Writings: JudaismThe Samaritan Pentateuch9 of 10

Writings: Judaism

The Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the five books of Moses as the Samaritan community keeps them, in Samaritan script. The anchor copy, Samaritan MS 1 at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, dates itself by colophon to the year 608 of the Islamic calendar, which the Library converts to 1211 CE. Scholars date the text much earlier and differ on how.

Last reviewed:

Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    Not drawn: the two traditions give dates for different events, the Jewish one for the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the Samaritan one for the entry into Canaan, so they cannot share one bar. The Orthodox Union, an Orthodox body, says the Torah was given at Sinai "some thirty three hundred years ago" on a page dated 21 June 2006, about 1300 BCE, computed here from that phrase and the page's date stamp; it is the only Jewish voice consulted that dates the giving, and the Conservative and Reform statements consulted give no year. The John Rylands Library's blog gives the Samaritan reckoning of the entry into Canaan as about 1639 BCE. Benyamim Tsedaka, the one Samaritan voice used, says the Almighty delivered the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai and gives no year, and no Samaritan source used gives a year for the giving.

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources (Christine Hayes of Yale, in a lecture: the documentary hypothesis, which she calls a major hypothesis that is not without criticism, assigns its sources relative dates, not absolute dates, and dates the earliest Torah source, J, to about the 10th century BCE; other scholars date all of it after the fifth century BCE, in the fourth or third; this is not the date of the Samaritan form of the text, which Terry Giles holds was probably produced in the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE from a type found in Judean Desert manuscripts of the 3rd to 1st century BCE)

  3. This copy made

    1211 CE, per the John Rylands Library (the colophon gives the year 608 of the dominion of Ishmael, the Islamic calendar, which the Library converts to 1211 CE)

  4. This copy found

    Not a find, and no record of how this copy came to the Library was found; the John Rylands Library's blog says its first 27 Samaritan manuscripts arrived with the Earl of Crawford's library, which Enriqueta Rylands bought in 1901, and does not say whether Samaritan MS 1 was among them. A comment under the blog by John Hodgson, which the blog points to, reports that 22 Samaritan manuscripts were bought in July 1872 by the 25th Earl of Crawford from Charles John Stewart of London and had earlier been bought in Nablus by Edward Bouverie Pusey; neither says whether Samaritan MS 1 was one of them.

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the five books of Moses, the Torah, as the Samaritans keep them. The John Rylands Library's blog describes the Samaritans as a religious and ethnic community native to Samaria, about 900 in January 2025, living near Nablus and in Holon.1

The blog says Samaritanism, like Judaism, centers on the Pentateuch. It says each community holds that it is the true descendant of the ancient Israelites and sees the other as departing from the true path, and that the two versions of the Pentateuch are almost identical, but not quite.1 The text is Hebrew in Samaritan script, which descends from the ancient paleo-Hebrew script.2

The anchor copy here, Samaritan MS 1 at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, is a codex, a book of pages. The Library says it seems to be the earliest known complete Samaritan Pentateuch that gives its date. The Library's blog names Cambridge University Library MS Add. 1846 as the earliest extant Samaritan Pentateuch. It has no date and is probably from the early 12th century.2

How the copy was dated

The scribe dated it himself. Samaritan scribes often hide a colophon, a note about a book's making, in an acrostic called a tashqil, with its letters set vertically between the columns. Jewish Torah scrolls never contain one, Sotheby's catalogue adds.23 In this copy the scribe, Abi Berakhathah, names himself and the two brothers he wrote it for. He gives the year 608 of the dominion of Ishmael, as the Library translates it, meaning the Islamic calendar. The Library converts this to 1211 CE.2 The sources used here report no laboratory test. See how ancient texts are dated.

The Samaritans in Nablus keep another scroll, the Abisha scroll, whose age is debated. Alan Crown's 1991 article, whose title asks whether it is 3,000 years old, opens by reporting what the Samaritans say. They say it is the oldest Torah in existence, written by Abisha, Aaron's great-grandson, 13 years after the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and that an embedded cryptogram validates this.4

Sotheby's auction catalogue, written for a different scroll, says most of the Abisha scroll is no younger than the 14th century and that Crown determined one section was written within a short time after 1150.3 The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry says it is generally agreed that the Abisha scroll cannot have been written before the 12th century.5 The Samaritan view of the scroll reaches this page only through Crown, Giles, and that entry, and the sources used here carry no Samaritan reply to these datings.

The text: its date and authorship

The strip above marks the Torah, the five books of Moses, not this copy or the Samaritan form of the text. The tradition row has no bar, because the Orthodox Union's Sinai date (about 1300 BCE, computed here from its statement of some 3,300 years ago on a page dated 2006) and the Samaritan reckoning of the entry into Canaan (about 1639 BCE, per the John Rylands Library's blog) date different events and cannot share one. The scholars' bar spans the dates Christine Hayes reports for the Torah's sources. For the Jewish text, see the Aleppo Codex.

Samaritan and Orthodox Jewish accounts, with Giles's report of Samaritan tradition

This column gives the Israelite Samaritan view as Benyamim Tsedaka states it on his institute's website in Holon, one voice and not every Samaritan's, and the Orthodox view as the Orthodox Union states it. Tsedaka writes that the faith has four principles: one Almighty, one prophet (Moses), one holy and true scripture (the Torah), and one chosen place (Mount Gerizim). He holds that the Almighty delivered the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and counts a Tenth Commandment, about an altar on Mount Gerizim, as missing from the Jewish version.6

Terry Giles writes that Samaritan tradition holds this text to be the genuine Torah, traceable to Abisha, and the Samaritans to be the true Israel from which others broke away.7 The Library's blog gives the Samaritan reckoning of the entry into Canaan as about 1639 BCE. No Samaritan source used gives a year for the giving of the Torah.2 The Orthodox Union says the Torah was given at Sinai some 3,300 years ago, and that the entire text of the Five Books of Moses is of divine origin.8

Scholars of the Torah and its Samaritan text: Hayes, Giles, Pummer, and Dayfani

Christine Hayes of Yale says in a lecture that the documentary hypothesis, which she calls a major hypothesis that is not without criticism, dates the earliest Torah source, J, to about the tenth century BCE. She adds that other scholars date all of it after the fifth century BCE.9

Terry Giles holds that the Samaritan Pentateuch extends a pre-Samaritan text type found in Dead Sea manuscripts of the third to first centuries BCE. He holds that it was probably produced by editing that type in the first century BCE through the first century CE.7

Reinhard Pummer holds that texts like it circulated beside forerunners of the Masoretic text, the standard Jewish text, and of the Septuagint, the Greek translation. He holds that nearly all its readings once called Samaritan existed before the people of Samaria and the Judeans parted. He sees one apparent Samaritan addition, verses on Mount Gerizim at the end of the Decalogue, though, citing Eugene Ulrich, he allows that the other texts knew them and left them out.10 Hila Dayfani argues that 4QpaleoExodm, the longest pre-Samaritan scroll from Qumran, included what she calls the Gerizim composition.11

How it was found

This copy is not a find. The John Rylands Library's first 27 Samaritan manuscripts arrived with the Earl of Crawford's library, which Enriqueta Rylands bought in 1901. A 1938 catalogue by Robinson, the Library's blog says, gave no knowledge of where those manuscripts were first obtained. The blog adds that more recent archival research has found information on their provenance.1

A comment under the blog by John Hodgson, which the blog points to, reports that in July 1872 the 25th Earl of Crawford bought 22 Samaritan manuscripts from Charles John Stewart of London. It reports that Edward Bouverie Pusey had earlier bought them in Nablus. Neither the blog nor the comment says whether Samaritan MS 1 was among them.1

What it shows, and what it does not

The evidence shows a surviving Hebrew form of the Torah's text, besides the Masoretic text, kept by a community of its own. On Giles's and Pummer's accounts it is related to scrolls found at Qumran.710 The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports roughly 6,000 differences from the Masoretic text, a count it ties to W. Gesenius's study of 1815, and about 2,000 agreements with the Septuagint against that text.5 Giles writes that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, existed in multiple versions kept side by side.7

On whether Samaritan readings are later changes, two sources speak to different points. The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry, which prints no date, says Gesenius's verdict that the Masoretic text was superior and prior held sway for a century, and that his dictum holds true in its main points to this day. Citing the Samaritan text's easier readings, an Aramaic form, and its pronunciation, it says the text in its present form shows a later stage of development.5

Pummer writes that the Dead Sea discoveries have changed the older scholarly view that the Samaritans took the Pentateuch from the Judeans, and that nearly all the readings once taken as Samaritan sectarian changes existed before the two peoples parted.10 The copy dates from 1211 CE per the Library, about 1,500 years after the earliest pre-Samaritan manuscripts (computed here from 300 BCE).27

See also

Sources

  1. John Rylands Library, University of Manchester (blog, 'The Samaritans and their books'). The Samaritans and their books. Rylands Blog, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester, 5 January 2025, 2025, the whole post. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  2. John Rylands Library, University of Manchester (blog, 'The Samaritans and their books II'). The Samaritans and their books II. Rylands Blog, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester, 12 January 2025, 2025, the section 'The Pentateuch of the Samaritans' and the section 'Counting time'. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. Sotheby's (catalogue note for Valmadonna Trust Library MS 5, with literature by Crown, Schorch, and others). Samaritan Torah Scroll (Aktaba Kadisha), Land of Israel [ca. 1166, scribe Shalmah ben Abraham bar Yosef of Sarepta]. Sotheby's, Valmadonna Trust Library Part I, 2015, lot 1, 2015, the catalogue note. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. Alan D. Crown. The Abisha Scroll: 3,000 Years Old?. Bible Review 7, no. 5 (1991); opening paragraphs on the Center for Online Judaic Studies site, 1991, the opening paragraphs only. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. John Macdonald and Ayala Loewenstamm. Pentateuch, Samaritan. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed., Gale), via Encyclopedia.com, the whole entry. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  6. Benyamim Tsedaka (AB Institute of Samaritan Studies, Holon). Principles of Faith. Israelite Samaritan Information Institute (israelite-samaritans.com), AB Institute of Samaritan Studies, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  7. Terry Giles (professor of theology, Gannon University). The Samaritan Pentateuch. Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature, the whole article. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  8. OU Staff. Torah. Orthodox Union, 2006. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  9. Christine Hayes. Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145), Lecture 5: Critical Approaches to the Bible: Introduction to Genesis 12-50. Open Yale Courses, Yale University, transcript, first chapter (Wellhausen's Documentary Hypothesis). Accessed 2026-10-29.
  10. Reinhard Pummer (University of Ottawa). The Samaritans in Recent Research. Bible and Interpretation, University of Arizona, December 2015, 2015, the paragraph on the Samaritans' sacred scripture. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  11. Hila Dayfani. 4QpaleoExodm and the Gerizim Composition. Journal of Biblical Literature 141, no. 4 (2022), pp. 673 to 698, 2022, the abstract only. Accessed 2026-11-06.