The Samaritan Pentateuch is the text of the Pentateuch (also called the Torah or Law) used by the Samaritans. On the return from the Exile, the Jews refused the Samaritans from participation in worship at Jerusalem. The Samaritans separated themselves socially from Jews, who in return shunned them. Denied access to Jerusalem, Samaritan worship was centred on their temple on Mount Gerizim. This temple was razed to the ground around 100 BCE by the Jews for religious reasons. Then a system ofworship was instituted by the Samaritans similar to that of the temple at Jerusalem. It was founded on the Torah, copies of which had been multiplied in Kingdom of Israel as well as in the Kingdom of Judah. Thus the Pentateuch was preserved among the Samaritans, which they read as one book. The division into five books, however, was later adopted by the Samaritans, as it was by the Jews, in all their priests' copies, for the sake of convenience. This was the only portion of the Hebrew Bible that was ever accepted by the Samaritans as having divine authority.

The form of the letters in the manuscript

There are important differences between the Hebrew and the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch in the readings of many sentences. In about two thousand instances in which the Samaritan and the Jewish texts (Masoretic text) differ, the Septuagint (LXX) agrees with the former. For example, Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the LXX reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the Masoretic text, however, the same passage reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." The New Testament, when quoting from the Old Testament, agrees as a rule with the Samaritan text, where that differs from the Jewish.

See also

• Samaritanism

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. Samaritaanse Thora