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SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH

The distinctive form of the Torah handed down in the Samaritan community. These five books constitute the only Scripture in the Samaritan tradition.

Among the Samaritan Pentateuch’s most notable features is its adaption to Samaritan theology, preeminently exhibited in the expansion of the Ten Commandments by incorporating the commands of Moses in Deut. 11:29-30; 27:2-7 after Exod. 20:17 in order to make worship on Mt. Gerizim the Tenth Commandment. Following this insertion, the Samaritan Pentateuch’s version of Exod. 20:24 reads, “in the place where I have caused my name to be remembered,” instead of “in every place where I will cause my name to be remembered.” This adjustment (also made throughout Deuteronomy) effectively rules out Jerusalem as an acceptable place of worship. Other elements of Samaritan theology featured in this Torah include defending the honor of God (by removing anthropomorphisms and by incorporating an angel of God in place of a direct encounter between the deity and humans) and occasional legal differences rooted in Samaritan interpretation of the law.

Textual critics generally agree that the Samaritan Pentateuch probably arose ca. 100 b.c.e. However, the type of text that the Samaritans adopted at that time was already in use more widely among Jews in Palestine in the Hasmonean period. For example, an important scroll of the book of Exodus from Qumran, 4QpaleoExodm, exhibits all of the textual characteristics of the Samaritan Pentateuch, lacking only the so-called “sectarian commandment” concerning Mt. Gerizim. This “proto-Samaritan” textual tradition, as it is called, is characterized by expansions of the text to achieve harmony within and between biblical books, by “modernization” of archaic or difficult elements in the Hebrew text, and by extensive use of matres lectiones (Hebrew consonants employed as vowels to assist in reading).

Bibliography. J. D. Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect. HSM 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); J. E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran: 4QpaleoExodm and the Samaritan Tradition. HSS 30 (Atlanta, 1986).

Jeffrey S. Rogers






Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)

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