The History of the Samaritans

Any serious examination of the Samaritan text tradition begins with the people who maintained it. The Samaritans present themselves as the remnant of Israel located in the central hill country, principally around ancient Shechem and Mount Gerizim. Their origins intersect with the fragmentation of the united monarchy (931 B.C.E.), the subsequent history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the Assyrian conquests culminating in the fall of Samaria (722 B.C.E.). The biblical account records that Assyria deported large segments of Israel’s population and resettled the land with peoples from other regions of the empire (2 Kings 17). The result was a complex demographic reality in which survivors of the northern tribes and new inhabitants lived contiguously. In that environment, a Yahwistic—indeed, a Jehovah-centered—community persisted in and around Shechem. Over time that community solidified its identity, claimed a heritage from Ephraim and Manasseh, and retained a priestly line said to descend from Aaron through Eleazar.

By the Persian period, the relationship between Judeans in Jerusalem and those at Shechem grew increasingly strained. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah preserve the memory of opposition to Judean rebuilding efforts after the return from Babylon (537 B.C.E.). In the time of Nehemiah (arriving 445 B.C.E.), Sanballat the Horonite emerges as a leader from the north who opposed the restoration of Jerusalem’s walls. The historical details behind Sanballat and the precise link between his family and the later Samaritan priesthood remain debated, yet the later erection of a rival sanctuary on Mount Gerizim crystallized the split. Josephus associates that sanctuary with the time of Alexander the Great (late 330s B.C.E.), although some elements may reach earlier into the late Persian period. What is clear is that the Samaritans, by the Hellenistic era, had a functioning cult centered on Mount Gerizim, a Pentateuch-centered Scripture, and a distinct script tradition that preserved an ancient form of Hebrew writing.

The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch as their Scripture, not the Prophets or Writings. Their theological emphasis on the sanctuary at Mount Gerizim, rather than Jerusalem, and their insistence that the divinely chosen place of worship lay at Gerizim rather than Zion are foundational identity markers. In the first century C.E., the Samaritans continued as a recognizable and separate people, as reflected in the New Testament’s geographic and cultural references. Despite later population declines, the Samaritans preserved a manuscript tradition of the Pentateuch that is both remarkably consistent and, in important places, distinct from the Jewish Masoretic tradition.

The Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritan Pentateuch (often abbreviated SP) is a Hebrew text of the five books of Moses copied in the distinctive Samaritan script, a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew letter forms used in ancient Israel before the widespread adoption of the Aramaic square script. The SP presents the Pentateuch as read and transmitted in the Samaritan community, and it is accompanied in Samaritan liturgy by an Aramaic Targum (Samaritan Targum) that renders the Hebrew into the community’s Aramaic vernacular. The Samaritan tradition also preserves a famed manuscript known as the Abisha Scroll, ascribed by Samaritan tradition to Abisha, a priest of the thirteenth generation from Aaron. While the Abisha attribution reflects the community’s reverence for antiquity, paleographic and codicological realities point to medieval copying; the Samaritan text, like all scriptural traditions, stands within a history of painstaking transmission rather than a single unbroken physical artifact from the wilderness period.

The relationship of the SP to the Jewish Masoretic Text (MT) is central for textual studies. By weight of evidence and method, the MT remains the base text for the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes, who labored between the sixth and tenth centuries C.E., refined an already stable Jewish consonantal tradition by stringent cross-checking and marginal systems. Departures from the MT are considered only when supported by strong external and internal evidence. In this framework, the SP functions as an independent Hebrew witness that often helps confirm the original reading, occasionally preserves an older or clearer wording, and at numerous points exhibits harmonizing or sectarian adjustments that are clearly secondary.

The differences between SP and MT are commonly grouped in several categories. A large tranche consists of orthographic matters, especially plene spellings (the fuller use of matres lectionis) and consistent vocalic indicators. These spellings smooth reading but rarely affect meaning. Another substantial layer comprises grammatical regularization and stylistic harmonization. A hallmark of the SP is the tendency to make parallel passages match, especially between Deuteronomy and Exodus or Numbers. Where MT leaves parallel laws or narratives with minor differences—differences fully compatible with natural language variation—the SP frequently aligns them verbatim. This harmonizing impulse, present already in some Second Temple copies of the Pentateuch, does not make the SP unreliable as a whole, yet it marks a proclivity that must be weighed in every textual decision.

Beyond orthography and harmonization lies a small but decisive subgroup of sectarian readings, the most conspicuous being the elevation of Mount Gerizim as the chosen place of worship. Two textual nodes illustrate this. In Deuteronomy 27:4, the MT directs Israel to erect stones on “Mount Ebal,” whereas the SP reads “Mount Gerizim.” The Samaritan reading is reinforced in the SP by nearby contextual adjustments and by liturgical practice that locates the covenant ceremony on Gerizim. Even more distinctive is the SP’s insertion after the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 of a command concerning the altar at Mount Gerizim, consciously adapted from Deuteronomy 27. The insertion appears in the SP as a discrete commandment. A representative rendering is: “You shall build an altar to Jehovah your God on Mount Gerizim, an altar of stones; you shall not wield an iron tool on them; you shall build the altar of Jehovah your God of uncut stones; and you shall offer burnt offerings on it to Jehovah your God.” The effect is to crystallize Gerizim’s centrality within the Decalogue’s immediate context. This addition is not present in the MT and is absent from ancient Jewish copies. Its dependence on Deuteronomy shows it to be a secondary, sectarian development that serves a clear theological aim.

At the same time, several significant SP readings deserve positive consideration. One well-known case is Exodus 12:40. The MT reads that “the sojourning of the sons of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.” The Samaritan Pentateuch and the main Greek tradition reflect a longer phrase: “the sojourning of the sons of Israel who lived in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.” That wording avoids chronological tension with the Abrahamic timeline and reflects the span from the call of Abram (Genesis 12, traditionally 1943 B.C.E. in literal chronology schemes that count back from 1446 B.C.E. for the Exodus) through the Exodus (1446 B.C.E.) as four hundred and thirty years. The expanded wording maintains the integrity of the Pentateuch’s internal chronology and harmonizes with the larger canonical presentation. When the SP supports this clearer sense and the reading is corroborated by other ancient witnesses, the textual critic may judge the longer wording original and the shorter an accidental or intentional abridgment.

Another domain where the SP offers strong comparative value is the primeval and patriarchal chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11. The Samaritan numbers often align with those reflected in the Greek tradition against the MT. The data are intricate, and any single solution must consider the possibility of independent chronological systems within antiquity. Here, the SP’s alignment with a non-Masoretic stream shows that the Hebrew Vorlage behind the Greek translators sometimes resembled, or was identical to, a Hebrew form akin to the SP, at least in selected passages. The critic weighs these instances on a case-by-case basis, granting the MT primary standing, yet acknowledging when the multiplicity of early witnesses indicates a reading earlier than the Masoretic consonantal tradition.

Regarding the divine name, SP manuscripts write the Tetragrammaton in Samaritan script consonants corresponding to JHVH. In quotations and translations we render the Tetragrammaton with “Jehovah,” not “the LORD,” to reflect the consonantal reality. The Samaritan scribal tradition treats the name with reverence; in liturgical recitation, circumlocutions and traditional pronunciations are employed. The existence of the divine name written fully in Samaritan manuscripts provides an additional, independent witness to the antiquity and ubiquity of the Tetragrammaton in the Pentateuch’s textual transmission.

The Ten Commandments provide a small laboratory for seeing harmonization at work in the SP. The order of “house” and “wife” in the coveting prohibition differs between Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 in the MT; in the SP, the tendency is to align the wording to a single standard. This does not create new theology or reverse commandments, but it reduces natural literary variation that the MT preserves. Dozens of such details exist across legal, narrative, and genealogical texts—always inviting the critic to distinguish between earlier textual plurality and later harmonizing tendencies.

Pre-Samaritan Texts

The Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized the study of the Pentateuch by exposing the diversity of Hebrew textual forms circulating in the last centuries B.C.E. Among those forms is a class of manuscripts that scholars describe as “pre-Samaritan.” These are not Samaritan manuscripts in the confessional sense; rather, they are Jewish copies of the Pentateuch that display the very harmonizing features characteristic of the SP, yet lack the distinctively Samaritan sectarian readings (most notably, the Gerizim-centered changes). Their importance for textual criticism cannot be overstated, because they demonstrate that the harmonizing editorial method was not born within the Samaritan community; it was a broader scribal habit present in Second Temple Judaism.

The most cited example is 4QpaleoExodm (4Q22), a paleo-Hebrew Exodus manuscript dated paleographically to the late second or early first century B.C.E. It contains extensive harmonizations, including the importation of Deuteronomic phrasing into Exodus to smooth parallel laws and the adjustment of narrative seams where the Masoretic tradition preserves more compact or less aligned forms. Other Qumran Exodus and Numbers manuscripts share similar tendencies. In these texts, the scribe appears to be guided by a desire to eliminate tension between parallel legal formulations and to remove perceived repetition by consolidating passages, or conversely to fill in perceived gaps by echoing fuller parallels.

Two implications follow. First, the core of what later defines the SP’s profile—alignment of parallels, grammatical smoothing, and expansions drawn from nearby contexts—was already a recognized scribal practice among Jews before the emergence of the distinct Samaritan sect. Second, because these pre-Samaritan features do not include the Gerizim-centered adjustments, the sectarian elements in the SP can be isolated as later, community-specific developments. This dual insight allows the textual critic to use SP readings with appropriate confidence when they are supported by pre-Samaritan Hebrew evidence and/or other ancient versions, while setting aside overtly sectarian reshaping.

The often-discussed case of Deuteronomy 27:4 illustrates the method. The SP reads “Mount Gerizim,” whereas the MT reads “Mount Ebal.” Claims have circulated that a Qumran fragment supports the SP’s “Gerizim” in this verse. The fragments are small and damaged, and no decisive pre-Samaritan Hebrew manuscript has been shown to carry an unambiguous “Gerizim” reading at Deuteronomy 27:4. That absence is instructive. It confirms that the sectarian Gerizim reading does not belong to the older harmonizing stream. The same observation holds for the insertion of a Gerizim altar command into Exodus 20; it is unattested in pre-Samaritan material. Where pre-Samaritan texts and the SP jointly attest a reading that is free of sectarian signature and commended by internal considerations—such as giving the more difficult or contextually superior reading—the textual critic has every reason to treat the SP as a weighty witness to an early Hebrew form.

The pre-Samaritan manuscripts also underscore the complexity of textual stability and change. The MT’s strength is not that it stands alone, but that it represents a carefully transmitted line whose overall profile resists the harmonizing and expansionist tendencies found in some Second Temple copies. That resistance is precisely what makes the MT the rightful starting point. At the same time, by comparing MT, SP, pre-Samaritan Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Vulgate, the critic can identify instances where the MT likely carries an abridgment, a copyist’s oversight, or a less precise form that was clarified elsewhere. The SP gains its greatest value in precisely those places where its reading converges with non-sectarian pre-Samaritan material and with one or more ancient versions that reflect a Hebrew Vorlage distinct from, but no less ancient than, the Masoretic consonantal tradition.

Scholarly Editions

Knowledge of the Samaritan Pentateuch in the West expanded dramatically in the early seventeenth century when a Samaritan Pentateuch manuscript made its way to European libraries. The text was first published in a major way in the Paris Polyglot under Guy Michel Le Jay in the 1640s, where the scholar Jean Morin championed the SP’s significance. The inclusion of the SP in Brian Walton’s London Polyglot (1657) ensured broader scholarly access. Those early printings were diplomatic, presenting a single Samaritan text to a European readership that had previously known the Pentateuch only in Jewish Hebrew forms and ancient versions.

The modern critical era for the SP is associated especially with August von Gall’s edition, prepared in the early twentieth century. Von Gall collated a broad spectrum of Samaritan manuscripts and produced a base text with a critical apparatus noting significant variants within the Samaritan tradition. While the Samaritan manuscript corpus is not as vast as the medieval Masoretic codices and fragments, it is nonetheless sufficiently diverse to enable a nuanced apparatus and to reveal patterns of internal Samaritan transmission. Von Gall’s work—subsequently reprinted—remains a standard point of reference for scholars needing a prepared Samaritan text that is not merely a single-manuscript diplomatic edition.

Beyond von Gall, the scholarly landscape includes several pillars that serve textual critics of the Old Testament. Modern editions of the Hebrew Bible that prioritize the MT, such as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) and the ongoing Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), routinely cite SP readings in their apparatus. The Hebrew University Bible Project, devoted to a full-scale diplomatic presentation of the medieval Hebrew text with exceptionally rich apparatus, likewise records Samaritan variants at loci of significance. Because the objective method grants the MT pride of place, these apparatuses allow the critic to evaluate SP readings in context, alongside Dead Sea Scroll witnesses and ancient versions. Far from undermining the Masoretic tradition, such apparatuses show the remarkable preservation of the MT while equipping readers to identify the relatively small number of places where earlier or clearer readings are preserved in other witnesses.

Within the Samaritan community itself and in modern academic circles, new presentations of the SP have appeared that make the text accessible to non-specialists. A notable advance is a full Hebrew edition paired with a modern-language translation that reflects Samaritan vocalization and liturgical practice, set alongside explanatory notes that register major differences from the MT. For textual critics, such editions are valuable as reading texts, but the work of restoring the original wording continues to rest on weighing evidence across all witnesses—MT, SP, pre-Samaritan Hebrew, Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate—always guided by sound internal criteria.

The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch also deserves mention in the context of editions. Although it is an Aramaic translation rather than a Hebrew textual witness, the Targum often mirrors Samaritan exegetical tradition and at times presupposes specific SP readings. Modern editions of the Targum, prepared on the basis of Samaritan manuscripts, aid in clarifying how the Samaritan community understood the Pentateuch and how certain Hebrew variants were interpreted in practice. This contextual information can indirectly assist textual critics in distinguishing between a textual variant and an interpretive tendency.

Finally, the place of the SP in contemporary Old Testament textual criticism is reflected in the practice of aligned texts and synoptic presentations. These resources place MT, SP, and the principal ancient versions in parallel columns, enabling immediate comparison of wording and structure. When used judiciously, such tools reveal both the breadth of agreement and the tight clustering of meaningful disagreements in the Pentateuch. A pattern emerges: the vast majority of readings are shared across the witnesses; harmonizing tendencies explain many differences; a few sectarian changes stand out and can be identified with confidence; and a select number of readings—like Exodus 12:40—show that the SP preserves, in concert with other witnesses, an early, historically grounded form that refines our understanding of the original text. Because the transmission of the Old Testament was providentially safeguarded through meticulous human copying rather than by miraculous stasis, every genuine convergence of witnesses sharpens the critic’s view of the autographic wording and strengthens confidence in the text’s integrity.

The sum of the matter is that the Samaritan Pentateuch is neither a curiosity to be dismissed nor a rival canon to be exalted. It is a disciplined, ancient Hebrew textual tradition preserved by a distinct community, one that illuminates both the stability and the limited, intelligible variability within the Pentateuch’s transmission. The Masoretic tradition remains the base. The SP, read through the lens of pre-Samaritan Hebrew evidence and weighed with other early witnesses, regularly supports that base and, at key points, helps the textual critic restore the earliest attainable wording with clarity and certainty.

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