Samaritaine bible

The Bible (Torah or Pentateuque) Samaritaine is the version of the Pentateuque of use at the Samaritains, community being claimed of an ascent Jew relationship of the Judaïsme. It is relatively close to the Christian and Jewish versions to pentateuque, but integrates an important difference: obligation to regard the Mount Garizim as the principal holy place, instead of Jerusalem.

The origin of the Samaritans

According to their book of the Chronicles ( Sefer ha-Yamim ), the Samaritans regard themselves as the descendants of the tribes of Ephraïm and Manassé (two tribes resulting from the Tribu of Joseph) alive in the Royaume of Samarie before its destruction in -722. The Sacerdotale family affirms to go down from the Tribu of Lévi. They add that “they are the Jews which separated from them at the time of the transfer of the Arche to the 11th century” before the common era. According to the second from their seven chronicle, “it is Elie which caused the schism by establishing with Silo a sanctuary with an aim of replacing the sanctuary of the Mont Garizim”.

With their return of exile, Judéens (inhabitants of the kingdom of Judaea, term which will give “Juif”), on the other hand considered the Samaritans as of ascent not-Jew (they would be prisoners established by Sennachérib, coming from an other share of the Assyrian empire) and polytheists (YHWH would be only one their divinities, with Astarté, Baal, etc). They thus refused the right to them to take part in the rebuilding of the Second Temple and in the worship to Jerusalem. The Samaritans had in addition set up a social barrier separating them from Judéens, which was worth perhaps this refusal to them.

Principal holy place

The Samaritans consider that god gave to the Jews the Mont Garizim like principal holy place, but that this one was moved towards Silo then towards Jerusalem for political reasons, Jerusalem being the capital of the kings of the Royaume of Juda.

For the two Books of the Kings (1 Kings and 2 Kings), the Samaritains wanted on the contrary to reach the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Following the refusal of the Jews, the Samaritans would thus have moved their worship towards the Mont Garizim. Their temple was shaved by Judéens towards 100 ACE, for religious and political reasons, following a war, apparently started by the Samaritans.

The temple is rebuilt shortly after the Jewish fallen through revolt of Bar-Kokheba (132-135). Starting from its conversion with Christianity, the Byzantine Empire however tried to convert of force the minorities (Christians hétérodoxes or not-Christians) to its version of Christianity. Thus, the emperor Zénon (born in 427 - reign of 474 with its death in 491) is caught some to the Jews and to the Samaritans. Under its reign, the temple Samaritan is one second time destroyed (into 484, he seems you), and this in a final way. It will never be rebuilt.

The system of worship instituted by the Samaritans seems to have been rather similar to that of the Temple of Jerusalem. This worship was centered on the Torah.

The Samaritaine bible

The Pentateuque was thus preserved among the Samaritans, who read it originally as only one book. Division in five books, in the Samaritans as at the Jews, was done later on for reasons of convenience. It is the only part of the Hebraic Bible that the Samaritans regard as divine authority, except perhaps for the Livre of Josué. All the other books of the Jewish Bible are refused. The Samaritains refuse also the Jewish oral tradition (as expressed in the Mishna, then the Gémara and the Talmud).

The Bible samaritaine is written in Abjad Samaritan, the primitive form of the Hebrew alphabet, said proto-cananéenne, that Judéens gave up for the square writing Assyrian. One regards this alphabet as faithful to that used before the Babylonian captivity.

Differences with the Jewish Torah

Hebraic Pentateuques and Samaritan comprise differences as for the reading in certain verses. One counts about 2.000 occurrences where Pentateuque Samaritan diverges from the massoretic version . The majority of the differences relates on the drafting or alternatives of contents without important theological implication, but of others are more fundamental, in particular with regard to the holiness of the Mont Garizim and not of Jerusalem.

Assumptions on the textual divergences

It was noted that the Seventy, a translation in Greek of the Bible, made by Jewish scholars of third century BC and still used by the Catholic church, was often closer to the version samaritaine than of the current Texte massoretic Jewish, at least for the parts not relating to Jerusalem. In the same way, the text Jews of the Dead Sea Scroll found with Qumrân and write between third century BC and 1st century diverges sometimes (in the Hebrew texts) from the text massoretic, or takes again (in the few texts in Greek) the text of the Seventy. More interesting, certain translations Greek of the Seventy correspond narrowly to Hebrew texts of the Dead Sea Scroll. These resemblances between these Jewish texts and the version samaritaine of pentateuque can be interpreted in four ways:

a religious influence samaritaine on the Jewish translators of the Seventy and the writings of Qumrân (perhaps via the Seventy). This assumption is delicate, Juifs and Samaritains of the time having very bad relations. Moreover, in the field considered by the Samaritans as being most important, namely the rejection of the centrality of Jerusalem, no influence is perceptible in the Seventy or the Dead Sea Scrolls.
an influence of the Seventy on the text Samaritan. The bad relations between Jews and Samaritans complicate this assumption however. Moreover, the Torah samaritaine is written in Hebrew Samaritan, which would have obliged with a retro-translation (Hebrew with the Greek , then of the Greek to the Hebrew Samaritan).
the old existence several versions slightly different from the biblical rollers, returning to different “schools”, the Text massoretic rising from the one of it, while the texts of Qumrân, the Seventy and the Samaritaine Bible, with their resemblances, would come from another. In fact, the texts of the Dead Sea show a strong hostility with the “official” Judaism of their time, and can have privileged person certain traditions different from the dominant currents of the Judaism.
Enfin, it is often considered that the Texte massoretic of the Tanakh was fixed definitively only about the 10th century. Accordingly (disputed by the orthodoxe Juifs, for which the forever varied text), it is plausible that the resemblances between the text Samaritan and the text of the Seventy (thus the catholic text) are related to the resemblance between the Hebraic versions used at the beginning of the Christian era by the Samaritans and the Jews, the massoretic version current being itself somewhat distant about it thereafter. On this last assumption, which is not proven, the text current Samaritan would be thus more faithful to the versions of the Pentateuque such as they existed at the Juifs and the Samaritains two thousand years ago, at least for the surface divergences. Most important, those bearing on the place of the Mount Garizim or Jerusalem, return to the bases of the divergences between Juifs and Samaritans, which is older. The Torah samaritaine of the time of the Seventy integrated certainly them.

In any assumption, if the divergences concerning the place of the Mount Garizim and Jerusalem are explained easily, so much they are founders for the existence even Jews and Samaritans, the divergences or the resemblances between the Bible samaritaine and the various known Jewish versions (Seventy, Texte massoretic and Dead Sea Scroll) have more obscure origins.

The monks of each group are persuaded that it is the other community which modified the text dictated by God.

Example of divergence without important theological implication

Example: Exodus 12:40

version samaritaine: “Now, the stay of the children of Israel and their fathers who had wandered out of ground of Canaan and in Egypt were 430 years”.
massoretic version: “Now, the stay of the children of Israel, who wandered in Egypt, was 430 years”.

The Talmud is conscious in the past of the divergences between the Texte massoretic and that of the Seventy or that of the Samaritan. For him, these are the last texts which deviated of the original text.

Thus, in connection with the above mentioned verse, the Talmud (Meguila 9a) indicates that the difference between the words of the verse and their interpretation is so large that this verse inevitably forms part of those modified in the version of the Seventy.
Indeed, as notes it Rachi, the summation of the ages of Kehat wire of Lévi, Amram wire of Kehat and Moïse wire of Amram, which leaves the Egypt would reach just 350 years. The 430 years are obtained by summation of the years that lived foreign children of Israel the “in countries not with them” (Bereshit 15:13):

30 years since alliance between God and Abraham until the birth of Isaac. (discussed, because not of biblical sources).
60 years of the birth of Isaac until that of Jacob (Bereshit 25:26).
130 years of the birth of Jacob until his arrival in Egypt (Bereshit 47:9).
210 years spent in Egypt.

For Talmud, the version of the Seventy is thus a manifest will “to clear up” the original text, by introducing an explanatory comment there. Always according to Talmud, the Samaritaine Bible takes as a starting point the version of the Seventy.

Divergences of contents with an important theological implication

The differences of contents relate primarily to the situation of the Mont Garizim like principal saint places, instead of Jerusalem.

The Ten commands of the Torah samaritaine integrate thus in tenth command the respect of the Garizim Mount like centers worship. The two versions of the ten existing commands in the Jewish Tanakh (that of the delivers exodus and that of the Deutéronome) were also standardized” relating to the Garizim mount.

See too

Internal bonds

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