Page "Samaritan Pentateuch" Paragraph 34

In 1915 Paul Kahle published a paper which compared passages from the Samaritan text to Pentateuchal quotations in the New Testament and pseudepigraphal texts including the Book of Jubilees, the First Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses.

He concluded that the Samaritan Pentateuch preserves " many genuine old readings and an ancient form of the Pentateuch.

" Support for Kahle's thesis was bolstered by the discovery of biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, approximately five percent of which contain a text similar to the Samaritan Pentateuch .< ref > Some examples include the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts conventionally designated as 4QpaleoExod < sup > m </ sup >, 4QExod-Lev < sup > f </ sup > and 4QNum < sup > b </ sup >.

See Vanderkam 2002, p. 95 .</ ref > Apart from the sectarian variants unique to the Samaritan Pentateuch such as the reference to the worship of God on Mount Gerizim, the Dead Sea Scroll texts have demonstrated that a Pentateuchal text type resembling the Samaritan Pentateuch goes back to the second century BCE and perhaps even earlier.

Other Dead Sea Scroll Pentateuchal manuscripts show a close affinity to the later Masoretic text.

These discoveries have demonstrated that manuscripts bearing a " pre-Samaritan " text of at least some portions of the Pentateuch such as Exodus and Numbers circulated alongside other manuscripts with a " pre-Masoretic " text.

One Dead Sea Scroll copy of the Book of Exodus, conventionally named 4QpaleoExod < sup > m </ sup >, shows a particularly close relation to the Samaritan Pentateuch: