The Samaritan Targum

In his article The Samaritan Pentateuch, http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Pentateuch,%20The%20Samaritan author J. E. H. Thompson presents the history of the Samaritan Pentateuch.  The Greek’s knew of the Samaritan Pentateuch in the 1^st century AD – “Origen knew of it”, “Eusebius of Caesarea in his Chronicon compares the ages of the patriarchs before Abraham in the Septuagint with those in the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Massoretic Text”, and “Cyril of Jerusalem notes agreement of Septuagint and Samaritan in Gen 4:8” (I 1).  The Samaritan Pentateuch must have been written at the same time as the Targum Onkelos and Jonathon.

Thompson states in his introduction, the fact that the Samaritan community in Nablus had a “recension of the Pentateuch which differs in some respects from the Massoretic has been long recognized as important.”  The Nablus roll was examined by Dr. Mills who indicated it “has the appearance of very great antiquity, but is wonderfully well preserved” (II 1), “the Jews admit that the character in which the Samaritan Pentateuch is written is older than their square character” (II 2), it is written in the same Aramaic “in which the Jewish Targums were written, sometimes called Chaldee” (V). 

Thompson says the Samaritan Pentateuch was missing for a millennium, until 1616 when a copy was purchased in Damascus by Pietro de la Valle, in 1623 presented to the Paris Oratory, then published in the Paris Polyglot, by Morinus, a priest of the Oratory, who emphasized the difference between it and the Massoretic Text, to have the church intervene to settle which was Scripture, and a fierce controversy resulted  (I 2).  The controversy makes it challenging to find unbiased opinions about the Samaritan Targum. 

In assessing the Relation of the Samaritan Recension to the Masoretic Text and to the Septuagint (III), Thompson criticizes Gesenius’s assessment of the differences because it was “founded on the assumption that the Samaritan Pentateuch is the later” (III 1), and “the assumption of Gesenius and of such Jewish writers as Kohn that the Massoretic text is always correct due to mere prejudice” (III 1. 1 c).  He classifies the variations as being due to either accident or intention, providing examples each in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Massoretic Text, and the Septuagint and Peshitta (III 1 1 & 2).  In his review of the hypothesises (III 2), Thompson states “One has only to compare the Samaritan, Septuagint and Massoretic Text of any half a dozen consecutive chapters in the Pentateuch to prove . . . neither is dependent on the others.” 

Thompson provides a list of recommended books on the Samaritan’s and the Samaritan Pentateuch, all of which can be found in pdf on Archive.org:

• The Samaritan script is found in the Paris and London polyglots.  Walton’s text in the London Polyglot is transcribed in square characters by Blayney, 1790.  (See the paragraph below which contains Abraham Tal’s concern about amendments made by Walton to the Samaritan text published in the London Polyglot in 1657.) 
• Three Months’ Residence at Nablus and an Account of the Modern Samaritans by Rev. John Mills, 1864.
• Fragments of a Samaritan Targum by Nutt, 1874.
• The Samaritans, the Earliest Jewish Sect by J. A. Montgomery, 1907.
• The Samaritan Pentateuch and Modern Criticism by J. Iverach Munro, 1911.

In Abraham Tal’s rendering of the event in The Samaritan Targum to the Pentateuch, Its Distinctive Characteristics and Its Metamorphosis, he confirms the Samaritan Targum was found by Pietro della Vale in the Samaritan community of Damascus, who brought it to Rome in 1616, and nearly 30 years later, in 1645, it was published by Morinus in the sixth volume of the Paris Polyglot.  Since this agrees with Thompson’s account, we can be fairly confident this information is accurate.

In the same paper, Tal alleges that Walton made many amendments to the Samaritan text published in the London Polyglot in 1657, and Walton’s text was used in the Das samaritanische Targum zum Pentateuch published by A. Brull, even though it had been copied in 1514, after Aramaic was no longer spoken in the Samaritan community, and the scribes unfamiliar with the language of the text.  These charges are addressed in the Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Brian Walton, D. D. (1821) which includes Dr. Walton’s Own Vindication of the London Polyglot which is available on archive.org (in pdf) or purchased for a reasonable price from Amazon.  Given the differing opinions, we must test the text and come to our own conclusions, but this is always the case regardless.

That biased opinions exist about the Samaritan text should come as no surprise, since the conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans may go back to “the time of Judges (1100 – 1025 BCE) . . . the beginning of the Samaritan Schism” according to David Steinberg in The Origin and Nature of the Samaritans and their Relationship to Second Temple Jewish Sects.  Steinberg reveals that the foundation of their conflict is their common heritage with the Samaritan’s considering themselves to be direct descendants of the line of Aaron, whereas the Jews consider the Samaritans to be gentiles.

The conflict between the Jews and Samaritans is evident  in the New Testament.  The Jews had a negative attitude towards Samaritan’s, even accusing Yahshua of being one in John 8:48.  The Samaritans did not receive Yahshua on his way to Jerusalem because he was a Jew in Luke 9: 51 – 56.  Both Jews and Samaritans were conditioned by their priests and leaders to hate and avoid contact with each other.

It is a sin to show favouritism James 2:9, God does not show favouritism Acts 10:34, all are equal before Yahweh Gal 3:28.  In his parable of the ‘good Samaritan’, Yahshua spoke of a Samaritan showing mercy for a man who had been robbed and beaten, and he commanded his disciples to ‘do the same’ in Luke 10: 30 – 37.  When Yahshua healed ten lepers, only a Samaritan, a foreigner, returned to thank him, to whom it said “your faith has made you well” in Luke 17: 11 – 19.  A Samaritan woman was surprised when he spoke to her at a well, asking her to give him a drink, and he said if she asked, he would have given her ‘living water’, and revealed himself to her as the prophesied Messiah in John 4: 7 – 29.  Yahshua showed no favouritism based on nationality or gender, and we must follow his example.