The Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritan Pentateuch

A source-witness to the text of the Five Books

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the form of the Five Books of Moses preserved and used by the Samaritan community, written in the old Hebrew (paleo-Hebrew) script that the Jews abandoned after the exile. It is one of the oldest distinct witnesses to the text of the Torah, and the Samaritans hold it alone as Scripture, receiving neither the Prophets nor the Writings.

It differs from the Masoretic (Jewish) text in some six thousand places, most of them small matters of spelling and grammar. A number of differences are substantial: the Samaritan text agrees with the Greek Septuagint against the Masoretic text in many readings, which shows that it preserves an old and independent line of transmission. Its most marked sectarian change is the commandment, added in its form of the Decalogue, to build an altar on Mount Gerizim, the holy mountain of the Samaritans.

Value as a witness

Because it parted from the main Jewish stream in antiquity, the Samaritan Pentateuch helps to recover older readings, to weigh the differences between the Hebrew and Greek traditions, and to see where the text of the Torah was still in some motion before it was fixed.