha are
recorded with relatively great fulness, yet the incidents related are all
isolated to such an extent that their chronological succession is by no
means certain. They may well have repeatedly worshipped at the
shrine on Mount Zion and yet no note of this be preserved in the sacred
books. If they were habitual worshippers there, and it were the note
of the religious in Israel to do so {cf. Tob. i. 4), still less likely would it
be to be recorded. The article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on
William Wilberforce of anti - slavery fame never mentions that he
attended church (see p. 82).
384 THE SAMARITANS
worship which seem to us in flagrant opposition to the Divine
Law, by arguments as specious as do the Romanists their
Saint - worship and image - worship. Further, when it is
recollected how scanty is the knowledge we have of the state
of matters in the Northern Kingdom of Israel great caution
must be used in making deductions from such facts as are
known.
The Samaritans are a dwindling race ; indeed for aught
that is known their last community, that in Nablus, may
have been massacred during this war, as the numerous other
communities of the race have been before this, by the Turks.
It is well to retain what knowledge we have. So long as
they remain they are witnesses for the nature of the Religion
of Israel in primitive times. If, as has been said, the Jews
are a testimony to the truth of Christianity then the
Samaritans enhance that testimony by their own.1
Tr> gnmman'g^ thr> prerediruy argument — the endeavoux-
has been to show that the' bamaritans^did not "get th&
p^ntatpnrh trnm hVra hut had ft before. The reasons for
this conclusion are as follows: (i) After the deportation of
the leading inhabitants by Sargon, the great mass of the
population left were still Israelites and therefore had the
Israelite Religion in its original form, whether its ritual
were regulated by legislation preserved in a book or not.
(2) Their history proves that they held to their faith with
great tenacity ; enduring persecutions of intense severity from
each successive sovereign power, whether heathen, Christian,
or Moslem, without abjuring it. (3) From the prophets H, psPa^
and more particularly Amos, it is proved that the Northern.
tribes knew and practised the Mosaic ritual long before
the captivity of Samaria. The}' had at the same time a form
of worship under the presidency of the prophets, analogous
to that of the synagogue of later days. From these prophets
also there is evidence that the histories of the Torah were
known as well as its ritual. (4) It must be assumed that
the mission of the priests from Esarhaddon is historical.
1 This was written in 191 7, but Rev. W. M. Christie, Tiberias, under
date 21st March 1919, communicates the information that the Samaritan
community was reported safe, numbering 152, and in possession of all
their rolls.
PENTATEUCH A L CRITICISM 385
The respect the Sargonids had for written formula of worship
suggests that the priests in question would be supplied with
these. Such a collection of ritual directions is found in the
Torah, the Pentateuch. (5) As it was not part of the Law,
the book of Joshua was not "brought by the priests. Joshua
was a prophetic book and the Xinevite government suspected
the influence of the prophets ; hence none of the prophetic
books are in the Samaritan Canon. On the critical hypo-
thesis that Manasseh carried the Law to Samaria, his
omission to convey Joshua also is inexplicable. (6) The
alleged finding of Deuteronomy, in the reign of Josiah, which
would militate against this, is disproved (a) by the narra-
tive of its discovery ; it is " The Book of the Law " which
Hilkiah says that they have found. Were it the copy of the
Torah, not merely Deuteronomy, which, in accordance with
Egyptian practice, Solomon had placed in the foundation ot
the temple, this individualisation would be intelligible, (b)
Its contents prove that it could not have been written by a
Jerusalem Jew to give Mosaic authority to the Psalmist's
claim that JHWH had chosen Mount Zion to put His Name
there ; while Zion is never mentioned, Ebal and Gerizim are
singled out for special notice. (V) Deuteronomy cannot have
been written before the Priestly Code because in certain
points it implies its existence, e.g., the Law of Leprosy, and
the way to observe the Feast of Tabernacles. (7) While the
ritual of the Samaritans differs from that of the Jews only in
minute points, these all indicate the Samaritan to be the
simpler and more primitive. Consequently it is unlikely
that they borrowed from the Jews. (8) Although the script
of the Samaritans is practically identical with that of the
Jews of the time of the Maccabees, the two did not alter
in parallel lines. The Samaritan script has remained
fixed, while the Jews have evolved the square character and
the Rabbinic. (9) By comparing the two recensions we
have endeavoured to show that they parted company when
the manuscripts of both were written in a script like that
found in Ba'al-Lebanon inscription, which appears to be
contemporary with Solomon. (10) While it is almost
impossible to believe that Ezra, a Babylonian scribe, who
though a priest had never "even seen a legitimate sacrifice
2Hff
386 THE SAMARITANS
could persuade the Jerusalem priests to remodel the system of
ritual which they had practised for nearly a century in accord-
ance with a document brought by him from Babylon^it is
absolutely inconceivable, in the first place, that^ManasseK} a
priest banished bv the influence of Ezra, would convey Ezra's
Code to the place of his banishment, and endeavour success-
fully to enforce it on those around him there. In the next
place, it passes belief that the Samaritans, despite their
obstinate preference for their own customs, should accept from
this runagate priest the Ezrahitic Code, with all its varia-
tions from the ritual to which they had been accustomed
for centuries. They would, one should think, be all the less
likely to accept this teaching from him as in accordance with
it he had been banished. Some would post-date this flighted
Manasseh by a century in accordance wiih Josephus. Besides
the improbability in itself of~this amended hypothesis, it is
involved in the century which Josephus mysteriously omits.
For these reasons we venture to maintain that it is
impossible to believe that the Pentateuch was only completed
with the arrival ot £zra at Jerusalem.
As a parallel historical instance is frequently more
illuminative than an abstract statement, we would suggest
that a condition of things similar to that when Ezra arrived at
Jerusalem from Babylon occurred at the rise of the Tractarian
movement in Oxford in the early thirties. Neither Pusey nor
Newman alleged that they had discovered a new and more
authentic prayer-book ; they asserted that the rubrics of the
book in use were not observed, that the discipline implied
in them was not enforced. Precisely similar was the attitude
assumed by \Ezrajn regard to the Law, especially that
relating to marriage with those of other nationalities. He
did not profess to introduce a new Law, but denounced the
non-observance of that given to their fathers at Mount Sinai.
Had the Tractarians in the beginning of the Oxford
movement produced a brand new prayer-book and called
upon all churchmen to adjust their worship to it, and to it
alone, they would never have been listened to. Still less
would Ezra have been obeyed in Jerusalem if Leviticus
had never been heard of before he produced it. Its novelty
would at once have condemned it.
APPENDIX I
MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH
In regard to every ancient writing, which has passed from the
stage of manuscript to that of print, it is important that the
authorities on which the printed text is founded should be
known and estimated. In regard to the Samaritan Penta-
teuch this is all the more necessary that its variations from
the Massoretic text are usually minute. Recognising this,
Dr Blayney appends a list of MSS. in European libraries,
and therefore open to scholars, to the preface of his trans-
cription into the ordinary square character of the Samaritan
text of Walton's Polyglot. These have been extracted from
Kennicott's List of Hebrew Manuscripts. While Blayney
gives a description of each he does not seem to have
recognised the importance of the tarikh, i.e., the colophon
inserted in the text of Samaritan MSS., which gives the
name of the scribe, the date, and place of writing. In his
text while he follows Walton he notes the variations from the
polyglot text to be found in the different codices. Walton's
text appears to have been taken from only one manuscript,
and that a somewhat inaccurate one. About three-quarters
of a century later Immanuel Deutsch wrote his article in
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible on the Samaritan Pentateuch,
and appended to it a list of manuscripts borrowed from
Blayney's, leaving out one or two that were fragmentary and
adding two which seemed to have disappeared. One is a
fragment in the Ducal Library, Gotha ; the other is said to
be in the library of the Comte de Paris in London. Dr
Deutsch only mentions, even with these two, eighteen
manuscripts.1
1 The writer has made every effort to get information about this
codex which Dr Deutsch alleged to be in the library of the Comte de
Paris in London, when he wrote in 1863. Thinking that the Count's
library might be broken up, and its treasures dispersed, it occurred to
him that it might be one of the codices in the Rylands Library about which
Freiherr von Gall was unable to get full information. He made inquiries
387
388
APPENDICES
A decided contrast to this is the list Freiherr von
Gall inserts in the prolegomena to his edition of the
Samaritan Pentateuch. The extent of the list is the first
thing that strikes the reader. The Freiherr following the
method of designation adopted by New Testament critics
has used letters of the alphabet to denote the different MSS. ;
in this process he not only exhausts the whole Roman
alphabet, but has to draw on the German black-letter
alphabet to the extent of fifteen letters ; thus he catalogues
no less than forty " more or less complete " {inehr oder
weniger vollstandige) manuscripts. Besides these, he denotes
some thirty groups of fragments of MS. rolls, and twenty-
five groups of fragments from MS. codices. Several of the
codices he has described very fully, transcribing into square
character not only the tarikh which tells the name of the
scribe, where and when he wrote, but also the note frequently
appended which tells of the subsequent purchase of the
codex by some person of wealth, with his genealogy. There
is of course duly notified by Freiherr von Gall the number
of sheets of paper or parchment used in its composition, the
number of lines in the page, whether or not it is accom-
panied by the Targum or by an Arabic version in Samaritan
characters. Eleven of the forty MSS. are merely denoted,
not described ; the only information given is regarding the
place where it may be found and its present possessors :
concerning one of these not even these items can be given
as it has disappeared. Blayney relates that it had been
bought for Kennicott from a Jew of Frankfort. At the death
of Kennicott it was unfortunately sold and has in vain been
sought for since. It had been in the possession of Hottinger,
who as Kennicott has noted had added varies lectiones from
the Leyden MS. Scholarship has to thank Freiherr von
Gall for his careful list of authorities, and for designating the
different manuscripts by letters ; thus one is enabled to refer
succinctly to the different authorities for the text. It may
be regarded as a piece of Teutonism on the part of the
at the authorities of that library, but found as elsewhere shown that it
was not one of them. Knowing Dr Cowley's unrivalled knowledge in
regard to things Samaritan, the writer put his difficulties before him.
Dr Cowley very kindly made inquiries and discovered that the library
of the Comte de Paris had not been broken up. Further, he endeavoured
to get into communication with the Due d'Orleans, the son of the
Comte de Paris, but in vain. At Dr Cowley's advice the writer himself
sent, on 8th December 1918, a letter to the Due d'Orleans, as it was under-
stood he would have his father's library, respectfully asking about the
missing MS., expecting to have a note of some sort from the Duke's
secretary; up to the time of writing, 20th April 1919, he has had no reply.
APPENDICES 389
Freiherr that he begins his list with a codex, the only-
apparent reason for such a precedence being assigned to
which is the fact that it is in the possession of the German
University of Leipzig ; and the letter A designates it. It
has no claim to precedence either on account of its age, its
history, or its completeness. One should have expected that
the codex brought to Europe by Pietro della Valle, as that
which first drew attention to the Samaritan Pentateuch,
would have been named and designated first. It might
possibly be answered that in New Testament criticism
Codex A has no intrinsic merits to explain its apparent
primacy. In the circumstances it may be convenient to
adopt the designations of the leading MSS. which Freiherr
von Gall has used ; the more so that another independent
text is not likely to be thought of for many decades to come.
The following is a condensation of von Gall's list : —
A. University Library, Leipzig; consists of 160 leaves
parchment ; 32 lines to the page. It is imperfect at the
beginning and end, beginning with Gen. xi. 31, and ends
with Deut. iv. 37. The cryptogram is not complete, but
as the scribe is the same who wrote the codex brought
to Europe by della Valle in which the cryptogram is complete
and gives the date, it may be assumed that this was written
about A.D. 1345.
B. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, cat. 2 (Kennicott, 363),
complete ; consists of 254 leaves of parchment ; 30 lines
to the page. It is dated " in the seven hundred and forty-
sixth year of the rule of the sons of Ishmael " ; A.H. 746 =
A.D. 1345. This manuscript was that, as said above, which
Pietro della Valle brought to Europe in 1616. Whether it
is earlier or later than that in Leipzig there is no means
of deciding.
C. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, cat. 2 (Kennicott, 333) ;
ff. 168 ; parchment ; 36-39 lines to page ; dated AH. 885
(a.d. 1480-81). It begins Gen. i. 20. It has several lacunae
involving 6 ff.
D. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, cat. 3 (Kennicott, 221) ;
ff. 284. It contains manuscripts of various dates ; some of
the leaves are paper, some parchment. Von Gall reckons
no less than eleven different hands. The date from the
cryptogram of D10, A.H. 577 (a.D. 1 181-82) to this date, von
Gall would ascribe D1; D3 he would date the following
century. There is a note of purchase of D2; date, A.H. 885
(A.D. 1480-81).
390 APPENDICES
E. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, cat. 4 (Kennicott, 364) ;
ff. 169 ; not from one hand. The main portion of it from
Exod. i. 1 (f. 46^) to end of Deuteronomy designated E1 ;
35 lines to page. Genesis he designated E2; 32 lines to
page. The date of E1 is A.H. 889 (A.D. 1484). At the end
of Genesis there is a note of purchase dated A.H. 986
(A.D. 1578-79).
F. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, cat. 1 (Kennicott, 334) ;
ff. 258; parchment; 24 lines to page. Begins Gen. xviii. 2
and ends Deut. vii. 5 ; it wants f. containing Lev. xiv. 40 to
xvii. 4. The cryptogram is awanting, but von Gall would
date it thirteenth century.
G. Universitats Bibliothek, Leyden (Kennicott, 183);
ff. 170 ; of various origin and age. The beginning of Genesis,
ff. 1-4 (Gen. i. 1 to iv. 19), are by a very recent and European
hand. The scribe painted rather than wrote the letters,
without any knowledge of them, and paid no respect to
punctuation. From Gen. iv. 19 to Num. v. 22 (ff. 5-1 n)
designated G1 ; 42 lines to page. From Num. v. 23 to xvi. 22
(ff. 1 12-122) G2; 40 lines to page. From Num. xvi. 23 to
Deut. xxxiii. 27 (ff. 123-169), G3; 41 lines to page. The
last f. contains the end of Deut. from xxxiii. 28 to conclusion.
The cryptogram at the end of G3 is dated A.H. 751
(A.D. 1350).
H. Imperial Public Library, Petrograd ; ff. 134; parch-
ment; 39-41 lines. Main portion Gen. xxvi. 21 to Deut.
xiv. 23, designated H1. From Deut. xxiii. 7 to xxxiv. 12
by another hand, designated H2. The beginning and other
missing portions supplied by a modern hand, designated h.
Date of H1, A.H. 840 (a.d. 1436-37).
I. Imperial Public Library, Petrograd ; ff. 226 ; parch-
ment. Gen. i. 16 to end of Deuteronomy; 32-35 lines. Written
in Cairo, A.H. 881 (a.d. 1476).
K. Ambrosian Library, Milan (Kennicott, 197).
L. Vatican Library, Rome (Kennicott, 503).
M. Vatican Library, Rome (Kennicott, 504), formerly
in the Barberini Library; ff. 266, of which 182 are old and
parchment, the rest paper written by a later hand. Three
columns on the page — Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic ; 42-44
lines a column. Date of M1, A.H. 624 (A.D. 1226-27).
Various hands represented in the rest ; part dated A.H. 887
(A.D. 1482).
APPENDICES 391
N. British Museum, London; ff. 254, 4to; parchment.
Contains the whole Pentateuch ; it is interleaved with white
paper; 31-32 lines; date, A.H. 764 (A.D. 1362).
O. British Museum, London. The whole Pentateuch with
Arabic version.
P. British Museum, London. Parchment ; ff. 97 ; contains
the whole Pentateuch; date, A.H. 845 (a.d. 1441-42); 45-52
lines.
Q. British Museum, London. Parchment; ff. 254, 4to ;
wants beginning and end of Pentateuch ; f. 1 in tatters ;
fragments of Gen. iii. 14 to v. 2 ; f. 2 begins v. 3 and ends
with Deut. xxix. 9.; date, A.H. 761 (A.D. 1359-60); 32-33
lines.
R. British Museum, London. Vellum ; ff. 223 ; date,
thirteenth century.
S. British Museum, London. Paper; ff. 119. a.d. 1494
has some restorations.
T. British Museum, London. Paper; ff. 451, 8vo ;
A.D. 1759.
U. British Museum, London. Paper; ff. 271, 4to;
date, 1356.
V. British Museum, London. Parchment; ff. 199; 32
lines; date, a.h. 740 (a.d. 1339-40). Written by the same
hand as A and B.
W. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 61). Belongs
to a set of six copies of which N is also one. Von Gall traces
eleven hands at work ; approximate date seventeenth
century ; varies from 29 to 35 lines. Material partly paper
and partly parchment.
X. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 62). Parch-
ment ; very imperfect. It is mainly the work of two hands.
There is an Arabic version parallel with the Hebrew, written
in Samaritan characters. A portion of it is dated A.H. 931
(A.D. 1525).
Y. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 63). Parchment
mainly, compiled, and by various hands. It is of different
dates. Dr Cowley has identified the work of eleven different
scribes in all. One of these, Y3, is dated A.H. 741 (a.D.
1340-41).
Z. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 64). Partly
parchment, partly paper ; ff. 188. The portions in parchment
392 APPENDICES
are ff. 3, 4, 170-177 ; the body of the codex ff. 5-169 are
in paper; another hand has supplied f. 2 and ff. 178-182.
The codex thus still incomplete appears to have been
brought to Europe and completed.
H. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 65). Parch-
ment, except from Deut. xxxiii. 1 to end; ff. 258; small
format, 5-2 inches by 4, from 24 to 33 lines. This codex
belonged to Archbishop Marsh, the gift of Huntington, who
had bought it in Nablus in 1690. The original MS. is dated
A.H. 911 (A.D. 1505). The leaf in paper was written the
same year as Huntington secured it.
!JB. Bodleian Library, Oxford (Kennicott, 66). Parch-
ment ; ff. 132 ; very small format, 3-6 inches by 2. It begins
with Gen. iv. 1, and ends with Deut. xxxi. 2. Dated
according to cryptogram, A.H. 721 (a.d. 1321).
C. Westminster College, Cambridge (England). The
gift of Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson. Mostly parchment ;
ff. 380. It is in two columns on the page, Hebrew on the
right, Arabic in Samaritan characters left. Date by crypto-
gram, A.H. 909 (a.d. 1504); improved and completed, AH.
1306 (A.D. 1888).
2D. University Library, Cambridge (England). Parch-
ment; ff. 244 (paper 1-4, 243, 244); dated A.H. 610
(AD. 12 1 3); 30 lines.
j£. University Library, Cambridge (England); ff. 312,
of which 2-305 are parchment; f. 1 and ff. 306-312, modern
completion on paper. Gen. i. 11 to Deut. xxx. n. There
are two columns on the page, Hebrew and Arabic version.
Date, A.H. 616 (A.D. 1219-20).
jf . Public Library, New York ; completed at beginning
and end with paper ; ff. 275 ; from ff. 3 to 269, parchment ;
26-29 lines; date, A.H. 629 (a.d. 1231-32).
(5. The property of David Solomon Sassoon, Esq.,
London. Parchment mainly, completed with paper. Very
small format, 4 inches by 3-2; ff. 450. Date a little doubt-
ful as cryptogram defective. Von Gall thinks it may belong
to the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the
fifteenth century.
1b. (Kennicott, 299). Since the death of Kennicott in
1783 this MS. has disappeared. It was interleaved and
was dated 16 10.
APPENDICES 393
3» The property of Dr Gaster, London. Parchment ;
fif. 219, of which 13 are recent, and paper. Written in
Cairo ; date, A.H. 915 (AD. 1509-10).
1k» Rylands Library, Manchester. Dated A.H. 608
(A.B. 121 1).
X. Rylands Library, Manchester. Has Arabic version.
Egypt; dated A.H. 729 (ad. 1328).1
flD. Rylands Library, Manchester. Has Arabic version
and vowel signs.
Through the kindness of my friends, Dr Rendel Harris
and the Rev. J. C. Nicol, M.A., Eccles, Manchester, I am
enabled to supplement the list of MSS. given by von Gall,
with a description of the codices in the Rylands Library,
Manchester.
Rylands No. I. (designated by von Gall Ik). Vellum.
Leaves 300 ; lines to page 26 ; total height 10-9 inches,
breadth 9-2; text, height 7-2, breadth 5-9. It is written in
bold Majuscular characters. The text begins on the outer
side of the first leaf. This first page is largely illegible ;
it suffers also from the bottom of the first leaf having been
torn away; the second page suffers also in that mutilation.
The last four leaves consist of four fragments, amounting
altogether to the equivalent of one full page. The third
last page ends with disconnected letters in Samaritan. This
codex has probably been written for liturgic use.
The Tarikh is as follows: — "I, Abi Berahhathah, son
of Ab Sason, son of ibn Moshe, son of Abraham, examined
and copied this holy Torah for the two brothers, Tobiah and
Asaph, sons of Sa'deh, son of Izhaq, in the year 608 of the
rule of the sons of Ishmael." This is equivalent in our
reckoning to A.D. 121 1.
Rylands No. II. (Library No. E. Designated by von
Gall %). Vellum. Double columns; Hebrew with Arabic
version. Leaves, 220 ; lines, from 45 to 50. Complete,
save that the first three leaves have been torn at the bottom.
Total height \yS inches, breadth u-8; height of text varies
from 9 to io- 1, breadth 8-3 to 8-6.
The Tarikh : " This holy Torah has been copied by the
slave, poor before his rich God, Habib, son of Yaqub the
copyist, son of Musellimal Nazir for Yaqub, son of Yukasah
1 This is a mistake in arithmetic on the part of von Gall ; the real
date is 1321.
394
APPENDICES
(and it is two complete copies) in the month Muharram,
in the year 721 of the rule of the sons of Ishmael." This
gives the date in our reckoning A.D. 1321. Freiherr von
Gall notes that it was copied in Egypt.
Rylands No. III. (Library No. V. Designated by von
Gall fty). This codex has been compiled from fragments
in different handwritings, with many and extensive lacuna ;
some of these have been filled up from Blayney's transcrip-
tion, retranscribed into Samaritan characters. The frag-
ments from the different books of the Pentateuch are
segregated, and the different handwritings are indicated
by a distinguishing letter. Leaves 158; — Gen. 1-18, Exod.
19-62, Lev. 63-90, Num. 91-124, Deut. 125-158. The
different portions differ in height and breadth. Genesis
is uniform throughout; total height 9-3 inches, breadth 7-5 ;
text, height 6-4, breadth 5-5 ; lines to page 28. Exodus and
the other books are made up of fragments by many different
hands; total height 103 inches, breadth 8-5 ; height of text
7 inches, breadth 6 ; lines to page, varying from 23 to 27.
There is no tarikh, consequently the date of the various
portions is a matter of conjecture. According to von Gall
it has an Arabic version. The last leaf is torn vertically,
and the greater part of the text is awanting.
Rylands No. IV. (not mentioned by von Gall). This
codex consists of 179 leaves; total height 12-8 inches,
breadth 9; text, height 8-4 inches, breadth varying, but
maximum 6-2. It contains Genesis and Exodus with Arabic
version in double columns, Hebrew and Arabic. Three
wanting at the beginning. This codex is in beautifully
clear handwriting.
1R. The property of W. Scott Watson, Esq., West
New York, N.J. Parchment ; ff. 80. Grant Bey had also
ff. 35 of this codex. The date of this codex has occasioned
a good deal of discussion. The date in the cryptogram
is A.H. 35 (A.D. 655-56). Even if foyoK* »» K&cxb is taken
strictly, and the date is reckoned from the conquest of
Palestine, the matter is not seriously improved. From the
fact that the cryptogram has been somewhat carelessly
written, and possibly that anso jot? has been omitted, the
date then may be A.H. 735 (A.D. 1335).
©♦ Originally in the possession of George Zeidan, a
Syrian Christian in Cairo. The exorbitant price of /20,ooo
was asked for it. Its date was declared to be A.H. 116
APPENDICES 395
(a.D. 734). Dr Cowley from the cryptogram dates it
A.H. 901 (A.D. 1495).
|p. Kgl. Bibliothek, Berlin ; contains ff. 279, two
columns on page, Hebrew and Arabic versions. It begins
with Gen. xi. 4, and ends with Deut. xxxiii. 28 ; wants
Deut. xxviii. 45-63; lines on page 40; date, A.H. 890
(a.d. 1485).
The above are the principal authorities made use of
by Freiherr von Gall in the preparation of his text. There
are besides numerous fragments of rolls and codices which
he describes with great particularity. These descriptions
and valuations must, however, be left to the scholar to consult
in the prolegomena which von Gall has appended to his
edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch.
APPENDIX II
DESCRIPTION OF THE NABLUS ROLL
The most interesting of the manuscripts of the Samaritan
Pentateuch, if not the most important, is the Nablus Roll,
for which so high an antiquity is claimed. Although there
is a pretence of showing it to every band of tourists who in
their visit to the Holy Land pass through Nablus, this
precious manuscript is really shown to very few. The High
Priest and his colleague have several copies of the Law in
roll form ; one or two of these are exhibited. Even those
while shown by the priest are held in his hand, and no
opportunity is afforded the student of anything like an
examination of them. The semi-darkness of the synagogue
in -which the exhibition takes place, a darkness intensified
by the brilliance of the light outside, would make any
examination difficult even for the exceptional tourist who
can read Samaritan.
As the silver case in which the Roll is kept is the first
thing the visitor sees, it may be well to consider it. Sir
William Muir in his Life of Mohammed, to show the relative
worthlessness of traditional evidence, brings together the
various traditions concerning the ring of Mohammed, its
history, its material, how he wore it, etc., and shows how the
traditions, though supposed to be those best authenticated,
contradicted each other. Scarcely less contradictory is the
evidence of travellers in regard to the case of this Samaritan
Roll. As to the material, Dr Mills, who twice visited Nablus,
in 1855 and in i860, and stayed three months in Nablus on
the second of these occasions, says that it is silver. On
the other hand Dr Spoer who visited Nablus in 1906 says
" the case is ... of brass inlaid with silver." Similar varia-
tion is observable in the accounts that are given of the
ornamentation of it.
Without further analysis, the descriptions of various
observers may be given. Dr Mills thus describes how it
896
APPENDICES 397
appeared to him. " Having removed its red satin cover,
which was ornamented with Samaritan inscriptions em-
broidered in golden letters, I found it was kept in a
cylindrical silver case which opened on two sets of hinges,
made so as to expose a whole column of reading. This
case was ornamented with relievo work descriptive of the
sacred contents of the Tabernacle." In a note he subjoins
a description by Grove in Vacation Tourists. " It (the
case) is a beautiful and curious piece of work ; a cylinder
of about 2 feet 6 inches long, and io or 12 inches in
diameter, opening down the middle. One of the halves
is engraved with a ground-plan of the Tabernacle, showing
every post, tenon, veil, piece of furniture, vessel, etc., with
a legend attached to each. The other half is covered with
ornament only, also raised. It is silver, and I think — but
the light was very imperfect — parcel gilt." Although Mills
quotes the passage without comment, it would seem that
in some points it does not agree with his own description.
Dr Mills speaks of "two sets of hinges," implying that the
cylinder was divided into three, whereas Mr Grove speaks
only of "halves," e.g., " one of the halves," " the other half."
Further, the height assigned to the containing cylinder by
Grove does not suit the measurement Mills gives of the
height of the writing in the Roll, i.e., 13 inches, and 15
inches as the height of the Roll; the margin of 15 inches
thus left for the case seems much too large.
In 1906 Dr Spoer published in the Journal of the Oriental
Society (vol. xxvii., p. 107) an account of this case which
differs very much from the descriptions given above. It
is as follows: "The case is cylindrical, 20 inches long, of
brass inlaid with silver. It consists of three sections form-
ing a circle of 6h inches in diameter. The middle section
is connected with the other two by three hinges on either
side. That the present hinges may be of later date than
the case itself seems probable from the fact that in two
cases they conceal letters forming part of the inscription.
Several letters are also missing from the perpendicular
inscription to the right of the lower central panel, where a
fragment of brass has been lost and a patch inserted. The
top and the bottom are closed by three segments of brass
forming a circle, so that the manuscript was completely
enclosed for its better protection. It is secured by long
brass hooks fastening into faceted knobs pierced with eight
holes. The top is decorated with a turreted border.
" Every section is divided horizontally into two panels,
398 APPENDICES
separated by a band outlined in silver. A geometrical
design in silver decorates the centre of every panel ; it
consists of an arabesque, contained in a circle running out
into four ornamental spear-heads.
"The dividing line is i£ inches in breadth inlaid in silver,
with an inscription in Samaritan characters enclosed in a
sort of cartouche, ending in ornamental spear-heads. This
inscription continues round the case, as does also a second
in smaller characters, in a continuous band, top and bottom.
Right and left of the lower central panel is an additional
inscription in small characters. All these are in Hebrew,
in the Samaritan alphabet. The words are separated
by dots."
There follow transcriptions and translations of the various
inscriptions. Two of these are quotations from Scripture —
from the priestly benediction (Num. vi. 24) — and the words
which Moses used when the Tabernacle was to move (Num.
x« 35)« Two of the inscriptions related to the manufacture
of the case. These are interesting, as giving the date when
it was made. " In the name of Yah — this case for the holy
writing was made in Damascus by the poor servant, the
least of the creatures of God, Abu haph-Phetach ben Yoseph
ben Yaqob ben Tzophar, of the tribe of Manasseh. May
Yah forgive his sins. Amen. In the year nine hundred
and thirty of the rule of the sons of Ishmael. At the hand
of Yitzhaq the . . . ." The inscription within the lower
central panel is as follows : " Written by Pin'has the son
of Eleazar." The equivalent date in our era to A.H. 930 is
A.D. 1524. In addition to his description Dr Spoer shows
photographs which illustrate his meaning ; there is a photo-
graph of each of the portions of the case.
When these descriptions are compared, there would seem
to be two if not three several cases. That seen by Mill and
Grove, if even they describe one and the same case, clearly
differs from that seen by Spoer. As already remarked, the
material of the case is different ; according to Spoer it is
brass inlaid with silver, whereas that seen by Mill and Grove
was silver. Moreover, as indicated above, there is at least
a possibility that Mill and Grove describe different cases.
Photographic evidence confirms the former of these
distinctions. In Dr Montgomery's work, The Samaritans*
there is a photograph of the case of the Nablus Roll, and
the ornamentation suits the description given by Grove
and Mills, but not at all that of Spoer. This photograph
is from a plate taken for the Palestine Exploration. Spoer
APPENDICES 399
also has photographs as above mentioned which support
his description. But besides that published in Montgomery,
there are other photographs issued by the Palestine Explora-
tion Fund ; one of these exhibits the middle filled with a
continuous arabesque ; at the top and bottom an ornament
like an arcade occupying each about three-sixteenths of the
entire space — each arch filled with arabesque work. The case
is composed of three portions as is Spoer's. When the
Palestine Exploration photograph, of which we speak, is
examined, a little bit of a second side is seen which appears
to repeat that fully exhibited. It may be that what is shown in
Montgomery's plate is a third side ; it shows the edge of
another side which seems to have an arabesque, like that
on the P.E.F. photograph above referred to ; certainly the
satin covering is the same.
There are thus clearly two cases. That described by
Spoer, dated in the sixteenth century, and that described
by Mills and photographed by the Palestine Exploration
Fund ; this latter is to all appearance much the older. To
this may be added a statement made to the present writer
by Yaqub Shellaby, the High Priest in 1898, that Baron
Rothschild had presented them with a case for their Torah !
This assertion is not worthy of much credit, as it was
associated with a number of imaginative statements. So
far as the present writer's memory goes, the case seen by
him on Mount Gerizim in 1898 coincides with that described
by Dr Mills and figured in the photographs of the Palestine
Exploration Fund. On the other hand a friend who visited
Nablus in 1910 thinks that the case he saw was like that
described by Spoer.
More important than the case is the manuscript within
it. Of this Mills gives a very careful account, although he
admits that he was not able to examine the whole of it.
His description is as follows : " The roll itself is of what we
should call parchment, but of a material much older than
that, written in columns 13 inches deep, and 7% inches
wide. The writing is in a fair hand, though not nearly so
large or beautiful as the book-copies which I had previously
examined. The writing being rather small, each column
contains from seventy to seventy-two lines, and the whole
roll contains a hundred and ten columns. The name of the
scribe is written in a kind of acrostic, and forms part of
the text running through three columns, and is found in
the book of Deuteronomy." In a note Dr Mills explains
that he did not himself see this, but that he gave it on the
400 APPENDICES
authority of Yaqub Shellaby who had shown him the ancient
roll in secrecy, and despite very considerable obstacles. To
call the tarikh an acrostic is not perhaps a very intelligible
descriptive name, only it would be difficult to suggest a
better. " Whether it be the real work of the great-grandson
of Aaron, as indicated in the writing, I leave the reader
to judge ; the roll, at all events, has the appearance of a
very high antiquity, and is wonderfully well preserved con-
sidering its venerable age. It is worn out and torn in many
places and patched with re-written parchment ; in many
other places, where not torn, the writing is unreadable.
But it seemed to me that about two-thirds of the original
is still readable. The skins of which the roll is composed
are of equal size and measure each 25 inches long and
15 inches wide" (Mills, Modern Samaritans,^. 312, 313).
In 1 86 1 Dr Rosen conveyed in a letter to Dr Fleischer
a description of the Nablus Roll which he had received from
a Hebrew Christian, named Kraus, which is as follows : —
" The manuscript is a roll and consists of one and
twenty rams' skins, according to the assurance of the priest,
taken from rams offered as thank-offerings. These skins
are only written on the hair side : they are of unequal size,
so that while the majority have six columns of text, some
have only five : they are artistically bound together by
thongs of the same material. If, as the priest maintained,
it has been in use, though very carefully handled, for many
centuries, the effect is yet noticeable in its very bad condition.
The parchment which in many places is as thin as writing
paper, appears often torn and holed, and especially frequently
blackened in a way as if the ink had run over it. According
to Herr Kraus, there may at most be half of it still legible,
which in the meantime, since the text remains undoubted,
can scarcely be regarded as a hindrance to scientific
knowledge. Only one column of Deuteronomy (xix. 8, ff.)
is fully preserved and can be read from top to bottom
throughout. Since the whole text of the Pentateuch
occupies at the most 120 columns or sides (pages), and
each ram's skin, prepared for parchment, contains five
or six such columns, it is clear that the writing must
be very close. This indeed necessarily is the case, since
each column contains more than seventy finely written
lines : the spaces which frequently break in constitute a
further contraction of the space available for writing on.
The writing is about a line high, and about the same breadth
is the space between. A free space of at most a finger's
APPENDICES 401
breadth is left between individual books. In short, the
space is very carefully used, and only before a paragraph,
or at the end of a column are the letters much separated
one from another, for the sake of rendering it possible
to begin a new line or column with a complete word."
Another interesting description was read by Dr Loewy
to the Society of Biblical Archaeology {Proceedings, 2nd
December 1879). It 1S from the pen of a Samaritan. Dr
Loewy found it among MSS. of the Earl of Crawford and
Balcarres. In the Proceedings it is a summary which
is given, so the narrative is in the third person. " The Roll
was opened by him on the 8th of dhel-kadi A.H. 1125
(a.d. 17 i 3), corresponding to the ninth month of the
Samaritan year." If this is reckoned from Tishri, the
beginning of the civil year, this would be the month
Sivan, equivalent to our May; if from Nisan, the beginning
of the sacred year, it would mean the month Kisleu, nearly
our November. The rest of the date is given in accordance
with the Samaritan reckoning: — "the 6152nd year since
the creation of Adam, and 3352nd of the settlement of
the Children of Israel in the Land of Canaan. The Roll
is declared to be the identical copy which was written
by Abishua, the great-grandson of Aaron, as is attested
by the tashkil or intertextual chronogram. The writer,
Maslam ibn Marjan, observes that for more than a hundred
years no one had examined this copy of the Pentateuch.
Solemn religious preparation had been made by Maslam
before he ventured to peruse the sacred writing. When
he went to the synagogue for this purpose he was attended
by several of the synagogal officials and some of their
children. Immediately after the section commencing
" Hear, O Israel," etc. (Deut. vi. 4-9), he found the inscription
consisting of the following words : —
,mrv ,pn ,cr6 hnx\ .pan ,pnx ,p ,nryta ,p ,Dnra ,p .ytras ^x
,-ina ,njno >^nx .nnaa ,snpn ,nsDn ,*nana ,111321
.mrr ,nx ,mis ,3-20 ,rvrv6i3:6 ,;j»3 ,p«
u I Abishua, the son of Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of
Aaron the High Priest — on them be the favour of JHVVH
and His glory — wrote the Holy Book at the door of the
Tabernacle of the Congregation in Mount Gerizim in the
2 c
402 APPENDICES
year thirteen of the possession of the Children of Israel of
the Land of Canaan, according to its boundaries round
about. I praise JHWH."
The tashkil concludes at the sentence, " If thou shalt
hear say in one of thy cities, which JHWH thy God hath
given thee " (Deut. xiii. 12).
Maslam describes his joy in discovering this chronogram.
He makes the observation that only the letters T and "1 were
missing from the tashkil. The reason that they are wanting
is that they occur at the bottom of the columns, and the
bottom of the folio had been worn away. The same reading
was collated afterwards by the witnesses who accompanied
Maslam ibn Marjan. This evidence disposes of the doubts
which Deutsch expressed as to the colophon being really
present at all. In his article in Smith's Dictionary of the
Bible, Dr Deutsch insinuated that the discovery which
Levysohn professed to have made was untrue.
In his edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Freiherr von
Gall gives Dr Cowley's explanation of the tashkil which is :
There was a High Priest who had two sons, Pinhas and
'Amram, who were also High Priests. The son of the latter,
the High Priest Ithamar, came in the year a.h. 602 (a.d.
1205-6) from Damascus to Shechem. A cousin of this
Ithamar might be the Abishua who wrote this mysterious
roll. The " thirteenth year of the rule of the Children of
Israel in the Land of Canaan and its limits round about"
would really mean, the emigration from Damascus "from the
limits round about " to Shechem in Israel. Something may
be said for the first part of this, although there is no need for
limiting the Pinhas, the father of the scribe, to one whose
father was Eleazar, as Eleazar was a stem name. The great
apostasy according to the Samaritans was when Eli
transferred the High Priesthood from the race of Eleazar
to that of Ithamar. It is difficult to accept the latter portion.
There is no trace of the emigration of a few Samaritans
from Damascus to Nablus ever being regarded as important
enough to form an era. The whole of the Samaritan
community in Damascus cannot have migrated to Shechem,
as four hundred years later there was a considerable
number of Samaritans still in Damascus. As only one
column in Deuteronomy can be read throughout, any
number of words and letters may have been lost over and
above the two letters which Maslam acknowledges, so any
number of hundreds may have preceded the "thirteen."
Nothing can be settled until the MS. is examined again.
APPENDICES 403
Let us hope it has not been destroyed by the Turks or
removed by their masters.
There are, or in present circumstances it may be more
correct or at least safer to say, were in the Samaritan
synagogue two rolls, in addition to the most ancient roll
of which a description has been given above. These were
shown to tourists, first the one, then if the tourist, knowing
the practice the Samaritan priesthood had of showing a
more recent roll to save the sacred document from con-
tamination, should ask for the real ancient manuscript,
the second was brought. These have not been described
with any care. In regard to one of them I can say it is
taller than the ancient roll, and the case in which it is, or
was kept is severer in design than the more ancient case.
There are probably several other rolls, in the possession
of the Samaritans, of various ages and values. Of course
no one can tell what devastation has been wrought by the
Turks, or how many of these, if any, have escaped the mania
for unreasoning destruction which seems to affect not only
the Turks but even more their temporary masters the
Germans.
{The above was written in the summer of 19 17.)
APPENDIX III
THE RELATION OF THE MINOAN ALPHABET TO
THE SEMITIC
The discoveries made by Sir Arthur Evans in Crete, and
the evidences afforded by them of an advanced civilisation
naturally excited considerable speculation. The thoughts
of scholars were directed to the traditional stories of the
realm of Minos preserved in Hellenic literature. On the
other hand archaeologists were prone to connect the Cretan
discoveries with those of Schliemann in Mykenae and Troy.
One peculiarity which had been observed in regard to the
civilisation of primitive pre-Homeric Greece was the singular
want of any signs of writing. M. Perrot(Perrot and Chipiez,
Primitive Greece (Eng. trans.), vol. ii., p. 462) says : " What most
strikes the historian who sets about to define pre-Homeric
culture, is its having been a stranger to writing. It knows
neither of the ideographic signs which Egypt and Chaldaea
possessed, nor of that alphabet which Greece will borrow
somewhat later of Phoenicia." In contrast with this Sir
Arthur Evans found, not only not a few inscriptions, but also
a collection of documents on tablets of half-baked clay.
Discoveries so important as those made in Crete, which
seemed to have a bearing in so many different directions,
classical and archaeological, were naturally liable to produce
an amount of mental excitement which would tend to the
exaggeration of their significance. The news of the discovery
of the foundations of Ahab's Palace in Samaria led to the
story being published that letters to Ahab were found which
had been sent to him from Shalmanesar II., and, greater
marvel still, from Asshur-bani-pal who lived some three
centuries after Ahab was in his grave. In estimating the
influence on our ideas of primitive times, which may be
derived from Cretan discoveries, care has to be exercised
lest this influence should be exaggerated.
One of the cases in which the conclusions of Sir Arthur
404
APPENDICES 405
Evans must, we think, be scrutinised with special care is
that in regard to the origin of the Semitic, or as he calls it,
the Phoenician alphabet. What evidence he adduces is to
a large extent assumptive. He assumes that the Cretan
civilisation was contemporaneous with that of Mykenae and
Troy ; but the lack of any evidence that the people of those
days had any mode of making their thoughts permanent,
whether ideographically or phonographically, appears to
prove definitely that the Minoan civilisation is later. The
finding of an alabastron with the cartouche of the Hyksos
King Khyan {Scripta Minoa, p. 30) does not prove that the
reign of Khyan falls within the Minoan period. Had there
been many of these alabastra^ the inference would have
been a fairly valid one; but in the circumstances the natural
deduction is that the Hyksos King had a date considerably,
perhaps very much earlier.1 The kinship of the Cretan signs,
presumed to be alphabetic, to those of Cyprus and.Lycia does
not carry the inquiry much further. Appeal is made to
the story of Bellerophon as told by Homer. He was sent
by Proetus his father to Lycia, with a folded tablet addressed
to his stepmother's father, and on it were impressed
(Trifxara Xvypd, "destructive signs." It does not necessarily
follow from the fact that there were alphabetic symbols
among the Lycians that these a-^/jLara were other than vague
symbols, such as savages of a lower stage frequently use.
But even though Homer intended to suggest alphabetic
writing, it does not follow that at the date implied by the
story (so much earlier than that when the Homeric poem
was composed) any such thing was known. There thus
seems to be decided failure of anything like evidence for
a very early date to the Minoan script.
The lack of any tradition associating the Greek alphabet
with Crete or Minos is strong evidence against that being
its source. The more advanced the civilisation ascribed to
Crete, the greater the extent of its commerce, the more
pervading the political influence of the Minoan Empire, the
more difficult it becomes to explain why, if the Hellenes
got their alphabet from Crete, Crete never got the credit
1 In my study as I write, I have a brick from a temple mound in
Mugheir ; there is on it an inscription in the oldest form of cuneiform.
Were such a disaster to befall our Island Empire as befell that of Minos,
and were the archaeologists of the fiftieth century a.d. to find it in the
ruins of Edinburgh, they would scarcely be justified in deducing from
it that our civilisation belonged, not to the twentieth century a.d. but
to the twentieth B.C.
406 APPENDICES
for it. On the other hand, the tradition is that they got
their alphabet from Phoenicia through Cadmus. Herodotus
records this tradition with all particularity (v. 58): "The
Phoenicians who came with Cadmus . . . introduced into
Greece upon their arrival a great variety of arts, among the
rest that of writing." Confirmatory of this view are the
names given to the letters. All the original letters have
Semitic names, hellenised only to the degree necessary
to fit them for Greek accidence. Thus aleph becomes alpha
and beth, beta. If Sir Arthur is correct, and the Semitic,
or as he calls it the Phoenician alphabet, is derived from the
Minoan, why did Hellenic tradition pass over the nearer
source and ascribe the introduction of letters to the more
distant, if it were not the truth ?
Another argument which seems to us conclusive is that
the names of the letters are significant in Semitic, and the
forms assumed by them are derived from pictographs of the
object. It is true that in some cases there is a doubt as to
the meaning of the name on the one hand, and a dubiety
on the other as to the object indicated. This, however,
applies only to some of the letters ; in regard to a number
there is practical agreement. Sir Arthur Evans himself
has no doubt of aleph being a pictograph of an ox's head
conventionalised. Equally general is the recognition that
beth represents a " tent," only the essential lines being
indicated. The fourth letter daleth in its earliest form
represents a " tent-door " ; it becomes in Greek delta. There
is some difference concerning the third, gimel. By Gesenius
it was supposed to represent a " camel " ; certainly the
earliest shape the character assumes has a striking re-
semblance to the head and neck of a camel. It was objected
by Colonel Conder that the vowels of the word gamal,
" camel," were not those for the letter ; but its name
in Syriac is vocalised as is the word for a "camel." In
the Greek name gamma the final / is not represented ; this,
however, may be due to the probability that the Phoenicians
called this third letter by the name gaman by which it was
known to the Samaritans ; the n sound is more fluid even
than / with which it is frequently interchanged. The camel
was not indigenous to Phoenicia or Palestine, so it may well
have been that the inhabitants of South- Western Syria got
the alphabet before they were acquainted with the animal ;
hence the Phoenicians changed the last consonant, and the
Jews the vocalisation. We venture to maintain that gimel
represents a "camel," notwithstanding that Sir Arthur
APPENDICES 407
Evans assures his readers that this view is generally
abandoned. The resemblance of the sign to a camel's head
and neck is the closer the nearer one comes to the origin
of the alphabet. This at once is clear on comparison of the
forms assumed by the letter on the Moabite and Siloam
inscriptions on the one hand, and that on the inscription
on the sarcophagus of Ashmunazar on the other. But the
camel was not used in Crete, probably was not known there,
consequently the sign was modified into the likeness of
a human leg. That this is not the primitive form is clear
from the fact that while in the primitive Semitic form the
approximately horizontal portion of the figure is markedly
shorter, suggesting the proportion of the relative lengths
of the camel's head and neck, a proportion lost in later
examples, in the Minoan the horizontal is practically equal
in length to the perpendicular (Scripta Mtnoa, p. 87). The
Cretan epigraphist knowing nothing of camels developed
the shape into a closer likeness to an object with which
he was acquainted, a human leg. A similar process is seen
in the initial letters of the chapters of an illustrated book, in
which the shape of the letter is altered and metamorphosed
to illustrate the contents of the coming portion of the
book.
Another example of what appears a similar process
of modification is to be found in regard to the letter zain
which in Minoan appears as j£- a two-edged battle-axe.
The meaning of the word seems to be a " weapon," and this
symbol would suit that meaning. The earliest form of this
letter in Semitic is ^ which occurs on the Ba'al-Lebanon
inscription ; this could not conceivably be developed from
the Minoan form. But on the other hand, when the
successive forms this letter assumes are followed, the
possibility of the Minoan symbol being evolved from the
Semitic is clear. The Ba'al-Lebanon figure appears to
be a conventionalised representation of a dart, barbed and
feathered ; on the Moabite stone it becomes X and in
the Siloam inscription 3;. Later still as on the sarco-
phagus of Ashmunazar the shape Z is reached clearly
from the desire to write the form quickly ; and from this the
Minoan is readily developed.
In the letter teth Evans sees a distinct case of the
Minoan character being clearly the primitive. It certainly
is the case that there is nothing like a consensus of opinion
408
APPENDICES
as to either the meaning of the name or of the object
intended to be indicated. Gesenius suggested a " serpent,"
for which he adduces an Arabic root now unused. The
earliest shape the letter assumes, a cross surrounded by a
circle, does not at all support this view. Various other
objects have been suggested as the hieroglyph behind this
letter, but without any striking probability in their favour.
The resemblance to a chariot wheel, the form the letter
assumes in Minoan, is very seductive. It has to be observed,
however, that the pictograph is in every case developed
beyond the mere suggestive outline used in true alphabetic
symbols. In short, it appears to be a case parallel with that
of gimel, an effort to give a meaning to a symbol which was
otherwise unintelligible. If the contention which we main-
tain elsewhere is correct, that the invention of the alphabet
is to be put to the credit of a tribe of trading Aramaeans
having their headquarters in the valley of the Tigris and the
Euphrates, then teth might be a word in use only among
them and significant of some object with which they, though
not their Hebrew and Phoenician customers, were familiar.
It is possible that similar has been the history of qoph which
by general consent is received to mean "the back of the
head " ; the word may have had that meaning to the Aramaean
inventors of the alphabet. There is no extant word in
any Semitic language having that meaning. In Hebrew
qoph means " a monkey with a tail " ; some of the forms
the letter assumes have a not very distant resemblance
to a view in profile of a monkey seated on a branch
with its tail hanging down. Were it found that in Crete
a word, nearly akin to the name of this letter, meant either
the back of the head or, as Sir Arthur Evans suggests, the
face without the features, something might be said for
the Minoan origin of the Semitic alphabet. Certainly in the
Aryan tongues the word for head has a superficial
resemblance to this, as seen in the Latin caput and the
German kopf ; but the initial sound is quite distinct from
the k sound, one very difficult to pronounce, as exhibited
by the fact that in a great part of the nearer East it has
disappeared from pronunciation, being replaced by the
hemza. In some quarters it is pronounced as g, a sound
that has been lost by the gimel in Syrian Arabic. The Greeks
did not retain it in their alphabet, although its presence as a
numeral proves that the Hellenic alphabet had it originally.
It is not impossible that some Aramaic inscription may
supply the missing word.
APPENDICES 409
If the Cretans in their alphabetic symbols depicted the
same objects and gave them the same names as did the
Phoenicians, then they too must have been Semites. But
Herodotus reckons them Hellenes (Herod, i. 2). In Homer,
Idomeneus, the Cretan king, grandson of Minos, is prominent
among the Greeks in the Trojan War (ii. xiii. 439, etc.).
If, while the objects depicted in the Cretan alphabet were
the same as those in the Phoenician, the names were different,
yet in each case the initial sound was the same, the pheno-
mena would certainly be explained. Only such a fortuitous
coincidence is so highly improbable as to amount to an
impossibility.
The connection of the Hellenic alphabet with that of
Phoenicia is exhibited in another way. It is probable from
the close connection between Northern Israel and Phoenicia
that the latter would share with the former its incapacity
to pronounce the gutturals. It is evident that whoever gave
the Greeks the alphabet they must have laboured under
this disability. Hence the Greeks proceeded to use the
signs for the unpronounced gutturals for the vowels with
which they were most frequently united ; thus alplia became
the vowel a, and he became the vowel e and so on. Though
the alphabet introduced among the Greeks had no gutturals,
the Hellenic tongue had them in use, so the}- had to devise
means of indicating them ; hence the sound which he had in
the earlier Semitic tongue and in Hebrew was represented
by the " rough breathing," and for heth the letter x had to
be introduced.
We do not know if the Cretans laboured under the same
disability in regard to the gutturals as did the Phoenicians.
If they did not, then the Greeks did not get their alphabet
from them. If they did then they, no more than the
Phoenicians, could be the inventors of the alphabet. They
would not have invented symbols for sounds which they
did possess.
There are, further, other letters which appear at one time
to have been in the Greek alphabet, but which disappeared
only a little while before historic time. The sixth letter
had disappeared from the alphabet of classic Greek, possibly
because it represented a sound which was not used by the
Hellenes.
If vav was pronounced, as was not improbably the case,
as w, and the ancient Greeks, like their modern represen-
tatives, had not that sound, the disappearance of that letter
from the alphabet of writing, although its place was still
410
APPENDICES
retained when the alphabet was used numerically, was a not
unnatural result. Metrical considerations have rendered it
not improbable that the digamma, as it was called from its
form, was in use when the Homeric poems were composed.
Hence the necessity felt for introducing <£ phi and v upsilon
to represent the /and v sounds. In the case of the first of
these letters, it as is well known has retained in the Latin
language the place it had originally in the Semitic alphabet,
and through it, occupies that position in the languages of
Western Europe.1 As to the latter letter it has to be
observed that in modern Greek upsilon is generally pro-
nounced as v\ thus the word for "cross," while written as
it is in ancient Greek, is pronounced stavros. That the
transliteration into Latin of the Greek for " gospel " assumes
the form evangelium, and that for "preparation" becomes
parasceva, proves that at least in certain combinations
upsilon was pronounced v by the Greeks of the opening
centuries of our era. In passing, it may be observed that
the differences between the Greek and Latin alphabets,
taken along with the predominant resemblances between
them, indicates that though both have been borrowed from
the same source, each has received it independently.
We have elsewhere maintained that the Semitic alphabet
could not have been invented by the Phoenicians. The
arguments which led us to that conclusion apply equally
against the idea that it originated among the Cretans. The
Cretans, like the Phoenicians, were a maritime people ; indeed
as inhabiting an island they could not pretend to an imperial
position in any other way than by developing their seafaring
industry. That being the case it might have been expected
that the objects used to supply alphabetic symbols would
have been, to some extent at any rate, drawn from the
utensils of maritime industry. But neither in Crete nor in
Phoenicia have any of the alphabetic signs such a source. It
is not that things belonging to seafaring life could not be
conventionalised. Conventionalised sails are not infrequent
in Egyptian hieroglyph, and ships are found delineated in
the Minoan inscriptions, but they do not seem to have
served as signs of sounds. The Cretans must have had
words for " ships," " sails," " anchors," " oars," " helms,"
" rudders," and so forth ; why were not some of these
1 It may be observed that the form alike of the digamma and of the
Latin F is really that of the Samaritan vav turned to look from left to
right, instead of from right to left.
APPENDICES 411
used to serve as the alphabetic sign to denote their initial
sound ? It can only have been that they had received the
alphabet from an external source, the invention of a people
partly agricultural and partly nomadic, who used camels
and tents, but were acquainted with more stationary modes
of life. If they know nothing of the great sea, they know
about fish and fishing. Everything points to the inventors
being a nomadic Aramaean tribe, whose home was on the
Mesopotamian border of the desert which separated the
land of the two rivers from Western Syria, and who were
engaged in conveying merchandise from Babylonia to the
shores of the Mediterranean.
We therefore, for the above reasons, venture to maintain
that Sir Arthur Evans has failed to make good his contention
that the Semitic alphabet has been originated by the Cretans ;
indeed we shall go as far as to say that he has not even
made his case plausible. Despite the weight of his authority,
we feel that the balance of evidence is in favour of the
conclusion above stated.
APPENDIX IV
NAVILLE'S THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
The science of Biblical archaeology owes so great a debt to
Professor Naville that even when we differ from him we do
so with reluctance, and with a deference which would lead us
to place the most favourable construction on any view which
he may propound. His identification of the "store cities"
built by the Israelites under the " taskmasters " of the
Pharaoh of the oppression, has been very generally accepted.
If his brilliant suggestion that the copy of the Law found in
the days of Josiah, during the repair of the temple, was that
which, in accordance with the Egyptian custom of placing
in the foundation of their temples a portion of the Book of
the Dead, Solomon had placed at the foundation of the
Jerusalem temple, has not been received with similar
respect, nor indeed been seriously discussed, the reason of
this may be sought in the dominance of the Wellhausen
hypothesis. If it was a copy of the whole Law which had
been so placed and so found, Ezra had no more to do with
the Priestly Code than Wellhausen himself. If it were only
the book of Deuteronomy, as Naville thinks, still the whole
theory is so involved in maintaining the book in question to
have been a forgery contemporary with its discovery, that it
would be shaken to its foundations. It will be readily seen
that it is from no lack of respect for Dr Naville, or for what
he has done in Egyptology, and for Biblical archaeology by
means of it, that we are not prepared to accept his theory as
to the original language of the Old Testament, as propounded
first in his book on Biblical archaeology, and later in his
Schweich Lectures.
His theory is that the Pentateuch was originally written
in cuneiform, and therefore on clay tablets. He thinks that
Abraham brought with him from Padan-Aram a number of
those containing the stories of Creation, the Flood, the
412
APPENDICES 413
building of Babel, etc., and that tribal scribes continued in
Palestine the process of recording events on clay tablets.
When they went down to Egypt the patriarchs carried these
tablets with them. These would all be written not only in
cuneiform character but also in the language of Mesopotamia.
Moses, as learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, would
necessarily be acquainted with Assyrian, the language of
diplomacy. In his intercourse with his own people he would
come to know about those tablets, and would arrange them
in a succession fitted to bring out the special position of privi-
lege occupied by Israel. Records thus preserved on tablets
would not be continuous, each would be a separate unit with
probably an introduction, which would recapitulate something
of what might be on other tablets and have a concluding
formula. Dr Naville holds that Moses recorded on similar
tablets the subsequent history in which he was the principal
actor, and also his legislation. Deuteronomy would form a
group of tablets apart. With the accession of Solomon
was introduced into Palestine the Phoenician script which,
however, was not used for the Law ; it was always transcribed
in cuneiform and in the Assyrian or Babylonian tongue.
When Ezra came he translated the Law into Aramaic, and
wrote it out in the Aramaean script. Later Rabbin trans-
lated the Law from the Aramaic of Ezra into Hebrew, or as
Naville would prefer to call it, Yehudith, "Jewish," which he
regards not as a language distinct from Aramaic but only
as a patois, differing from it merely as " Platt-Deutsch "
differs from the German of Luther or Schiller. As to the
other and later books he believes that some would be
impressed on clay tablets, and others scratched on potsherds
or written on parchment or papyrus. The script used, he
thinks, would not be the Canaanite but the Aramaean ; this
name he restricts to the script of the Assouan papyri.
Portions of this theory are worthy not only of considera-
tion but of general acceptance. Brought up as Abraham
was in a state so advanced in civilisation as was that of
Hammurabi, in which scribes were a class important enough
to require special legislation, he could not fail to value
writing ; nomad as he was if he could not write himself,
though that he should have that accomplishment is not
unlikely, he would yet have among his clansmen one or more
capable of exercising this art. Hence that the legends of
the Creation and the Flood would be impressed for him on
clay tablets, and conveyed by him to Palestine is extremely
likely. No one who was not " thirl " to the critical hypothesis
414 APPENDICES
would fail to see that the Jewish form of these stories is
much more primitive than the Babylonian. Thus to take the
story of the Flood ; in the Babylonian form of the legend Par-
Nipishtim brings into the Ark with him not only silver and
gold but also slaves, whereas Noah in the Bible narrative takes
with him none of these, does not indeed seem to have them.
The Bible narrative dates from a period before men had begun
to use metals generally or to possess slaves. The clay tablets
which Abraham brought withhim may well represent the source
of the Bible story. A difficulty suggests itself at this point ;
the language of Babylonia at that time was not written in
a script that could be called in any strict sense cuneiform.
The Laws of Hammurabi were incised in a script which has
only a very distant resemblance to the cuneiform of the
times of the Sargonids. When it was impressed on bricks,
the figures of the characters were not made by fine chisels
but by a block of wood or stone on which the inscription
had been cut in relief, being pressed on the soft wet clay.
This may be seen from the multitude of bricks from the
temple mounds of Mugheir (Ur of the Chaldees) on which
there are identical inscriptions.
Further, it may be doubted whether the herdsmen of
Abraham and Isaac would retain the language of Babylon,
when in Canaan they were associating with their neigh-
bours who spoke a different tongue. It is quite true
that diplomatic correspondence some centuries later was
carried on even with Egypt in the language and script of
Babylon. In that case there is evidence, as Professor
Naville himself informs us, that the native tongue of the
writers was different from that in which they wrote. Unless
when writing legal documents, or diplomatic letters, the
inhabitants would write in their own tongue. As to the
script, the want of the fine clay would be a great, almost an
insuperable difficulty in using the cuneiform for ordinary cor-
respondence. About a century ago amongourselves parchment
was, while still used for legal deeds, never taken for ordinary
letters. Clay might be imported for the use of diplomats or
legal scribes, but natives in their letters would content them-
selves with the writing material within reach. It is doubtful
if the followers of Abraham would reckon the annals of their
wanderings to be worthy the expensive imported clay. Still
less would the Mesopotamian clay be available in the
wilderness. The "Ten Words" were engraved on tables of
stone, and therefore not on a material favourable to cunei-
form. Still as cuneiform inscriptions were incised on the
APPENDICES 415
gypsum slabs of the palaces of Sargon at Khorsabad, and of
Sennacherib at Kuyounjik, the granite of Sinai might be
engraved with cuneiform symbols.
Before passing on to consider this theory further a note
may be inserted at this point, by way of caveat, against
accepting the assumption which Professor Naville makes,
that Assyrian was so like the language of Canaan that
Abraham and his herdsmen would have no difficult}' from
the very first in conversing with the natives. To prove that
although both Assyrian and Hebrew, which is admitted to
be the same as Phoenician, belong to the same class of
Semitic languages but are yet very different from each other,
one has only to turn into Hebrew any few lines of the
examples given in King's First Steps in Assyiiau. Com-
munication between the men of Abraham and the Canaan ites
would be mainly through generally recognised signs ; a
method of intercourse to some extent in use in Palestine to
this day.
Closely akin to this assumption is the idea that the
literary language of South-Western Asia was Assyrian.
Dr Naville grounds this on the fact that while numerous clay
tablets emanating from Palestine have come down to the
present day, nothing survives in any other script or language.
The argumentum e silentio is notoriously inconclusive. It is
doubly so in the present case when the difference in durability
is considered between the tablets of kiln-burned clay and
sheets of brittle papyrus, or skins liable to decay, the only
materials for writing on available to the Palestinian in
ordinary cases. It is quite true that diplomatic corres-
pondence and legal documents were written in the script and
language of Babylon, a relic of the far back conquest ; but
from that it cannot be argued that there was no indigenous
literature. For centuries after Norman-French ceased to be
spoken in England, Acts of Parliament and certain legal
deeds were inscribed in that tongue. One may not argue
from this that neither Chaucer nor Wiclif lived or wrote in
English. Although no fragments of literature have been
preserved on contemporary parchment or papyrus, yet the
form of the letters in the inscription of Mesha of Moab
proves that a long process of evolution from pictograph lay
behind ; this in turn implies much practice in writing. The
style of the composition also indicates that the author of the
inscription was not unaccustomed to writing narrative. This
is confirmed by the Siloam inscription, the composition not
of a court-historiographer, as that of the Moabite Stone
416 APPENDICES
probably was, but of the foreman of the excavators employed
by Hezekiah.
As evidence of the correctness of his hypothesis that the
Pentateuch was written on clay tablets with cuneiform
characters and in the Babylonian tongue, Professor Naville
adduces the phrase which recurs so frequently in Genesis,
" The Book of the Generations of, etc.," which he regards
as the terminal formula of a tablet. But this phrase is
restricted to Genesis alone of the books of the Law ; and not
even in that book does it occur with sufficient frequency to
justify his conclusion. Again, while the phrase in question
appears occasionally at the end of portions of the book of a
length to suggest transcription from a tablet, e.g. Gen. ii. 4,
on the other hand there are cases where the formula must
have been at the beginning not the end of the paragraph,
e.g. chap, xxxvi. 1, 9; xxxvii. 2; it may further be observed
that the paragraphs in chap, xxxvi. are out of proportion
short to be the transcription of narrative tablets. Many of
the narratives in Genesis suggest by their form that to
some extent they had been transmitted as oral traditions.
In regard to the later books Dr Naville thinks that they
were sometimes impressed with chisels on clay tablets, and
at others scratched on stone or metal plates. This double
usage he thinks is implied in the account of the naming of
Maher-shalal-hash-baz (Is. viii. 1). Naville recognises that
in this instance we have a case of engraving on a stone
tablet or metal plate, but thinks that when Isaiah speaks of
" a man's pen " he means to distinguish between the ordinary
writing which he is to employ in this case, and the legal
script which it might have been supposed would have been
used. This view, while not in itself improbable, really implies
nothing as to how the rest of the prophecies of Isaiah were
written. That certain legal documents were a century ago
usually written in " blackletter " is no proof that people
wrote treatises in that script, or that books were printed in it.
Even of less probative value is the fact that in Gezer two
contract tablets in cuneiform have been found dated 649 and
647 B.C. respectively. At that time Palestine formed part of
the Assyrian Empire ; and so the diminished kingdom of
Judah whose king Manasseh was then a captive in Babylon
had been conquered by Esarhaddon. It was not extra-
ordinary that legal contracts should be written in the
language of the suzerain power ; but this fact would give no
information as to what literary activity there was among the
natives, or in what language it found expression. Another
APPENDICES 417
script was in use in Gezer ; stones have been found with the
words engraved on them Tahoum Gezer, "the boundary of
Gezer." The language is Aramaic, and the characters are
what Dr Naville calls Phoenician. Aramaic was the second
official tongue of the Assyrian Empire ; much as in Ireland
four or five centuries ago, for certain government documents,
Norman - French was the language employed, in others
English, while the language of the people was Erse. An
outsider might argue that English was the literary language
of Ireland ; Shakespeare, it might be shown, represents
Macmorris the Irish captain in the army of Henry V. as
speaking English. From this it might be maintained that
the language of the Irish in Shakespeare's days was English ;
all the more so that he makes Frenchmen in that play speak
French. Reference might be made to those masters of
English — Swift, Burke, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Moore, and
hosts of others, all Irishmen. Yet there was all the while
the splendid Celtic literature, the value of which we are only
now beginning to estimate, dating from before the English
Conquest altogether. Dr Naville, it seems to us, has been
guilty of a similarly erroneous judgment to that which we
have attributed to the above supposed outsider.
Another point in the hypothesis advocated by Professor
Naville is the relation in which he assumes Hebrew to
stand to Aramaic ; he regards the former as being merely
a patois of the latter. The request which Eliakim
and those with him made to Rabshakeh (2 Kings xviii.
26) appears to imply that as "the people on the wall"
would not understand a speech delivered in Aramaic, it
was a language different from that which they ordinarily
spoke. The Scottish dialect is regarded as quite distinct from
literary English ; yet Gladstone had no difficulty, though
speaking in literary English, in rousing the Scottish people
in his Midlothian campaign to the utmost enthusiasm.
Notwithstanding, Professor Naville thinks the request of
Eliakim quite compatible with Hebrew being merely a
patois of Aramaic. It surely is not to be imagined that only
the ignorant rabble of Jerusalem crowded to the city wall
when the representatives of Hezekiah had their conference
with the Chancellor of the great king, the King of Assyria.
This subject may be approached from another point. It
may be admitted that it is difficult to determine precisely
the amount of difference which must be proved to exist
between two modes of speech, before it may be considered
clear that they are different languages and not merely
2 D
418 APPENDICES
different dialects of the same language. Further, it is
obvious that the difficulty in the case before us is increased
by the fact that the different languages of the Semitic group
resemble each other so closely in their vocabulary and their
grammatical accidence. Still bearing all things in mind, it
seems impossible to maintain that the differences which
separate Hebrew from Aramaic are merely dialectic. In the
first place, both languages have syntactical peculiarities which
not only distinguish them from each other but from all
other Semitic tongues. On the one hand, in regard to
Hebrew, there is " the vav conversive " ; the strange idiom
by which the simple conjunction u or ve when preceding the
preterite of a verb makes it future, but when it precedes a
future makes it have a past sense. This peculiarity the
Aramaic does not share, as indeed does no other language
Semitic or other. On the other hand, Aramaic has a dis-
tinguishing characteristic which marks it off from Hebrew,
as also from other Semitic languages. Instead of the definite
article the Aramaic has the status etnphaticus ; the syllable
ah or a is added to any substantive which is to be made
definite. This syllable is affixed in accordance with the
same rules as regulate the prefixing of the article ha in
Hebrew. Although in regard to accidence there is less
difference, still even there the distinguishing peculiarities
are marked. In conjugation the verb in both languages
conforms to the Semitic type, yet the Aramaic is much
more simple and symmetrical in the arrangement of its
"conjugations" or verbal forms. In Aramaic these are
alternately active and passive ; the latter being distinguished
from the former by having the syllable ith or eth prefixed.
In Hebrew the difference is mainly indicated by an internal
vocalic change as Piel becomes Pual in the passive, and
Hiphil, Hophal ; the passive of the Qal is formed by pre-
fixing the syllable ni. The preformative hith, analogous to
the ith and eth of Aramaic, is the sign not of the passive but
of the reflexive in Hebrew. If Hebrew is compared with
Eastern Aramaic a further difference emerges ; the prefor-
mative of 3rd per. masc. sing, and plur. impf is nun, not as in
all other Semitic languages, including Western Aramaic,/^///.1
It may be added that while the Phoenician dialect of
Hebrew seems to agree in regard to its conjugations with
that of Jerusalem, the dialect of Moab seems to have had a
1 In regard to the substantive verb the preformative is sometimes
lamed, as in the Mandasan subdialect of Eastern Aramaic and in the
Aramaic of the Bible.
APPENDICES 419
more elaborate system akin to the Arabic. When the above
considerations are taken into account, it would appear to be
impossible to agree to Dr Naville's view and regard Hebrew
as simply a patois of Aramaic. The difference is greater
than that which separates French from Italian, or Spanish
from Portuguese ; surely Dr Naville would not consider
Portuguese a patois of Spanish, or French of Italian.
This leads to consideration of another point in Professor
Naville's theory of the evolution of the present text of the
Old Testament. According to his hypothesis Ezra not only
translated the Law out of Babylonian into Aramaic but
committed his translation to writing in the Aramaic script of
Assouan. It is difficult to understand why Dr Naville has
thought it at all probable that Ezra, who presumably was
acquainted with the Aramaic script in use all over Syria,
found alike in the inscriptions in Sinjirli, on the weights in
the palace of Sargon in Nineveh, and on the envelopes of
the contract tablets of Babylon, would so go out of his way
to use the script of Assouan in preference. In the greater
portion of the text both of his Schweich Lectures, and of
his book on Biblical archaeology, Professor Naville speaks as
if the Aramaeans wrote their language only in the mode of
writing adopted by the Jews of Assouan to suit the writing
materials open to them in Egypt. There is no evidence
that when the Jews of Palestine and the Phoenicians wrote
Aramaic they did not use the characters used by the
Aramaeans around them. That scribes both in Jerusalem
and in Samaria would be able to decipher writings sent them
from Assouan is probable enough, but from this it does not
follow that when writing, not on papyrus but on parchment,
they would use any other script than that which he calls
Phoenician, but which was really the universal Semite script.
Ezra it may be presumed would write in Jerusalem, as he
had been accustomed to do in Babylon, with the characters
of ordinary Semitic. It seems to us that Dr Naville has
encumbered his theory unnecessarily with this additional
hypothesis that Ezra employed the script of Assouan.
The further portion of Dr Naville's theory that Ezra
not only transcribed the Torah into Aramaic script but
translated it into the Aramaic language involves a singular
reversal of the age-old opinion that the Aramaic Targums
were interpretations of the Law rendered necessary by the
fact that the Jews had largely abandoned Hebrew. Accord-
ing to Professor Naville's theory, the Aramaic was the
original and the Hebrew which has been so long regarded as
420 APPENDICES
the original was really the Targum, the interpretation. His
presupposed history of the extant Hebrew text is a daring
hypothesis. Certain of the Jerusalem Rabbin translated
from Ezra's Aramaic successively the Law, the Prophets, and
the fCthubhim into the local patois of Judea. The theory in
question is so bizarre that in order to ensure ourselves
against misrepresenting it the very words in which it is pro-
pounded must be given. " When the Rabbis wished to give
to their religion, to their laws, to their national life which rests
entirely on their books, a thoroughly and exclusively Jewish
character, they made a dialectal modification; they turned
their books into the language spoken at Jerusalem ; but
since that had no script, they had to invent one, and they
adopted a modified form not of the Canaanite but of the
Aramaic, the one real book-language which they already
knew" {Archeology of the Old Testament, p. 207). Another
feature in this hypothetical history may be drawn from the
Schweich Lectures : " As it came out of Ezra's hand, this law,
their sacred books, had no national garb, it was only a part
of the Aramaic literature. It was necessary to separate the
books of Moses and the Prophets from foreign writings, so
that they should become exclusively Jewish. The hated
Samaritans had that privilege, they could not be confused
with the Jews or with their other neighbours, since they had
their Pentateuch written in their own script and in their own
dialect, which differed but little from that of the Jews. I
believe the Rabbis did the same as the Samaritans "
{Schweich Lectures, p. 76). There are three points here :
(1) The present Hebrew Scriptures are a translation from
Aramaic ; (2) The present Hebrew character is the invention
of the Jewish Rabbis, a modification of the script of the
Assouan papyri ; (3) That this double process was carried
out in imitation of the "hated" Samaritans.
To take these points seriatim: — (1) The extant Hebrew
Scriptures are a translation from the Aramaic. There are
already the well-known Targums, to restrict attention to the
Torah, the Targums of Onkelos, and of Jonathan ben Uzziel,
so-called, besides the variation of the latter, the Targum
of Jerusalem. Professor Naville has only indicated in the
most indefinite manner the period when he thinks the
Jerusalem Rabbin made their translation from Ezra's
Aramaic. As, however, he holds that Our Lord delivered
His discourses in Aramaic, and notes that He quotes the
twenty-second Psalm in Aramaic while hanging on the cross,
as evidence "that the sacred books must all have been in
APPENDICES 421
Aramaic," it would seem that he holds that the Rabbinic
translation was made after the fall of Jerusalem. The
ordinarily received date of Onkelos is early in the third
century of our era; Stenning {Enc. Brit, "Targum") would
place it a century later. It evidently is the traditional
version handed down from meturgeman to meturgeman ; it
has greater affinities with the Biblical Aramaic than with the
Aramaic of the Talmud, or the Aramaic of the Palestinian
Lectionary. Does Dr Naville maintain that the so-called
Targum of Onkelos is really Ezra's version of the original
Mosaic cuneiform? If the Rabbinic Hebrew was introduced
in the beginning of the second century A.D., surely every
copy of Ezra's version would not have disappeared by then.
If it was still extant, there would be no need of another
Aramaic version. Consequently it would seem that Professor
Naville is obliged to assert the Targum of Onkelos to be
really the version which Ezra made from the cuneiform
tablets left by Moses. Hence the present Hebrew text of
the Pentateuch is a translation of the Targum. It would
seem to be an investigation by no means involving abnormal
ability or information to demonstrate which, the Targum of
Onkelos or the Massoretic Hebrew, was the original and
which the version. Every student of Hebrew knows riK eth
the sign of the accusative. When the student passes to
Aramaic he finds that IV yath occupies the same position in
Onkelos, as also in the Peshitta, that is to say whenever eth
appears in the Hebrew then yath appears in the Aramaic,
Eastern or Western. When, however, the student directs his
attention to writings composed in Aramaic he finds this
particle practically absent. In Biblical Aramaic it occurs
only in Dan. iii. 12, and then only as supporting the oblique
case of a pronoun ; in the Sinjirli inscriptions the equivalent
particle m vath occurs only once and in a similar grammatical
construction (Sinjirli Hadad, 28). In translations made from
Greek which has no such particle IV yath is not found, as may
be seen by reading the Peshitta New Testament and the
Palestinian Lectionary. ' When one compares either the
Targum of Onkelos or the Peshitta with the Hebrew text, it
is at once seen that yath occurs always and only when eth is
found in the Hebrew ; just as Aquila represents the untrans-
latable particle by aw in his version. It would seem that
Aramaic had this particle originally, but it had fallen into
disuse as far back as the eighth century B.C. ; and it was
revived in the Targum much as the antique forms of the
Authorised Version were used in the translation of the
422 APPENDICES
Bensly fragment of 2 Esdras when it was inserted in the
text of the Revised Version of the Apocrypha. Other
instances might be brought in which the Aramaic is con-
formed to the Hebrew, but what we have referred to is
patent to every reader. Confirmatory of the originality of
the Hebrew is the treatment of poetical passages in the
Targum. Wherever there is obscurity in the Hebrew there
is the endeavour to remove the obscurity in the Targum.
In Gen. iv. 7, we have in the Hebrew the difficult sentence
rendered in the Revised : " If thou doest well shalt thou not
be accepted ? and if thou doest not well sin coucheth at the
door ; and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule
over him." This is without doubt very obscure. Onkelos
renders thus according to Etheridge's translation : " If thou
doest thy work well is it not remitted to thee ? and if thou
doest thy work not well, thy sin unto the day of judgment is
reserved, when it will be exacted of thee, if thou convert not :
but if thou convert, it is remitted to thee." It goes without
saying that the Targum is the simpler : while by no
possibility can the Hebrew be regarded as an attempt to
render the Aramaic ; the Aramaic is a paraphrase of the
Hebrew taking the word for "sin " as meaning " sin-offering,"
and interpreting the enigmatic last clause as implying that
Cain would not lose his birthright as elder brother. A yet
more striking instance is found in the fifteenth verse of the
preceding chapter : " I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed : it shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The version of the
Targum is clearly an attempt to explain the Hebrew : in no
way can the Hebrew be regarded as an attempt to give a
rendering of the Aramaic It is as follows : " I will put
emnity between thee and between the woman, and between
thy son and her son. He will remember thee what thou
didst to him at the beginning, and thou shalt be observant
unto him at the end." No one can doubt that of these two
the Hebrew, not the Aramaic, is the original ; the Hebrew
is figurative and poetic, the Aramaic is plain prose ; that a
translator may turn poetry into prose is what is not
infrequently seen, but that prose in the original should
become poetry in the version is an unknown phenomenon in
the history of literature. There are numerous other passages
in Onkelos exhibiting the same characteristics.
The assertion (2) that the modern Hebrew character is
the invention of the Jewish Rabbin, a modification of the
script of Assouan need not occupy much time as it is
APPENDICES 423
supported by no proof; what resemblance there is, is due to
the fact that both scripts resulted from writing with a reed
pen on papyrus The Greek transcription of the tctra-
grammaton shows that in earl)- Christian times vnv and yodh
were as indistinguishable in the script then in use among the
Jews as they are in the Kefr Bir'im inscription. In the
script of Assouan, on the other hand, these two letters are not
by any means strikingly like each other. The present square
character was the result of independent evolution. Had
Professor Naville's theory been correct, the Septuagint would
have been translated from a text written in the Aramaic
script of Assouan, and variations of the LXX. from the
Massoretic would have been shown mainly to have been due
to mistakes of letters like in that script ; but differences
attributable to this cause have not been numerous enough
to attract attention. On the other hand, Professor Kohn
rested part of the proof of his Thesis, that the LXX. trans-
lated from the Samaritan Recension, on the fact that some
of the variations could be explained by confusions of letters
like each other in the Samaritan script. Origen's interpreta-
tion of the "tittle" in Matt. v. 18, proves that the square
character was in use in the third century of our era; this
leaves but little time for the process Professor Naville's
theory presupposes. This second point may be dismissed
as unproved and improbable.
The remaining point (3) is that this translation from
Aramaic into Hebrew was made in imitation of the
Samaritans. The most rudimentary knowledge of the
period in which this alleged translation was produced would
make the inquirer aware of the hatred and contempt with
which the Jews regarded their Northern co-religionists. In
the Talmud they are spoken of as "Cuth;eans," and some-
times as " the foolish people of Shechcm." That the despised
"Cuthaeans" had translated the original Aramaic of the
Scriptures into Hebrew would, one should have thought,
have afforded the Jerusalem Rabbin an opportunity of
denouncing the " Cuthaeans " as guilty of another enormity,
rather than to suggest to them a thing which they themselves
ought to follow. But the very assumption that before the
Jews, the Samaritans had rendered the cuneiform inscrip-
tions which contained the sacred Torah into Aramaic, and
further turned that Aramaic into "the local patois oi
Jerusalem" is itself improbable. These assumptions involve
difficulties which in their very nature appear to us insuper-
able. It is true that like the Jews the Samaritans have an
424 APPENDICES
Aramaic Targum of the Law. Who made this Aramaic
version of Pentateuch ? Certainly it could not be Ezra. If
Onkelos represents the original Aramaic of Ezra, the most
casual inspection of the Samaritan Targum reveals the
differences which separate these two. The Samaritan is
written in a different dialect of Aramaic, one which has
closer affinities to Hebrew. Further it has to be noted that
the Samaritan Targum is much closer to the Hebrew than
is that of Onkelos. This may be seen by comparing the
curse on the serpent from Onkelos as given above with the
Samaritan version : " I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; he shall bruise
thee as to the head, and thou shalt bruise him as to the
heel." Comparison may also be made with the Divine
exhortation to Cain as found in Onkelos and given above
with the Samaritan, which is as follows : " If thou doest
well thou shalt be accepted, if thou doest not well, sin
croucheth at the door and to thy hand is repentance (Castelli
conversio), and thou shalt rule over him." If for the moment
we accept Professor Naville's hypothesis, it may be admitted
that the translation of these passages into Hebrew would
result in something very like the Massoretic. As above
shown any attempt to render the Onkelos version of these
passages into Hebrew would result in something very
different from the received text.
This brings us to what appears to be the crowning
difficulty of accepting Dr Naville's theory. Is it con-
ceivable on the ordinary doctrine of probabilities that from
two such widely differing Aramaic versions a Hebrew text
should emerge which is practically identical, the same in
Samaria as in Jerusalem ? Even if the improbable sup-
position is assumed that Ezra's Aramaic version as well
as the original Samaritan Aramaic have both utterly
disappeared, and so the present Targums are not those
from which the Hebrew version has been made, still it
must be maintained as amounting almost to an impossibility
that two independent versions in Aramaic, versions of the
assumed cuneiform text, should be so closely alike that
when independently translated into Hebrew the two versions
were all but absolutely identical.
After considering Professor Naville's theory in the most
favourable way, admitting to the utmost every probability
which can be urged in its favour, we are compelled to
conclude that it is not worthy of acceptance.
INDEX
Abbaside persecution of the Samaritans,
48
Aboda Zara quoted, 38
Abu'l Fath, Chronicle of, described,
147-8
hymn on sufferings of Samaritans,
267-8
on cause of Samaritan rebellion under
Zeno, 45
on Christ's birth and life, 165
on Christ's disciples and apostles,
165-6
on date when sacrifices ceased on
Mount Gerizim, 120
on identity of the Essenes and
Samaritans, 164
Addis, Dr, on Hezekiah's destruction
of the High Places, 372
Adler, the Samaritan Chronicle and
its publication, 148-9
the Samaritan Chronicle, analysis
of, 155-9
concealment of the Sacred Roll of
the Law, 161
Alexander the Great, his intended
desecration of Mount Gerizim
averted by the influence of Hizqiah
the High Priest, 163
story of his destruction of Samaria
criticised, 31
Alexander, son of Aristobulus, defeated
by Gabinius, 37
Alexander Jannaeus and his widow held
Samaria as part of their dominions,
35
425
Alexandria, Jewish influence in the
city of, 319
use of Hebrew by Jews discontinued
there, 320
Alexandrian Version of Pentateuch,
peculiarities of, 341-2
Alphabet, the, evolved from hiero-
glyphics in Babylon and Egypt,
204-5
the tables of, in Semitic script, 222
the Semitic, its relation to the Minoan
alphabet, Appendix, 404-11
Phoenician origin of the Greek, 233
regularity of the order of the letters
in the, and the importance of
its fixity in connection with
cryptic writing, 218
Alphabetic poems in Hebrew literature,
217-18
in Samaritan, 266
Amos, his references to ritual worship
in Northern Israel, 78-9
his use of technical ritual terms, 80
Anastasius, Samaritan rebellion in
time of, 45
Angels, the doctrine of, whence derived,
74-5
Samaritan belief in, 187
Antagonism between the worship of
JHWH in Northern Israel and
on Mount Zion considered, 352
Antediluvians, the genealogy of, in
Samaritan Pentateuch reviewed, 344
Antiochus Epiphanes, treatment of the
Jews by, 33
Antiochus the Great, treatment of
Samaritans by, 32
426
INDEX
Antonines, the, destruction of Samari-
tan literature under, 260
the review of Samaritan history
under, 41, 169, 260
Apocalyptists, the, their doctrine of
God as localised and visible, 179
Apollonius has Samaritans in his army,
34
Aqabiah, concealment of vessels of the
Tabernacle, 160
Aramaic, Biblical, compared with
Samaritan, 246-51
abandoned by Jews in Egypt,
especially in Alexandria, 320
gradual introduction of, into Palestine
by Assyrian colonists, 256-7
unknown in Southern Israel in time
of Sennacherib, 256
Aristeas, on the origin of the Septua-
gint, 320
Artaxerxes, ordered sacrifices to be
offered on Mount Gerizim, but
these forbidden, 162
Ashima, Jews assert that the Samaritans
worship, 178
Ashmunazar, the inscription on his
sarcophagus, 224
Askenazim, use of synagogues as a
sort of club by the, 122
Assouan papyri, their confirmation of
Biblical history, 29
Assyrian deportations, their design, 1 7-20
Astruc, his hypothesis of the existence
of two documents in the books of
Genesis and Exodus stated, 358-9
relation of his hypothesis to modern
Biblical criticism, 358-9
Atonement, description of the Great
Day of, as it is observed by the
Samaritans, 134
the Great Day of, the Jewish and
Samaritan modes of its observ-
ance reviewed and contrasted,
134-5
B
Baal, the name as a factor in Israelitish
nomenclature, its significance,
378-9
the name of the Supreme God of the
Canaanites, 63
Baal, the name of local deities, 63
Baal-worship, its influence on Israel, 63
Baalim, impure rites in worship of the,
64-5
Baasha adopts measures to prevent the
Northern Israelites worshipping
in Jerusalem, 82
Babylonian story of the Creation, 185
Bagster, list of variants between
Samaritan and Massoretic texts,
279-82
Bar-Cochba, war of, in Samaritan
history, 167
Bashan, province of, held by the
kingdom of Syria, 3
Benjamin of Tudela, his account of
the Samaritans in twelfth century,
49-50, 120
Bennet, ascribes the first two verses
of Joshua to E, although JHWH
only divine name used, 359
Book of the Dead, portions of, placed
in foundation of Egyptian temples,
375
Booths, in connection with Feast of
Tabernacles,mentioned in Leviticus
and Deuteronomy, 374
Budge, Dr Wallis, on Egyptian
religion, 64
Burial of the dead, practice of
Samaritans at, 139
Burney, Dr, on narrative of Hezekiah's
destruction of the High Places, 372
Buxtorf, Dr, on recency of the
Samaritan Pentateuch, 276
asserts Pentateuch written in square
characters, 276
Calves, golden, the worship of,
considered, 71-2
worship of, how rendered, 76-7
kissing of, explained, 77
Canaanite cities described, 6l-2
aboriginal tribes, corrupting influ-
ence of, 62-3
Carmina Samaritana, Gesenius on,
266-7
Cerealis slaughters Samaritans in the
time of Vespasian, 39
INDEX 427
Cheyne, Dr, referred to, 365, note, on the temple treasure: 0:1 Mount
Simon the Just Gerizim, 163
Chinese language, the only ideographic D.ilman, Trof., on the difference
tongue, 203-4 between Jewish and Samaritan
Christ, Samaritan account of, 165 Passover rite-, 141-2
Christian influence on Samaritan Dallu, a bucket in Hittite, according to
religion, 192 Conder origin of la '.■':. 20S 12
Chronicles, books of, dates and his- Daniel, lo^k of, argument for it.-
torical value considered, 106-7, note inclusion in the Canon of O.T.,
Chronology of Josephus proved to be 360, note
inaccurate, 30 Dead, the, buried in coffins 1 y the
Circumcision, as observed by Samari- Samaritans, 140
tans, 137 Death, how met by the Samaritms, 139
contrast between Jewish and Samari- Decalogue, the, its authorship, 72-3
tan rites, 137-8 special sanctity 1 ', 192
Cities of the Plain, significance of the Degeneration, religions of the Canaan-
prophetic reference to their destruc- ites, 64
tion, 95-6 illustrations of its effect on Israt . I :
Coffins, use of, a peculiarity of the Deity, belief in a Supreme, univer.-ality
Samaritans, 140 of, 84-5
Colonists deported from Northern Demonology among the Sam uitans, 19c
Israel, who were the}' ? 20-2 Deportation of conquer d peoples ly
Commodus Emperor, his persecution Assyrian, its de.-ign, 17-21
of Samaritans, 169 1 earing of, on the Jewish element in
Conder, Colonel, on the earliest form Samaria, 17-20
of the Pentateuch, 207-96" Deuteronomy, date of, as sugge tc 1
localises the Avites near Nineveh, 21 by the Samaritan Pentateuch,
on Hittite origin of the Semitic 37C-5
script, 211-2 authorship, Mo-.ic, -uggestcd ly
Covenants, the seven which bind the choice or Mounts F.i .A and
Samaritans, 175 Gerizim lor the ratiticati 1 o'
Cowley, Dr, on Mehablah, a Samari- Israel'; covenant with III W 1 1 ,
tan Satan, 1 90 6-7
Creation, Babylonian story of, 185 higher critical account of it a'.thur-
the doctrine (if, taught ly the ship, 65-6, 361-2
Samaritans, 1S1-2 to t! e f regi ins. .' : -
tablets of Nineveh less primitive icrilio in Deal llicji I hue
than those of Genesis, 382 1 tioned in, (A -9
the ten words of. 184-5 not written to ei-.j in woi : :, on
Critical theory, higher summary of Mount Zion aloii' , 69-70
argument against, 384-6 Deutsch on Saniaiit.m v< r.-ion oi
Cuthah identified by Dr Pin. he.- a Pentateuch cuik i e<!, 2,v8
Kutu, near Babylon, 21 De Wette canii \ the iritical hyrotln
into Joshua, 358
Diodorus Siculns, Alexander tin' liic.it
poisoned by Antipaler, 1 ' ,;
D, symbol for Deuteronomit. 358 Dispute between Jew and San
D (daletli) confused with R (res/i), before Ptolemy Philorr.etci dc-
292-4 scril ed, 32-3
Daliya, Samaritan High Priest frus- Doctiines common to Jews and
trates Ptolemy's attempt to obtain Saniaiitans, and theii relation to
D
INDEX
variants between the Samaritan
and Massoretic scripts, 3 1 1-2
Dove, image of a, alleged by Jews
to be worshipped by Samaritans,
179, note
Driver, Dr, on Wellhausen theory,
criticised, 373-4
E document, Ephraimite, 361
uses Elohim, 358
Ebal and Gerizim, why chosen by Moses
for ratification of Israel's covenant
withJHWH, 13-14
Ebal described, 14
on the stones on which the Law was
there engraved, 118
Ehud recognised as judge, 155
Eichhorn's theory as to the seventy-two
elders who translated the Septua-
gint, 321
development of Astruc's hypothesis,
358
Eli and Samuel, tendency to national
unity under, 26
caused the schism by usurping the
High Priesthood, 154
Eliashib, an old man when Nehemiah
came to Jerusalem, grandfather of
Manasseh, 364
Elijah's active ministry mainly west of
Jordan, 3
sacrifice on Carmel, bearing of on
ritual of Northern Israel, 77-8
unless had worshipped in Jerusalem,
Jewish honour of him inexplic-
able, 82
Elijah and Elisha in the Samaritan
chronicles, 158
may have worshipped in Jerusalem,
383, note
Elisha assumes a different attitude to
Jehoshaphat from what he does to
Jehoram, 82
Elohim and JHWH interchanged, 299
Ephraim and Manasseh, Samaritans,
their trick, 167
Epiphanius on Samaritan heresies, 43
on Samaritan belief in angels, 187
Esarhaddon, appeal of deported
colonists to, considered, 22-3
Eschatology of Samaritans, its resem-
blance to John's Apocalypse, 196-7
Eternity of God, a Samaritan doctrine,
177
Evans, Sir Arthur, on Minoan script,
215-7, Appendix III., 404- 1 1
Ezekiel and the origin of the so-called
Law of Holiness, 362
Ezra, on the illegality of Jewish inter-
marriage with Samaritans, 1 18
reason for thinking he was not the
author of the Priestly Code,
367-9
terminates friendly relations between
Jews and Samaritans, n 8-9
Fetichism, African, descriled, 64
Fishing, the letter tzade pictograph of
a person fishing, 216
Flood, story in Genesis more primitive
than the corresponding story in
Babylonian records, 382-3
Foreigners resident in Galilee hostile
to the Jews, 35
Frankel's theory of a Samaritan inter-
polation of their Pentateuch from
the Septuagint, 329
Galilee, history of, under monarchy in
Samaria, 3
inhabitants, deported by Tiglath-
Pileser, 3
inhabitants, why they escaped per-
secution by Antiochus Epiphanes,
36
relation of, to Jewish revolt against
Antiochus Epiphanes, 35-6
stronghold of Judaism, 3')
Garmun connives at circumcision, 42-3
Gaster's, Dr, Samaritan Book of Joshua,
149. ISO
Genealogies, antediluvian, explained
as given in Samaritan text, 344
INDEX
429
Genealogies in the Septuagint, 344,
345
variants in, as formed in the Samari-
tan Septuagint and Massoretic
versions considered, 345-7
Genesis, first chapter, variants between
Samaritan and Massoretic texts
noted, 280
first five verses, how read by Samari-
tans, 235
primitive character of ethnological
tables there, 382
Gerizim, Mount, described, 6-9
one of the seven things separated
from Godhead before all else, 183
how long sacrifices were offered in
temple there, 119-20
the true Bethel, 157
treated as God's appointed site for
national worship, when was it,
117
on Heavenly Paradise, and earthly
Eden, 198
Gesenius, classification of variants
between Samaritan and Massoretic
texts, 282-305
collection of Samaritan hymns by,
266
on Asaria de Rossi's theory of cor-
ruption of the LXX. by Alex-
andrian Greeks, 328-9
on differences between the Samaritan
and Massoretic Pentateuch
reviewed and criticised, 305
on grammar accommodated to that
of the Samaritan dialect, 239-45
thesis on the Samaritan Pentateuch,
276
Gezer, antiquarian discoveries in, 61-2
Gibbon on Roman Empire under
Hadrian and the Antonines, 40
Ginsburg, on variants involving the
matres lectionis, 326
Glory of the Lord, hypostatised by
Marqah, 180
God, glory of, 175, 181
Graetz, on scene at Naioth when
Samuel prophesised, 98-9
Guerin, account of Nablus, 8
description of ruins on Ebal and
Gerizim, 13, 14
II
Hadrian, Emperor, in Samaritan
history, 167-9
erects a temple to Caesar on Mount
Gerizim, 168
Hadrian's original favour to the
Samaritans withdrawn, 168
rebukes Jewish High Priest for
idolatry, 167
Haupt, P., on our Lord's origin, refuted,
22, note
Hebrew, language spoken in Palestine
in time of the Patriarchs, 239-40
greater resemblance to Samaritan
than Jewish Aramaic, 258
language spoken both by Samaritans
and Jews in time of Haggai and
Malachi, 257
Heidenheim on Samaritan hymns, 262
in his collective poem on Unity of
God as taught by Samaritans,
180
Hellenic Empire, condition of Samari-
tans under, 31-2
Heraclius, resultless victories of, 46-7
Hermon, Mount, seen from top of
Mount Ebal, 14
Herod, alleged cruelty of, to the
Samaritans, 165
generous treatment of the Samaritans,
37-8
Hexateuch, the, how it looks to a
reader ignorant of higher critics,
356-8
critical theory of its constitution and
origin, 358-63
Hezekiah as Assyrian Viceroy,
probability of, 4, 14, 18
his Passover for all Israel, date of, 4,
16
Hierarchies, angelic, not recognised by
Samaritans, 188
Higher critical theory, argument
against it summarised, 384-6
Historic character of Samaritan
religion exhibited, 143-4
History of a people revealed in its
language, 236-7
Hittite writing, hieroglyphic nature of,
206
430
INDEX
Hizqiah, the Samaritan High Priest
and Alexander the Great, 163
Hogarth on the death of Alexander
the Great by poison, 163
Hommel on the cuneiform origin of
the Samaritan script, 208
Hypothesis, higher critical, its origin
and development, 358-9
Hyrcanus, John, conquest of Samaria, 35
Samaritan temple burned by, 141
Samaritanism, alleged conversion to,
141
I
Ibri character, the name given to the
Samaritan in the Talmud, 350
regarded as that in which the Law
was first given,
Images not used in Samaritan worship,
200
Immortality of the soul, a doctrine of
the Samaritans, 187
Intermarriage between Jews and
Samaritans forbidden by Ezra and
Nehemiah, sketch of this incident,
28-30
criticism of this action, 29-30
Israel, deportation of under Sargon,
not universal, 15,16
Israelite prophets, proof that they were
not evolved from the so-called
medicine man of the heathen, 84-5
religion, essentially historic character
of, 143-4
Israelites, differences between the
Northern and Southern tribes con-
sidered and explained, 26-7
number of under Joshua, 59
Israelitish disunion under ihe Judges
and its results, 60 I
Itacism, what it proves in regard to a
MS., 285
J document, Judaean in origin, 361
usesJHWH, 358
Jaddua, did he ever meet with Alex-
ander the Great, 107, note, 112
JE document, not a law-book, 371
Jerome on Samaritan practices and
tenets, 43
Jerusalem, fall of, not mentioned in
Samaritan history, 166-7
Jewish charges against the Samaritans,
178
sacred history superior to the corres-
ponding Samaritan history, 172
theology compared and contrasted
with Samaritan, 199-200
theory of the origin of the Samaritans,
15
Jews, sects of the, referred to by Abu'l
Fath, 164
separation of the, from the Samaritan,
and the importance of fixing MS.
date, 356
Josephus, account of the Samaritan
submission to Antiochus Epiphanes,
33-4
bias of, against the Samaritans, 33
on the presence of Israelites in
Northern Palestine subsequent
to the deportations under Sargon,
16-17
proof of the unreliability of his
writings, 366
testimony as to the Essenes, 103
writings of, known to the Samaritans,
164
Joshua, absence of book of, from the
Samaritan Recension, its bearing
on the higher critical theory of the
otigin of the Pentateuch, 359-fo
book of, assumed to be known by
Israelites according to the
prophets Amos and Hosea, 96-7
evidence that it was known to
Samaritans, 10-II
no part of the Law when the Samari-
tans got their recension of the
Pentateuch, 359
placed by Jews on different plane
from the Five Books of Moses,
359-60
reason why it is excluded from
Samaritan canon, 97
Joshua, Samaritan book of, described,
146-7, 155-6
resemblance to the Jewish book, 150-1
INDEX
431
Joshua, the Jewish leader, honour paid
him by the Samaritans, 145
Josiah's religious reformation, its bear-
ing on the Samaritan claims to be
of Israelite origin, 16-20
its influence on the Samaritan
people, 20-2, 1 1 5-7
Judea, kingdom of, described: its
pastoral character, 4
Judges, legends restraint in, 378
Justasa, a robber set up as king,
44
Justin II., severe oppression of Samari-
tans by, 46
Justin Martyr, his connection with
Samaria, 40
Justinian's oppression of Samaritans
and the rebellion it caused, 45-6
Juynboll, Dr, on Samaritan book of
Joshua, 147
K
Kabhodh (Divine Glory), hypostatised
by Marqah, 180
Kahle, Dr Paul, on Samaritan Targum,
267, note
Karaites resemble doctrinally the
Samaritans, 201
Khosrou Purviz, his conquest of Pales-
tine, 46
many Samaritans crucified by, 46
Kingship, why more powerful in Davidic
kingdom, 104-5
Kircheim's classification of variants
between fhe Massoretic and
Samaritan texts criticised, 284
Kohn, Dr, classification of the same
criticised, 284
on alleged corruption of Septuagint
by Alexandrian Greeks, 321
on possible theories to explain the
variances between the Samaritan
and the Septuagint texts of the
Torah, 327
on Samaritan Torah as foundation
of Septuagint, 329-35
criticism of the above theory, 335-41
Lammens, on assistance given to
Saracen conquerors of Palestine, 47
Lampridius on alleged introduction by
Heliogabalus of Samaritan rites
into the syncretistic-worship of the
God whose name he bore, 41
Lang, Andrew, referred to, 64
Law, the book of, discovered in temple,
Dr Naville's theory about it, 375-7
was it the whole Torah ? 376
an individualised copy of the law, 375
it was recognised to be the book of
the law although by hypothesis
the Jews had no law-book, 66,
375-6
the whole of it, known to Amos,
evidence for, 81-2
historic incidents refened to by Amos
and Hosea, 94-5
proof that it dates as far back as
Samuel, 381
Leaf, on knowledge of Phoenician
alphabet in Crete, 1400 B.C., 233
Levirate law, observation of, by
Samaritans, 138
differences between Jewish and
Samaritan observances, with
reasons for them, 139
Lewis, Mrs, her Palestinian Lectionaries,
166
Lidzbarski, quoted, 224
Lost ten tribes of Israel discussed, 15
M
M (mem) and N (;/««) confused, 294-5
Macalister, Dr, discoveries at Gezer,
61-2, 64
Maccabaean script, examined, 224-5
struggle, the Samaritan immunity
during it, 33-4
MacEwen, Prof., on sprinkling of the
Paschal lamb's blood on the fore-
head of children, etc, 132
M'Fayden, Prof., on Ephod and Tera-
phim, 72-3, note
Madden, History of Jewish Coinage, 227
432
INDEX
Magic, believed in by the Samaritans,
190
Magus, Simon, claim to be the Paraclete,
195
claim to be the Samaritan Christ, 1 95
Man, constitution of, as taught in
Samaritan theology, 186
Manasseh, the fugitive Jewish High
Priest, critical theory about him
reviewed, 364
his influence on the text of Samaritan
Torah, 325
probable author of the Samaritan
doctrine regarding Mount
Gerizim as God's appointed seat
of national worship, 1 1 7-8
reason why he excluded the book of
Joshua from the Samaritan
Torah, 153-4
Manasseh and his brother Ephraim
trick Samaritan worshipper, 167
Mandeville, Sir John, account of the
Samaritans in fourteenth century,
51-2, 120
Manir, ben, name given to Samaritan
Messiah, 192
Manuscripts, early, how they were
written, 285-6
Marqah, the Samaritan theologian, his
Book of Wonders, 268
date and teaching of, 1 74
Marriage ceremony, Samaritan and
Jewish contrasted, 138
Martyr, Justin, on the Paschal lamb,
131
Marwick, Wm., on Samaritan worship
of a dove, 179, note
Massoretic recension of Pentateuch, the
importance of determining its
relation to the Samaritan, 355
text, reasons for discounting its
critical value, 324
was it prior to the Samaritan ? 283
Mattura, his hymns referred to, 262
Maundrel, Henry, account of Samari-
tans in seventeenth century, 53-4
Menahem, estimate of population in his
time, 17
Merx, Dr, on Samaritan Christology,
194
poem on the Thaheb, 194, 268
Messiah, Samaritan belief in the, 193
Millennium, the, in Samaritan doctrine,
196-7
Mills, Dr, description of Samaritan
synagogue at Nablus, 121
on dress worn by the Samaritans when
at worship, 122
on Samaritan creed, 175
on Samaritan disbelief in prayers for
the dead, 140
on Samaritan doctrine of the resurrec-
tion, 197
on Samaritan right to observe the
Passover at a later date when
unable to do so at the correct
date, 130
Mohammedan influence on Samaritan
religion, 192
influence on Samaritan theology,
175-6
Mohammedanism, rise and victorious
progress of, 47-8
Monotheism of the Samaritans, 175
Montgomery, Dr, hymn of Samaritans
translated, 177
on legal relation between Jews and
Samaritans as recognised by
Jews, 38
on persecution of Samaritans by
Abbaside khalifs, 48
on resistance of Samaritans to
Khosrou Purviz, the Persian
conqueror of Palestine, 46
on Samaritan Feast of Unleavened
Bread, 132
on Samaritan names for angels, 188
on Samaritan names for devils, 189
on story of Garmun and Baba Rabba,
42-3
Morinus and the Samaritan Pentateuch,
275
Morning and evening prayers offered
by the Samaritans, 140-1
Mosaism in Northern Israel, its vitality,
proof of, 58 ff.
Moses in Samaritan theology almost
equivalent to Christ in Christianity,
192-3
the one mediator of a divine revela-
tion, 191
prayer of, a hymn translated, 263-4
INDEX
433
Mother roll of Massoretic and Samari-
tan texts written in angular script,
295-6
Music, its place in prophetic worship of
JHWH, 93
no, in Samaritan synagogue worship,
122
Mythology, the theology of childhood,
173
N
Nablus, city and valley of, described,
7-8
roll of Samaritan Pentateuch des-
cribed, Appendix II., 396-403
Nachman, Moses ben, notice of his
visit to Palestine in thirteenth
century, 5 1
recognises likeness of Samaritan to
Maccabaean script, 227
Nassau, R. H., referred to and quoted,
64
Naville's theory of the original language
of the Old Testament, Appendix
IV., 412-24
on the Roll of the Law found in the
time of Josiah, 375
Nazirites in Northern Israel, their sig-
nificance, 81
Nehemiah, date and historic value of,
106-7, note
his termination of friendly relations
between Jews and Samaritans,
119
his zeal against Jewish intermarriage
with the Samaritans considered
and criticised, 29
Neubauer's Samaritan Chronicle, its
discovery, 146
review and analysis of, 159
Nicaso, wife of Manasseh and daughter
of Sanballat, 29
Nicholls, Samaritan grammar referred
to, 253
Nomenclature, significance of Biblical,
especially as regards the use of
JHWrf and Baal in Hebrew
proper names, 57-9
O
Objections to the higher critics' views
about the origin and development
of the Hexateuch stated, 363-4
Omnipresence of God, a Samaritan
doctrine, 177-80
Origen, influence of, in modifying the
text of the Septuagint, 325
on the resurrection as not taught by
Samaritans, 197
on Roman persecution of Samaritans,
its reason, 41
Original text of Samaritan Torah,
reason for dating it in Ahab's time,
325
Ox, the, was it a symbol of JHWH, 72
P, symbol of Priestly Code, 358
Palestine, condition of, in Joshua's day,
60
not fully subdued by Joshua, 60
the three nationalities settled there in
Joshua's time, 59-60
Paradigms of verbal forms, 270-4
Parallelism absent from Samaritan
poetry, 268
Passover, the, adjustment of it by the
Samaritans to the Sabbath, 126
contrast between the Jewish and
Samaritan, 1 30-1
description of a Samaritan, 126-30
feast carefully observed by Samari-
tans, 124-5
ritual, summary of differences between
the Jewish and Samaritan forms,
141-2
Samaritan method of fixing its date,
125-6
Pattie, R. B., explanation of Hezekiah's
Great Passover, 16
Pentateuch alone canonical among the
Samaritans, 145
complete in all its parts when it
reached Samaria, proof, 363
critical theory as to its origin and
constitution criticised, 361-3
2'E
434
INDEX
Pentateuch, portions of it, possibly due
to Samuel and the schools of the
prophets, 377-8
read through by Samaritans between
sunrise and sunset, 376, note
reasons for believing the Samaritans
had a complete book before
the date of Ezra, 384-5
Samaritans, historical evidence ren-
ders probable its existence prior
to the date assigned to the Jewish
Pentateuch by the critics, 54-6
weakness of the critics' reasons for
including the book of Joshua in
it, 360-1
Personality of God, a Samaritan
doctrine, 176
Petermann, Dr, list of variants between
Samaritan and Massoretic texts,
279-82
on blood sprinkling in the Passover
ritual, 132
on Samaritan mode of reading
Hebrew, 234-5
on the four ruling angels in Samaritan
teaching, 189
Philo on the Essene community, 103
Polygamy though permitted unknown
among the Samaritans, 138
Population of Palestine in time of
Joshua, 59
Prayer offered by Samaritans both
morning and evening, 140-1
Priesily Code (so called according to
critics) brought to Jerusalem from
Babylon by Ezra, 362-3
difficulty of accepting the critics'
account of its prompt acceptance
at Jerusalem, 367-70
difficulty of P being received in
Samaria at the instance of
Manasseh, 368-9
evidence for its priority to Deuter-
onomy, 375
objections to its early date considered
and met, 382-4
proof that it must have been
known in Samaria before Ezra
came to Jerusalem, 370
Priests, why more influential in Southern
than Northern Israel, 27, 104
Procopius'account of Samaritan rebellion
under Anastasius, 45
on alleged Samaritan conversion to
Christianity, 46
Pronunciation of Hebrew letters con-
sidered, 231-2
Prophetic and Essene communities
compared, their points of resem-
blance and contrast, 103
denunciation of worship at the High
Places, cause of, 65-6
guilds under Elijah and Elisha, 101-2
responsibility for the books of Samuel
and Kings in the Canon, 107-8
role in Israelite religion, 144
worship (prophetic) and synagogue
worship practically identical, 97
worship included reading of the Law
and musical services, 93
worship of JHWH, its form in
Northern Israel, 91-3
Prophets alleged to be authors of
historical books of the Bible, 105-8
Prophets and priests, relations to one
another in Northern and in
Southern Israel, 85-9
Prophets, customary badge or mark to
distinguish them, 102-3
description of how they occupied
their time, 105
in Northern Israel, how far their
influence tended to supersede
that of the priests, 89-92
in Northern Israel more powerful
than in the South, 27, 103
political impotence in Davidic King-
dom, 104
schools of the, described, 97-106
Ptolemaeus Lagi deports Samaritans to
Egypt, 3a
Purim, Feast of, as observed by
Samaritans, 136
contrast between the Samaritan and
the Jewish observance, 136
Qiblah, the Samaritan, 161
the Israelite, 161
the true decided, 161
INDEX
435
R
Rabbin, on the unlawfulness of any
translation of the Law out of
Hebrew into a foreign tongue, 321
exception in favour of Greek, 322
on the variations the translators
introduced, 322
Religion, its relation to ritual, 173-4
Resurrection, Samaritan belief in the
doctrine of the, 197
Revelation of God's will, believed in by
all nations, 83-4
Samaritan belief in their possession
of, through Moses, 191
Rhyme, use of, in Samaritan hymns, 265
Ritual worship in Northern Israel
considered and described, 77-81
Rolls, the most ancient form of books,
230
Rouge, Dr, on Semitic script as derived
from Egypt, 209-1 1
Sabbath, the, strictly observed by
Samaritans, 123
Samaritan adjustment of the Pass-
over to, 126
Sakhra, a Holy Stone of the Samaritans,
described, 12
tradition regarding it, 12
Samaria, city and state of, described, 2
considered as an Assyrian Province,
its extent and character, 4
historic interest of, 5, 6
present extent and condition of, 7-9,
14
early history of, 25-7
record of its history under the
Ilasmonarans and Herodianp,
34-6
united to Judah under Herod, 37
Samaritan sea -coast occupied by
Philist'nes, 5
Samaritan Aramaic and the Targum
in that tongue considered, 246
compared with Hebrew and Chaldec,
246-55
Samaritan Hebrew literature, scanti-
ness of, 260
Samaritan aspect of Israelite religion,
independent of and more primitive
than that furnished by Judaism,
evidence of this, 355
Samaritan buiial, method of, described,
139
Samaritan Canon, reason for non-
inclusion of literary prophetic
prophecies, 1 10
reason for the non-inclusion of the
books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
and the Kin«s, 108-10
Samaritan claim to Israelite oiigin
considered, 14-24
claim to Israelite origin shown to be
well-founded, 352
Samaritan claim to a share in Jewish
temple worship, 23
creed outlined, I 74-5
Samaritan disfavour with Romans,
evidence of, 41
history of the people, 25 ff.
history as affected by Bar-Cochba,40-i
history as suggesting the possession
of a copy of the whole law by
that people in the time of
Esarhaddon, 379-80
history as suggesting the existence
of the whole law in the time of
David and Solomon, 380-I
hymns collected by Gesenius, 174
independence of the Jews, 553-4
independence of the Jews, considered
in its bearing and value in icgaid
to the Judaic religion and its
sacred books, 25-6
Samaritan letter to Antiochus Epi-
phanes, 33-4
Samaritan literature in Aramaic and
Hebrew very scanty, 260
latest only in Arabic, 260
sacred, destroyed by Hadrian, 16S-9
Samaritan Mosaism ptii r t 1 fall of
Northern Kingdom, 552
Samaritan Passover, consequence of
difference of date compared with
the Jewish, 39
observance and its present site
described, 12-13
Samaritan Pentateuchal ■ manuscripts
enumerated, Appendix I., 387-95
436
INDEX
Samaritan Pentateuchal text, date of
divergences from Massoretic, 316-8
Pentateuchal text, was it copied from
an MS. in the square character ?
289-91
Pentateuchal text, was it a retrans-
lation of the Septuagint, 327-8
Samaritan pronunciation of the Hebrew
letters, peculiarity of, 232
rebellion under Zeno and its punish-
ment, 44
recension of Torah, evidence for its
antiquity based on the script in
which it is written, 355
relations to the Jewish revolt under
Nero, 39
ritual like that of the Jewish
Sephardim, 121-2
ritual worship before the captivity,
proof that it resembled the
ritual common in Judea even in
post-exilic times, 79-81
Samaritan Sanhedrin, 39
script compared with that of
Maccabaean inscriptions, 225-6
script, evolution of, 225-6
script, Jewish allegation that the
Law was first given in, 350
Greek version, was there a ? 32
sympathy with Romans under
Pompey, 37
Targum considered, 261
Torah, original text of, probably as
old as the date of Ahab at latest,
325
worship on Gerizim, a replica of
Jewish worship on Mount Zion,
30-1
writing, peculiar features of, 228-9
Samaritanism, proof that it is an earlier
type of Israel's religion than that
established in Judea by Ezra, 200
Samaritans, description of their physical
appearance, 24
Samaritans, feast of the New Moon still
celebrated by, 123-4
Samaritans, the, flight to Britain
alleged, 48
history of, under the Antonines, 41
history of, during the Crusades not
recorded, 48
Samaritans, history of, under the
Hellenic Empire, 31-6
persecution of, under Hadrian, 41
persecution of, under Christian
emperors, 41-2
persecution of, under the Eastern
Empire, 43-4
pertinacity of their faith and its
independence of the Jews, 46
seek refuge from persecution in
Persia, 46
welcome the victorious Saracens, 47
worship now confined to the Nablus
synagogue alone, 120
Samariticon, the, account of, 238
origin of Septuagint alleged from,
33C-3
Samuel the prophet, his share in the
production of the Pentateuch,
377-8
Samuel and the prophets, editors not
authors of Pentateuch, 381-2
Sanballat, Governor of Samaria, 28
father-in-law of Manasseh, in
his temple on Mount Gerizim and
its history, 9-10, 11 2-3
Sargon, his account of conquest of
Samaria and deportation of its
inhabitants, 18
Sayce, Dr, on Hittite writing, 206
quoted, 331
Scaliger, Joseph, and the Samaritan
book of Joshua, 147
Script, the angular, its development
described, 296
Scripts, the oldest known Hebrew,
what are they ? 291-2
Semitic script, whence derived? 206-10
new theory of its origin, 212-20
Septuagint, the, differences between it,
and the Samaritan and Massoretic
recensions of the Torah, 323-4
evidence that it was not edited from
a Samaritan recension of the
Torah, 343, 355
importance of, in Greek-speaking
world, 324
its origin considered, 320-4
relation of later Talmudic Judaism
to it, 321-2
uncertainty as to its text, 324-5
INDEX
437
Septuagint, use of by our Lord and his
apostles, Paul and Peter, 321
was it translated from a text which
implies a copy of the Torah
brought into Egypt by Jeremiah
or in his time ? 349
witness to the integrity of the
Pentateuch at a date antecedent
to Ezra, confirmed by the
Samaritan text of Torah, 350-1
was there a Samariticon ? 32
Seven things, the, for which the world
was created according to Samari-
tan teaching, 183
Shechem, Valley of, its historic associa-
tions, 5-7
Shema, the, not repeated by the
Samaritans, 177
Shobach, story of the defeat and death
of, 1 5 1-2
Simon the Maccabee, coins of, inscrip-
tions in Samaritan characters,
349
probably High Priest at Alexander's
invasion, 365
Simon the Just, not identical with
Simon II., 365, note
Sin, original, doctrine of, not known
to Samaritans, 187
Smith, Robertson, Professor, quoted,
173
Solomon's ceremony at dedication of
temple quite in keeping with
the Priestly Code, 381-4
Spirituality of God, a Samaritan
doctrine, 177-8
Stafford, Roland G., account of
Samaritan Passover, 13
Stahelin and De Wette carry the
Astruc hypothesis into Joshua,
358
Stanley, Dean, quoted, 365, note
Stars, the, Samaritan association of
angels with, 190
Stones, the twelve, on Mount Gerizim,
described, 10
Story of Garmun and Baba Rabba,
42-3
Suetonius referred to, 40
Surdi, Samaritan name of Artaxerxes,
162
Tabernacle, the, symbol of national
unity in early Israel, 61
Tabernacles, the Feast of, as observed
by Samaritans, 136
Talmudic tract Kuthim contains dicta
regarding the relation of Jews and
Samaritans, 38
Targum, the Samaritan, described, 180
Temples, the, to JHWH in Upper and
Lower Egypt, a proof that sub-
ordinate shrines were allowed in
later Jewish history, 67-8
Testimony to a people's religion, what
gives it value and reliability, I
Thaheb, belief in the, 193
coming of the, or Messiah and the
end of the world, 172
date of his advent, 196
Theodosian Code, its penalties for
Samaritan worship, 44
Thukot (Succoth), Pharaoh had a
country house at, 331
Thursday, the luckiest day for a
wedding, 138
Tiamat, mother of the gods, split up
by Marduk, in Babylonian plan of
Arabia, 185
Titus not noticed in Samaritan history,
166
Tobiah the Ammonite, significance of
his having a chamber in the temple
at Jerusalem, 1 18
Tolideh, a Samaritan chronicle de-
scribed, 146
Torah, the, date of alleged bringing
of it to Samaria by Manasseh,
1 1 1-2
complete, known in Samaria, before
the return of Zerubbabel to Jeru-
salem, proof of this, 117
known to Samaritans before the days
of Ezra, 232
sanctity of, in Samaritan belief, 191
Tractarian movement in England, its
analogy to Ezra's reforms, 386
Tradition regarding the twelve stones
on Mount Gerizim, 10
Transjordanic province, its tenure by
Samaritans precarious, 2-3
438
INDEX
Transjordanic province, claim to it by
Mesha of Moab, 2-3
Tribes, the lost ten, question considered,
14-15
Truth of God, hypostatised by Marqah,
180
U
U V (yav) confused with I Y (_yodh~)
through mistake of Jewish scribes,
290
Universe, the created, threefold nature
of, a point of Samaritan belief, 1 84
Unleavened Bread, Feast of, observed
by Samaritans, 132-3
Valle, Pietro della, on Samaritan
communities, 52
secures copies of Samaritan Penta-
teuch, 275
on dwellings of Samaritans in
Damascus, 52
Value and reliability of any testimony
to a people's religion, secret of, 1
Vespasian's treatment of the Samaritans,
38-9, 166
Vilmar, his edition of Abul Fath's
Chronicle, 148
W
Warren, Sir C, his account and plan
of the ruins at Nablus and Mount
Gerizim, 10-12
on village of Makkada, 132
Weeks, Feast of, or Pentecost, celebrated
by Samaritans, 132
contrast between Jewish and Samari-
tan modes of celebration, 1 33
Wellhausen on Ezra as source of the
Pentateuch as now received by the
Jews, 363
Will, freedom of the, not taught in
Samaritan theology, 187
Winckler, Otto, Dr, on the cuneiform
character of the first Pentateuchal
text, 207-91
Words, the ten, of Creation, described,
184-5
World, the, Samaritan teaching as to
what it was created for, 183
Worlds, a succession of, a part of
Samaritan creed, 183
Worship on the High Places, described,
70-1
Wreschner, Dr X., on Samaritan
tradition, crnTcised, 201-2
Wright, Dr, on the Empire of the
Hittites, 206
Writing, the discovery of, no date can
be fixed for, 203
Xerxes, alleged by Josephus to have
been the monarch whom Nehemiah
served as cup-bearer, 30
reasons against this allegation, 30
Xiphilinus, epitomes of, 40
Year, the New, Feast at, observed by
Samaritans, 133
the New, contrast between Jewish
and Samaritan, 133
Zeno, Emperor, Samaritan rebellion
under, 44
Zerdusht-Zoroaster called king, 162
Zerubbabel's temple at Jerusalem,
claim of the Samaritans to co-
operate in building it, 28
rejection of the claim, 28
31
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