Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritan Pentateuch is a special version of the Hebrew Pentateuch or the Torah of the Samaritans. He was born at the latest after the destruction of their sanctuary on Mount Gerizim (127 BC), which sealed their separation from the Jerusalem temple cult. As they recognized only the written teachings of the Torah as holy scripture, they have their own version in the original writing of the Pentateuch, namely in a form of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. You do not recognize the oral teaching.

Manuscripts

The first manuscript of this hitherto unknown Toraversion was discovered in 1616 in Damascus. It is written in Samaritan script, one related to the ancient Hebrew consonantal script font that contains only a few vowels. The manuscript was initially regarded as related parties adopted the biblical original text, considered almost worthless since a verdict of Wilhelm Gesenius 1815, however, as for the biblical textual criticism.

This judgment has significantly differentiated, since 1860 in the Cairo Geniza about 400 years older manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch were discovered. His oldest known manuscript in book form ( the Code) was bought by a self- note 1149 and may have been one or two centuries before written. Paul Kahle and others have studied these manuscripts.

The Abischa role contains parts of the Torah (Num 35 EU - 34 EU Dt ), which are dated to the 11th century. She puts together old and younger fragments of this Pentateuch and is revered to this day in the Samaritan community of Nablus, the biblical Shechem, as their Holy Scriptures.

Fragments and individual inscriptions from the Samaritan Pentateuch are from the 3rd to the 6th century.

The first and only critical edition of the manuscripts was 1914-1918 published by the orientalist and theologian Prof. Dr. August Freiherr von Gall.

Relation to other biblical texts

In about 6,000 cases, the text from the Masoretic text differs from that present scientific editions of the Bible is based. A majority of these cases affects only the spelling, eg the difference between The defective and Plene - letters or other formal differences, not substantive statements.

Approximately 1,900 of these deviations are consistent with those of the Greek language Septuagint. They are interpreted as evidence for ancient Hebrew text versions, the two Bible versions and templates are developed independently of those of the Masoretentextes.

A small part of the differences can be explained by the interest of the Samaritans, to represent their cult as the rightful opposite the Jerusalem Temple cult. This applies to an inserted behind ex 20.17 EU bid to build a sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, and for about 20 verses in Deuteronomy that relate to the election of the holy place subsequently at Shechem. The limited number of these interventions is no longer regarded as a cancellation of the entire text, as they had not appealed great match with both the Masoretentext as well as the Septuagint.

Many differences to Masoretentext are linguistic in nature: they simplify ancient and complicated formulations to increase the intelligibility of Palestinian Jews who spoke Aramaic predominantly BC since 539. These adjustments were after the advent of the Aramaic translations of the Bible, the Targums, superfluous. They therefore refer to a high age of the Samaritan Toratextes, which therefore can not have been dependent on the Targums predominantly present proto- Masoretic text tradition.

Among the scrolls from the Dead Sea to Pentateuchtexte found from about 200 BC, similar to the language of the Samaritan Pentateuch, without knowing its specific, related to the Garizimkult insertions. They proved the great antiquity of the underlying textual tradition.

Detected only in marginal notes and quotations is a Greek translation of the Samaritanus, the so-called Samareitikon. There are also Aramaic and Arabic translations of it.

Expenditure

  • August von Gall (ed.), The Hebrew Pentateuch of the Samaritans, Vol.1, Prolegomena and Genesis. Alfred Töpelmann in Giessen in 1914.
  • August von Gall (ed.), The Hebrew Pentateuch of the Samaritans. Berlin 1966 ( photomechanical reprint of Giessen 1918), Reprint: Walter de Gruyter, 1993, ISBN 3-11-009258-1. ( Excerpt online)
  • Abraham Tal ( Ed.): The Samaritan Pentateuch. Edited accor ding the MS 6 (C) of the Shekhem Synagogue. Tel - Aviv University, 1994, OCLC 492,989,975th
Religious text Samaritan alphabet Book of Numbers Book of Deuteronomy Orthography Book of Exodus Shemaryahu Talmon
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