Page "Samaritan Pentateuch" Paragraph 41

With the displacement of Samaritan Aramaic by Arabic as the language of the Samaritan community in the centuries following the Muslim conquest of Syria, they employed several Arabic translations of the Pentateuch.

The oldest was an adaptation of Saadia Gaon's Arabic translation of the Jewish Torah.

Although the text was modified to suit the Samaritan community, it still retained many unaltered Jewish readings.

By the 11th or 12th centuries, a new Arabic translation directly based upon the Samaritan Pentateuch had appeared in Nablus.

Manuscripts containing this translation are notable for their bilingual or trilingual character ; the Arabic text is accompanied by the original Samaritan Hebrew in a parallel column and sometimes the Aramaic text of the Samaritan Targum in a third.

Later Arabic translations also appeared ; one featured a further Samaritan revision of Saadia Gaon's translation to bring it into greater conformity with the Samaritan Pentateuch and others were based upon Arabic Pentateuchal translations used by Christians.