As to the age and origin of the Samaritan Pen tateuch, opinions have been much divided. We shall enumerate the principal ones.
Ussher thought that the document was the production of an impostor named Dositheus, who lived in the apostolic period, and pretended to be the Messiah. As he falsified the Pentateuch in rnany places, Ussher conjectured that he may have made it out of a Jewish copy and the Septuagint. But it is incorrect to assert, with Photius, that he falsified the Pentateuch. Messianic passages are not perverted in the Samaritan. And the Samari tans gave little heed to Dositheus's pretensions. How unlikely then that they would have received a compilation from his hands.
2. Le Clerc, Poncet, and others supposed that this copy of the law was made by the Israelitish priest whom the Assyrian king Esarhaddon sent to the new colony to instruct them in the worship of Jehovah. This hypothesis is unsupported by his torical testimony. It was not necessary for the priest to make a new document, but to instruct the people out of the existing Pentateuch. Why should he have undertaken the superfluous task of writing a new law-book, when the old was sufficient ? 3. Frankel conjectures that the document was made from the Masoretic text by additions and corruptions which took place gradually, as also from the Septuagint, subsequently to the 6th century. Against this is the testimony of Jerome (Praia/. in Libe. Reg.* et ad Galat. iii. to), which Frankel tries to evade, but most bunglingly. The Talmud itself recognises the existence of the recension; and Frankel quotes two Mishnic authors who refer to it, R. Simon ben Eleasar and R. Eleasar ben Simon. It is needless to add the tes timony of Eusebius of Cmsarea and other fathers. Frankel's alleged evidences of Galileanism are nugatory ; and his remarks upon the document show an inability to get beyond isolated expressions and phenomena into the genius of the work itself. He has a prejudice against the people unfavourable to the investigation of truth (see Ueber den Einfluss der Palaestinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinisehe Hermeneutik, p. 237, et seqq.) 4. Tychsen conjectured that the Samaritans transcribed the work from a Hebrew copy into their own character, in the roth, rrth, or r2th century. This is clearly refuted by the testi monies of Origen and Jerome, who affirm that the Samaritans had the Pentateuch in peculiar charac ters before their times.
5. Many think that copies of the Pentateuch must have been in Israel from the time of Reho boam as well as in Judah, and that they were pre served by the former as well as the latter. Thus the Samaritans inherited the document from the ten tribes. This opinion was first advanced by John Morin ; and is that of Walton, Houbigant, Cappellus, Kennicott, Michaelis, Eichhorn, Bauer, Jahn, Steudel, Mazade, Stuart, and others.
The truth or falsehood of the view is essentially connected with the question of the authorship of the Pentateuch. If Moses wrote the five books which bear his name, it may be plausibly argued that the Samaritan recension v.,as derived from the ten tribes ; but if the Pentateuch did not originate in its present form till the time of Manasseh or Josiah, the view in question is obviously incorrect. It appears to us that the Pentateuch, as we now have it, did not originate earlier than the reign of Manasseh ; and therefore the hypothesis before us must be rejected. It has no valid argument in its favour, all the considerations once urged for it having been proved weak or untenable, such as the national hatred of the two peoples, the fact that the Samaritans admitted no other books than the Pentateuch, and the old Hebrew character in which the Samaritan is written.
6. The origin of this recension must be looked for at the time when the people separated them selves for ever from the Jews, becoming an inde pendent sect. About 4o9 B.C. one Manasseh, of
priestly descent, having been expelled from Jeru salem by Nehemiah, betook himself to the Sama ritans. It is possible that he may have carried with him the first copy of the Pentateuch which the people had ; though it is more probable that they had some before. These they may have got in the time of Josiah, whose ecclesiastical reform extended farther than Judah, since we are told that under him the Levites collected money for the re pair of the temple from Manasseh, Ephraim, and all the remnant of Israel (2 Chron. xxxiv. 9). Single copies of the law may have found their way there among the mixed people that dwelt in Sa maria and the neighbouring parts even then. Yet none of them could have formed the normal codex ; nor could there have been such a docu ment till their temple was built and a separate worship established. An ecclesiastical code would be required then for the first dine. The copy ot the Pentateuch they received must have come from the Egyptian Jews directly or indirectly, since the Samaritan agrees in so many of its readings with the Septuagint against the Masoretic text. Why they did not receive the book of Joshua, as well as the Pentateuch, can only be conjectured. Those who suppose that it formed a constituent part of the Pentateuch at first, affirm that it was not se parated from the preceding five books till after Ezra's time, which agrees with the date we have chosen for the Samaritan Pentateuch. Such as believe that Joshua was not at first connected with the other five books may say that the Samaritans did not wish. for more Jewish writings than were necessary co reg-ulate their worship. We believe that the text which constitutes the proper Samari tan, the authentic copy they assumed for the guide of their religious services, was obtained some time after the Babylonian captivity, when the temple on Gerizim was finished. The priests who went to them from Jerusalem contributed to the result in question, so that they adopted the Pentateuch as their code in the same extent, and substantially in the same form, as the Jews at Jerusalem. It is improbable that the Samaritans themselves first brought the Pentateuch with them into Egypt, as Havernick asserts. Their recension must have been made about the end of the 4th century before Christ. It originated, unquestionably, before the Septuagint was made—i.e. before the reign of Ptolemy Lagi, or Ptolemy Phila delphus his son. The 3d century before Christ is too late a date for it. It is not indeed un likely that after the appearance of the Greek version the Samaritan received emendations or alterations, bringing it into greater conformity to the Greek ; but most of the characteristic read ings belonged to it at first. It received its present form substantially prior to the LXX. Since then, there is scarcely a doubt that it has been corrupted by careless transcription, and smoothed down in many cases by the desire of regularity or ease in pronunciation. The orthography has suffered most ; for there is reason to believe that the pro nunciation of the Samaritans was more imperfect than that of the Jews. At the present day they read the text very differently from the latter. The view of the age belonging to the Samaritan Pen tateuch now given is that of Ant. van Dale, R. Simon, Prideaux, Fulda, Hasse, Gesenius, De Wette, Hupfeld, Hengstenberg, Keil, Bleck, and others. The fact that Hengstenberg, though be lieving that the Pentateuch existed before the ten tribes separated front the other two, holds the post exile origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch, shows the untenableness of a prior date.