JSOT the Samaritans and Early Judaism

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES

303 Editors David J.A. Clines Philip R. Davies Executive Editor John Jarick

COPENHAGEN INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR

7 General Editors Thomas L. Thompson Niels Peter Lemche Associate Editors Frederick H. Cryer Mogens Miiller Hakan Ulfgard

Sheffield Academic Press

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The Samaritans and

Early Judaism A Literary Analysis

Ingrid Hjelm

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 303 Copenhagen International Seminar 7

To Thomas

Copyright © 2000 Sheffield Academic Press Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd Mansion House 19KingfieldRoad Sheffield SI 19AS England

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press and Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd Guildford, Surrey

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-84127-072-5

CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations Introduction

7 8 11

Chapter 1

THE TWO-EPISODE PARADIGM: SAMARITAN RESEARCH FROM MONTGOMERY TO COGGINS The Earliest Jewish Sect: The Position of J.A. Montgomery The Original Israelites: The Position of M. Gaster A Postexilic Political Schism: The Position of A. Alt Decisive Elements in the Formation of a Distinct Samaritan Community in the Hasmonaean Period: The Positions of H.H. Rowley, G. Holscher, W.F. Albright and M. Smith Taking up Old Ideas: The Positions of P.M. Cross and H.G. Kippenberg Breaking the Two-Episode Paradigm: The Position of R.J. Coggins

13 13 22 30

33 41 48

Chapter 2

RADICAL ALTERNATIVES: THE THEORIES OF CROWN AND NODET A.D. Crown's Late Dating for a Distinctive Samaritanism Samaritans as Original Israelites? The Position of E. Nodet

52 53 61

Chapter 3

SAMARITAN LITERATURE The Pentateuch Manuscripts Translations The Special Features of the Samaritan Pentateuch

76 76 83 85 87

6

The Samaritans and Early Judaism Samaritan Theological Literature Chronicles Halakhic Literature Commentaries on the Pentateuch

94 97 103 103

Chapter 4

SAMARITANS IN JEWISH, CHRISTIAN AND HELLENISTIC LITERATURE Rabbinic Judaism in the Light of the Samaritan Question Christianity in the Light of the Jewish-Samaritan Question The Request for an Identification of Simon the Just and Ben Sira 50.25-26 The Foolish People in Shechem: Who Are They? Shechem in the Old Testament Tradition The Levites in Jewish Traditions Zadok; pTTC '33 D^H D^HDH and the Levites Jews, Conflicts and Reputation

104 104 115 125 138 146 152 158 171

Chapter 5

SAMARITANS IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS General Introduction to Josephus's Works Examination of Josephus's Various Descriptions of Samaritans Josephus's Terminology Josephus between Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities Concluding Remarks to Josephus's Presentation of Samaritans Mount Gerizim, Tell er-Ras

183 183 192 216 222 226 234

Chapter 6

SAMARITAN HISTORIOGRAPHY Prophets in Samaritan Tradition The Historiography of the 'Postexilic' Period

239 254 258

Chapter 7

FROM LITERARY TO HISTORICAL REALITY

273

Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

286 300 315

PREFACE Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one. John Berger

In its earliest form this monograph was an entry in the annual prize essay competition in Old Testament exegesis at the University of Copenhagen in 1996. The original essay, Samaritanerne og den antikke j0dedom, was fortunate enough to be awarded a gold medal. The editors of the Copenhagen International Seminar, Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson, recommended that I revise it and publish it in English in their series. For support and assistance in producing the original prize essay and this monograph I would like to thank the following: Pere Etienne Nodet of the Ecole Biblique for lending me his English manuscript of A Search for the Origins of Judaism, which has been a considerable inspiration in my own work; Professor Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University for his hospitality and friendship during my stay in Jerusalem; Dr Richard Harper, director of the British School, Dr John Woodhead, vice director at the British School and his wife Karin, the staff at the school and my fellow residents for their interest and support and my son Andreas for being a courageous and wonderful companion during our stay. Professor Niels Peter Lemche of the University of Copenhagen and Lektor Per Bilde of Aarhus University for their advice and corrections of earlier drafts of this thesis; Professor Thomas L. Thompson of the University of Copenhagen for his neverending encouragement, inspiration and support as well as the revision of my English. For financial support for research in Jerusalem, I am indebted to the Thora Odlands Fond, Tribute to the Danes through Scholarships Fund and the Copenhagen University Fund. Finally, I want to thank every scholar whose works and ideas I have used and exploited, whether it has been with pleasure or annoyance. None has been without its use, as one can never know to whom one is indebted. Ingrid Hjelm Copenhagen

ABBREVIATIONS

AB ABD AF AnBib ANET

AnLeeds ANRW

AOAT ASOR ASTI ATLA ATR BA BASOR BHS BJRL BKAT BO BR BZAW CBQ CIS CPJ CRINT DDD DID DSD DSS EncJud Erlsr

Anchor Bible David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Kitab al Tarikh of Abu'1-Fath Analecta biblica James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950) The Annual of Leeds University Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1972-) Alter Orient und Altes Testament American Schools of Oriental Research Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute American Theological Library Association Australian Theological Review Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Biblia Hebraica stuttgartensia Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament Bibliotheca orientalis Bible Review

BeiheftezurZW Catholic Biblical Quarterly Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum Corpus Papyrorum Judaicum Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Dead Sea Discoveries Dead Sea Scrolls Encyclopaedia Judaica Eretz Israel

Abbreviations FGrHist

9

F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden, 1923) HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion Hen Henoch HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HTR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual IDBSup IDB, Supplementary Volume IEJ Israel Exploration Journal JA Journal asiatique JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies KS Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3 vols.; Munich: C.H. Beck, 1953-59) LCL Loeb Classical Library NKGWPhil.-Hist. Klasse Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zur Gottingen NovT Novum Testamentum NovTSup Novum Testamentum, Supplements NTOA Novum Testamentum et orbis antiquus NTS New Testament Studies OLZ Orientalische Literaturzeitung OTP James Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly RB Revue biblique REJ Revue des etudes juives RevQ Revue de Qumran SET Studies in Biblical Theology SJLA Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity SP Samaritan Pentateuch SPB Studia postbiblica SSEA Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities ST Studia theologica SUNVAO Skrifter utgitt au der Norske Uitenskaps—Akademi i Oslo TSK Theologische Studien und Kritiken VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Vetus Testamentum, Supplements

10

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

WMANT

Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenshaft Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Paldstina-Vereins Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

ZAW ZDMG ZDPV ZNW

INTRODUCTION 'When shall we take them back?' This talmudic utterance (Mass. Kut. 28) forms the backbone of most of Jewish and Christian discussions about Samaritans since Josephus wrote his various origin stories of the Samaritans in the first century of this era. The utterance both implies that the Samaritans have left 'us' and that 'we' are the ones to decide when 'we' will accept them as part of 'our' community. The forcefulness of this view on Samaritans, formed by Judaism's self-understanding of having developed from the Old Israel's transformation of past traditions to become the New Israel, has been determinent for most scholars' writings about the Samaritans for the past century. Scholars have worked hard to establish the origin of Samaritans in accord with these stories, to overcome contradictions and confusion as well as to harmonize Josephus's stories with other stories. Most of these efforts have proven unsuccessful. Whether one places the origin of Samaritanism in the eighth-century Assyrian policy of deportation, based on a story of 2 Kings 17, in a fifth-century expulsion of a priest serving at the temple in Jerusalem, based on a remark in Nehemiah 13, in a fourthcentury deceit of the Persian King Darius at the advance of Alexander the Great, based on Josephus's Antiochus IV story and the books of Maccabees, all resolutions have agreed on the worthiness and reliability of one or other Jewish story about Samaritan origin and the Samaritan community's departure from a Jerusalem centred Judaism. This departure was followed by a final schism, usually dated to the second century BCE, based on Josephus's John Hyrcanus story and scholarship's claim for a development of the Samaritan Pentateuch at that time. Against this view stands Samaritan self-understanding that they belong to the Old Israel, have an unbroken chain of high priests and a cultic continuation that has kept their heritage unchanged. While Judaism argued for the necessity of a new beginning after the Babylonian exile, Samaritans insisted that their old tradition be maintained. As Abraham had left the godless world of Haran to go to Shechem, so

12

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

Samaritans—in their postexilic return—brought home their old tradition (kept in custody in Nineve) from Haran. The discussion clearly places itself in an implicitly much broader discussion about the new and the old Israel, with the Samaritans opting for continuity and the Jews for new beginnings in the Ezra-Nehemiah traditions. Such a new beginning, however, according to Samaritan understanding, had already taken place in the time of Eli and had proven false. Each having opted for their own tradition we are left to ask whether ancient 'historiography' is anything but competing stories? Is scholarship forever doomed to justify one or another's story? Giving up the priority of the biblical tradition, based as it is on the false assumption that not only the Bible, but also its stories, belong to our origin, we might, however, be able to establish each tradition in its own right. Competing stories are competing stories belonging to those who wrote them. Historical reality belongs to the world that created these stories. It is not necessarily reflected in any simple truth about the past.

Chapter 1

THE TWO-EPISODE PARADIGM: SAMARITAN RESEARCH FROM MONTGOMERY TO COGGINS The Earliest Jewish Sect: The Position ofJ.A. Montgomery1 Published in 1907 and reprinted with few revisions in 1968, this was the first work that, on the basis of the Samaritan sect's own sources, sought to describe the history of the sect and its relation to Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the past and the present. In the previous century, scholarship had centred around studies of the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) and its relationship to the Masoretic Text. Studies of the copy of the SP brought home by Pietro Delia Valle in the 1620s seemed to support the text of the Septuagint against the various Hebrew texts. It thereby became important for the anti-Reformation's fight for the establishment of a textus receptus.2 The title of Montgomery's book places it in a Jewish as well as a sectarian context. Montgomery's working hypothesis found its inspiration in K. Lincke's Samaria und seine Propheten,3 which he judged had 'unsuccessfully attempted to establish the theory that the Samaritans were true descendants of the Northern Israelites in a direct line from Elijah, Elisha, Hosea and the Yahweh-worshipping family of Jehu'. Using 'authoritative' sources from the Christian period (New Testament, Josephus and Talmud), Montgomery concluded that the Samaritans 'were nothing else than a Jewish sect'. The one essential difference between them and Judaism was that 'their cult centres on Gerizim, not on Zion'.4 This denial of any other differences marked the perspectives 1. J.A. Montgomery, The Samaritans: The Earliest Jewish Sect: Their History, Theology and Literature (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1907; repr. New York: Ktav, 1968). The 1907 edition is used throughout this work. 2. This question will be dealt with more extensively in Chapter 3. 3. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1903. 4. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 46.

14

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

of Montgomery's judgment of Samaritanism's dependency on Judaism and his denial of the fact that postexilic Judaism had as its programme the rejection of the older cult and the image of the old Israel. Both of which Samaritans claimed to be part of their heritage. It is noteworthy that Montgomery stated without hesitation that the differences in adherence to the cult between the North and the South was 'much too exaggerated' and was based on the fact that it was 'orthodox Judah who wrote the history'.5 At the same time, his own conclusions were based on these very same 'historians', who considered those who did not belong or submit to 'orthodox' Judaism to be heretics and schismatics. According to Josephus, in his use of the ideology of 2 Kings 17, the Samaritans were also considered to be of doubtful stock.6 According to Montgomery the origin of the sect should be sought in the change of political circumstances in Samaria resulting from the deportations and settlements of foreign peoples, such as recounted in 2 Kings 17; Ezra 4.2-9; Isa. 7.8 and in Assyrian Annals. We should not believe, however, that these Northerners instituted a spiritualistic and monotheistic belief that developed into a Samaritan religion, as happened in the 'Jewish church'; or that such a syncretist religion could develop into a 'triumphant monotheism'. This would have demanded a spirituality far beyond what could be ascribed to the Samaritans as such. When, in spite of that, the northern kingdom developed—at least regarding a minor remnant—into a faithful Yahwism in spite of the influence from foreign peoples, this was due to the support from a more 'resistant' Judaic society.7 Because only part of the population had been

5. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 47. 6. Josephus, Ant. 9.277-91. Montgomery is here in full accord with E. Schiirer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1885) (whom he does not refer to), who stated that although Samaritans are of mixed stock they rightly are to be considered to belong to the Jewish people since they have adopted Jewish worship of Yahweh to such an extent that only Gerizim and Jerusalem marks the difference. 7. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 54. Evidence for this hypothesis was based on: (1) Hezekiah's passover as told in 2 Chron. 30, which also included the people from Ephraim who caused a delay of the celebration; (2) the capture of Manasseh to Babylon (2 Chron. 33.11); (3) the reform of Josiah (2 Kgs 23), which includes all the cult places in Samaria; (4) the deputation from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria, which paid the mourners in Jerusalem a visit of condolence after the destruction of the temple (Jer. 41.4-6).

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

15

exiled from Samaria and later from Judaea,8 there remained a core of 'old Israelite blood' that joined together under the Judaic crisis in mutually supporting the survival of their common religion. The return from exile did not break this agreement, for, during the reign of Darius I (521-385 BCE), the return of Zerubbabel had created expectations of the coming of the Messiah, which joined Judaean, Samaritan and Babylonian Israelites together in a new enthusiasm powerful enough to overcome old differences.9 Opposition to this enthusiasm was not to be found within Judaism itself and the 'am ha'ares of Ezra 4.4 was not the Samaritans, as was usually asserted on the basis of Josephus's interpretation. They were non-Israelite peoples who moved into Judaea during the Babylonian exile.10 The real opponents to the activities of the returnees were the political governors of the Persian province of Aber-Nahara, such as the

8. Comparing biblical references from 2 Kgs 17; Isa. 7.8; Ezra 4.2, 9 and Assyrian Annals 11-17, 20-23, 67, 94, 95, Montgomery made the conclusion that not the whole population had been deported and that it was mainly the leaders of the people, while the poorer country people remained 'without king, without prince, and without altar, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim' (cf. Hos. 3.4). This remaining group was added to by immigrants from various places in Mesopotamia for around a hundred years (cf. Samaritans, pp. 4853). For later discussions, see J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968); B. Oded, Mass Deportation and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979), who on the basis of a study of 157 Assyrian texts concluded that several deportations took place, involving very different numbers of people, having different purposes and comprising entire regions, cities or families, and were not subsequently followed by similar migrations. See also Th.L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992); Th.L. Thompson, The Bible in History (London: Cape, 1999), pp. 190-99, 210-27; H. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996); L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Leading Captivity Captive: 'The Exile' as History and Ideology (JSOTSup, 278; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). 9. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 62: an expectation which was carried out by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. Montgomery here found support in the view of Wellhausen, that Zech. 6.9-13 referred to Zerubbabel, for whom the crown was designed. 10. Reflected in fact in 1 Esd. 3.45 and 4.50, but in sharp contrast to Josephus and later rabbinic tradition that stressed the ideological contrast between North and South that the South had remained empty during the exile and had avoided defilement by foreign peoples.

16

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

Horonite Sanballat 'without doubt belonging to the heathen colonisators in Samaria, Tobiah who had close relations to the Judaean aristocracy and priesthood although he was an Ammonite (Ezra 6.17ff.; Neh. 13.4ff.) and finally Geshem the Arab (Neh. 2.19; 6.6)'. These were not to be considered to belong to those who had observed the Jewish religion in Samaria. Political privileges given to the Jews caused the envious acts supported and led by these officials.11 According to Montgomery, the Bible did not connect these postexilic events, related in Ezra and Nehemiah, with the Samaritans. Scholarship's interpretation was based solely on Josephus, who, elaborating on Neh. 13.28, reported that Sanballat, being the father-in-law of Manasseh, grandchild of Eliashib and brother to Jaddua, built a temple on Gerizim to his son-inlaw and others following him after they had been expelled from the Judaean temple in Jerusalem. 12 In spite of Josephus's novelistic 11. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 65. This view is much later repeated in L.L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, I (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1992), p. 121. 12. Although Josephus placed his account in the time of Alexander the Great, scholarly consensus maintained that there was only one event that had been given a different context and consequence. In Montgomery's view Josephus was dependent on a Samaritan tradition that combined the legend with Sanballat (Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 67-69). Among Montgomery's contemporaries the historicity of the Alexander legend was met with a considerable mistrust (cf. H.H. Rowley, 'Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple', BJRL 38 [1955-56], pp. 166-98, reprinted in idem, Men of God [London: Thomas Nelson, 1963], pp. 246-76). Rowley here argued against an early view put forward by G. Holscher, Geschichte der israelitischen und judischen Religion (Die Theologie im Anbriss, 7; Giessen: Alfred Topelmann, 1922), p. 172, who, according to Rowley, Men of God, p. 258 n. 2, had previously rejected Josephus's account and regarded it as an unhistorical legend originating in Jewish-Alexandrian circles. This view is shared by several scholars as cited by Rowley, Men of God, p. 250 n. 1: R. Riietschi, 'Was Josephus von einem Sanballat erzahlt...ist ein sehr ungeschichtliches Erzahlung'; H. Willrich, 'Dass uns ein apokryphes Buch im Auszuge vorliegt, ist unzweifelhaft'; A.H. Sayce, 'The whole story seems to be derived from some apocryphal Jewish account of the Origin of the Samaritan Temple'; F. Vigouroux: 'Le recit de Josephe est plein d'anachronismes et ne saurait etre accepte'; G. Holscher, 'Die Ausbildung der jiidisch-alexandrinischen Schullegende, von der Josephus abhangig ist, ervolgte nur wenige Menschenalter vor Josephus... Von Tradition iiber mehrere Jahrhunderte fruhere Ereignisse kann damals nicht die Rede sein, wie gerade die ganz konfuse, aus blosser willktirlicher Exegese des Nehemiatextes herausgesponnene Alexander-Jaddualegende zeigt'; G.F. Moore, 'The Alexander part of the story in Josephus is not embellished legend but pure fiction of a

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

17

'historiography', this could still inform us about the reasons for the expulsion.13 The reform activities of Ezra and Nehemiah had as their goal the formation of a 'church state' in Jerusalem and its immediate neighbourhood, which was supported religiously and politically by the Babylonian golah. Not everyone shared the enthusiasm for their efforts to secure 'the purity of the holy seed', and it is not difficult to imagine the opposition to these returned 'doctors of the Torah', who, irrespective of both their Davidic and high priestly lineage, introduced the priestly codex.14 The 'am ha'ares gained support from their heathen leaders, who had close relations with aristocratic circles in Jerusalem.15 Whether they met with immediate success we are not told. However, 'since (Nehemiah) had to solve the problem afresh' Montgomery concluded that 'Ezra had failed'. Nehemiah, the successor of Ezra, in office from 445-433, was a 'far more strenuous, yet withal more political, ruler'. Leaving aside chronological incompatibilities, Josephus's story about Manasseh, son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite, offered itself as a useful solution to Montgomery's reconstruction. He and no one else was the person who laid the foundations for the Samaritan sect16 that emerged out of 'the excommunication from the Jewish church' 17 and found a home in Samaria, in Shechem, 'which was always an open town to foreigners in ancient times'. Independent of Jewish jurisdiction, species very familiar in the Hellenistic literature of the Jews... A historian may properly decline to admit such testimony as to either fact or date'; E. Sellin, 'Es ist klar, dass es sich hier iiberwiegend um eine Legende handelt, die aus Neh. 13:28 heraus gewaschen ist'. For the later literature see below. It is noteworthy that most of these statements occur before the publication of the Elephantine papyri by A.E. Cowley in 1923. 13. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 69. 14. Montgomery's statement that the high priests were considered to be 'as secular-minded as the royalty' seems to be due to simple prejudice. The Hebrew Bible in fact places Ezra in the pre-exilic high priestly lineage (cf. Ezra 7.1-2; 1 Chron. 6.1-2). 15. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 64. 16. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 68-69 did not give any solution to Josephus's disagreement with Neh. 13 and the placement of Sanballat's son-in-law in the time of Alexander the Great, but ascribed this confusion to the incorrectness of ancient historiography and to the possibility that Josephus had other sources at hand, that is, 1 Esdras and probably some Samaritan traditions that were intended to connect certain important events to this legendary ruler. 17. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 69.

18

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

'a home offered itself through the political favor of the political leaders and officials of that district, who were bent on doing mischief to Jerusalem and its church'. Here they had most of the holy places from Jewish ancestry and here they found a place to build a temple and establish a cult. This group later became known as Samaritans or Shechemites, a more correct designation used by Josephus. Their self-designation remained Israelite, and, leaving it to their adversaries to call themselves 'Jews', they verbally preserved Joseph's priority over Judah.18 Montgomery did not consider this to be a complete schism. In the following centuries, political, religious and family relations nourished the Samaritan sect, where a branch of the Jewish high priesthood reigned. The close agreements of Samaritan and Sadducean theology also seemed best explained by close relations between the priests in Shechem and Jerusalem, supported by the family ties of the high priestly lineage. The ultimate and irreversible schism occurred when John Hyrcanus conquered Shechem and Gerizim and destroyed the Samaritan temple in 128 BCE.19 Being only a minor group, the Samaritan sect did not play any significant role in the Maccabean uprising. According to Josephus, they even denied having any relationship with the subdued Judaeans in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. A contradiction to this statement, found in 2 Mace. 5.22-23's account, that Antiochus had placed governors in Jerusalem and on Gerizim, led Montgomery to assert that John Hyrcanus's conquest must be understood within a context in which the majority of the Samaritan population consisted of heathens who supported the occupation. It was therefore only natural that John Hyrcanus, after Judaea's annexation of Ephraim, Lydda and Ramathaim around 145 BCE, extended his reign into the central hill areas, 'and not only paid off old scores with the degenerate Syrian kingdom, but also took vengeance on the weakened Samaritan sect', whose city and temple he laid waste in 128 BCE.20 This act was 18. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 70. 19. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 71: 'We possess no further data concerning the Palestinian Samaritans until the second century BCE, in the period of the Maccabees. But the intervening age was not one that was committed to the rigorism of Ezra and Nehemiah, or of the Chasidim and the Pharisees of the second century. The fortunes of the Jewish Church were chiefly in the control of the high priesthood, which appears in general to have been utterly worldly-minded.' 20. The Samaritan Chronicle Kitab al Tarikh of Abu'l Fath (AF) relates that

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

19

followed by the conquest of Samaria in 107 BCE by the sons of John Hyrcanus, who 'attempted to obliterate even the traces of the city's existence' and, by the further capture of Scythopolis, came to dominate the whole of the northern border of Samaria. In spite of asserting the opposite, Montgomery was extremely dependent on Josephus's various stories about the Samaritans. Although he had knowledge of parts of Samaritan historiography, he had no trust in its relevance for his own historical conclusions. In fact, he treated this historiography as a simple curiosity that, in its distortion of Jewish historiography, could not be taken seriously.21 When, however, seeking both to escape the influence of Josephus22 yet rejecting the contradictions to Josephus in, for example, 2 Maccabees, he was left with a historiography that found no place at all for Samaritans in the Hasmonaean period. Disappearing in the pagan population as such, they suffered equally with this population. This construction, however, does not take into consideration that it is nowhere stated that this population had suffered temple destruction and persecution. It does not consider that the debate in Josephus before the court of Ptolemy (Ant. 13.74-79) and the requests addressed to Antiochus Epiphanes (Ant. 12.237-64) deal precisely with the question of the status of Samaritan bene yisrael in relationship to Judaean bene yisrael. Most problematically, it gives no reason for the actions of John Hyrcanus; nor does it explain sufficiently what happened to the Jewish sect of Samaritans, which had been formed by the expulsion of Manasseh from the temple in Jerusalem. It does not create any continuity between postexilic Samaritans and the John Hyrcanus conquered Samaria without taking Shechem, and later, convinced of the legality of the Samaritan cult, sent his offerings and tithes to Gerizim. This account bears clear allusions to John Hyrcanus's quarrel with the Pharisees, whom he leaves to join the Sadducees (cf. Ant. 13.288-300). Montgomery considered it to be 'a plausible hypothesis that the preservation of the northern sect during this period of absolute Jewish control of Samaria was due to the liberalistic policy of the Hasmonaeans to use the Samaritans as a counterweight to the Pharisaic rigorists' (Samaritans, p. 80 n. 20). 21. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 76, 80. Should he, however, grant Samaritan literature some antiquity, such as regarding the 'midrashic components of the book of Joshua', then its dependency on Jewish sources, from which it borrowed or imitated still makes it unusable for Samaritan historiography (see p. 310). 22. So, Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 156, where it is asserted that Josephus 'reflects the current Jewish prejudices of his day, and allows us to perceive some truth only through the contradiction in which he involves himself.

20

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

pre-exilic remnant of 'old Israelite blood' who had developed into a true Yahwism because of the support 'offered to those weak brethren by the more persistent community of Juda'.23 This basic view, which we now must characterize as a caricature of the Samaritans based on an anachronistic understanding of the origins of Judaism, also coloured Montgomery's presentation of Samaritan theology. The Samaritans did not possess any 'intellectual independence'. The sect 'was content to draw its teachings and stimulus from the Jews, even long after the rupture was final'. The Pentateuch formed24 the backbone of Samaritan theology that reached its most fundamental development in the teachings of the fourth century CE Samaritan theologian Marka. This development, however, 'celebrated in the traditions concerning Baba Rabba',25 had but a brief blooming. 'The Samaritans fell back into the prosaic type characteristic of them, so that their theology has become a hard and dry product with little imagination and spiritual afflatus'. 26 The same judgment was given of Samaritan liturgy. Although this is represented, in the British Museum alone, in 12 large quarto volumes, numbering some 2000 pages, consisting of hymns, litanies, songs of praise, requiems, meditations, midrashic hymns composed for the great feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Booths (Kippur), as well as fasting liturgies and haggadic literature, they only 'rarely expose any poetic genius, but borrow and imitate Jewish and Syrian-Christian traditions'.27 Only in regard to earnestness and sincer23. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 54. 24. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 205. Montgomery did not engage himself in any lengthy discussion of the Pentateuch. The assertion made by Wellhausen that the Law must have reached its final form by the time of the exclusion of the priest who became the leader of the Samaritans about 432 BCE, he found unsubstantiated, since scholarship's knowledge of Jewish and Samaritan relationships for at least 200 years was so limited that we could not know for sure whether Samaritans and/or Jews had revised their Scriptures (cf. p. 73). Montgomery's ambiguity, however, found expression in his statement about relations between SP, MT and the LXX: 'all mysteries and theological prepossessions aside, the simplest hypothesis is that the Samaritan represents an actual early form of the Pentateuch... Indeed it is not the disagreement that is remarkable so much as the great similarity ot the two texts. Apart from the few falsifications inserted by the Samaritans, there are no material differences' (p. 289). 25. A third century CE reformer of Samaritan theology, see Chapters 2 and 3. 26. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 206. 27. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 299.

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

21

ity in principles of faith did Montgomery allow the Samaritans a genuine religious spirit that 'gives a true dignity to very much that is in itself absurd and trivial'.28 Not only Jewish but also Christian theology influenced Samaritan thought. The phraseology is clearly marked by this influence, and several of the epithets attributed to Jesus can be found in the Samaritan 'belief in Moses, who, however, because of absolute monotheism, never can reach a divine status similar to that of Jesus. Moses is the sole prophet, the confidant of God, the son of his house, one with whom God talked face to face. He is the end, the limit of all revelation, a very ocean of divine utterance. Coloured by Christian terms, he is 'God's evangelist, the Pure one, the Light on Earth etc.'.29 However, Montgomery's proof of what he calls Christian influence in fact takes most of its epithets from the Old Testament. It is not owing to Christian influence that 'no prophet has ever arisen like Moses, or ever will arise; or that Moses is the absolute prophet, for all things hidden and revealed were shown him on the holy mount, so that other prophets are superfluous'. Even the assertion that 'on his account the world was made' has its first parallel in Jewish thought. The lack of interest in sacrificial laws in Samaritan theology gave Montgomery reason to conclude that the theology laid greater stress upon the moral side of the law. Expressed in haggadic form, it marks Samaritan theology with a tone of spirituality that might have been 'one of those numerous developments of Old Testament religion which were forerunners of the spiritual worship of synagogue and of Christianity'. This places Samaritan synagogue worship earlier than the similar Jewish one, 'for the glory of Gerizim fell two centuries before that of Jerusalem' .30 This constant ambiguity in Montgomery's judgment is probably given its greatest expression in his description of holy places, of which Judah can only 'boast of Hebron and Beer Sheba, and of the very modern sanctity of Jebusite Jerusalem', while 'the north was full of sanctuaries where Yahweh had appeared and where his heroes lived and died'.31 It is for Montgomery a 'strange outcome that the one-time sepa28. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 300. 29. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 226. 30. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 230. 31. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 15-16: 'Straight into the inviting uplands of Ephraim went the tribes of Israel...their objective was Shechem, the natural capital of the district (Jos. 1-9). Upon its two holy mountains was performed, and this according to Judaean tradition, the first formal covenant of the people with Yahweh

22

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

ratist tribe (Judah) became the church of Israel, while the north has at last given home to the smallest and most insignificant sect in the world'.32 The full impact of this statement is not dealt with satisfactorily in Montgomery's work. His reader is left to consider whether he in fact was so influenced by the nineteenth century's status of the Samaritan community that, in spite of considerable references to a more widespread and a more independent Samaritan religion and society in the Old Testament, in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, in the New Testament, in, for that matter also, some of the writings of Josephus and the Church fathers, he found it impossible to conclude otherwise about Judaean-Samaritan controversies in antiquity. In spite of these inconsistencies, Montgomery's work had a considerable impact on scholarly opinions of Samaritanism. For decades it forced scholars either to challenge his obvious mistakes or to create more substantial 'evidence' in support of his historical reconstruction. Of these the latter certainly predominated.33 The Original Israelites: The Position ofM. Caster34 Caster's book forms a response to Montgomery's conclusions. Taking up the same issues and by and large using the same literature, Caster's implicit criticism of Montgomery's use of sources became a counterin their new home (Jos. 8.30ff.; Deut. 27) ...And now again the land was consecrated by the graves of Joseph and Joshua and Eleazar (Jos. 24.29ff.) and even according to an early tradition the tombs of the twelve patriarchs (Acts 7.16). This was the land of Gideon and Samuel and Saul, of Elijah and Elisha, in a word the land of Israel, whereas the South possessed no better title than its tribal name Juda, a provinicial designation, over against the noble succession of the North.' 32. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 16. 33. In fact A.D. Crown, in his presentation of Samaritan studies since Montgomery, could state that although his recent book (A.D. Crown, A Bibliography of the Samaritans [ATLA Bibliography Series, 10; London: The Scarecrow Press, 1984]) contained 2806 entries for all texts and writings from the sixteenth century until 1984 (with an addition of 311 entries for the following two years), it could be concluded that 'in many of these, Montgomery's book was still the principal reference. In many cases one receives the distinct impression that the scholars writing this material were "rediscovering" the Samaritans as if there had been no work done since the days of Montgomery'. Cf. A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck],1989), p. xvi. 34. M. Gaster, The Samaritans, Their History, Doctrines and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1925).

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

23

weight to the pro-Judaic perspective underlying Montgomery's work. Where Montgomery failed to take seriously the sources he had at hand, Gaster sought to establish a harmonious historiography based on the SP, some Samaritan Chronicles, the Masoretic Pentateuch and the Old Testament Scriptures as well as the body of Jewish literature. The conclusions of Caster's historiography placed Samaritans in a much more independent role. They were not, as in Montgomery's book, the weak half, entirely dependent on their stronger brethren in the south, but they certainly were a people with their own strength and character, a religious and (political?) threat to their southern brethren, who were forced to fight over centralization of the cult.35 Whereas the Hebrew Bible considered the origin of the Samaritans to have resulted from the settling of heathen colonies in the northern kingdom after the fall of Samaria (referred to in 2 Kgs 17, Ezra 4 and confirmed in Josephus, Ant. 9.277-91; 10.184; 11.1-119), Samaritan tradition related the origin of the tribe(s) to the settling in 'the holy land'. The Samaritans, in Hebrew D'HQCZJ (Somerim: the keepers [of the Law]) are presented as descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh along with adherents from other tribes. Their list of high priests is traced back to Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron. The original tabernacle was erected on Mount Gerizim by Joshua, where the commandments of the Law were written (cf. also Deut. 27.2, which in the BHS is named Mount Ebal).36 35. Although Gaster could ascribe to the Samaritans the role of being the original Israelites, he still considered them to be a Jewish sect, having their background in the same Pentateuch and without any trace of heathen influence: 'The most minute investigation has failed to indicate a single trace; on the contrary, the result has been to fortify still farther, and confirm more strongly, the conviction that the Samaritans are none other than a purely Jewish sect' (Samaritans, p. 41). 36. Implicitly confirmed in Josh. 24.26: 'And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was established by the sanctuary of the Lord' (cf. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 8). Gaster did not accept Higher Criticism's attempts to take away the genuineness and antiquity of the chapter (cf. p. 8 n. 2). Gaster's acceptance of the Samaritan claim to be the original Israelites was later supported by F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, 'Erwagungen zur Samaritanerfrage', in idem (eds.), Die Araber in der Alien Welt, IV (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1967); A. Mikolasek, 'Les Samaritains gardiens de la loi contre les prophetes', Communio Viatorum 12 (1969), pp. 139-48; J. Macdonald, The Samaritan Chronicle No. II: From Joshua to Nebuchadnezzar (BZAW, 107; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1969). E. Nodet, Essai sur les origines du juda'isme: de

24

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

Disagreements in the priestly families between the older and younger sons of Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar, and Eli's subsequent move of the ark to Shilo marked the beginning of the Judaean-Samaritan controversies. The schism culminated in David's building of the temple in Jerusalem and became manifest during the time of Ezra.37 In order to give a certain authority to his sanctuary, Eli brought with him a copy of the Law Ithamar had had in his possession. This copy was later placed in the foundation of Solomon's temple. According to Gaster, the historicity of these events presented in the Samaritan Chronicle found its confirmation in several cases: (1) In Old Testament historiography, it is not until after the establishment of the tabernacle in Shiloh that Yahweh is named Yahweh Sebaot. (2) Eli's companion in his schismatic work is a descendant of Korah (1 Chron. 6.18-24), marking the new revolt as a reiteration of the revolt of the ancestor against Moses and Aaron (cf. Num. 16). (3) The obscure passages in the David-Saul story, relating Saul's killing of Ahimelekh and the priests of Nob and David's friendship with Abiathar and Ahimaas, could find its explanation in rival priestly families sympathizing with either one or the other. (4) The aetiological story in 2 Kings 17 about the removed peoples, which in Josephus bear the name Cuthaeans, had no impact on and no consequence for later Old Testament literature. With the exception of Ezra 4.1-2, the Samaritans cannot be traced in any biblical text. Ephraim is generally considered to be a legitimate Israelite tribe, belonging to the 'holy people' in so far as they keep the Law and accept Zion (cf. Isa. 7.8, 9; 11.11-13; Jer. 23.5-6; 31; Ezek. 37.16-19; Zech. 9.13; 10.6). Furthermore, both Hezekiah and Josiah send embassies to the 'old' Israelite tribes, unaware that these had been replaced by heathens.38 The parallel account in the Samaritan Chronicle does know of drought, famine and attacking wild beasts (so also Lev. 26), but such had been caused by the deportation of the priests, which had brought an end to the worship. After a petition to the Assyrian rulers, the high priest Serayah returned to rebuild the temple and to reestablish the cult on Mount Gerizim. Contrary to the Jewish version, in this tradition of the Samaritans, it is Serayah who asks the Jews and Josue aux Pharisiens (Paris: Cerf, 1992); rev. Eng. version: In Search of the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah (JSOTSup, 248; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). 37. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 8-9. 38. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 9-17.

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

25

their leader Zerubbabel to participate in the rebuilding. Since it was not comme ilfaut for the Jews to act positively to this request, the building was delayed. Not until after negotiations with the Persian king Surdi and proof given of Gerizim's priority over against Jerusalem did the rebuilding continue under royal protection. The chronological disagreement in placing Serayah as a contemporary of Zerubbabel did not affect Caster's reconstruction.39 This is surprising as his readings of Samaritan as well as biblical material is of a thoroughly historicizing character. Neither is the parallel account in Ezra about the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem considered to be either unhistorical or to conflict with the Samaritan account. The Ezra story, on the other hand, is seen to give evidence for the power of the Samaritans, namely that they could delay the rebuilding of the temple for years 'while they enjoyed the privilege of having rebuilt one on Mount Gerizim a long while before'.40 In contrast to Montgomery, the 'am hd'dres and the 'adversaries of Judah and Benjamin' are certainly the Samaritans. The unsolved question for Gaster is why the Jews rejected Samaritan support in the rebuilding. 41 His answer to this question concerns the purifying function of the exile. The returnees from the Babylonian exile were 'chastened in heart and wholly changed in their religious outlook. Every trace of ancient idolatry had been shed and pure monotheism was now the outstanding form of their worship and belief. They certainly did not have intentions of reviving old cult forms nor, by intermingling with other people—not even their former associates from before the exile— want to risk losing what had been gained from the purifying suffering of the exile. For that reason, the Jews had to reject the Samaritan offer, avoid any kind of socializing and install the true high priest in the House of David. This was the struggle of the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Interpreting Satan of Zech. 3.1-2 as representative of the Samaritan interests (in his attempt to convince the high priest 39. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 20. It is not clear, however, to me, on what Samaritan material Gaster based his reconstruction. The newer translations of Samaritan Chronicles do not present these confusions. 40. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 21. 41. 'It is however perfectly clear and easy to understand the refusal of the Jews to accept the invitation of the Samaritans to worship with them on Mount Garizim, but if the Samaritans came and offered to worship in Jerusalem, why should they have been refused' (Gaster, Samaritans, p. 21).

26

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

Jehoshua that Gerizim/Shechem was the place chosen by God), Gaster placed this story in the centre of assumed postexilic discussions over cult and belief. Standing the test, Jehoshua's rejection of Satan's temptation established his legitimacy as high priest,42 a legitimacy that had been presumably rejected by the Samaritans, who otherwise claimed to have a correct and direct descendant from the Aaron-Eleazar branch of the lineage. The changing of garments in Zech. 3.3-7 illustrates the prophet's claim that, although Jehoshua was not the legitimate high priest, he now was the elected high priest.43 Although I agree with Gaster that we find these disputes in the Old Testament and that Zechariah also seeks to legitimize the high priest in Jerusalem, I do not think that Zechariah's text bears an implicit rejection of the Samaritan priesthood. The scenario is that of the book of Job. The fire and the removal of filthy garments are metaphors for 'removal of iniquity'. This is clear from v. 4. That this recognition in a context of cult centralization implies rejection is conjecture and stands in contrast to Gaster's interpretation of Zech. 4.14 that the olive trees reflect a future reunification of the two priestly families. The text as such seems not to have such a perspective, and we are far better off if we consider the two olive trees as symbolic representations of Jehoshua and Zerubbabel; namely of priesthood and kingship. The legitimacy of Jehoshua is confirmed in 1 Chron. 6.1-15. As son of Yehozadak son of Serayah he belongs to the lineage of Eleazar-Levi. This is the claim found also in Samaritan traditions, which, as we have seen, placed Serayah in their high priestly genealogy. The recurrent Old Testament motif of conflict of brothers certainly is also representative, and seems to be so fundamental for the Judaean-Samaritan conflict that we come across it over and over again. Of greatest importance is that Ezra is also placed in this genealogy, although he never bore the title of high priest: a title that is, however, remarkably absent in both Ezra and Nehemiah.44 According to Jewish as well as Samaritan tradition, Ezra transcribed the Hebrew text into the Aramaic script from the old characters still found among the Samaritans. In Gaster's interpretation of the event 42. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 23-24. 43. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 23-24. 44. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 27: 'as for his title, it is noteworthy that his genealogy is given, though many links are missing, and that he is described as the safer mahir' meaning 'a very high functionary, either equal to the high priest or commander of the army'.

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

27

there could only have been one reason for such a drastic step; namely to break completely and to eliminate the Samaritan text from circulation among the Jews, to relegate it to a place of inferiority or to declare it spurious as well as incorrect and unreliable, as was often declared in the Rabbinic writings, and to wean the people from any contact or any knowledge of the old script. The new alphabet formed the impassable barrier between the two.45

According to Samaritan tradition, Ezra not only transcribed the text, he also falsified it, adding an extra commandment to replace the original commandment that the altar should be on Mt Gerizim, and further changed the wording of Deut. 27.4 to Ebal against an original Gerizim. This explains why 'the Levites read the Law to the people under the command of Ezra and with the assistance of Nehemiah'.46 Gaster's interpretation of these events is complicated by his attempts to incorporate what he think is the prophets' 'hope of reunification' by Samaritan submission to Zion and Jerusalem. Not only Zech. 4.14, but also Ezra 10 and Nehemiah 13 as well as Hag. 2.11-12, are directed towards Judaean-Samaritan relations.47 Stretching his argumentation beyond what in fact is said in these texts, it seems that Gaster, in his attempt to save the Jewish people from having fallen so deeply into apostasy that they even intermingled with heathen nations, allocates more cases to this argumentation than is dealt with in the texts.48 It is a wonder why Gaster did not bring in such texts as 2 Chronicles 30 and 45. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 28. 46. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 30: 'This will explain the failure of Ezra's activity until his work was taken in hand by Nehemiah and carried through owing to the authority wielded by the latter. The High Priest and his family, the princes of Judah, and all those who lived in amity with the Samaritans unquestionably offered great opposition and resistance to Ezra's reformative work and were able to thwart it during the years that Ezra was alone.' 47. See Gaster, Samaritans, p. 29. Gaster considered the Ashodim to be a euphemism for Samaritans, whom they avoided mentioning. 48. See p. 22: 'The relations between the Samaritans and the returned Jews must have been of a friendly character at the beginning; after all, they were conscious of being parts of one nation, they practically spoke the same language, worshipped the same God, followed the same injunctions, and had the same laws. The Jews could therefore easily have intermarried with the Samaritans, for it is not to be assumed from the records of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, that the Jews had so far forgotten themselves as to intermarry with the heathen inhabitants'; p. 29: 'In order therefore, to carry out his decision, Ezra had first to break the family relations: hence the stern decree of divorce.'

28

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

Jeremiah 30-31, which seem more appropriate to his argument about reunification. Placing the schism in the time of Ezra (dated to the mid-fifth century), Caster had no need for Josephus's Manasseh legend about the coming of Alexander the Great. This legend, based on Neh. 13.28 and Josephus's elaboration of it, has no place in Samaritan writing, and Manasseh is not placed in the Samaritan list of high priests.49 The increased animosity between the two groups, accusations of idol worship, of breaking of the Law, of fraternizing with the occupying power, combined with discussions over cult and belief for centuries, finally caused the Hasmonaean destruction of the Samaritan temple in the time of John Hyrcanus50 Also in contrast to Montgomery, Gaster argued for the antiquity of an unchanged Samaritan theology extending back some 3000 years. Any assertion of borrowing, copying or adapting their theology to the surrounding cultures, heathen or Jewish, was left unsubstantiated. As a minority group the Samaritans had to defend themselves against Judaism's accusations of having falsified the Law. 'They dared not give up a minute particle of their tradition.'51 That the opposite should be the 49. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 32-34. 50. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 35-36: 'There was no love lost between the two parties, and no sooner did John Hyrcanus obtain practical autonomy for Judea than he attacked the Samaritans, destroyed their temple, and annexed those portions of their territory which abutted on the northern frontier of Judea.' 51. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 46. Similar, but less radical views were later put forward by J. Macdonald, The Theology ofjhe Samaritans (NTL; London: SCM Press, 1964), p. 29: 'It has become customary for people to assume that the Samaritans were always the borrowers and not the lenders. Thus it is usual to claim that whenever Samaritan Literature presents ideas similar to those of some or other Near Eastern religion it was the former that incorporated the ideas of the latter. Such a claim is far from proved and no clear evidence has been presented up til now in support of it. Any claim for Samaritan borrowing from Judaism is nonsense, as anyone who has read all the available material must judge. What is true beyond doubt is that both Samaritanism and Judaism developed from a common matrix. Both possessed the Law, albeit they were at variance over points of difference in their respective texts of it, and both were evolving in an atmosphere wherein many ideas and ideals were being nurtured.' This argument's categorical refusal to consider Jewish dependence should not be compared to Macdonald's view that Samaritans 'were considerably influenced by the Greek philosophers' (Theology, p. 30), that gnosticism 'certainly influenced the Samaritans' (pp. 31-32), 'that at least in later times, they were closely influenced by the New Testament' (p. 33), and that they

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

29

case was for Gaster quite as impossible. Agreements in interpretation of the Law expressed in halakhah by both Jews and Samaritans are due to a common Pentateuch (which must have had divine and unchangeable character for both groups long before the development of oral traditions). This can be clearly demonstrated by the fact that Samaritan halakhah in some instances agrees with the so-called Sadducaean interpretation, while in many others it agrees with the so-called Pharisaean interpretation. In contrast to Judaism, Samaritanism did not experience a break from the tradition. In Jewish tradition this was the necessary consequence of the Babylonian destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritan list of high priests can be dated back to Adam, while the worship on Gerizim is understood never to have ceased as 'they have never been removed from Mount Gerizim'. Gaster in fact argues here against the Samaritan self-understanding that they had been removed three times: in the time of Saul, at the exile and finally in the time of the Jewish king Simon. These removals, however, caused no break with tradition. The return from the Babylonian exile is a return to the old cult place, a return to the old code, re-establishing the former cult.52 I do not wish to engage myself in a lengthy discussion about Gaster's presentation and judgment of Samaritan literature, but some few remarks must be made. Without direct evidence, admittedly difficult to establish, Gaster considered the Samaritan texts to be of a considerable antiquity and to have been copied accurately for centuries. The asserted differences between the Samaritan, the Masoretic and the Septuagint Pentateuchs were all due to later rewritings of the various texts in book form. These were 'not invested with the same sacred character as that with which the scroll was endowed'. 53 Only the scroll was used for divine service and should remain unblemished. For that reason, the former judgments of differences should be reconsidered and the discussion about the Samareiticon and the LXX taken up once again. This argument of Caster's has been seen for the last 50 years in quite another light. With the finding of the scrolls in the caves of the Judaean desert, Caster's argument fell apart. The establishment of an unchangeable textus receptus was finally accepted as belonging to a much later period. Gaster's other arguments regarding palaeography, colophons 'did not avoid considerable influence from Islam' (pp. 37-39), since he is here speaking from both a different perspective and time. 52. See Chapter 6. 53. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 103.

30

The Samaritans and Early Judaism

and passeq in the Masoretic texts (where they deviated from the Samaritan texts) created few interested comments in following decades. The same must be said of his arguments about the Samaritans having been originally Israelites and preserving Hebrew in its most archaic form.54 Albeit this argument found its roots in both Jewish and Samaritan tradition, few scholars accepted it as historical. For years to come, the presentation of the Samaritans given by Josephus found its way into most of the 'historiographies' on both Judaism and Samaritanism. A Postexilic Political Schism: The Position of A. Alt55 Montgomery and Gaster both operated within what can be called a twoepisode paradigm. Placing the origin of either Samaritans or Jews in the first episode of separation—whether this be in post- or pre-exilic times—and a subsequent final schism in the fifth-second century BCE, the division of Jews and Samaritans begged explanation beyond pure political circumstances related to the formation of the Jewish state and the subsequent reign of the Hasmonaeans. The assertion of hostilities in the intervening period is conjectural. It does not explain steps taken by the Hasmonaeans or give reason for the hatred arising from such events. This problem forms the background of Alt's judgment of political circumstances in Palestine during Assyrian and Persian times. Historicizing the biblical accounts, Alt reached the conclusion that the schism was purely political. The building of the temple on Gerizim was an unavoidable consequence of Persian policy, which—with Nehemiah— gave Judaea an independent political role similar to what Samaria had enjoyed for 300 years.56 The ruling classes in Samaria,57 placed there 54. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 107: 'We thus have here four stages of development: first the old Hebrew writing, then some time afterwards the separating dot, then the transliteration of the old Hebrew writing into the square associated with the name of Ezra, and lastly the final evolution of the difference between the final and the medial letters. This development of course covers a long period and is probably the work of centuries. The Samaritan scroll shows the period of the separating dot, and thus from the point of view of palaeography has preserved a most archaic form which in all its details is entirely independent of any Jewish or other known influence.' 55. A. Alt, 'Die Rolle Samarias bei der Entstehung des Judentums' (1934), KS 2, pp. 316-37. 56. Alt, 'Rolle Samarias', p. 337: 'Das sich die Provinz Samaria auf diesen Umschwung hin auch als Religionsgemeinschaft unabhangig von Jerusalem kon-

1. The Two-Episode Paradigm

31

first by the Assyrian governors and later by the Babylonian and Persian authorities, had jurisdiction also over Judaea and its remaining poor landed population. When the Persians, however, sent home Judaea's exiled aristocracy58 this population, called 'am ha'ares, fought to remain under Samaritan rule. Aided by the governor, they appealed to the Persian king to stop what they considered to be usurpers of 'government'. The immediate result was favourable to the 'am ha'ares. Judaea was without its own governor and the Samaritan jurisdiction had no intention of giving up its influence in this area. It was not until the time of Nehemiah and the establishment of an independent Judaean province that the neighbouring provinces were deprived of influence in Judaic policy.59 This did not lead to the establishment of two equal regions. stituerte und durch offiziellen Ausbau der Verehrung Jahwes auf dem Garizim ein kultisches Element, das ihr bis dahin gefehlt hatte, in ihren Bestand einfiigte, war die unausbleibliche Folge.' 57. Alt, 'Rolle Samarias', p. 320: 'Nicht minder wichtig fur die Rechtslage und fur das innere Leben der neuen Provinz ist aber zweitens die Ersetzung der deportierten bisherigen Oberschicht, die damit fur immer aus der Geschichte Palastinas ausscheidet, durch eine neue, die auf dem gleichen Wege der Deportationen aus anderen Teilen des Grossreiches zusammengeholt wird, also weder in sich selbst noch mit der an ihren Platzen belassenen Untersicht der Provinzialbevolkerung einen angestammten, nicht erst durch die Massnahmen der assyrische Regierung kiinstlich hergestellten Zusammenhang besitzt'. At the core of Alt's argument lies the assumption that these people remained unassimilated. Cf. p. 322: 'Es ist daher ein griindlicher Irrtum, wenn man sich die Entwicklung der Dinge in der Provinz Samaria von der Assyrerzeit so vorstellt, als ware da allmahlich ein Ausgleich zwischen der alteinheimischen und der neugefiihrten Bevolkerung eingetreten, und wenn man gar diese angebliche Volkermischung zur Grundlage fur das Verstandnis der spateren samaritanischen Religionsgemeinde machen will, als ware bei ihrer Entstehung eine Religionsmischung mit im Spiel.' 58. Alt argued that the exiled Judaean high society had not been exiled in the technical sense of the word, but was only removed for a limited period from its homeland, and was never replaced by a foreign upper-class group, as had happened in Samaria (cf. Alt, 'Rolle Samarias', p. 326). With the return of this 'exiled' upperclass group, its submission to Samaritan authority created the conflicts described in Ezra and Nehemiah. The Samaritan upper class, called 'am ha'ares, were those who for political reasons sought to delay the building of the temple in Jerusalem. 59. Alt, 'Rolle Samarias', p. 331: 'hatte es dort von anfang an einen persischen Statthalter gegeben, so miisste er an mehreren Stellen genannt sein, wo man in Wirchlichkeit nicht ein Wort von ihm lest, Ex.: Ezra 5:3ff, 4:8, 7:12ff; Neh. 2:7ff.' The mention of former governors in Neh. 5.15 does not necessarily refer to the same function, and it is possible that it refers to the Samaritan governors (p. 333

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Jerusalem kept its priority at least until the end of the Persian period. In Samaria, it was only the central area and Gerizim that had cultic independence.60 Supporting Alt's assertion of Jerusalem's sovereignty was the acceptance of the common Pentateuch, which in Alt's opinion must have taken place long after Nehemiah. Furthermore, the people from the Jewish colony in Elephantine sent their letter to the governors in both Jerusalem and Samaria, but to the high priest only in Jerusalem (cf. Elephantine pap. 31). It is characteristic for Alt's presentation that it was not as directed by the biblical account as might be the immediate impression.61 It is the extra-biblical material, the Assyrian Prism text, that undermines the understanding of 2 Kings 17 as historical, and it is the Elephantine papyri that supports the historicity of Neh. 5.14. With this step, scholarship began its move into the paradigm shift in Old Testament research, which in its historical reconstruction sought to place the development of Samaritanism and Judaism in the postexilic period and to remove entirely connections between 2 Kings 17's dubious 'Samaritans' and Ezra's and Nehemiah's 'Adversaries'. Involved in these attempts at reconstruction have been the severe and still-ongoing debates about the historicity of the Bible's accounts. This debate tended to divide scholars into two groups: one who, comparing the biblical accounts with extrabiblical material, found it difficult to consider the stories of the Bible historical, and another group who, seeking to explain the divergences, tried to establish foundations supporting the historicity of the Bible. In n. 2). This argumentum ex silentio is the unproven part of Alt's assertion that Nehemiah carried out the separation some time before the end of the fifth century, as documented in the Elephantine papyri, which seemed to be the only secure anchor for a dating. Cf. p. 332: 'So bezeugt denn auch fur die Folgezeit (408) eines der jtidisch-aramaischen Dokumente aus der Militarkolonie von Elephantine die Existens einer besonderen Statthalterei in Juda neben der in Samaria, was zur Voraussetzung hat, dass nunmehr das einstige Gebiet des Staaters der Davididen ganz oder wenigstens zu einem wesentlichen Teil aus einer Eingliederung in die Nachbarprovinzen gelost und administrativ verselbstandigt war.' 60. Cf. A. Alt, 'Zur Geschichte der Grenze zwischen Judaa und Samaria', (1935), KS 2, pp. 346-62. The heritage from Josephus is clear here; and it is not declared from what the Samaritans had cultic independence. 61. So also in his famous Landnahme hypothesis Alt takes his starting point first and foremost from the late bronze Iron age transition and only secondarily from the traditions of Judges (A. Alt, Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Paldstina [Leipzig: Reformationsprogramm der Universitat Leipzig, 1925]).

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Samaritan studies, this development reached its climax in H.G. Kippenberg's claim for the historicity of 2 Kings 17, placing this event in a context entirely unrelated to the events after the exile. The 'Samaritans' involved in both cases were unrelated.62 If it were not for the fact that Josephus relates these two groups (called Kot>0aioi, Cuthaeans, in his writings), Kippenberg's suggestion could easily have solved the historical problem. We will return to this below. The issues regarding the origin of the Samaritans in this formative period of scholarship were not reducible to political developments. They were increasingly related to the broader questions of the origin and development of both postexilic and pre-rabbinic Judaism. Central to these debates have been the questions of the development of the Pentateuch and the formation of the Canon. By necessity, this included reconsiderations of an asserted pre-exilic Deuteronomistic Yahwism comprising all of Palestine and dating back to a biblically established common monarchy, which, in the light of new insights gained from texts as various as the Elephantine papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls, could be maintained only with great difficult. Decisive Elements in the Formation of a Distinct Samaritan Community in the Hasmonaean Period: The Positions ofH.H. Rowley, G. Holscher, W.F. Albright and M. Smith The move towards this paradigm shift is clearly demonstrated in H.H. Rowley's article from 1955,63 rejecting the reconstruction made by C.C. Torrey and G. Holscher. In an attempt to save the reliability of Josephus's Alexander legend, they argued either for a placement of the event in the time of Nehemiah's rule during the reign of Artaxerxes II (405-359 BCE)64 or for the dependency of Josephus on Alexander

62. H.G. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur samaritanischen Religion der aramaischen Periode (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1971), pp. 92-93. 63. 'Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple'. 64. C.C. Torrey, Ezra Studies (1910), repr. W.F. Stinespring, Prolegomena (Library of Biblical Studies; New York: Ktav, 1970), pp. xi-xxviii; idem, 'Sanballat the Horonite', JBL 47 (1928), pp. 380-89; idem, The Chronicler's History of Israel: Chron.-Ezra-Neh. Restored in its Original Form (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. xxxi, repeated these former views and totally rehabilitated Josephus's story about Alexander's arrangements in Samaria.

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Polyhistor, 'who normally is considered to be reliable'.65 Concluding that we have no knowledge of when the Samaritan temple was built, Rowley did not consider it necessary that the building of the temple had anything to do with the schism asserted by Josephus. The texts from Elephantine did not display any knowledge of a break between Jerusalem and Samaria, and the cult centralization from the time of Josiah was most probably deemed only short-term and not extending into a postexilic period.66 That the Jewish colony in Elephantine did not seem to have any knowledge of the Pentateuch, the Law, sabbath, feasts, biblical traditions, and so on, was pointed out by A. Cowley as early as 1923: 'so far as we learn from these texts Moses might never have existed, there might have been no bondage in Egypt, no exodus, no monarchy, no prophets'.67 This led Cowley to assume that the Pentateuch in its later form was chiefly postexilic, and that the rabbinic tradition's assertion of

65. G. Holscher, Die Quellen des Josephus fur die Zeit vom Exil bis zum jiidischen Kriege (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1904). See note 12 for early references to this discussion. Critical viewers of Josephus's reliability at the time were, for example, R. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York, 1941), p. 809: 'Josephus... gives a purely fictious account of the founding of the Samaritan church'; M. Noth, History of Israel (ET; 2nd rev. edn by P.R. Ackroyd; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), p. 354: 'The whole story is full of legendary details and introduces all kinds of figures, such as the governor of Samaria Sanballat, who do not belong to this historical context.' Rowley had nothing but contempt for Josephus's history writing, which he characterized as inaccurate and unrealistic: 'It is curious to find how little accurate history of the Persian period survived in Jewish tradition, and for chronological purposes in this period Jewish sources are of slight value' (Men of God, p. 257). 66. Rowley here refers to the Samaritan tradition's assertion that the temple at Gerizim was restored by Sanballat in the time of Zerubbabel, thus supporting Josephus with 200 years' divergence (Men of God, p. 266 n. 2), and further on p. 268 he says, 'At the end of the fifth century BC the Jewish authorities could be presumed to look with complacency on the existence of a temple at Elephantine, which could serve a community there which was cut off from the Jerusalem temple, and it might have looked with equal complacency on a temple on Mount Gerizim, either then or later, since the political tension which had appeared between Jerusalem and Samaria more than once in the post-exilic days had made the Samaritans but coldly welcomed visitors in Jerusalem.' 67. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, p. xxiii.

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the loss of the Law which therefore was restored by Ezra (cf. Sank. 21b; Suk. 20.3) should be judged trustworthy.68 Rowley did not agree with this, but maintained that the Pentateuch must have reached its finished form before the time of Ezra, as it was highly improbable that the Samaritans had borrowed the Pentateuch from the Jews after the breach had become complete, and almost certain that the whole Pentateuch must have been accepted as the work of Moses before things had reached such a point.69

That the Samaritans should have 'borrowed' and 'accepted' the Hebrew Pentateuch and at the same time have treated Ezra with the 'greatest bitterness' was for Rowley a contradiction that could not bring these traditions together.70 The purpose of Ezra's mission was to bring religious practice into agreement with this Law code, and—given the reference to the finding of it in Jerusalem's temple—declare this place to be the place for the name of Yahweh. The erection of the Samaritan temple was thus not a result of this reform. This temple, based on the traditions of the Pentateuch, must have existed long before that time.71 It is reasonable to expect that Rowley had asked whether it in fact was the destruction or the claim implicit in the Deuteronomistic reform for a centralization of the cult that caused the schism. This would have brought him closer to the opinions put forward by Holscher and

68. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, p. xvii. 69. Rowley, Men of God, p. 273: 'if Ezra had changed the Pentateuch, so that the original reading of Deut. 27.4 is Gerizim, as claimed by the Samaritans then it was not improbable that the Samaritans had older copies.' Asserted also by G.F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries, I, pp. 25-26: 'In Deut. 27.4, the Jewish text has "Mount Ebal", where the whole tenor of the context demands "Gerizim", as the Samaritan Hebrew reads; the same change has been made in the Jewish text in Jos. 8.30... Shechem-Gerizim was therefore manifestly the place so often spoken of in Deuteronomy where God would put his name; Jerusalem had usurped a precedence never meant for it. So far as the letter of Scripture went, the Shechemites could make out an embarrassingly good case.' Cf. Rowley, Men of God, p. 272 n. 4. 70. Rowley, Men of God, p. 211. 71. Rowley, Men of God, p. 275. The non-acceptance of the historical books was for Rowley easy to understand because of their anti-northern bias. For the Prophets and the Psalter, on the contrary, it is difficult to give reason for their dismissal: 'It seems more likely that the breach had become so deep that a reconciliation was impossible before these books had secured anything like so firm a place as they had by the time of Ben Sira.'

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Albright,72 which had been rejected by Rowley on the grounds that 'it is hard to see why the Samaritans did not accept more than the Pentateuch if that were so'.73 As early as 1922, G. Holscher had argued that the schism was only indirectly related to the development of the canon. Jews and Samaritans had the same Pentateuch. The collection of the prophets should not be dated earlier than the end of the second century BCE, since these and the biblical historical books display an anti-Ephraimitic tendency, which had been unacceptable for the Samaritans. The common opinion that the schism should be dated to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and that Josephus's Alexander legend should reflect an underlying historical event was rejected by Holscher on the grounds of 2 Mace. 6.1's mention of Gerizim, as well as the dating of the final redaction of the Pentateuch later than the time of Nehemiah.74 It was only increasing envy and unfriendliness over cult practices, with an excessive eagerness for the observance of what the Hasmonaeans considered to be the proper cult, that had led to the destruction of the Samaritan temple and a final schism.75 Without joining the discussion about Samaritan acceptance or nonacceptance of Old Testament prophets and Scriptures, religious and 72. They placed the schism in either the second century BCE (cf. Holscher, Geschichte, p. 170) or the first century BCE (cf. W.F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2nd edn, 1946), p. 336. 73. Rowley, Men of God, p. 269. 74. Holscher, Geschichte, p. 172 n. 14. 75. Holscher, Geschichte, p. 170: 'Erst die Intoleranz der Hasmonaerzeit hat den Bruch herbeigefiihrt. Wahrend die Seleukidenmacht im 2. Jhrh. zerbrockelte, gelang es den Hasmonaeren, die jiidische Herrschaft u'ber den grossten Teil Palastinas auszudehnen: Jonatan gewann die samarischen Grenzdistrikte, Simon eroberte Gazara und Jope, Hyrkan I. Iduma'a, Pera'a und Samaria, Aristobul I. auch Galilaa bis an die Grenzen Libanons; Alexander Jannai war am Ende Herr fast ganz Palastinas. Dabei trieben diese Hasmonaer eine Million mit Feuer und Schwert; wo sie konnten, vor allem in Iduma'a und Nordgalilaa, zwangen sie die Bevolkerung zur Beschneidung. Diesem orthodoxen Religionseifer fiel auch das Heiligtum auf dem Garizim zum Opfer, welches Hyrkan I im Jahre 128 zerstorte. Mit Ausnahme der grossen hellenistischen Stadte war Palastina seitdem judaisiert; das Programm des Deuteronomiums von der Zentralisation des Kultes in Jerusalem war fiir kurze Zeit verwirklicht'. But already in 63 BCE the Samaritans were liberated by the Romans and from that time on was 'die Sekte der Samariter bei Sichem als eine eigene, vom Judentum losgeloste Religionsgemeinschaft entstanden.'

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political circumstances, the reform of Ezra, and so on, W.F. Albright dated the Judaean-Samaritan schism to the Hasmonaean period. He based his assertion on the existence of coins from this period bearing clear impressions of the script of Samaritan scripture. Considering this to be a revival of the pre-exilic archaic Hebrew script, Albright concluded that it was 'presumably then or somewhat later that the entire SP was retranscribed into the archaizing "Samaritan" script, which symbolised the refusal of the Samaritans to follow the "modernists" of Jerusalem'.76 The conquest of Shechem and Samaria between 128 and 110 BCE and the Roman takeover in 63 BCE confirmed for Albright his dating of the schism.77 This scriptural 'evidence' was strongly supported by P.M. Cross, who, on the basis of preliminary work on DSS in the mid-fifties, concluded that 'the Samaritan Pentateuch, its textual type, orthographic style, Paleo-Hebrew script, and linguistic usage, all developed in the Maccabean and early Hasmonean periods'.78 Cross, 76. Albright against M. Gaster (and rabbinic tradition), considered the Samaritan 'retranscription' to be a two-step movement, which must have implied that he expected the Samaritans to have followed the practice instituted by Ezra. 77. Albright, Stone Age, pp. 265-66: 'Since there is not a single passage in the whole Pentateuch which can be seriously considered as showing post-exilic influence either in form or content, it is likely that the entire Pentateuch was compiled in substantially its present form before 522 BCE. However, this does not mean that its form was already fixed according to the standards prevailing in the time of the Septuagintal translation (c. 250 BCE) or in that of the Samaritan recension (which Samaritan palaeography practically compels us to place between c. 100 and c. 63 BCE), to say nothing of Masoretic standards more than a millennium later.' The contradictions in this statement certainly have inspired innumerable studies on how a later excerpt can be prior to itself. 78. P.M. Cross, 'Papyri of the Fourth Century B.C. from Daliyeh', in D.N. Freedman and J.C. Greenfield (eds.), New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 45-69 (65); J.D. Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect (HSM, 2; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 87, gave Albright and Cross full support: 'its script developed from the paleo-hebrew; its orthography is the standard full orthography of this time; the textual tradition it represents is not only known from this time, but completed the development of its characteristics during the Hasmonean period.' R. Pummer, 'Present State of Samaritan Studies I', JSS 21 (1976), pp. 39-61 (51), gave Purvis's statement this comment: 'Whereas many would agree with Purvis in principle that the final break must have come then, and that specifically sectarian version of the SP dates from that time, not everyone considered Purvis' arguments as conclusive.' References are made to reviews of Purvis's Samaritan Pentateuch:

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however, operated within the two-episode paradigm. His studies on the papyri from Wadi Daliyeh from 1963 and especially 1975 sought to solve the chronological confusions in Josephus's Alexander story by data from other sources. Before examining this contribution to the Samaritan debate we need to deal with Morton Smith's challenging work, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament, from 1971. Reconsidering the whole question of the image of Judaism prior to the Hasmonaean period and placing Samaritans within that Judaism, Smith removed any reason for sectarian ruptures related to temple building projects. With reference to a widespread religious syncretism in Palestine until the second century BCE, he argued that it was fashion rather than conscious religious policy that had brought an end to offerings and the replacement of cult places with synagogues, resulting in a decimation of cult places to 'the official cults at Jerusalem and Samaria and perhaps a few holy places in the north, most likely Mt Gerizim' ,79 The 'Samaritan schism' is not to be dated from the erection of this temple but from the breakdown of relationships between Jerusalemites

B.J. Roberts in JTS 20 (1969), pp. 569-71; M. Smith in ATR 53 (1971), pp. 127-29; J.H.C. Lebram in BO 25 (1969), pp. 382-83; Z. Ben-Hayyim in Biblica 52 (1971), p. 255, who expresses severe doubts when he asks, 'Can one really come to an important historical and social conclusion such as the time of the formation of the Samaritan sect according to the orthographic form and the script of its Holy Writ?'. The dating was on other premises accepted by M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 191, who did not reckon with the canonization of the prophetic books before the Hasmonaean period, which made the question about acceptance/nonacceptance unimportant; R.J. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews: The Origins ofSamaritanism Reconsidered (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), p. 152, who rejected Cross's theory about the local text tradition, since there could have existed several local text traditions which have now been lost. The most that can be said is that palaeography points to a recension in the Hasmonean period. Coggins (Samaritans and Jews, p. 155), warned against too heavily stressing the fact that the Samaritans had rejected the non-Pentateuchal Scriptures: 'In fact, a wide range of attitudes could be found, and it appears that the Samaritans were similar to the Sadduccees and the Jews of the diaspora at Alexandria in the way in which they accorded fully canonical status to the Torah alone, with a more limited place being found for certain other works.' Further research on the DSS brought up new ideas about various text types and the development of the Samaritan script, and in fact loosened the scholarly asserted ties between schism and recension. See Chapter 3 . 79. Smith, Palestinian Parties, pp. 184-85.

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and Samaritans, which led to a reversal of each group's legal opinion regarding the permissibility of the cult carried on at the other's sanctuary.80

This conclusion Morton Smith based on an assertion of the existence of two competing parties in postexilic Palestine: a Judaic separatist party, led by the governor Zerubbabel and the priest Yehoshua son of Yosadak,81 and an assimilation party represented chiefly by priests from Jerusalem who allowed mixed marriages, proselytism, a certain degree of religious syncretism and more cult places. Between those parties we find the 'am ha'ares, the remaining pre-exilic syncretist Yahweh worshippers, or perhaps apostates or pagans. They were now forced to decide for one or other party.82 Paraphrasing Ezra and Nehemiah with related prophets and using parts of Josephus's historiography as reliable sources, Smith asserted that the separatist party gained influence in the fifth century83 but fell behind again in the fourth century when the

80. Smith, Palestinian Parties, p. 185. M. Smith pointed out that, according to Ezra 3.Iff., 4.Iff. and Jer. 41.5, sacrificial worship of Yahweh continued after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and prior to its rebuilding. This in fact separated the temple from the sacrificial cult, which only demanded altars, several of which have been found in and outside of Palestine: Haran, Elephantine, Babylon, Lakish, Gerizim, Tabor, Karmel, Hebron, Mamre, Deir 'Alia, Tell es-Sa-dieyeh, Araq el-Emir, Leontopolis, etc. (cf. pp. 90-98). 81. The separatist party emanated from the pre-exilic Yahweh-alone party (Smith, Palestinian Parties, p. 34) with a new programme of realizing the EzraNehemiah reform (cf. pp. 110-11). 82. M. Smith based his analysis on textual evidence relating to the modification of former customs. See pp. 180-84 (183): 'Since the Judeans and the north Israelites continued to worship Yahweh, and since we are told that the cult in the north was sacrificial, the problem which had to be overcome on the Judean side was that of explaining away the passages in Deuteronomy which prohibited sacrifice outside Jerusalem. This problem the assimilationist priests had already met when they combined the deuteronomic and holiness codes in a single collection, since the holiness code anticipated (and seems framed to necessitate) sacrifices in every village. Perhaps their harmonistic exegesis simply interpreted Deuteronomy's references to sacrifice at "the" place, which Yahweh would choose as meaning "any" such place, that is, any established shrine ("the" often has the meaning "any" in priestly legal texts).' 83. In the work of Nehemiah, it finally gained political as well as religious authority in Judaea. The Judaeans were from that time on a special people, segregated from their neighbours, observing peculiar customs (such as the Sabbath), and devoted to a Yahweh worship centred around the temple in Jerusalem. Whether the

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assimilist party gained power. This was kept until around 180 BCE, only interrupted once by a crisis around 350-330 BCE during the reign of Artaxerxes III Ochus. His conquest of Jerusalem, probably in the 350s, became a decisive event for the relationship between Judaea and Samaria. The deportation of a mainly pro-Egyptian government and the installment of a pro-Persian one in Jerusalem, whose members came mainly from the separatist party, 'may have produced a temporary crisis in relations with the Samaritans and may have contributed to Josephus's erroneous location of the "Samaritan schism" in the period immediately following'.84 With Alexander the Great's defeat of Darius in 333 BCE, the assimilist party is seen to have gained power again, which they kept until around 180 BCE. The principal achievement of the Jerusalem priesthood during this century and a half of assimilationist control was to establish their corpus of religious law—the Pentateuch—so firmly as the law of Yahweh and the law of the land that its preservation could become the battle-cry of the Maccabees, and its interpretation the central concern of later sectarian Judaism... From the Samaritan acceptance of the law to the Maccabean revolt there is no reliable sign of any lasting and official breach. Shechemites and Judeans formed a single religious community in Ptolemaic Egypt and were treated as a single religious community by assimilationists liked it or not, they could do nothing but submit to this 'religion of (most) Judeans', called '"Judaism"' (p. 145). This, however, did not lead to any realised cult centralisation or to a destruction of a Samaritan temple (which must have existed from pre-exilic times, Ezra 4.2). This would have required a military occupation, which would have been contrary to the Persian administration's protection of local religious groups (Smith, Palestinian Parties, pp. 197-98). 84. Smith, Palestinian Parties, pp. 185-86: This accounts for many of the prophecies warning against alliances with Egypt—our present collection of prophetic books was probably being put together about this time.' This utterance is typical for Morton Smith's work of combining history and literature (cf. p. 151). Historically there is much in support of such an argumentation, but methodologically it is very difficult to avoid circular arguments that are in constant danger of creating both political history and history of literature on unsubstantiated arguments. The prophetic warnings discussed by Smith could in fact have been brought at any time in Israel's ancient history. The lack of historical references to most of the events in the Persian and Hellenistic periods until the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (around 170 BCE) makes it possible to create whatever scenario one thinks fit for the texts and probably also accounts for the scholarly hypothesis that the texts were finally edited in this period, since such an assertion does not bring them in a conflict with later literature, or later events.

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the Seleucids until the hellenizing party in Shechem protested. Their protest may have been no more representative of Shechemite opinion than the contemporary acts of the hellenizers in Jerusalem were of Judean opinion, but representative or not it began an official separation which was confirmed by the Shechemites non-participation in the Maccabean revolt (the 'Samaritans' who helped the Seleucids probably came from pagan Samaria). From this time on there were two religious communities. The Shechemites presently revised their text of the Pentateuch to justify their practices, and from that time on there were two official texts of the law.85

This conclusion seems to be one of the great weaknesses in Smith's work. The assertion of a continuation of the assimilist party in Judaea but not in Samaria after the period of Artaxerxes III, creating an initial schism in this period, seems to be a necessary hypothesis for Smith's reconstruction of the establishment of the Pentateuch. For unknown reasons, this is asserted to have originated in the Jerusalemite priesthood, although its perspective is entirely from outside of Jerusalem. The assertion of a Samaritan acceptance of this Law, which could only happen if 'there was no lasting and official breach', is not substantiated, and, whatever reason the Samaritans might have had to revise this 'accepted' Pentateuch, it is not presented in Smith's work. The possibility that it was the separatist party that needed to revise their early edition of the Pentateuch seems not to have occurred to him. Taking up Old Ideas: The Positions of P.M. Cross and H.G. Kippenberg The finding of the so-called Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh in 1962 brought further confusion regarding the formation of postexilic Judaism's relation to Samaritanism. The still unsolved question of the chronological inconsistencies in Josephus's Alexander legend has only seemingly found its solution in the reconstruction offered by P.M. 85. Smith, Palestinian Parties, p. 191, here followed the views of Waltke, 'that the Samaritan Pentateuch was influenced by the proto-Masoretic text, but later went through a period of corruption' (B. Waltke, Prolegomena to the Samaritan Pentateuch [HTR, 58; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965], p. 463). 'This would seem a reflection of the two periods, first 198-173, when the massoretic text was being formed and the upper classes of Jerusalem and Shechem were on good terms, then the Maccabean period, when Shechem at first was in the hand of the Hellenizers, later was at war with the Maccabees, and finally destroyed at 107.'

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Cross.86 The finds from a cave in the Jordan valley, north of Jericho, consisted of several, mostly administrative, documents from Samaria, potsherds of a type found in Shechem also, and about 300 skeletons. Some of the documents carried the name of Sanballat and, together with the Elephantine documents, they bore testimony to Sanballat's ties to Samaria. By way of the so-called papponomy theory,87 Cross sought to demonstrate comparable reliability for the Chronicler, Josephus and the papyri. However, in spite of possible evidence implicit in the papyri, Cross's reconstruction had the sole purpose of saving the biblical 'evidence' and Josephus's elaboration on it. It is somewhat ironic that Cross, in his first article on the subject in 1963, claimed: 'The significance of the discoveries in the Wadi Daliyeh despite the relatively banal content of the papyri, is considerable. Any light on the fourth century BC. is highly welcome; one doubts that there is a less known century in Palestine in the entire first millennium.'88 The reconstruction made by Cross with Sanballat I-II-III and the associated high priests Yohanan I86. P.M. Cross, Jr, 'The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri', BA 26 (1963), pp. 110-21; idem, 'A Reconstruction of the Judean Restoration', JBL 94 (1975), pp. 418. 87. Which he based on his own reconstruction of a king list from an Ammonite inscription from Tell Siran in the sixth century BCE. See P.M. Cross Jr: 'Notes on the Ammonite Inscription from tell Siran', BASOR 212 (1973), pp. 12-15, and B. Mazar, 'The Tobiads', IEJ 1 (1957), pp. 137-45, 229-38, who placed all references to Tobiah in one genealogy stretching from 590 BCE (Lachish Ostraca) to 200 BCE (Zenon papyri) with an addition of the Tabeel lineage from the eighth century BCE, referred to in Isa. 7.6. This reconstruction did not achieve general acceptance as it relied mostly on the Old Testament and Josephus, and since it had not been established that similarity of names implies the same genealogy (cf. T.C. Eskenazi, 'Tobiah', ABD, VI, p. 584-85). 88. In his article from 1975, 'Reconstruction', Cross complained about the lack of progress in research since the discovery of the Elephantine papyri in 1911: 'If one compares the review of literature on the date of Ezra's mission by H.H. Rowley in 1948 ["The Chronological Order of Ezra and Nehemiah"] and the review by Ulrich Kellermann in 1968 ["Erwagungen zum Problem der Ezradatierung", ZAW 80 (1968), pp. 55-87] and ["Erwagungen zum Ezragesetz", ZAW 80 (1968), pp. 373-85] one comes away disappointed; a generation of research has added at best a few plausible speculations.' To these Cross reckoned J. Morgenstern, 'The Dates of Ezra and Nehemiah', JSS 7 (1962) pp. 1-11, and Smith, Palestinian Parties (p. 252 n. 109), who, criticizing Rowley, argued, 'Arguments from personal names are generally worthless because of the frequence of papponomy at this period, and the frequency of most of the names concerned'.

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II-III and Yaddua I-II-III were not witnessed, as claimed by Cross, by Elephantine papyrus 30 and Samaria papyri 5, 8 and 14.89 With a dating of Elephantine papyri to 408 BCE and Samaria papyri to 375-335 BCE, both of which speak of the 'sons of Sanballat', Cross found it necessary to identify the Sanballat of Elephantine papyrus 30 as number I, while the Sanballat of Samaria papyri 5 and 14 had to be number II. Finally, the Sanballat mentioned in Josephus's Alexander story was seen as number III.90 As a consequence of this reconstruction, Josephus's account of the marriage of the daughter of Sanballat (III) to the Jerusalemite priest Manasseh, brother to Yaddua (III) had to be a different incident than that mentioned in Neh. 13.28. This could only be the marriage of the daughter of Sanballat (I) to the son of the high priest Yoyada (Yaddua I).91 Cross's attempt to save Josephus's mistake by a reference to a late composition for the work of the Chronicler in the Rabbinic period (as a reason for Josephus's use of 1 Esdras and an 89. Samaria papyrus no. 5 mentions 'Yahu son of [San]ballat, Governor of Samaria'; no. 8 mentions '[H]nnyh, governor of Samaria'; no. 14 mentions '[Yes]hu son of Sanballat and Hanan the prefekt' (cf. Cross, 'Papyri of the Fourth Century B.C.', p. 46). 90. R.W. Klein gave full support to this reconstruction in 'Sanballat', IDBSup, I, pp. 781-82, where he furthermore found it probable that there could have been several priests who married Sanballat's daughters since the schism had not occurred immediately. G. Widengreen, 'The Samaritan Schism and the Construction of the Samaritan Temple', in J.H. Hayes and J.M. Miller (eds.), Israelite and Judean History (London: SCM Press, 1977), pp. 489-538 (507-509) rejected Cross's reconstruction for not only having construed the results but also their presuppositions. H.G.M. Williamson, 'Sanballat', ABD, V, pp. 973-75 points to the obvious problem, that formerly Rowley ('Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple') and Mowinckel (Studien zu dem Buck Ezra-Nehemia II: Die Nehemia-Denkschrift [Oslo: SUNVAO, 1964]) had noted that Josephus did not place his account about the son-in-law of Sanballat in the time of Nehemiah but rather in the time of Alexander the Great, and that it has not been proven that 'the Sanballat of Josephus proves to be Sanballat the III'. It should be further noticed that Josephus, disagreeing with the biblical account, leaves out any naming in his Nehemiah account (Ant. 11.159-83), and only refers to those included as Ammonites, Moabites and Samaritans (11.174), which would have been unnecessary if the names could have been repeated. The disagreements in Josephus's historigraphy thus had not been overcome with the new finds, as asserted by Cross in 'Reconstruction', p. 5. 91. '...it is clear that he [Josephus] confused Yaddua II and Yaddua III as well as Sanballat I and Sanballat III with diabolic results for the history of the Restoration' ('Reconstruction', p. 6).

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independent Nehemiah source) might save the historicity of Nehemiah as such, but it certainly brings it in conflict with Josephus's dating of Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE. In fact, it also removed Cross' need for a Sanballat III and Yaddua III. Perhaps it was this implicit contradiction that made Cross suggest in the same article (p. 18) that The Memoirs of Nehemiah here briefly summarised must have been originally composed and circulated in the late fifth century. Toward 400 BCE a final editor combined the Nehemiah-memoirs with the Chronicler's work (Chron. 2), prefixed a collection of genealogies (1 Chron. 19) and otherwise edited the whole.

This collision between two paradigms of research became crucial for Cross's conclusions. With a dating of Nehemiah to the time of Artaxerxes I, about 445 BCE, he needed an extra generation in order to hold the evidence from Elephantine and Samaria papyri together with the biblical material. The attempt to save the historicity of the biblical material provided this material with a superiority over extra-biblical evidence. In fact it took away any possible historicity of the extra-biblical material. Where one might have expected a revision of the 'evidence' from the Bible and from Josephus on the background of new material, the contradictions introduced by this material were smoothed away in an even more fanciful reconstruction. This certainly was an 'upside down' Martin Noth: 'Es geht aber wissenschaftlich nicht darum, ob wir "external evidence" brauchen, sondern ob wir "external evidence" haben.'92 Here we had 'external evidence' that in a twisted way created two extra Sanballats out of the 'son(s) of Sanballat' mentioned in the papyri. More clearly, this lack of consistency is demonstrated in Cross's 1971 article on the subject, where he stated: There can be little doubt that the erection of the temple of Gerizim as a rival to Zerubbabel's temple in Jerusalem further aggravated the traditional bad relations between Samaritan and Jew.' This assumption was based solely on Josephus and had, as R.J. Coggins demonstrated a few years later93 no contemporary documentation. When the schism in the second century was claimed to be a culmination of these circumstances—witnessed in archaeology and DSS's documentation of a Samaritan text type as well as by an independent development of the Samaritan 92. M. Noth, 'Der Beitrag der Archaologie zur Geschichte Israels', in G.W. Anderson et al. (eds.), Congress Volume Oxford 1959 (VTSup, 7; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), pp. 262-82 (27 I n . 1). 93. R.J. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews.

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Pentateuch in this period—we once again were faced with a construed historiography's apologetic claiming Judaism's sovereignty: It is difficult to speak of the Samaritans as a fully separated sect, so long as direct Jewish influence shaped their doctrine and practice, so long as the biblical text which they used was held in common with the Jews, so long as Jew and Samaritan used a common national style of script.94

Representing a conservative strain of scholarship's problem with incorporating new evidence in already well-established concepts about Israel's and Judaism's history, based mainly on the biblical evidence, Cross demonstrates pretty well the working paradigms of this scholarly view. The two-paradigm episode established in Samaritan studies, which operated mostly with a 'sudden first separation' related to temple erection and a similar 'sudden second separation' related to temple destruction, based itself on another paradigm related to cult centralization and a biblical Judaism already as early as the fifth century BCE. This second paradigm, however, was one of conjecture rather than evidence,95 and the assumption that a 'sudden first separation' should have anything to do with cult centralization and for that reason have caused inevitable conflicts and clashes was based on this conjecture. When at the same time the historicity of this 'sudden first separation' and the asserted temple building had been shown to be improvable, scholarship was left with the second part of the first paradigm: the temple destruction and the appearance of a Samaritan text-type and script as secure anchors for a reconstruction. Those anchors, however, began to give way in the course of DSS studies, and have left the scholarly world even more confused about the origins of the Samaritan Pentateuch, giving rise to renewed discussions about 'who changed what' and when. The dating of the temple destruction, which seemed well established, did not undergo any severe criticism in the following decades, although questions of reason and range had not been satisfactorily answered. Thus Cross's conclusion that '[tjhis reconstruction of the history of the Samaritans solves many problems' and 'it dissolves the mystery of the specifically Jewish character of Samaritanism' only satisfied those scholars dealing primarily with questions of Jewish history for whom a paraphrase of Josephus at length was considered to be methodologically acceptable. 94. Cross, 'Papyri of the Fourth Century B.C.', p. 64. 95. As pointed out by M. Smith, Palestinian Parties.

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Another representative of the two-episode paradigm was the German scholar H.G. Kippenberg, whose quite influential work from 1971, Garizim und Synagoge, sought to remove what might have been left of connections between pre-exilic and postexilic Samaritans. This, however, did not relegate the 'Samaritans' of 2 Kings 17 to the unhistorical. In Kippenberg's reconstruction they belonged to another period and had nothing to do with the later Samaritans.96 Kippenberg's interpretation of the first schism follows closely the views put forward by Montgomery. In rejecting the thesis of Alt he concluded that the schism was religious and not political.97 The reason seemed to have been a prohibition of mixed marriages in Jerusalem, which also included marriage with Samaritan women (cf. Josephus, Ant. 11.312).98 This conclusion seems somewhat anachronistic, if we are to conclude that the Samaritans originated as a result of this prohibition, and that faithfulness to Jerusalem included an abandonment of former practices, whereby those who could not follow these innovations formed their own cult in 'Shechem, lying deep in Samaria, once had been the very birthplace of the whole of Israel'.99 Echoing the conclusions of Montgomery, Kippenberg asserted that this did not lead to a final break. Most of the differences could be handled. Both groups still had the same Pentateuch and it was still the priests from the same lineage who maintained the cult both in Jerusalem and in Shechem. Once again it is stated that 'it was not until the 96. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, p. 37: 'Fassen wir zusammen. Die— offen vertretene und unterschwellig wirkende—Meinung, nach dem Sturtz des Nordreiches seien die Israeliten deportiert und Heiden neu angesiedelt worden, ist einseitig. Nach den Quellen ist nur ein Teil der Israeliten verschlept worden. Die zuriickgebliebenen Israeliten waren der Zahl nach den neu angesiedelten Heiden gewiss iiberlegen. [as argued by Montgomery in 1907]. Dass diese Kolonisten in der autochtonen Israel-Bevolkerung aufgingen, ist warhscheinlich [against Alt]. Diese ganze Vorgang, der vielleicht auch zu einem Synkretismus gefiihrt hat (2 Kon 17), fallt zeitlich bis vier Jahrhunderte vor Griindung des Garizim-Kultes und hat mit diesem nichts zu tun.' 97. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, pp. 58-59: 'So ist der Garizim-kult nicht als Resultat einer politischen Tat, sondern die Folge einer Verdrangung von Priestern, die sich nordisraelitischen Traditionen verbunden fiihlten. Es bildete sich also am Ende des 4. Jh. v. Chr. in Israel ein neues Zentrum von Glauben und Kult heraus.' 98. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, pp. 58-59. 99. 'dass tief in Samaria liegende Sichem, dass ja schon einmal die Geburtsstatte ganz Israels gewesen war (Josh. 24)'.

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time of the Maccabees that Jews and Samaritans divided into two groups.'100 The reasons were priestly quarrels prior to the Hasmonaean success and the appointment of illegitimate priests in Jerusalem. This called for a Samaritan independence in the continuation of the high priestly Eleazar lineage as an opposition to the illegitimate Hasmonaean priests in Jerusalem.101 Although it was the Hasmonaeans who broke the high priestly succession and thereby forced the Samaritans to claim the legitimate priesthood for themselves—which in Purvis's work was understood to be the Zadokites, common to Samaritans and Jews, and in Kippenberg's the Samaritan Eleazarites opposing the Zadokites— this break somewhat arbitrarily led to the formation of a 'sect' that maintained continuity. Not able to give up the well-established idea of syncretism in northern Israel and echoing 2 Kings 17, Kippenberg concluded that it was an increasing Hellenization of the Samaritan community that had become mixed with Sidonians in Shechem that led the Jews to destroy their temple and their city.102 Kippenberg's rendering of the history thus became as contradictory as Josephus's. What seemed to be an abolishment of the 2 Kings 17 paradigm of syncretism was in fact nothing more than a reuse of a Deuteronomistic theology transferred to

100. 'erst in der Makkabaerzeit Juden und Samaritanen in zwei Gruppen trennten'. 101. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, p. 92: 'Die samaritanische Sekte scheint sich im wesentlichen im 2. Jh. v. Chr. konstituert zu haben. Getragen wurde sie von israelitischen Priestern, die sich als Eleasar-Sohne verstanden und Zadokiten, Eliden und Leviten die Hohepriesterwiirde absprachen. Wahrend des 3. Jh. v. Chr. scheint die Rivalitat zweier Priesterschaften in Sichem und in Jerusalem noch nicht als endgiiltige Antitese verstanden worden zu sein. Erst im 2. Jh. v. Chr., als die Jerusalemer Hohenpriestersukzession zerbrach, entstand Streit iiber den legitimen Kult. Jetzt, beim Zerbrechen des einst einigen Israels, fiihlen sich die Samar. veranlasst, ihre Hohepriestersukzession darzulegen und ihre Heilige Schrift zu kanonisieren.' This in fact was the position of Purvis, Samaritan Pentateuch, pp. 11316, who furthermore stressed the importance of political solidification of Judaean control over especially the North as a motivation for John Hyrcanus's attack. 102. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, p. 93: 'Die jiidische Seite ihrerseits nahm Anstoss an der Hellenisierung des Garizim-Kultes, die wohl nicht nur von einer Kolonie Sidonier in Sichem, sondern vielleicht auch von diesem oder jenem Samar. gebilligt wurde.' Pummer, 'Samaritan Studies I', rightly criticized this assertion in his review of Kippenberg (pp. 53-55): 'it should be underlined that there is no conclusive evidence regarding the exact point in time or reasons for the final separation between Samaritans and Jews.'

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the third-second century BCE. This theology ascribed to Israel/Samaria the role of those who first broke the covenant and rightly bore the punishment for it. Kippenberg's attempt to read Josephus historically and correct his 'mistakes' in fact brought him right back into the arms of Montgomery. Historicizing the biblical material loosened it from its own perspective and deprived it of the inherent myth-making theology that had claimed that both Samaria and Judaea were emptied by the exilic events, and that Samaria, in contrast to Judaea, did not remain empty and 'undefiled'. This central message of 2 Kings 17 played a considerable role in the Jewish self-understanding of 'pure remnant'. In Ant. 10.184, Josephus could state: Now when Salmanesses removed the Israelites, he settled in their place the nation of Cuthaeans, who had formerly lived in the interior of Persia and Media and who were then, moreover, called Samaritans because they assumed the name of the country in which they were settled. But the king of Babylonia, when he carried off the two tribes, did not settle any nation in their place, and for this reason all of Judaea and Jerusalem and the temple remained deserted [epriuot; 8te|ieivev] for seventy years.

Removing this perspective merely distorts the text, but it does not solve the historical problems, which certainly have nothing to do with any traceable historical event, but asks rather for clarification about why the Samaritans are portrayed in this manner in some Jewish literature: a literature that reached its climax in Josephus's attempts to extirpate these so-called Cuthaeans. Josephus, in fact, is not representative of an overall understanding about the Samaritans. New Testament and early rabbinic literature still fought to find ways of placing Samaritans within Judaism. Syncretism played a very limited role in their respective judgments. We shall turn to these problems again in Chapters 4 and 5, in an evaluation of the thematic elements involved in the various presentations of Judaean-Samaritan controversies. Breaking the Two-Episode Paradigm: The Position ofR.J. Coggins R.J. Coggins's monograph Samaritans and Jews: The Origins ofSamaritanism Reconsidered from 1975 became epoch-making for Samaritan studies. Partly abolishing the two-episode paradigm, Coggins's work led to new considerations of Samaritanism in the Roman period and to the thesis of a very late final break. Reconsidering the various Old Testament readings that were usually ascribed to belong to the

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Judaean-Samaritan schism,103 Coggins concluded that these did not expose any considerable anti-Samaritan attitude, as well as that later interpretation of these texts had been based mainly on readings of Josephus. The Old Testament texts thus gave no evidence for a schism as such, but rather for increasing tensions between north and south, such as can be seen from a few apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts: Sir. 50.25-26, 2 Mace. 6.1-2 and the book of Judith. 104 The Samaritans' close relations to the Sadducees, with whom they shared similar views on Scripture, priesthood and cult, as mentioned also in the Mishnah, placed them in a spectrum of Jewish groups that did not break from rabbinic Judaism until long into the present era.105 Josephus's account of the building of the Samaritan temple in the time of Alexander the Great was still undocumented, and the finding of the Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh only solved the problem regarding Sanballat but not those otherwise implied in the story.106 Archaeological evidence of a rebuilding of Shechem in the fourth century BCE and a destruction in the end of the second century might support Josephus's story. G.E. Wright,107 in his report, also found support for this chronology in Quintus Curtius's History of Alexander (first century CE), which related that some Samaritans had burned to death the governor Andromachus, whom Alexander had placed in Samaria. As a result, the remaining Samaritans were expelled from the city and settled in Shechem.

103. 2 Kgs 17; Isa. 7.8b; 9.8; 11.10-16; 56-66; Jer. 41.5; Hos. 5; Mic. 1.5-9; 6.16; Hag, Zech. 1-8; Ezek. 37.15-28; 40-^8; 2 Chron. 13, Ezra; Neh.; Pss. 78; 87. 104. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 81: 'Indirectly however, the Old Testament evidence is of value in two ways. First it is clear that tension between North and South in Israel goes back to a very early date. Such tension is a recurrent theme even in the period of the United Monarchy, and probably goes back at least to the time of the Judges. It is not our purpose here to explore its origins, but it is clear that there is some link between the tension and that which later developed between Jews and Samaritans. It would be wrong to identify them, and suppose that the Samaritans can simply be identified as a continuation of the old Northern Kingdom—as we shall see, there is much in Samaritan tradition that militates against that—but it would be equally wrong to deny all connection and continuity.' 105. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 161. 106. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 97. 107. G.E. Wright, Shechem: The Biography of a Biblical City (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 181; idem, The Samaritans at Shechem', HTR 55 (1962), pp. 357-66; Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, pp. 104-108.

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Rejecting both Quintus Curtius108 and Josephus, and not at all convinced that we know enough about Alexander's placement of troops in Samaria, Coggins suggested a reconsideration of the whole material. This had previously been done also by B. Reicke,109 who had argued for an establishment of the Samaritan community in 380 BCE, when the repercussions of the 'Zionistic reforms of Nehemiah' forced the officials in Samaria and a few aristocrats in Judah to form their own community in Shechem, 'retaining the Torah but no other scriptures'. This dating would fit the dating of the Samaria papyri and could further be argued on the basis of finds of Persian material on the spot. Although Reicke's reconstruction had 'certain obvious strong points', Coggins rejected it because of its weaknesses according to an asserted, but undocumented antagonism between Jerusalem and Shechem in the rebuilding of the city, inconclusiveness of the finds dating the coins to the Hellenistic period and the artifacts to the Persian period, and finally because the reconstruction as such rests on a schismatic model for which we had no evidence.110 What was left for Coggins was Josephus's statement that the temple, which John Hyrcanus destroyed, had been built 200 years earlier (Ant. 13.256). Dating the destruction to either 128 BCE as Josephus did, or to 108 BCE according to the coins found on the spot, this would bring us as close as possible to any knowledge of the formation of a community. Coggins's reference to a confirmation of John Hyrcanus's destruction in Samaritan Chronicles111 cannot be substantiated. Quite the contrary. According to this literature, it was a King Simon, chronologically placed before Alexander the Great, who had destroyed the temple. John Hyrcanus's attack on Sebastia and Nablus did not lead to any cult place destruction.112 Refuting the two-episode paradigm, Coggins suggested that Samaritanism developed from Judaism's formative period from the third century BCE. The context for this development was for Samaritanism what it was for other factions and currents of Judaism: disagreements over cult, belief and society, which resulted in the formation of Jewish 108. Based on J. Warrington in Everyman's Classical Dictionary (London, 2nd edn, 1969), p. 175, who declared Quintos Curtius worthless and R. Marcus in the Loeb Josephus, VI, app. C, esp. pp. 520ff. 109. The New Testament Era (London: SCM Press, 1969). 110. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, pp. 109-15. 111. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 114. 112. See Chapter 6.

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communities outside of Jerusalem: Qumran, Leontopolis, Elephantine, Araq-el-Emir, and so on. The Deuteronomistic cult centralization probably was practised in a less restricted manner than had been assumed earlier, and final breaks did not occur until centuries later. Given this background, the term 'schism' seems to have been misleading, presuming an orthodox norm that was not present in Judaism until the Christian era.113 Scholarship's current use of this theme has played an unreasonable role in Old Testament studies as part of an anti-Samaritan polemic's implicit purpose of demonstrating the apostate character of Samaritanism: The simple truth is, that there is no reference to the Samaritans in the Hebrew Old Testament. Some of the allusions in the work of the Chronicler may point to a situation which would later develop into JudaeoSamaritan hostility, but that is the most that can be said.114

More than 15 years elapsed before Coggins's work began seriously to influence the scholarly world. The idea of a schism was so well established in the classical views on Samaritanism that in the following decade scholars' acceptance of Coggins's ideas had a close parallel in the considerations of how and when Samaritans broke away from Judaism in either Persian or Hellenistic times.115 The abandonment of the exclusion model regarding whether it had been political or religious circumstances that had led to a formation of a new Jewish community in Shechem that we later came to know as the Samaritans, did not occur before Judaism's sovereignty and normativity in pre-Christian time was seriously challenged. This step forms the next chapter of the history of research.

113. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 163, is here referring to P.R. Ackroyd, Israel under Babylon and Persia (New Clarendon Bible, OT, 4; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 185. 114. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 163. It must be noted that Coggins did not reckon with a dating later than 250 BCE for the Chronicler and accepted the Old Testament Scriptures' implicit chronology as historical for their dating. 115. See, e.g., J.D. Purvis, 'The Samaritans and Judaism', in R.A. Kraft and G.W.E. Nickelsburg (eds.), Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 81-98; E.J. Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 8-12.

Chapter 2

RADICAL ALTERNATIVES: THE THEORIES OF CROWN AND NODET The establishment of 'Societe d'Etudes Samaritaines' in 1985 marked a turning point in Samaritan studies. In 1984,l the first comprehensive bibliography had been published, and in 1989, a full presentation was given of the standing positions of Samaritan research in the fields of history, literature, language, theology, diaspora studies and archaeology, all with updated bibliographies.2 With contributions from scholars who over years had worked intensively with various issues, the book represented an up-to-date work, aiming not so much to give answers to all the questions involved as to stimulate further research. Profiling the positions of its contributors, it demonstrated the broadness of the scholarly research,3 which certainly—as pointed out by Crown in his foreword—'over the last quarter century numbered so many specialised works which have so changed the state of our knowledge in numerous areas of Samaritan studies that the field is very different from what it was in Montgomery's day'.4 These works' concentration on Samaritan literature gave impetus to current publications of Samaritan texts, translations, commentaries, grammars, encyclopaedia, and so on. Having established the origin of the SP 'securely' in the Hasmonaean period, the insecurity about which political circumstances had led to this step 1. Crown, Bibliography of the Samaritans. The former bibliography of L.A. Mayer from 1964 was shown to be incomplete and certainly also needed an updating (L.A. Mayer [ed.], Bibliography of the Samaritans [Abr Nahrain Suppl.; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964]). 2. Crown, The Samaritans. 3. See S. Noja, 'The Last Decade in Samaritan Studies', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 802-14. 4. Crown, Samaritans, p. xvi; notice Crown's critique of the uncritical use of Montgomery, Chapter 1.

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furthered new evaluations of the Samaritans' own traditions and their relation to the asserted priority of Jewish tradition. The intention of the book was not to synthezise the various insights in a new historiography, but rather to make up for the need of evidence in research. A.D. Crown's Late Dating for a Distinctive Samaritanism The tendencies of deconstruction in biblical research, which in the 1970s had begun in the studies of Israel's prehistory,5 inevitably came to include also the postexilic period and the request for a reconsideration of the biblical evidence for Judaism as such.6 This request loosened 5. Taking its departure in a rejection of the historicity of the patriarchal narratives, cf. Th.L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1974); J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), G. Fohrer, Geschichte Israels: Von den Anfangen bis zu Gegenwart (Heidelberg: Quelle Meyer, 1977); A.D.H. Mayes, Israel in the Period of the Judges (SBTh, 2.29; London: SCM Press, 1974); J.M. Miller, The Israelite Occupation of Canaan', in J.H. Hayes and J.M. Miller (eds.), Israelite and Judean History (London: SCM Press, 1977), pp. 213-84; J.A. Soggin, The Davidic and Solomonic Kingdom', in Hayes and Miller (eds.), Israelite and Judean History, pp. 332-80; D.M. Gunn, The Story of King David (JSOTSup, 6; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1976); J.P. Fokkelmann, Narrative Art in Genesis (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975); idem, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Book of Samuel (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981). Contemporary with the critique of historicity went a considerable critique of the Documentary Hypothesis and the datings of the biblical material: cf. H.H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1976); R. Rendtdorff, Das Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuchs (BZAW, 174; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1977); H. Vorlander, Die Entstehung des jehowistischen Geschichtswerkes (Europaische Hochschuleschriften, 23.109; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978); E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vdtergeschichte (WMANT, 57; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984); N.P. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (VTSup, 37; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985); N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch (JSOTSup, 53; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987); see Th.L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), pp. 77-126, for an annotated introduction to this new paradigm and its implications for historical research; and G.W. Ramsey, The Quest for the Historical Israel (London: SCM Press, 1981), for a summarized overview of the implications for biblical science. 6. This, however, did not place Samaritanism in any central position within the large number of scholarly works on Judaism published in these decades, e.g., L.H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-

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the previous fate-determining 'symbiotic character' of Judaean-Samaritan controversies and paved the way for re-evaluations of the 'sources', leading to quite interesting and challenging new conclusions. A.D. Crown contributed considerably to this new line of ideas in his article from 1991, 'Redating the Schism between the Judeans and the Samaritans'. 7 According to this article, neither temple building nor its destruction had been decisive for the final schism, which could not be dated earlier than after the Bar Kochba revolt. Prior to the occurrence of the rabbinic literature after Judah ha-Nasi, no significant anti-Samaritan polemic could be found in this literature, and it was only in the generation after Judah ha-Nasi, following the Bar Kochba-revolt, that we see the development of anti-Samaritanism in a series of negative statements by the rabbinical teachers, culminating in the ruling that the Samaritans are unquestionably to be considered as Gentiles.

The development of a heretic Judaism with a specific Samaritan Pentateuch in the third century CE, and a spreading of this teaching to synagogues and midrash schools, together with the establishment of a specific liturgy and halakhah, led to irreversible schism. Crown based his argumentation for this late dating of SP on the negative evidence from DSS,8 that none of these texts bear similarities to what had been found in Origen's citation of the Samareiticon. That made it pretty safe to conclude an origin after 135 CE.9 The few occurrences of clashes or sity Press, 1992); G. Boccacini, Middle Judaism, Jewish Thought, 300 BCE to 200 CE (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1991): D. Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian; E. Schiirer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ: 175 BC-AD 135 (trans, and rev. G. Vermes et al.\ Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973-87). 7. A.D. Crown, 'Redating the Schism between the Judeans and the Samaritans', JQR 82 (1991), pp. 17-50. 8. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 49 n. 112: D.N. Freedman and K.A. Matthews, The Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1985), where the term 'proto-Samaritan' regularly indicates that the text is not the Samaritan Pentateuch. J.E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran: 4Qpaleo Exod and the Samaritan Tradition (HSM, 30; Atlanta, CA: Scholars Press, 1986), finds 4Q Paleo Exod M rather close to the Samaritan version but not identical with it. See Chapter 3 in the present study for a discussion of these problems. 9. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 47: 'None of the Paleo-Hebrew texts from Qumran which have similarities to the Samaritan version are at all close to the Samareiticon cited by Origen in his Hexapla.' See further Crown, 'Redating the

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events involving Samaria in the New Testament (Jn 4.3-4; Lk. 9.52.) and Josephus (War 2.232-33; Ant. 20.118-38) were exceptions that were few enough to become reported.10 By this we are brought to the reforms of Baba Rabba, whom Crown, on the basis of the Samaritan Chronicle Kitab al-Tarikh of Abu'1-Fath, dated to the third century CE rather than to the usually accepted dating in the fourth century.11 An increasing Samaritan activity in this politically rather peaceful period had as its purpose the spreading of Samaritan thought and halakhah to all places within and outside of Palestine where Samaritans lived. Hand in hand with this went the canonizing and the promulgation of the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch.12 This activity, according to Crown, became decisive for the Judaean-Samaritan relationship: 'After Baba, Judaism reached its limit of toleration of Samaritanism because it had produced a Torah version at variance with that which was accepted as canonical in Judaea.'13 This reconstruction of events did not free Crown from reckoning Samaritans as a Jewish sect ('i.e. a religious subgroup of a main religion that remains so close in belief and practice that it cannot be regarded as a different religion') that had originated from Judaism, 'and certainly were Jews before the schism', and this in a more conservative form regarding circumcision, sabbath, passover ritual, and so on, for which Samaritans preserved 'pre-rabbinic' practices (i.e. practices Schism', n. 109, for a discussion of the characteristics of the 'Samaritan' text in Hexapla; J.D. Purvis, 'The Samaritans and Judaism', pp. 81-98 (86), for a dating in the second century based on 'palaeographical, orthographic and textual evidence'. 10. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', pp. 27-28. 11. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 44 and n. 96, for Crown's dating of the Samaritan Chronicle, supported by P. Stenhouse, The Kitabh al-Tarikh of Abu-'I Fath (Sidney: Mandelbaum Trust, University of Sydney, 1985), and D. Groh, 'Jews and Christians in Late Roman Palestine: Towards a New Chronology', BA 51.2 (1988), pp. 80-98, who argued for a stable and prosperous period in Palestine around 250-363 CE: 'The building activities of Rabbi Babba and his followers would fit well into this period.' 12. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 46. 13. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 50, based paradigmatically on Purvis, 'The Samaritans and Judaism', and F. Dexinger, 'Limits of Tolerance in Judaism: The Samaritan Example', in E.P. Sanders (ed.), Judaism, Jewish and Christian Selfdefinition, II (London: SCM Press, 1981), pp. 88-114, cf. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', n. 108, and transferred from their dating in the third-second century BCE to the third century CE.

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derived directly from the Pentateuch).14 This view on Samaritans characterizes important parts of Crown's article, in which he simultaneously seeks to balance differences between Samaritans and Jews and describes Samaritans as sectarians and schismatics in constant conflict with the Jews about the placement of the temple. Thus 'open hostilities are rare'15 and probably an exaggeration in Josephus's account, while at the same time the temple at Gerizim gives reason for 'an increasing difficulty of the second temple period' and becomes a 'dangerous rival' to the temple in Jerusalem,16 because of its situation and its connection to the Pentateuch traditions,17 which did not support any claim for a primacy of the temple in Jerusalem according to cult, architecture and high priestly genealogy.18 Crown thus argued that not only had the 14. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 21 and n. 11. 15. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 27: The evidence is against the outright bitterness in the first century between Samaritans and Jews, that is spoken of in Josephus and the later rabbinical sources.' 16. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 31: 'the Gerizim temple was almost certainly seen as a dangerous rival to the Jerusalem temple, since it was proximate to an ancient sacred city, Shechem, and its claims to a Jewish temple were not dependent upon Greek patronage. The temple at Gerizim was evidently a source of considerable friction between Jews and Samaritans even in Egypt, and on occasion in Palestine, we cannot be sure that the friction was continuous in view of the alleged friendship between the Sadducees and the Samaritans.' 17. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 32: 'The Samaritans argued that their temple stood on a site made sacred by the sacrificial activities of the Patriarchs and by the fact that the first sacrifice in Canaan (Deut. 27.4) took place thereon, since it was the Mount of Blessing... If indeed one reads the patriarchal accounts with a critical eye, Bethel and Shechem seem to be the same, or at least proximate, places. The association of Bethel with all the events in the patriarchal accounts linked with Bethel, Shechem, Moriah and Gerizim can be made directly from the Torah. The Septuagintal reading of Shiloh instead of Shechem (Jos. 24) and the statement in the Testament of Joseph (2.6) that Joseph was buried in Hebron rather than near Shechem suggests that the Jewish authorities were already troubled by Samaritan interpretations of the sacred writ in favour of Shechem and Mt Gerizim. There is also clear evidence from the polemics between Eliezer ben Simeon and the Samaritans over their reading of Gen. 12.6 that by the mid-second century CE the Samaritan claims about Shechem were proving worksome to the tannaim.' See Chapter 7 of the present study for much earlier 'corrections' of the Pentateuch, which Crown did not include in his argumentation. 18. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 33, referring to Ant. 12.8-10: 'The story though brief, is most informative. It tells us directly that the Samaritans offered sacrifices in their temple, and it implies that there was nothing to choose between

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destruction caused an increasing Samaritan hostility against the Jewish temple in the second century BCE, but that it was the loss of both cult places that led to open rivalry and to increasingly polemical activity from the middle of the second century CE.19 That this argumentation bears a clear imprint of the influence from Josephus, Crown involuntarily testified in his reference to Josephus's account about Demetrius's concession to Jonathan, including that 'it shall be in the power of the High Priest to take care that no one Jew shall have any other temple for worship but only that at Jerusalem' (Ant. 13.54), which for Crown was a reference to the existence of other temples and Jerusalem's concern about this, especially in regard to the Gerizim temple.20 What Crown, however, was not aware of is the difficulty of the parallel reference in 1 Mace. 10.25-45, which must be the source for Josephus's text, and which in this place has a different wording testifying that this specific question did not have that kind of actuality in the second-first century BCE.21 Apion 2.193 might point to a similar lack of clarification. The Samaritan woman's question to Jesus in John 4 could indicate that two centres of worship were regarded possible as legal Jewish shrines and that a central authority of these centres could be questioned. It is therefore still open to debate whether the various stories about hostility and rivalry form part of a 'historiography', which sought to legitimize an act that had quite different premises, and might not be at all related to disagreements over cult and practice until a much later period. The Johanine 'evidence', dating to the beginning of the first century CE and these and the sacrifices at Jerusalem that would clearly distinguish them from each other... Josephus's account clearly indicates that the objection to the Gerizim temple was based not on arguments against its ritual or style but that it was simply acknowledged by all to be secondary (and by implication, inferior) to that in Jerusalem'; p. 35 n. 63: 'From this perspective it does not matter whence Josephus drew his account and whether it was fanciful. Josephus accepted the view that the Gerizim temple was in the authentic tradition of the Old Testament, which is what we should expect of the Samaritans.' 19. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 40: 'we begin to note an increase in the polemical writings relating to the rivalry, that is from the middle of the second century CE onwards. It is evident that the rivalry was kept within reasonable bounds until this period'. 20. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 31 n. 52. 21. Which in fact supports Crown's assertion that the discussion gained actuality in the second century CE. See Chapters 5 and 7 below for a debate on the issues implied.

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Josephus's fight for claiming Jewish priority in his Antiquities from the end of the first century CE, does not document that the so-called sectarian writings of the Samaritan Pentateuch have to be dated that late. The renewal of these discussions after the loss of both temples might not have anything to do with an establishment of new positions, but may be a matter of convincing argumentation in the context of a pagan audience.22 The negative evidence from the DSS at best only tells us that Samaritan writings were not included among the texts; and recent discussions have demanded that the various text designations need to be reconsidered.23 In spite of Crown's quite innovative suggestions, we must conclude that in many respects they are tied to the seemingly inescapable anachronism that understands rabbinic Judaism as normative already in pre-Christian times. This understanding does not take seriously the sectarian aspects of the origin of this Judaism in Ezra-Nehemiah Torah theology of postexilic times, which in fact forms the backbone of the Mishnaic understanding of the oral Torah, and which have led to a considerable Ezra veneration in rabbinic thought. I find it necessary to argue that the denial of this development constantly leads to absurdities, which on one hand ascribe Samaritan independence and authenticity, and a religion common with Judaeans, but on the other hand maintain a Jewish sovereignty and primacy from which Samaritans originated and developed. Changing the term to 'a pre-rabbinic Jewish sect' does not solve this problem. On this premise it would be more correct to argue that it is rabbinic Judaism, which left its foundation in the teaching of the fathers,24 if we are to consider this to be the Pentateuch or the Mosaic code and if the goal had been a preservation of this kind of orthodoxy.25 That history has confirmed the viability of this Jewish 'sect' implies a risk to historians of bestowing upon it pre-existential authority. Using the language of inclusion or exclusion seems to be misleading in both cases, and presupposes an established hierarchy, which in fact is not even present in Josephus's slanderous writings about the 22. See further Chapter 5. 23. See Chapter 3. 24. Cf. the discussion of the various Jewish sects in Josephus, Ant. 12.10, 292, 296-97; 18.14-15; Life 191. 25. As pointed out also by Dexinger, 'Limits of Tolerance', p. 89, referring to Samaritan self-understanding. This view forms the central core of Nodet's work, Origins of Judaism.

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Samaritans. Giving credit to this insecurity, which in fact seems to have been the purpose of Crown's article, it would have been more appropriate to speak of variant traditions instead of sects.26 The terms Samaritan and Jew might then designate nothing more than the temple a person belonged to and not include specific religious obser-vations. Cult centralization as a political issue in the formation of a partly independent Jewish state during the Hasmonaeans required a centralization of the power, which, with king and high priest in one person, seems to have left no room for another powerful centre in Sam-aria. Claiming their legality of the high priestly lineage, the Samaritans had the means seriously to challenge the status of the Hasmonaean priests.27 Could in fact the tradition about the division of the kingdom in the Iron age, which implied a decentralization of the cult and an establishment of centres in Samaria and Jerusalem, have led to an inclusion of Samaria in the time of John Hyrcanus, which by necessity had to imply a destruction of a Samaritan temple that was no less Jewish than that in Jerusalem,28 but which, according to tradition, was representative of a fatal schism in a remote past, and certainly stood in opposition to extra-Pentateuchal 26. Suggested also by Purvis, The Samaritans and Judaism', pp. 91-95, about criteria for speaking of variant instead of sect, and the need for a more nuanced view on Judaism and Samaritanism. Purvis warned against an anachronistic understanding of both. 27. D. Mendels, Jewish Nationalism, argued that with the Hasmonaean uprising and its development into a war for national independence a need arose for an establishment of national symbols: capital and temple. After the final conquest of Jerusalem in 141 BCE during Simeon 'the capital and the temple were at the heart of the Jewish nation, and the high priesthood was its highest political office' (p. 135). '[From 142-76 BCE] the Temple became the most important symbol of national political independence. The high priests were the secular rulers of the nation, without any dependence on foreign rulers' (p. 138). 'The wish for only one religiopolitical centre is a dominant motif in much of the literature of the period. [References are given to Jewish, Samaritan and Greek literature on the previous pages.] At that juncture of their history the Jews well knew that in the past, competitive religio-political centers had brought about their own national destruction; and indeed, ten tribes were lost (Ezekiel 23)... For this reason they felt uncomfortable with other Jewish religious centres such as Leontopolis, Shechem and Araq elEmir. The Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was, of course, the main problem' (p. 150). 28. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 35 n. 63: 'Josephus accepted the view that the Gerizim temple was in the authentic tradition of the Old Testament, which is what we would expect of the Samaritans.'

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biblical traditions? 29 If this scenario be structurally correct, then it accounts pretty well for the problems of finding any distinct Samaritanism before much later. It also accounts, however, for the problems of finding any distinct authoritative Judaism before the fall of the Jewish temple in 70 CE. The question of relations between Sadducees and Samaritans thus have to be seen in a new light and cannot be explained by priestly contacts alone.30 We need to ask why these contacts were upheld? Were they based on family relations, such as has been asserted by some scholars, or is it more likely to regard them as being quite natural, given the agreements in cult practice and belief?31 We also need to ask what it means when Abu'l-Fath's version of John Hyrcanus's quarrel with the Pharisees, in the Samaritan Chronicle not only led to his turning of allegiance to the Sadducees (Josephus, Ant. 11.293-97), but also included a reversal of his former behaviour towards the Samaritans, and that he even asked permission to go on pilgrimage to Gerizim (AF p. 113).32 That the Church Fathers also do not distinguish clearly between Sadducees and Samaritans, and Mishnah in some instances simply juxtaposes the two groups, must raise considerations beyond what can be 29. Mendels, Jewish Nationalism, p. 96: 'The concept of the twelve tribes recurs again and again in the documents of the Hasmonaean period, and can also be found in the Jewish literature of the Roman period. The number twelve, signifying the completeness of the Jewish nation, is also associated with the settlement of the nation on the most extensive territory the Jews were believed to have possessed in the past.' 30. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 72, 73, 86-87; Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, pp. 157-58; Crown, 'Redating~the Schism', pp. 23-24: 'It is not impossible that the Samaritans had a cordial relationship with the Sadducees and that there was some degree of co-operation between the Jerusalem and Gerizim priests.' 31. Crown here refers to Josephus's description of the Samaritan temple as 'the temple of the God Most High' and that Josephus's account clearly indicates that the objection to the Gerizim temple was based not on arguments against its ritual or style but that it was simply acknowledged by all to be secondary (and by implication inferior) to that in Jerusalem; see also, 'Redating the Schism', pp. 34-35; E.J. Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 10. 32. Crown, 'Redating the Schism', p. 36 n. 69, referring to J. Bowman, Samaritan Documents Relating to their History, Religion and Life (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1977), p. 135. Crown's comment that the Samaritans might still have been using the ruins of the temple confuses two traditions. It was only according to Jewish tradition (Josephus, Ant. 13.256) that John Hyrcanus destroyed the temple, not to Samaritan tradition as mentioned earlier in Chapter 1.

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seen as plainly sectarian groupings. These considerations might find their answers in the various groups' self-understanding and their interpretation of the common tradition. According to the Samaritan Chronicle Abu'l-Fath, no Jewish sects are claimed to be Samaritan, even if they share the same view on Scriptures as the Sadducees do, or they 'rally around the Samaritan temple' and participate in the cult there, such as the Hasidim.33 Regarding the Sadducees, the unsurmountable problem was their relation to the temple in Jerusalem, and regarding the Hasidim it seems to have been their belief. The Pharisees, because of their exegesis and lenient attitude towards truth, was the most hated Jewish group in Samaritan tradition (AF p. 111). Samaritans as Original Israelites? The Position ofE. Nodet With his quite comprehensive work Essai sur les origines du judaisme: de Josue aux Pharisiens,u E. Nodet revived the discussion about the possibility that Samaritans should be considered to be original Israelites.35 Some of these views had previously been argued by M. Gaster in his 1924 book and by J. Macdonald in his 1964 book.36 The view 33. Macdonald, Theology, p. 25, identified the Hasidim with the Samaritans based on an unpublished text of 2 Chronicles, disagreeing with AF, who considered them to be connected geographically to the Samaritans. 34. (Paris: Cerf, 1992); rev. Eng. version (used throughout): In Search of the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah (JSOTSup, 248; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). 35. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 12: 'I hope to show that the simplest way to take into account various anomalies and many scattered bits of information is to presuppose, schematically the following: that the Samaritans of Gerizim were the most direct heirs of the ancient Israelites and their cult; that the material in the Hexateuch should generally be attributed to them, with the conscious exception of the weekly sabbath; that Judaism, dispersed throughout the whole Seleucid Transeuphrates, was an import from Babylon and was made up of ancestral traditions and memories of the Kingdom of Judah; that the union between these two, that is to say between two quite restricted groups, took place a little before 200 BCE, and was followed by an intense literary activity; that Judaism was given legal status at Jerusalem by Antiochus III.' 36. Macdonald, Theology, p. 8: '"Judaist" a term restricted to the period beginning with Ezra, has reference to the religion of the post-exilic Judaeans. Judaism thus applies to the religion whose origin is that of Samaritanism, but whose path of development from the Babylonian exile was quite different from that of the Samaritans.'

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gained only few supporters, but, as shown in the review of Crown's article, it certainly did (and still does) need serious consideration. The first driving force for Nodet's work was the surprising observation that our history writing methodologically rested on very weak foundations, and that the insufficiency of the available sources led to a veiling rather than an unveiling of the historical facts. When classical history writing construes a history on 'facts' with a plausibility far less than one hundred percent that rests on similar uncertain 'facts', the historian is left with a reconstruction that at best is only probable. In other words: The progress of this positivistic method of establishing facts becomes very quickly disastrous.'37 This methodological insufficiency was especially crucial in the reconstruction of Jewish history from the destruction of the temple in 587 BCE to the Hasmonaean takeover in about 150 BCE. The main source for this period was Josephus, and, as it turned out in Nodet's research, he was 'no better informed than we are and we often have the feeling that he is deliberately drawing out a meagre documentation in order to fill up centuries that are especially empty'. 38 That Eusebius of Caesarea was no more conclusive in his results in his work Preparation for the Gospel convinced Nodet of the inadequacy of the method.39 The second driving force in Nodet's work was the question of the status of the Bible in Judaism, leading to the chronological and typological delimitation of the work given in his subtitle From Joshua to the Mishnah.40 In the postexilic period, the status of the Bible underwent a change, which, as reflected in rabbinic literature, challenged the teaching of the Bible and in several instances made the biblical text inferior to the oral tradition.41 It probably was this insecurity about the Bible's authority that had in the beginning led rabbi Akiba's school to attempt a synthesis of the written and oral Torah. This condition stood in strange contrast to the attitude toward the Bible represented by Samaritans, 37. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 60. 38. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 9, 331. 39. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 10. 40. 'Joshua was the one who locally established in writing a statute and a law at the Shechem assembly, while the Mishnah was the ultimate metamorphosis of the traditions brought from Babylon and mixed in with Judaean influences'; Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 12. 41. y. Sank. 11.6: 'The Words of the scribes are more important than those of the [written] Torah.'

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Sadducees, Philo, Josephus and even the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, all of which ascribe to the Pentateuch a central position as a source of law, history and philosophy.42 Josephus's claim of adherence to Pharisaism and his neglect of those in rabbinic tradition so wellknown rabbis Hillel and Shammai, his ignorance of the academy in Jamnia, as well as rabbinic tradition's similar ignorance of Josephus, reflected for Nodet a curious relationship, which was best explained by the rabbinic movement's placement outside of Jerusalem in the rural regions of Galilee and connected with Babylon.43 The discussions about the keeping of the sabbath clearly illustrated the implications of this problem. Nodet's main reference to this discussion is 1 Mace. 2.41's account that Mattathias in 167 BCE, during Antiochus Epiphanes' persecutions, decided that Jews were allowed to bear arms in defence on the sabbath. Almost at the same time, according to Josephus, the Samaritans declared that they had recently adopted the sabbath from the Jews and that they were ready to give it up to avoid reprisals.44 Nodet here follows Josephus's description of the Samaritans as those 'Sidonians' living around Shechem and maintaining the cult at Gerizim—in fact a very limited group: who could have been the dissidents, degraded by foreign marriages and lax observances. In fact they constituted a limited group and had undergone some Jewish influence (Sabbath, Sabbatical year). Yet before these influences, they had been the heirs of the Israelites (Jacob, Joseph).45

Nodet therefore considered this sabbath rule to be rather late. The status of the temple in Jerusalem was another problematic case that was difficult to fit into classical historiography: 'artificially magnified in the story of Alexander, it is astonishingly marginal for 42. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 10: 'the rabbinic tradition, in its oldest layers, shows no sign of a biblical foundation, but only of secondary offshoots from the Bible, it can in no way pass for a "religion of the Old Testament".' 43. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 59: This marginal situation implies that the rabbinic tradition, although wanting to be heir to the memories of Jerusalem and the Temple, had its origin in fact from the ruling circles of Jerusalem. This would explain perfectly why Josephus ignores them altogether, or even would not want to know of them. In a similar way, Josephus only discovered Christianity in Rome, when he could not deny it a certain social importance.' Cf. E. Nodet, 'Jesus et Jean Baptiste selon Josephe', RB 92 (1985), pp. 321-48. 44. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 63-64. 45. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 381.

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Nehemiah as well as for the Pharisees, which does not, however prevent strong claims being made about it'. The inauguration of the altar on 25th Kislev in 164 BCE by Judas Maccabaeus had no immediate institutional consequences, and it was evident that it was not the temple but the temple institution as such that played the most central role during the Maccabaean crisis.46 With these examples the issues of research in Nodet's work is presented: The Maccabaean crisis, the authority of the holy books, the development of the oral Torah, sabbath, and finally the Samaritans who seem to appear 'at each moment in the development of ancient Judaism, and that Josephus in particular systematizes their opposition, from Cyrus to the Maccabees'.47 Since the historiography for the period is incoherent, contradictory and limited to singular events that cannot be brought into any harmonious course (the edict of Cyrus, the building of the temple, the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, the arrival of Alexander and the decrees of Antiochus III), it is not possible to create a coherent picture of events and developments of early Judaism and its placement in the Persian period prior to Alexander the Great by means of classical source analysis.48 After Judas Maccabee, information becomes more numerous, and it is evident that conditions regarding the sabbath, temple and Samaritans have changed. This gave Nodet reason to use Judas Maccabee as a chronological reference. He separated him from the other members of the Hasmonaean family, since it was clear that he had other interests and also obtained a different position in the books of Maccabees.49 As a typological reference Nodet used what he calls the Nehemiah model/the Nehemiah city, which, removed from its 'historical' context, 'designates a community structure defined by a limited and protected space, where the Torah—and especially the Sabbath—could be ob-

46. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 62. 47. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 62. 48. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 38: 'the origins of Judaism, distinct from the reconstruction of the sanctuary under the patronage of Cyrus and Darius, fit in very poorly in the Persian period, but are a priori earlier than the arrival of Alexander, since he was impressed with the temple and with the worship there, and since he bestowed upon the Jews privileges, which he refused to the Samaritans. If this episode fades away as fictional, however, there is no longer anything which would appear to guarantee so ancient a date for these origins.' 49. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 263.

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served without any hindrance'. 50 The question of the sabbath is here used as the touchstone in Nodet's research, since the discussions and the accounts about defence or lack of defence, combined with Josephus's obvious uneasiness about stating that the sabbath rule, which prohibits defence on the sabbath, should belong to the Mosaic tradition, could point to a late fixing, and seems rather to belong to the split in Judaism into various fractions in the third-first century BCE. The 'results' of Nodet's methodical research led to the establishment of three distinct Jewish groups, which in different ways determined development during the Hasmonaean crisis.51 The reform policy of Antiochus III52 gave the impetus to this development. This reform policy was similar to the well-known reforms presented in Ezra and Nehemiah. Transformed to this period, where they would fit better, they instituted a new law as a synthesis of the Law of Moses with Babylonian customs.53 An active policy of restoration was instituted after Antiochus Ill's takeover in 223 BCE and Jerusalem played a central role in this restoration. The condition for the city was similar to that described in Ezra 6.1-12: without high priest, with an unfinished temple and with no authority to receive the decree, which therefore was sent to the Syrian governor, who had the highest authority economically and religiously.54 The purpose of the decree was to move observant Jews to central places in Palestine where they could serve Seleucid interests as 50. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 62, 87, 379. 51. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 263. 52. Understood on the basis of Antiochus's decree presented in Josephus, Ant. 12.138-44, which Nodet (pp. 217ff.) considered to be authentic. Cf. E.J. Bickerman, 'La charte seleucide de Jerusalem', REJ 100 (1935) pp. 4-35, reprinted in E.J. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, II (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980), pp. 44-85, and Y.H. Landau, 'A Greek Inscription Found Near Hefzibah', IEJ 16 (1966), pp. 54-70. This stele inscription mentioning Antiochus Ill's fiscal reorganization of Palestine can in no way be connected to Josephus's decrees ascribed to Antiochus III. 53. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 225; see also p. 386: 'In brief, the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, which contains ancient information, not only offers no serious obstacle to the proposed conclusions, but even makes it possible to clarify the functions of these two personages: to Ezra was precisely connected the written Law (all or part of the Pentateuch), with views about all Israel and a dominant high priesthood governing the Law and the cult, whereas under the name of Nehemiah and his library were gathered together the traditions of the Elders, various writings and a Jewish nostalgia for a monarchy having control over the cult.' 54. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 218.

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'buffer' zones against upheavals without themselves being a threat to the rulers, since they were not allowed to carry weapons on the sabbath. This model was known from a similar practice, related in Ant. 12.14950. After the order of Antiochus III, 2000 Jewish families were moved from Mesopotamia to Phrygia and Lydia because of an upheaval there. Xeukis, who was in charge of the move, was instructed to make sure that these loyal Jews became properly settled, were free of taxes for ten years and were allowed to live by the law of their fathers.55 According to Nodet this policy changed the balance of power in Palestine. The 'deportation' of these observant Jews to Jerusalem led to confrontations and splits that definitively formed the agenda for the Maccabaean crisis and also became foundational for the formation of rabbinical Judaism. Prior to the decree of Antiochus, the returned Jews had formed two main groups. One group concentrated around the temple in Jerusalem, whose situation is reflected in Ezra 1-6. The other group, called Nehemiah Jews or Ezra Jews, were Hasidic Jews, 'Men of the Great Assembly', who, after their return from Babylonia, instituted the weekly sabbath, which previously had been connected to the feasts of the new moon. These Jews began to collect the Pentateuch traditions, probably together with the Samaritans, with a late addition of Deuteronomy.56 At the core of the sabbath problem lay in fact calendar disagreements. The lunar calendar governing feasts and sabbaths formed the foundation of Israelite religion, such as it is traceable in the Pentateuch prior to the 55. The letter is undated, but is considered to be authentic and belonging to the same period (cf. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 223). 56. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 281-86, 289, 335, see also p. 92: The Hexateuch as a whole can with great difficulty be considered the work of NehemiahJudas [2 Mace. 2.13f.], since on the one hand the narrative part superbly ignores Jerusalem and very largely gravitates around Shechem and Mount Gerizim and therefore applies more to the Samaritans than to Judaea, and on the other hand the Babylonian model of the sabbath, close to that of Nehemiah, does not agree with the basic biblical ideas. Some of the accounts referred to above indicate besides that these same Samaritans, although attached to the Pentateuch, denied that they observed the sabbath like the Jews, at least in the time of Antiochus IV, as if the Sabbath precept had no further force. In dispensing with the biblical narratives then, it is advisable to examine the legislative sections, especially those dealing with the Sabbath: is it possible to picture a Pentateuch without the weekly Sabbath of the Creation?' The result is positive in Nodet's study, giving a Pentateuch without the priestly redaction, which must have taken place after Nehemiah and before 1 Mace, (cf. pp. 93-121).

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priestly redaction, and which is unknown to Ezekiel and Isaiah.57 With the introduction of the weekly sabbath—separated from the phases of the moon—a cult reform was introduced whose central aim was to remove the fertility cult connected with the moon. As a result, the Jews were forced to form two distinctive groups: observant Nehemiah Jews fitting the description of Agarthacides, for whom the sabbath observance was central, and non-observant Jews,58 who had no problems in joining Alexander's army (cf. Ant. 11.339). The conflicts between these two groups were to some degree solved by the high priest Simon the Just,59 who seemingly had some success in combining the Babylonian oral Torah with the Pentaeuch in some form and the requirements of the priesthood realizing the decrees of Antiochus III. After Simon this unity fell apart again and quarrels about the high priestly office led to the formation of three different groups:

57. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 118-21, 99-102 and 380: 'The Sabbath in its old form, attested in the prophets and in some narratives, referred to the full moon and the associated ceremonies. The Passover, the 14th of a lunar month, was therefore a Sabbath in this sense. The Mesopotamian sources were likewise acquainted with a shabattum, corresponding to the full moon. They were acquainted too with "dangerous days" the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th. Practically, the rhythm of the quarters of the moon was close to the weekly sabbath, but with the computation beginning over again each month, therefore in dependence of the moon. The weekly sabbath had at the outset the same rhythm but was freed from that lunar servitude, which implied a change in cult of major significance, since the moon, governing human fertility was easy to divinize.' 58. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 90. 59. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 277, 335. Of Egyptian origin, based on the name and indirectly testified in 1 Mace. 5.23 and Josephus, Ant. 12.226-27. See p. 260: 'The simplest hypothesis is therefore to admit that Jason and Onias were really Lacedaemonian in origin, or more exactly, since their Lagide connections are certain, that they were Egyptian descendants of Spartan colonists. Moreover, this does not conflict in any way with their having been named or recognized as high priests by the Seleucids: the governor-high priest of Coele-Syria to whom Antiochus III had addressed the Charter of Jerusalem was a former Egyptian general named Ptolemy. Likewise, according to 2 Mace. 6.1, Antiochus IV named an Athenian to rededicate to Zeus the sanctuaries of Jerusalem and Gerizim, and that function greatly resembled an appointment as high priest in the official Seleucid royal cult.' This, of course, is a highly tendentious reading of the implied texts leaning heavily on Josephus's interest in exploiting the similarity of names. With R. Smend, Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (Berlin: Georg Reimer Verlag, 1906), we are told that Onias was the Greek rendering of the Hebrew Yochanan.

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2.

3.

High priests of different origins, accepted and supported by the Seleucid rulers and their friends, of whom Onias, son of Simon the Just appointed by Antiochus III, is a prototype. These priests tolerated an increasing Hellenizatlon and the taxation of temple treasures. Furthermore, in their application for Jerusalem's status as a polis, they created an antagonism that brought them into open conflict with observant Jews (group 2) who wanted obedience of the Law, and non-observant Jews (group 3) who did not accept that temple treasures be given to the Seleucid rulers.60 More or less observant Jews returned from exile and spread all over the Seleucid empire, but with a minor group settled in Jerusalem. Their leader was Judas Maccabaeus together with the Hasidim. From them we have the connection to the later Pharisees, developing in the period between Jonathan and John Hyrcanus, who, independently of the high priest and the king, had gained a considerable influence over the people, especially those living in the diaspora.61 Nodet separated Judas from the Maccabees, to whom he was artificially connected in 1 Maccabees, in order to render him priestly status, but whose political and religious observances he did not share, especially regarding the sabbath62 and the temple.63 That he 'is forgotten' in 1 Mace. 14.28-45, the inscription in memory of the formation of the state, and in 16.3, Simon's testament, which only mentions 'my brother' (sing, and probably Jonathan is meant), together with the 'fact' that he is not appointed high priest, were Nodet's reasons for suggesting this separation.64 Israelite priests having no decisive break from their Samaritan origin. They grasped the power religiously and politically in

60. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 381-82. 61. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 334: They were more biblical (and less given to activism) than Judas Maccabaeus himself, but were very similar to the book of 2 Maccabees, with a vision of the Temple as a divine dwelling and with an efficacious desire to influence the Diaspora, as the festal letters show.' 62. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 63. Judas did not carry weapon on the sabbath, but fled to the mountains (cf. 2 Mace. 8.25-26; 15.1-2). 63. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 215-16, 237-48. 64. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 209, 215-16, 246-48, 381.

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Judaea. Their prototypes are Jonathan65 and Simon, sons of Mattathias. Mattathias himself, a priest with Samaritan connections, had left Jerusalem because of its decadence, but dreamed about seeing the temple again. From them we have the connection to the Sadducees,66 who originally connected to the Samaritans, established themselves in Jerusalem and became dominant in the time of Alexander Jannai.67 Claiming to be heirs to the Zadokite priesthood, they are connected with the books of Chronicles, which established the genealogical connection to the Zadokites (cf. 1 Chron. 24.3-31) and whose theological profile match that of the Sadducees according to Josephus's description in Ant. 18.16.68

65. In whose days the holy books came to Jerusalem (cf. 1 Mace. 12.9). The disagreement of this text with Josephus, Ant. 13.167, 'although we have no need of such evidence, since our own writings inform us of this', made Nodet assert, 'Onias as high priest did not possess the "holy books", that is to say he did not have the Pentateuch, in which in particular the genealogies were found; or at the very least, he sought other proofs of antiquity than these books, which were perhaps not really "holy" for him.' Cf. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 259. 66. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 335, 381. 67. Which implies a transfer of John Hyrcanus's discussion with the Pharisees (Ant. 13.289-90) to Alexander Jannai (cf. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 249). 68. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 266: 'The difference between Judas and Mattathias has become clearer, under the veil of a common armed resistance. The latter has been recognised as an Aaronite, perhaps a Zadokite, with Samaritan connections. But what results from this is a problem relative to the Book of Chronicles, which described a cult installed in Jerusalem, in which the Davidic monarchy and the tribe of Levi (priests and Levites) held sway. Moreover, the interpretation of the line of Joarib and Mattathias as Zadokites is based solely on the interpretation of the list in 1 Chron. 24.3-31. If it is omitted it is still possible to compare the Sadducees with Mattathias and the Samaritans, but their name becomes again inexplicable. The difficulty may seem artificial, since Chronicles is commonly dated to the Persian period or the beginning of the Hellenistic period, without any definite relationship with the decree of Cyrus, or with the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah. But Chronicles is to be dated after the "Law of Moses", which they constantly mention. Jonathan's letter to the Spartans, in which he declared that he had the sacred scriptures at his disposal, which Onias did not have, or did not utilise, shows that the existence or at least the authority of the Law of Moses (or of the "holy books") among the circles directing the Temple could not have gone back a good while before the Maccabean crisis.'

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The roles of these groups in the Maccabaean crisis and the development of the rabbinic tradition in the aftermath of that crisis will not be dealt with here. According to Nodet, the origin of the Samaritans is hidden in the complex pre-history of Israel, which does not form part of his study. They probably are not those from 2 Kings 17's and Josephus's imported Cuthaeans, but relate to a local Yahweh cult centred around Shechem,69 with strong local traditions connected to Jacob-Israel. They furthermore are connected to the Aaron traditions via Bethel, which must be identified with Shechem or a nearby sanctuary whose origin is lost.70 At a certain time, not later than Alexander the Great, the Gerizim cult originated with the traditions connected to them.71 From this came the Hexateuch traditions, the connection to Joshua, the Jacob traditions, which had been written down around 250-200 BCE and were accredited with the authorization as the 'Law of Moses' without the weekly sabbath, interpolated in a later redaction.72 The meeting with the returned Nehemiah Jews led to an acceptance of some of their customs, inter alia the weekly sabbath (cf. Ant. 12.259). This resulted in a considerable literary activity and probably also in a common Pentateuch, which 69. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 147: 'The people did not intermix with the subjects of the province as a whole. On the occasion of the visit of Alexander (Ant. 11.340), two entirely distinct groups are clearly apparent: the Samaritans in general, and the "dissident" Jews connected with the Gerizim temple. Even if Josephus's presentation is tendentious, since he always tried to denigrate the Samaritans there is a certain duality, represented by the two cities of Samaria and Shechem. In other words, the petition just studied did not concern all the Samaritans, but only a group revolving around Shechem and the unnamed temple.' Nodet here argues against the scholarly tradition that assumes the Sidonians to be a colony, living among the Samaritans, but not connected with those (see below, Chapter 5). Nodet's argumentation is bound to his establishment of a history for the development of the weekly sabbath, which would fall apart if the Sidonians in Josephus's writing were not the Samaritans. 70. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 167-82. 71. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 381. 72. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 191, 152, 381: 'In addition the Samaritan Pentateuch has interesting contacts with the Qumran fragments and with the least revised forms of the LXX (Philo, New Testament). The Letter of Aristeas which presents a Jerusalem high priest ruling over the twelve tribes, conferred authority on a revision, in a more Judean or more balanced sense, of a translation of the Pentateuch that had been judged to be too "Samaritan". Since Antiochus III, the importance of Judaea had only kept on growing, but the Samaritan text, despite later corruption, should be regarded as the first heir of the primitive edition.'

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became dispersed to the diaspora.73 Because of the Nehemiah Jews' self-assertion as heirs to all Israel, they collided in Jerusalem with another tradition that was 'cultic, prophetic and perhaps also royal. This forms the prehistory of the Maccabaean crisis' in which the Samaritans, in Nodet's presentation, did not participate.74 The role of the Samaritans in Jewish history had ended. Concentrated around the high priestly governed life75 on their wind-swept mountain, they could do nothing but wait for extermination in 107 BCE. The present reader certainly is left wondering how this peripheral group could leave such an imprint on the cult in Jerusalem, that it accepted its history as part of their own, and seemingly had so great veneration for this history that changing it had to go via secondary interpretations, such as in the book of Jubilees, Testament of Joseph, and so on.76 Nodet's view on the Samaritans as a minor group that seemed to have contact with other groups in Judaism only for the basis of the establishment of a history of the Pentateuch in our scholarly world certainly is an intrinsic weakness of his work. By this he introduced a distortion that supports the Jerusalem tradition's own assertion of the existence of a widespread and normative Judaism as early as the third century BCE.77 The connection to the Hasidic Jews and later the Sadducees is so weak that it cannot be seen as more than a working hypothesis, having no sociological resonance. The question of their relation to the cult in Jerusalem before and after Simon the Just is left unanswered in Nodet's work. The Samaritan account, which curses King Simon for having destroyed the temple at Gerizim and which 73. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, pp. 191-95, 38. 74. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 191. 75. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 269: 'An essential element for the Samaritans was the absolute primacy of the priesthood, in conformity with the Pentateuch, in complete contrast with pharisaic and then rabbinical Judaism, which was a lay democracy in which the dominant element was the teaching of tradition by the doctors of the Law; among the Samaritans, all religious acts went through the priests, and in particular the seven feasts and the calendar.' 76. See Chapter 7 below. 77. Nodet, Origins of Judaism, p. 381: 'If the Samaritans constituted a very local reality, it was not the same for the Jews, scattered as far as the Tigris. In the prehistory of the Maccabean crisis, the Jerusalem charter granted by Antiochus III (about 200) is of prime importance, since it attempted, in order to ensure their fidelity, to federate a Jewish population of Babylonian culture scattered throughout his whole kingdom, by reorienting it on the city and its temple.'

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curses Ezra for having forged the Law is not taken into consideration either. Instead, Ezra's role as promoter and promulgator of the Law of Moses and his institution of scribal and teaching activities in the whole of the Seleucid kingdom during Antiochus III are given special attention. If this be the source of the common Pentateuch, such as suggested by Nodet, it fits badly with the Samaritan view on Ezra.78 Whatever historical role this figure might have had, the tradition ascribes to him a far greater role than the promoting of the Pentateuch. Nodet's separation of Ezra and Nehemiah, making Nehemiah the innovator and preserver of 'the traditions of the Elders, various writings and a Jewish nostalgia for a monarchy having control over the cult', and making Ezra the promoter of 'the written Law (all or part of the Pentateuch), with views about all Israel and a dominant high priesthood governing the Law and the cult' hardly reflect biblical, Samaritan or rabbinic tradition. The collection of the Masoretic texts is the work of the rabbis. Ezra's mission is first and foremost the promotion of an oral Torah. For that reason is he placed outside the temple (Neh. 8.4). It is not the priests, but the Levites (metaphorical rabbis) who teach the people (cf. Neh. 8.7-9): 'So they read from the Book, from the law of God, with interpretation [crib!?]. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.' This is well testified in 'Abod. Zar., which makes Simeon the Just the first high priest in a series of seven generations of teachers. Before the promulgation of the Law, the city and the temple have been rebuilt, and the Jews from the rural districts have moved into the city. In other words circumstances were in place for a realization of the commandments of the Law, so that after the reading of the Law, the confession of sins (Neh. 9) is followed by the cutting of a new covenant: in this version the signing of a contract (ch. 10)—by which religio-social reforms instituted by the Law could be declared valid (Neh. 13). The placement of Nehemiah after Ezra in biblical tradition has as its purpose bringing Ezra into the old tradition and leaving Nehemiah as a guaranty that what the new Ezra brings is not completely different from the old tradition, but that it (as part of the tradition) is enclosed by it. That the keeping of the Sabbath and the marriage regulations are made part of the old tradition is documented by the references to the Pentateuch (Ezra 9.12; Neh. 8.13-15; 10.31-40; 13.1-2, 10, 25), which guarantee that they should be kept. The inclusion of Ezra in the tradition at the

78. As pointed out by Rowley, Men of God, p. 271.

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time when he introduces something new is a common literary technique of biblical composition. The circularity designates the wholeness, annuls the chronology and, by making the first the latter and the latter the first, connects past and present. Rabbinic veneration for Ezra as the figure who together with 120 Elders form 'the Great Synagogue' that returned from exile 'made many new rules and restrictions for the better observance of the Law' also fits Nodet's model badly. Ezra's function as innovator and competitor to Moses (cf. t. Sank. 4.7): 'If Moses had not anticipated him, Ezra would have received the Torah'; (b. Suk. 20a): 'He restored and re-established the Torah that had been almost forgotten' not only brings him into conflict with the Samaritans, but also with the Sadducees, who according to Nodet originated from them.79 As a contrast to this veneration, the work of Nehemiah is given insignificant reference in rabbinic tradition, restricted to a few sabbath rules (cf. b. Sab. 123b). That the decree of Antiochus III in Josephus reflects the Nehemiah model, which he has not presented previously, neither in his mention of Ezra (Ant. 11.121-58) or Nehemiah (Ant. 11.159-83), should be the 'caveat', which either accepts Nodet's placement of the reform here or rejects to write history on the premises of Josephus. The placement of Simon the Just as the high priest who combined the various 'traditions' and thus realized the decree of Antiochus III implies an impossibility regarding the book of Ben Sira. Ben Sira's ignorance of Ezra and the reforms of Nehemiah, of whom he seems to have knowledge of his building of the city wall only (cf. Sir. 49.13)—'The memory 79. Meg. 31b; y. Meg. 4.1.75a: 'He ordained that public readings from the Torah take place not only on Sabbaths, but also on Mondays and Thursdays'; b. Sank. 21b: He also had the Bible rewritten in 'Assyrian characters, leaving the old Hebrew characters to the Samaritans'; B. Bat. 21b-22a: 'He established schools everywhere to fill the existing needs and in the hope that the rivalry between the institutions would redound to the benefit of the pupils'; B. Qam 82a-b, y. Meg. 4.1.75a: 'He also enacted the ordinances known as "the ten regulations of Ezra" and together with five of his companions, compiled the Misnah' (tractate Kelim, in A. Jellinek, Beit ha Midrash: Sammlungen kleiner Midrashim und vermischter Abhandlungen aus der altern judischen Literatur [6 vols.; Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrmann, 3rd rev. edn, 1967 (1853)], p. 88). Aside from the book which bears his name, Ezra wrote the genealogies of the book of Chronicles up to his own time (B. Bat 15a) and had a hand in writing the book of Psalms (Song R. 4.19). The rabbis identify him with the prophet Malachi (Meg. 15a). He is one of the wise men whose piety is especially extolled by the rabbis (Midr. Jeh. to 105.2), cf. E. Davis, EncJud, VI, p. 1106.

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of Nehemiah also is lasting; he raised our fallen walls and set up gates and bars, and rebuilt ruined houses'—is significant. It can be argued, of course, that the language here must be read metaphorically. The placement between v. 12, the temple building activity of Yehoshua ben Yozadak, and v. 14's praise of Enoch certainly can also give clues to such an interpretation. The praise of Simon (son of Onias in Sir. 50) mentions his high priestly performance during the service and does not mention anything about reform activities, unless one reads his building activities metaphorically. It has to be noted that the book of Ben Sira does not display any special interest in sabbath or marriage laws, and that the main demand concerning worship is social adjustment and the keeping of the offering commands (cf. chs. 7 and 35). Of course, there could be several reasons for that, and it cannot be denied that the case is political: also regarding the praise of the high priest, whoever this person is. Considering the book of Ben Sira to belong to another context that does not have knowledge of these reforms would imply that its Jerusalemite orientation is a late insertion.80 The dating of the book is another important matter. Its implicit dating to 182-132 BCE and a possible late dating to 117 BCE removes it so far from the alleged reforms of Antiochus III that other contexts become possible. The origin of the Pentateuch in Samaritan tradition and its 'adoption' in Jerusalem is meaningful only if this tradition had first later become Samaritan or if both groups had identified themselves with the same prehistory. If they did not, we must ask why the cult in Jerusalem accepted the Samaritan version as their own. Interestingly, the biblical tradition confirms Nodet's hypothesis that the Samaritans were the original heirs to the Pentateuch traditions. It also confirms that the cult moved from north to south and not the opposite. In the Ezra-Nehemiah tradition it asserts furthermore that this move was necessary, and that the break between the pre-exilic old Israel and the postexilic new Israel was foundational for the survival of the New Israel with its new interpretation of the Law. What confuses this scenario, however, is the later 80. Sir. 50.27. The standard translation based on the LXX: 'Ir|oot>c; moA.euiTr|c;, 'Jesus, son of Eleazar, son of Sirach of Jerusalem', conflicts with the Hebrew text: KTO p "ITI^K p "pIOD. R.H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), and P.W. Skehan and A. A. Di Leila, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation, with Notes (AB, 39; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987) both omit Simeon, asserting this to be an erroneous insertion.

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traditions' wish for a correction of the direction of this move. Denying the innovative aspects of that move, they claimed heritage to the whole tradition. This is particularly evident in Josephus's claim for Jerusalem's sovereignty. The contradictions to this claim is not given satisfactory attention in Nodet's work. Nodet's selective reading of his 'sources', which a priori asserts the authenticity of some texts and rejects others as inauthentic, implies the assertion that our texts are historical documents directly reflecting reality. Establishing hypothesis on the background of the veracity of some texts indirectly provides these texts' reality-creating activity with an authority that ignores these very texts' myth-making functions. Such a reading is in constant danger of leading to circular argumentation and tendentious confirmation of the hypothesis at test. Nodet hereby seems to have fallen victim to his own criticism of methods. That might be inevitable if we are to engage ourselves in historical reconstruction at all. That such a reading also can give wonderful new insights and establish new hypotheses is well demonstrated. It certainly is one of Nodet's greatest achievements that he brings up the question of the Pentateuch afresh. Its origin and transmission raise urgent questions of the primacy and authority of what we are wont to call Judaism.

Chapter 3 SAMARITAN LITERATURE

This chapter offers a brief introduction to most of the literature we call 'Samaritan', including DSS texts, from the SP to the latest of the Samaritan Chronicles of the nineteenth century CE.1 Detailed text examination should not be expected here, and readers are advised to seek further information in the literature referred to. The historiography of the Samaritan Chronicles will be examined in Chapter 6. The Pentateuch With the exception of some few references to surviving Samaritans in Palestine in the fourteenth century CE, it was not until the end of the sixteenth century CE that real information about Samaritan communities was given by J. Scaliger, who wrote diaries from his travels in Palestine and brought them to the attention of Western scholarship. Scaliger also collected some few manuscripts and was in close correspondence with the Samaritan community in Nablus for years.2 The publication of these Samaritan manuscripts raised text-critical questions about the originality of the biblical manuscripts, and led to the first European publication of the SP in 1616 by Pietro della Valle. Later, J. Morinus, who already in 16313 had argued that the SP was earlier than the MT, inserted the SP into his Polyglot, published in Paris in 1645. Morinus's text appeared in 1. See J.P. Rothschild, 'Samaritan Manuscripts', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 771-94, for preservation of manuscripts and fragments, a total of about 1800 placed in about 70 libraries and private collections. 2. J.J. Scaliger, Opus De Emendatione Temporum (Leyden, 1583; 1598; Geneva, 1629). 3. J. Morinus, Exercitationes Ecclesiasticae in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateucheum (Paris, 1631).

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revised form in the London Polyglot, published by B. Walton in 1657,4 which also contained a list, made by Casellus, of the text variants to the MT: 6000 were found, 1900 of which corresponded with the LXX. This interest in the SP was not entirely scientific. The ideologies, expressed in sola scriptura and ad fontes of the Reformation had challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. For centuries both parts of this debate had a major interest in 'excavating' the most original text, a so-called Urtext. The demonstration of a greater correspondence between the SP and the LXX, which also could be proved to harmonize better with the Vulgate text than those Hebrew manuscripts the reformers claimed to have been Urtexts had the purpose of defending the tradition and warding off the critique of church tradition by Lutherans. The classical work of Gesenius from 18155 sought a revision of these views. He assumed that the Samaritan sect came into existence with Alexander the Great's permission for the Samaritans to build a temple on Mt Gerizim. At this time the Samaritan priests, he argued, revised the Jewish text to fit this new reality. The correspondence with the LXX could be explained by assuming a common origin in an AlexandrianSamaritan recension, which Gesenius considered to oppose a Jewish recension, and to have had authority among the Jews. The AlexandrianSamaritan recension was a more popular edition, made for public use, while the Jewish recension, for the sake of its claim to greater respect, had not undergone the same revisions, but had kept its textual problems.6 4. B. Walton (ed.), Biblia Polyglotta (6 vols.; London, 1657). Prolegomenon XI: De Samaritanis et eorum Pentateucho eiusque versionibus. (The prolegomena have been frequently republished by: Heidegger [Zurich, 1673]; Dathe [Leipzig, 1777]; Wrangham [Cambridge, 1828].) 5. W. Gesenius, De Samaritanorum origine, indole et auctoritate (Halle: Springer Verlag, 1815). 6. Gesenius, De Samaritanorum origine, p. 14: the variants comprised: (1) grammatical changes, (2) explanations in the text, (3) assumed changes in order to remove textual difficulties, (4) changes based on parallel passages, (5) expansions based on parallel passages, (6) harmonizing of chronologies, (7) Samaritan words (including the special use of laryngeals), (8) sectarian readings based on Samaritan theology and cult practice. For these reasons Gesenius did not consider the SP to be useful for text-critical studies. Gesenius's views are discussed in Purvis, Samaritan Pentateuch, p. 75, and B. Waltke, 'The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Text of the Old Testament', in J.B. Payne (ed.), New Perspectives on the Old Testament (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1970), pp. 212-39 (228-32).

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These opinions of Gesenius were followed by Z. Frankel, S. Kohn and J. Nutt.7 A. Geiger shared Gesenius's views in principle but was more critical in regard to the MT. By introducing much new material, he sought to demonstrate that most of the variants were older than the Samaritan community, and that the Samaritan text should rather be considered to be an independent text than a development of any Jewish text.8 In 1915 these views were further argued by P. Kahle,9 who considered the SP to be very old and to have a greater degree of originality10 than the MT, which had only later been compiled and edited from various sources. The LXX was similarly based on various translations, which first developed a standard version in the Christian era. Kahle based his arguments on SP's accords with Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, Philo, LXX and the New Testament. Scholars like R. Pfeiffer, B. Roberts, F.G. Kenyon, O. Eisfeldt, A. Weiser and E. Wiirtwein all shared Kahle's opinions.11 P.M. Cross, working out more fully a theory put forward by W.F. 7. Z. Frankel, Vorstudien zur den Septuaginta (Leipzig: n. pub., 1841); idem, Uber den Einfluss der paldstinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Hermeneutik (Leipzig: n. pub., 1851); S. Kohn, De Pentateucho Samaritano eiusque cum versionibus antiquis nexu (Leipzig: n. pub., 1865); J.W. Nutt, Fragments of a Samaritan Tar gum: Edited from a Bodleian Ms. with an Introduction, Containing a Sketch of Samaritan History, Dogma and Literature (London: n. pub., 1874; repr. Giitersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1980). 8. A. Geiger, Urschrift und Vbersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhdngigkeit von der innern Entwicklung des Judenthums (Breslau: Heinauer, 1857). 9. P. Kahle, 'Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Pentateuktextes', TSK 88 (1915), pp. 399-439. 10. Against Gesenius, who could not find more than four authentic readings. 11. B.K. Waltke, 'Samaritan Pentateuch', ABD, V, pp. 932-40; R. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament; BJ. Roberts, The Old Testament Texts and Versions (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1951); idem, review of Purvis, Samaritan Pentateuch, JTS 20 (1969), pp. 569-71; F.G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (revised by A.W. Adams, New York: n. pub., 1958); idem, The Text of the Greek Bible (London: Gerald Duckworth, 3rd rev. edn, 1975 [1936]); F.F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments: Some Chapters on the Transmission of the Bible (London: Pickering & Inglish, 1953); O. Eissfeldt, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 3rd edn, 1964 [1934]); A. Weiser, The Old Testament, its Formation and Development (New York: n. pub., 1961); E. Wiirtwein, Der Text des Allen Testament (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1952) (ET: E.F. Rhodes [trans], The Text of the Old Testament [Leiden: SCM Press, 1980]).

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Albright,12 revised Kahle's opinions. On the basis of DSS biblical manuscripts he concluded that the Pentateuch (and former prophets) had developed from three local text traditions: an Alexandrian LXX, a Palestinian proto-Pentateuch and a Babylonian proto-MT, all originating in copies of the Law and Former Prophets, whose literary complexes had come into final form in Babylon in the sixth century, and which were then brought back to Palestine. The tradition concerning the text of Ezra may reflect these circumstances. In any case we must project the 'archetype' of all surviving local texts of these books roughly to the time of the Restoration.

From these traditions, he argued, the SP emerged from the Palestinian family as a rewritten sectarian text 'not earlier than the Hasmonean era', and the MT could be understood as a text revised by the rabbis around 100 CE.13 The Palestinian and Alexandrian texts' close relations in form and orthography were caused by the latter being 'a branch of the Old Palestinian family', which broke off in the early fourth century. 14 In contrast to Albright, Cross would not call these textual families 'recensions', since they were 'the product of natural growth or development in the process of scribal transmission, not of conscious or controlled scribal recension'.15 Thus, Cross (as in the Sanballat question) seems to be operating within two paradigms: maintaining the paradigm of the antiquity of the Hebrew Bible and merging this paradigm with the evidence from DSS, which in fact does not support the first paradigm and gives little evidence for the second, since Cross's proto-MT of Babylonia does not exist among DSS. This was clearly understood by S. Talmon,16 who could not agree to the theory of a single Urtext or any development of three distinct local families. Rather, he considered it most likely that various 'primal traditions' had been in 12. W.F. Albright, 'New Light on Early Recensions of the Hebrew Bible', BASOR 140 (1955), pp. 27-33. 13. P.M. Cross, 'The Contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the Study of the Biblical Text', in P.M. Cross and S. Talmon (eds.), Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 278-92. 14. Cross, 'Contribution', pp. 290-91. 15. Cross, 'Contribution', p. 282 n. 21. 16. S. Talmon, Textual Study of the Bible', in P.M. Cross and S. Talmon (eds.), Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 321-400; Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 152.

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use at the same time, which 'progressively lost their lease on life and ultimately crystalized in a restricted number of Gruppentexte'.ll Also E. Tov warned against an establishment of an Urtext and a too rigid grouping of texts, which were more likely related to each other 'in an intricate web of agreements, differences and exclusive readings'.18 Tov argued further that the designation 'proto-Samaritan' should be avoided and replaced by 'pre-Samaritan', since SP was largely based on a textual tradition that was extant in ancient Israel the descriptive name 'Samaritan' is almost irrelevant. The content and typological characteristics of this text were already found in preSamaritan texts found in Qumran, that is, in the ancient non-sectarian texts upon one of which SP was based.19

The discussion was related to the debate of Second Temple Judaism brought forward by the studies of DSS. Many scholars still considered it possible to place DSS manuscripts within an already established history of Judaism from the third century BCE. With the conviction that Samaritans had departed from Judaism not later than the first century 17. Talmon, Textual Study of the Bible', p. 327. 18. E. Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (Jerusalem Biblical Studies, 3: Jerusalem: Simor, 1981), p. 274; idem, 'A Modern Textual Outlook Based on the Qumran Scroll', HUCA 53 (1982), pp. 11-27 addressed the problem of 'integrating the new knowledge into an old framework, although a new one is actually needed' (p. 13) and since 'there is no evidence for a Masoretic text-type, nor a Septuagint text-type, while there is some legitimacy for the employment of the term "text-type" for the Sam. Pent.' (p. 24) The terminology thus should not go unchanged but be replaced by the simple term 'texts', indicating that 'the MT, LXX and Sam. Pent., which traditionally have been presented as the only three textual recensions of the biblical text, represent, in fact, but three of many texts' (p. 26). See also Tov, 'Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts from the Judaean Desert', JJS 39 (1988), pp. 3-37, for a survey of the various biblical texts found in the caves and an analysis of the textual differences, thus strengthening the argument that 'we should no longer try to fit the Qumran texts into this imaginary framework, created because of the coincidence that the MT, Samaritan Pentateuch and LXX were the only preserved textual sources' (p. 35). This statement was somewhat softened in Tov's 1992 book (Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Assen: Van Gorcum]), which for its outline speaks of five groups of biblical texts without avoiding the already established text-types of the MT, SP and LXX (pp. 114-17), in spite of the fact that one of the objectives of the book is 'to drive home the realization that MT and the biblical text are not identical concepts'. MT is only one representative of the complex of sources that reflect the biblical text. 19. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 81.

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BCE, it seemed to be quite simple to mark expansionist texts from Qumran written in palaeo-Hebrew as Samaritan, although their content did not agree with the SP. The early opinions about 4QpaleoExodm, written in palaeo-Hebrew and with full orthography and text expansions, but without any sectarian readings which could be related to the SP, offer clear examples of this tendency.20 Of importance for the relationship between pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts is the absence of any so-called sectarian readings in pre-Samaritan texts. The designation 'pre-Samaritan' is therefore based on script, expansionism, harmonization and linguistic features. Expansionism and harmonizing tendencies, which in pre-Samaritan texts do not bear the same characters, however, are found in several other DSS texts and should perhaps more precisely be labelled expansionist texts. I think it proper to argue against Tov21 that the Samaritans cannot be said to have chosen such a text, but rather continued to use the text-type they were accustomed to. This statement of course implies a different view of the Samaritan origins as well as of whether texts have been expanded or shortened. It should not go unnoticed that we do not find any Masoretic texts at Qumran and that some of the texts called proto-Masoretic bear close similarities to so-called expansionist texts in a manner hardly to be distinguished from the MT Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.22 This in fact was confirmed also by E.Y. Kutscher, who, in his study of IQIsa23 detected a great degree of similarity between the IQIsa, LXX and SP. All three text-types intended to remove linguistic and theological ambiguities and seemed more suited to popular use. Similarly the palaeo-Hebrew still in use for Samaritan writings can20. Thus P. Skehan, 'Exodus in the Samaritan Recension from Qumran', JBL 74 (1955), pp. 182-87; Skehan changed his opinion a few years later and declared that the text was not Samaritan because of its lack of space for sectarian readings and its compatibility to 4QTest. Cf. P. Skehan, 'Qumran and the Present State of Old Testament Text Studies: The Masoretic Text', JBL 78 (1959), pp. 21-25; M.D. McLean, The Use and the Development of Paleo-Hebrew in the Hellenistic and Roman Period (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1982), and J.E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran, p. 306, who, for text-critical reasons, maintained that the text was proto-Sam., although the text had no room for the SP reading of the Decalogue. 21. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 100. 22. Cross, 'Contribution', p. 289. 23. E.Y. Kutscher, The Language and the Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), p. 77.

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not convincingly be argued to give evidence for any Samaritan origin and/or related text revision during the Hasmonaean period, as J.D. Purvis has argued,24 since this script never ceased to have been in use.25 The findings of coins from the Hasmonaean period, minted with palaeoHebrew, might indicate that for national purposes the square script had not reached a status beyond the palaeo-Hebrew. Except for a single coin dating to the time of Alexander Jannaeus, all coins with Hebrew text, before and after up to the Bar Kochba revolt, are written in palaeoHebrew.26 In addition we do not have any sure knowledge of a development of specific Samaritan script features before the third century CE, and it cannot be safely said that Samaritans did not also use square script for profane purposes.27 Given this wide range of about four hundred years of scriptural identification for an origin of a Samaritan community, we end agreeing with Tov's suggestion that 'this dating does not necessarily have implications for their Torah. The non-Samaritan (pre-Samaritan) substratum could have been created prior to the establishment of the community or, alternatively, the Samaritan text could have been created much later.'28 Lacking in this discussion about whether pre-Samaritan texts are to be found among DSS is the entire question about what tradition the DSS actually represents. This question has become more pivotal in the past ten years of scholarship, because of the ongoing breakdown of the Essene hypothesis. Are the DSS sectarian texts of the Essenes, Sadducees or Pharisees? Were they brought into the caves in the second or first century BCE, or even as late as the first century CE? Do they come from one place, as has been suggested: from libraries or a geniza in Jerusalem, and either brought to the caves at one or more times,29 or 24. Purvis, Samaritan Pentateuch, p. 86: '[I]ts script developed from the paleoHebrew; its orthography is the standard full orthography of this time; the textual tradition it represents is not only known from this time, but completed the development of its characteristics during the Hasmonean period.' 25. R.S. Hanson, Taleo-Hebrew Scripts in the Hasmonean Age', BASOR 175 (1964), pp. 26-42. 26. A. Kindler, 'Coins and Currency', EncJud, V, pp. 696-72. 27. R. Pummer, 'Samaritan Material Remains and Archaeology', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 135-77 (136-38). 28. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 83. 29. A theory vigorously defended by N. Golb. See reference to his works discussed in F.H. Cryer and Th.L. Thompson (eds.), Qumran between the Old and

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have they been produced at Khirbet Qumran? Are texts written in the 'Qumran system' written in Qumran in contrast to 'non-Qumran system' texts, which had been imported?30 With these questions unanswered, it is necessary to keep in mind that the SP, with its specific features, could have existed contemporaneously with these text bodies, but not have formed part of them, and should not be expected to be found among DSS. This negative evidence can therefore only be used with great caution in the context of Samaritan history. Manuscripts Not unlike Masoretic texts, 'original' Samaritan texts of the Pentateuch are not available from before late mediaeval times. Pietro della Valle's manuscript dates from 1345-46, Von Gall's Exodus E from 1219, and the famous Abisha scroll from 1149.31 The datings are based on a deciphering of cryptograms in the texts, giving information about the name and family as well as the dating of the scribal work. With a single New Testaments (CIS, 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 101; 19495, 202-204, 252-55, 292. 30. As suggested by Tov, 'Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts', pp. 33-36; E. Ulrich, 'The Paleo-Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts', in D. Dimant and L.H. Schiffman (eds.), Time to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 103-29, argued for a recognition of the use of 'Qumran-orthography' outside of Qumran as evidence for a 'traditional' versus 'contemporary', or 'conservative' versus 'modernizing'—depending upon whether the scribes continued to copy the Persian period texts in the old orthography or modernized them in accord with contemporary practices of the Hasmonean-Roman period (p. 127). 31. Possibly the oldest scroll of the Pentateuch. It is greatly honoured by the Samaritans and kept in custody in the synagogue of Nablus. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 110-12, advocated a much earlier dating of the scroll. Implicit to the Abisha scroll, is that it has been written by Abisha ben Phinehas in the thirteenth year after the entrance to Canaan. This made Gaster assume a very early original, eventually from the time of Ezra, since the cryptogram could not have been changed by later copyists. The problem of dating the origin of cryptograms in the text (peculiar to Samarian literature) makes Gaster's argument rather hypothetical. P. Kahle, 'The Abisha Scroll of the Samaritans', in F. Hvidberg (ed.), Studia Orientalia loanni Pedersen (Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard, 1953), pp. 188-93, gives an account of the confusions about the various Abisha copies; he argues that the fragment, published by Fr. Perez Castro ('El Sefer Abisha', Sefarad 13 [1953], pp. 119-29; repr. 'Das Kryptogramm de Sefer Abischa', VTS1 [1960], pp. 52-60), could have been written centuries before the oldest known Pentateuch manuscript. Perez Castro dated the scroll to the twelfth-thirteenth century CE.

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exception of a text from the ninth century, most texts date to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and represent about 150 more or less fragmentary texts. Most of the manuscripts come from Damascus, Egypt, Shechem and Sarepta,32 and are now in custody of the Synagogue of Nablus, the John Ryland's Library at Manchester,33 the British Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale at Michigan State University34 and a few private collections like the Sassoon Collection.35 It has been argued that the Samaritan text had not been copied quite as carefully as the MT. B.K. Waltke, in his study of texts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, has detected an increasing deviation from the MT based on scribal errors.36 This study of course is very important for the evaluation of the published editions of the SP. A.F. von Gall's classical edition, Der hebraische Pentateuch der Samaritaner31 suffered from not having respected such developments. Although von Gall presented the available manuscripts and also made use of them in his text critical apparatus, he, for unknown reason, chose a manuscript, which had several errors, had been reconstructed on the basis of the MT and did not contain the Abisha scroll.38 Later editions made by A. and R. Sadaqa, Jewish and Samaritan Version of the Pentateuch39 and L.F. Giron Blanc, Pentateuco HebreoSamaritano-Genesis,40 sought to meet these problems. The former used 32. R.T. Anderson, 'Samaritan Pentateuch: General Account', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 390-96. 33. E. Robertson, Catalogue of the Samaritan Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (2 vols.; Manchester: n. pub., 1938-62). 34. R.T. Anderson, Studies in Samaritan Manuscripts and Artifacts—The Chamberlain-Warren Collection (ASOR Monographs; Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1978). 35. D.S. Sassoon, Ohel David: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library (2 vols.; London: n. pub., 1932). 36. B.K. Waltke, Prolegomena, pp. 42-64. 37. A.F. von Gall, Der hebraische Pentateuch der Samaritaner (repr.; Berlin: Alfred Topelmann, 1966 [1914-18]). 38. J. Hempel, 'Innermassoretische Bestatigungen des Samaritanus', ZAW 12 (1934), pp. 254-74. 39. A. and R. Sadaqa, Jewish and Samaritan Versions of the Pentateuch—With Particular Stress on the Differences between Both Texts (Tel Aviv: n. pub., 196165). 40. L.F. Giron Blanc, Pentateuco Hebreo-Samaritano-Genesis (Testos y estudios Cardenal Cisneros, 15; Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1976).

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a manuscript from the eleventh century for the Tetrateuch and the Abisha scroll for Deuteronomy and had the MT in parallel columns. Blanc's edition was based on MS Add. 1846, written early in the twelfth century CE and now kept in the University Library Cambridge. This edition records variants from fourteen additional sources.41 Translations The SP was early translated into Greek, Aramaic and Arabic. As support for the understanding of the Hebrew versions as well as a documentation for an early standard text, these translations have considerable value for research. The earliest reference to a Greek translation is given with Origen's Samareiticon. Only very few fragments have been found and no clear consensus of whether they actually are Samaritan has yet been reached.42 The Giessen fragment, which was acquired in 1910,43 consists of Deuteronomy 24-29, including the so-called Samaritan readings of Deut. 27.4: Hargerizim instead of Ebal. Other text variants could support a Samaritan origin, but the manuscript's close agreement with the Samaritan Targum makes it difficult to see it as stemming from Origen's hand. Later text findings44 have not offered more secure evidence for an early Greek version of a work by the Samaritans for the Samaritans. Both Tov and Pummer have argued against any assumption of a text being Samaritan because it has Gerizim in the right place. So has Vetus Latina, at least in Codex Lyon. This variant reading is not necessarily Samaritan,45 but could be an original reading, which was later changed.46 41. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 84. 42. See the discussion in S. Noja, 'The Samareitikon', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 408-12. 43. Published in 1911, in P. Glaue and A. Rahlfs, 'Fragmente einer griechischen Ubersetzung des Samaritanischen Pentateuchs', NKGW Phil.-Hist. Klasse 2 (1911), pp. 167-200. 44. A. Rahlfs, 'Bin weiteres Fragment der griechieschen Ubersetzung des Samaritanischen Pentateuchs', NKGW Phil.-Hist. Klasse 2 (1911), pp. 263-66; B. Lifshitz and J. Schiby, 'Une synagogue samaritaine a Tessalonique', RB 82 (1975), pp. 368-78; Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge, p. 148, dates the inscription to the fourth century CE. 45. E. Tov, 'Pap. Giessen 13, 19, 22, 26: A Revision of the LXX?', RB 78 (1971), pp. 355-83. 46. R. Pummer, 'Agarizin: A Criterion for Samaritan Provenance', JSJ 18.1 (1987), pp. 18-25.

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The Samaritan Targums (Sam. Tg.) have become the standard designation for the translation of the SP into Western Aramaic,47 which possibly did take place some time between the end of the first century BCE and the eleventh century CE.48 Because of poor translations of the Hebrew texts, the Sam. Tg. have not been considered to offer much of interest for research on the SP,49 and they have only recently been investigated thoroughly by A. Tal. In a huge study, published from 1980 to 1983, Tal was able to show that most of the mistakes were linguistic— related to geography and chronology—and were not to any serious extent theological.50 The Arabic translations date to the tenth century CE. They underwent revisions in the thirteenth century CE. Harmonizing various manuscripts, these revisions created text editions, which both linguistically and theologically differed from their original texts. Although Arabic became an everyday language for many Samaritans in the tenth century CE, Hebrew was kept for liturgical purposes and probably prevented of these Arabic texts from becoming authorized as a standard version.51 47. See, A. Tal, 'Samaritan Literature', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 413-67, pp. 446-47, for the linguistic considerations. 48. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. II, p. 41, dates the Targum to the time of Baba Rabba. A. Loewenstamm, 'Samaritans', EncJud, XIV, pp. 754-57 (754), argues for a dating between the first and fourth century CE based on lingustic concords with Defter and Memar Marqah, together with several grascicisms in the text. 49. The first edition published in Paris and London polyglots was, according to P. Kahle, Textkritische und lexikalische Bemerkungen zum samaritanischen Pentateuchtargum (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1898), 'the worst known manuscript of the Samaritan Targum'. 50. Tal, 'Samaritan Literature', p. 448. In a comparative study of MS, Or. 7562 from the British Museum and MSS 3 and 6 from the the Shechem synagogue, Tal demonstrated that MS Or. 7562 reflects Samaritan Aramaic from the pre-Talmudic period (the time for the occurrence of the Palestinian Targum), revealing earlier stratas, which are seen also in Tg. Onkelos and Aramaic documents from DSS. MS 6 from the Shechem synagogue represents the period for the occurrence of Talmudic Arabic, from around fourth century CE and used as a proof text for MS Or. 7562. MS 3 is a result of scribal inability in a period where Aramaic no longer was in use. See, furthermore, the introduction in A. Tal, The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch: A Critical Edition (3 vols.; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 198083). 51. H. Shehadeh, 'The Arabic Translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989),

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The Special Features of the Samaritan Pentateuch The examination of the deviations between the MT of the Pentateuch and its Samaritan counterpart, numbering about 6000, have been dealt with by other scholars and will not be repeated here in detail, since this examination is based on readings of mediaeval texts and not on their ancient Vorlage.52 E. Tov,53 in his examination of such assumed Vorlagen (named pre-Samaritan texts found among DSS), sought to distinguish between this 'pre-Samaritan substratum and a second, Samaritan layer added in the Samaritan Pentateuch'. From his examination, it seemed 'that the Samaritans added but few ideological and phonological changes to their presumed base text. All other characteristics were already found in the early texts'. However, attention needs to be given to the inconsistency with which these characteristics occur in the preSamaritan texts. Given their rarity it is difficult to make precise statements about their implications. The following sections briefly discuss Tov's results. Harmonizing Alterations These involve alterations to remove contradictions in the text. They are far from being thorough, but represent a tendency that is more dominant in the SP than in pre-Samaritan texts of DSS. The formalism with which these harmonizations are made includes a consistent use of names, which makes the SP reading of, for example, Num. 13.16 impossible: 'Moses named Joshua son of Nun Joshua', a name that he is given already in the calling in SP Num. 13.8. This reading goes against all other witnesses, including the pre-Samaritan texts, all of which resemble the Masoretic reading: 'Moses named Hosea son of Nun Joshua.' However, this lectio difficilior of the Samaritan text, I think, should not be too quickly understood as a harmonization, since it might be argued that Num. 13.8 in other texts has been harmonized to fit Num. 13.16. Text pp. 481-516. The article is a summation of the author's dissertation from 1977, The Arabic Translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Prolegomena to a Critical Edition' (Hebrew). 52. Casellus (1657); Gesenius (1815); Luzatto (1851; repr. 1970 by R. Kirchheim); Purvis (1968). 53. E. Tov, 'Protosamaritan Texts and the Samaritan Pentateuch', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 397-407; idem, Textual Criticism, pp. 80-100.

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variants to the SP either suggests a deletion of Nun Joshua or of Joshua, which means that *? K")p should be translated as 'called at' or 'read to'.54 Changes on the Basis of Parallel Texts, Remote or Close Remote alterations most often relate to harmonizations between the Tetrateuch and Deuteronomy, which, because of its status as 'repetitive Torah', apparently had to correspond, especially in the narrative parts of the book.55 This led to an insertion of Deut. 1.9-18 in the middle of SP Exod. 18.25, thus repeating the command to Moses about appointing judges on Deuteronomy's terms. According to MT and SP Exod. 18.21 these judges should be 'capable men, who fear God, trustworthy men who hate a bribe', but according to Deut. 1.13 be 'men who are wise, understanding and experienced'. The same feature is found in 4QpaleoExodm. In fact this 'harmonization' of the Exodus text with that of Deuteronomy undermines what was said about harmonization in the former paragraph, since we now have two variant stories about the appointment of judges in the same text, and we thus should expect the qualifications to have been adjusted according to the rules of harmonization. According to Tov other adjustments are found in, for example: Num. 10.10 with an addition of Deut. 1.6-8; Num. 12.16 with an addition of Deut. 1.20-23; Num. 13.33 with an addition of Deut. 1.27-33. Similar features are found in DSS manuscripts without being entirely consistent with the SP. The number of harmonizations differs in a remarkable way, so that, for example, 4QpaleoExodm has less harmonizations, while 4QNumbhas more than the SP.56 Evidence for this last remark is not given by Tov since the examples mentioned are also found in the SP. Tov's five examples of close harmonizations (i.e. alterations based on context or related verses) cannot be sufficiently compared to pre-Sama54. Cf. the apparatus in von Gall, Der hebrdische Pentateuch (Num. 13.16). Attention must be given to the fact that von Gall in several instances adapted the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch to the MT. 55. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 86. 56. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 98: Exod. 32.10 add. based upon Deut. 9.20; Num 20.13 add. based upon Deut. 3.24-28 and 2.2-6; Num. 21.12 add. based upon Deut 2.9, 17-19); Num. 21.20 add. based upon 2.24-25; Num. 27.23 add. based upon Deut. 3.21-22.

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ritan manuscripts because of lack of material, and it is only Exod. 8.20's addition of ~INQ to the heavy swarms of insects that has a known parallel in 4QpaleoExodm: E.g. SP Exod. 8.20 reads IRQ "DD miJ for MT 133 ITII>, an alteration based on 9.3, 18, 24 and agreeing with Tg. O.J.; 4QpaleoExodm and Vulgate but against Tg.N.

As can be seen from the two examples below, the agreement with other text witnesses differs, and nothing can be safely concluded from these few examples. E.g. SP Gen. 7.2. reads TOp31 H3T for MT inp«] 2TK, an alteration based on Gen. 1.27; 6.19; 7.3, 9 and agreeing with LXX, TG.O.N.J., Syr. Pesh. and Vulgate. E.g. SP Num. 27.8 reads DHH]! (assign) for MT Dll-niJm (transfer), an alteration based on vv. 9, 10, 11 and agreeing with Syr. Pesh. but in contrast to LXX, Tg. O.J. and Vulgate, all reading the verse as in MT.

Alongside tendencies of harmonization, the Samaritans are believed to have added 'sources for a quotation' in their Scripture. Here again this is done because of the assumption that Deuteronomy is expected to 'repeat' the content of the preceeding four books, the technique of inserting verses from Deuteronomy into the earlier books can also be described as providing 'source' for a quotation. This technique was also applied to relatively small details in sections that are not parallel.57 E.g. SP Exod. 20.2 l b containing Deut. 18.18-22, which has been added in retrospect to give cause for Deut. 18.16. This addition is also found in 4Q158andin4QTest. E.g. SP Exod. 6.9, anticipating the people's murmuring in Exod. 14.12. E.g. SP Gen. 30.36, which has an addition describing the content of Jacob's dream and thus anticipating Gen. 31.11-13, whereas the MT is lacking any reference to the mentioned dream. This reading is attested in 4Q364 ( = 4QPP). A similar addition is found in the SP after Gen. 42.16, anticipating Gen. 44.22.

To Tov's list, we should add that the addition to SP Exod. 20.17b, containing the Samaritan tenth commandment and the erection of the altar on Mt Gerizim, anticipates the erection of the stone altar in Deut.

57. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 88.

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27.2-8, which in both instances is supplied with the explanatory remark that this 'is facing Gilgal at Elon Moreh facing Shechem'. Of the four examples offered by Tov, two do not fall within the expectation of Deuteronomy's superiority as a reason for the addition. Furthermore, there seems to be a problem in that the additions do not really clarify, and in some instances conflict with, the text of the Deuteronomy. The arbitrariness of the retrospective language in Deut. 18.16 and 27.1, 8 does not match the 'additions' in SP Exodus. Neither does the anticipation of Jacob's dream fit any need for clarification in the MT. It is thus a moot point whether one is correct in assuming that the texts of the Tetrateuch have been altered on the background of Deuteronomy. The expansionist character of the Samaritan and pre-Samaritan text seems rather to have given reason for the clarification and removal of conflicting (Deut. 18.16 [27.2, 8]) or superfluous (e.g. the 'addition' to SP Gen. 30.36) material in the Tetrateuch. Repetition of Commands According to Tov, 'it is characteristic of the style of the biblical narrative to relate commands in great detail, while their fulfilment is mentioned only briefly, with the words "...and he (etc.) did as...'".58 In the SP on the contrary, commands are not only given but also executed in verbatim repetitions of the commands. So when the MT says that the Lord demanded so and so and ends with the remark that it had been done, the SP variant adds the command and might say, 'Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said...', with a repetition of what the Lord had told them to say. These additions are most clearly brought out in Exod. 7.18, 29, 8.19 and 9.5, 19, agreeing with 4QpaleoExodm. Linguistic Corrections It appears that most of the linguistic corrections of the SP were already found in its pre-Samaritan substratum, since they resemble the harmonizing changes described above. Some of them are indeed found in the pre-Samaritan text 4QpaleoExodm.59 Orthographic peculiarities in MT have often been changed in the SP. Pronominal suffixes of third person masculine singular, which in a few places in the MT is written with n (e.g. Gen. 9.21; 12.8; 13.3; 49.11; Exod. 22.4; 22.26) were almost always corrected to 1. Similarly the qere form of MT Gen. 3.12, 20 and 58. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 89. 59. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 89.

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7.2 is in the SP written in the ketib form similar to the writings of 4QpaleoExodm (22.26; 31.13), 4QDeutn(5.5) and the proto-Masoretic manuscript 4QLevc (5.12). The use of matres lectionis has traditionally been considered to be more dominant in the SP than in the MT. R. Macuch and M. Cohen, however, have independently demonstrated that this assumption is wrong. They have shown that matres lectionis in fact are more related to categories of words than to specific texts.60 Some DSS manuscripts, including 'non-Samaritan' manuscripts as well as such pre-Samaritan manuscripts as 4QpaleoExodm and 4QDeutn have a high use of matres lectionis, while other pre-Samaritan manuscripts are written with a more defective orthography than the SP. Phonological interchanges of gutturals are common in DSS manuscripts. In pre-Samaritan texts, this phenomenon relates especially to V/ n and is as frequent as in Galilaean Aramaic.61 Unusual (often archaic) forms are replaced by common forms and grammatical incongruencies are often corrected. Most of these 'corrections' are noted in the critical apparatus of BHS.62 Some disagreements are simple scribal errors, such as the frequent reading of ~l in the MT for 1, in the SP. Given this support of the SP spelling in pre-Samaritan texts, one must conclude that the SP reading in these instances is original, contrasting with the often meaningless text of the MT, for example, Gen. 14.14; 47.21 and Num. 24.17. Alterations Related to Content and Ideology The question of where to worship form the central part of these alterations. Hargarizim, usually in one word, is employed in all instances where Jerusalem is alluded to in the Pentateuch.63 60. R. Macuch, Grammatik des samaritanischen Hebrdisch (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1969); M. Cohen, The Orthography of the Samaritan Pentateuch. Its Place in the History of Orthography and its Relation with the MT Orthography', Beth Miqra 64 (1976), pp. 50-70; 66 (1976), pp. 361-91 (Hebrew). 61. Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 95-96, offers a few examples with references to Macuch, Grammatik des samaritanischen Hebrdisch, and Z. Ben-Hayyim, The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans (5 vols.; Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1957-77) (Hebrew). 62. Which misleadingly has punctuated the Samaritan variant according to the Masoretic tradition! 63. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 95: 'The reading hargarizim in SP is usually taken by scholars as tendentious, but since it is also found in Vetus Latina it should probably be taken as an ancient non-sectarian reading.' See also Pummer, 'ARGA-

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That Yahweh is to be worshipped on Hargarizim is also stated in the Decalogue of SP Exod. 20.lib and Deut. 5.18b, which has the MT first commandment as a headline to the Decalogue. The Samaritan tenth commandment records Deut. 11.29a; 27.2b-3a, 4a, 5-7 and 11.30 (in this order). Deut. 27.4, which forms part of the commandments, reads 'Gerizim' for MT 'Ebal', in agreement with Vetus Latina, reading 'Garzin'. The qualifying note to the placement of Gerizim and Ebal in SP Exod. 20.17b and Deut. 5.18b, stressing that this 'is facing Gilgal at Elon Moreh facing Shechem', also in SP Deut. 11.30, solves the confusion in the MT by the addition DD2) 'TIQ. Interestingly it finds support in rabbinic literature.64 None of these readings are found in pre-Samaritan texts, since the sections are either missing or the text is corrupt. The often-mentioned SP formulaic rule of writing "IPD, 'chose', in a past form when pertaining to 'the place, Yahweh will choose' (future form) in MT Deut. 12.5, 11, 14, is not given any further consideration in Tov's study.65 It seems to me that the matter is not quite as clear as scholarship has traditionally argued. Since SP Deut. 12.21, 26 and 15.20 employs a future form, agreeing with MT, and the Samaritan Chronicle Kitab al-Ta'rikh, written by AbuT-Fath (AF pp. 71-76). employs both tenses in its theological discourse about the placement of the temple, one has to reconsider the question. The consistent use of the past form ^"ira (1st person sing.) in MT 2 Chron. 7.12, 16, when Yahweh—in an answer to Solomon's prayer—decides to 'dwell' in the house Solomon has already built, could be witness to a conscious redaction of the MT of Deuteronomy. The underlying ideology in Chronicles, however, might not be related to place so much as to cult RIZIN: Samaritan Provenance?'. The 'Samaritan' reading, without space between the words, occurs also in a Masada fragment written in the 'early' Hebrew script, see S. Talmon, 'Fragments of Scrolls from Masada', Erlsr 20 (1989), pp. 286-87 (Hebrew with English summary). However, the Samaritan nature of that fragment is contested by E. Eshel, 'The Prayer of Joseph, a Papyrus from Masada and the Samaritan Temple on ARGARIZIN', Zion 56 (1991), pp. 125-36 (Hebrew with English summary). 64. Cf. m. Sot. 1.5, dealing with the blessing on Gerizim and the cursing on Ebal, and stating that these are in Samaria, 'near by Shechem, beside the oaks of Moreh, as it is written, Are not they beyond Jordan (there is written, and Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem unto the oak of Moreh); as there the oak of Moreh that is spoken of is at Shechem, so here the oak of Moreh that is spoken of is at Shechem'. 65. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 95.

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centralization and to the rejection of other 'houses' in Israel.66 Another special feature in the SP compared to the Masoretic Pentateuch belongs to chronology relating to the first generations in Genesis.67 Of interest is the reading of 'the sixth day' in Gen 2.2. agreeing with LXX, Syr. Pesh and Jubilees but against MT, Tg. O.N.J and Vulgate, which all read the 'seventh day'. The stay in Egypt in MT Exod. 12.40, reckoning 340 years in both the SP and LXX, includes the stay in Canaan in this reckoning, which of course conflicts with the following verse that relates that after this 430 years' stay in Egypt, the armies of Yahweh went out of Egypt. The SP is also seen to have slight variations related to the synchronic use of words and phenomena that are not seen in the MT. Summing up, we must conclude that the SP reflects a text type found in Qumran, which, because of its 'various additions and expansions', is labelled as an expansionist text. This text type is not restricted to Samaritan texts, and the above-mentioned features common to so-called pre-Samaritan texts and the SP does not convincingly prove that any texts among the DSS should be labelled 'Samaritan'. The so-called second stratum of the SP, belonging to ideological variants, is still unproven, since none of the DSS texts contains the material needed for that examination. The common assertion that Samaritans expanded their texts with harmonizations of various sorts is unfounded, because it has not been proven that these 'additions' meet any need of clarification. In some instances they conflict with the text of Deuteronomy that they are thought to anticipate. On the premise of lectio difficilior, the Samaritan text should be considered prior to its Masoretic counterpart, while on the premise of lectio brevior it should be considered to be later! Such conflicting premises require a reconsideration of our understanding of techniques of expansion, and raise further questions about whether we are after all correct in speaking of 'extensive editorial rewriting' of the type of texts to which the SP also belongs.68 66. Cf. Chapter 5 below. 67. R. Weiss, Studies in Text and Language of the Bible (Jerusalem, 1981) (Hebrew), pp. 63-189, cit. Tov, 'Protosamaritan Texts', p. 403 n. 10. 68. Tov, 'Protosamaritan Texts', p. 407: 'It is similarly reflected in the protoSamaritan texts allowing for extensive editorial rewriting.' Just having received Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), I am pleased to be able to quote his conclusion on the matter: 'In sum, except for their script, the palaeo-Hebrew biblical manuscripts from Qumran

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Although the Samaritans recognize only the Pentateuch as their sacred text, this does not imply that no other literature could be given a certain authoritative status. How early this happened is difficult to state. It might belong to the development of a certain distinctiveness in Samaritan theology in the third century CE, as suggested by Crown.69 In the Samaritan Chronicle Kitab al-Tarikh by Abu'1-Fath (see p. 000 below) such a reason is given for the rejection of other Jewish Scriptures: they disrespect the commandment given in Deut. 4.2 and 13.1 (12.32) that 'you shall not add to it or take from it'.70 Thus the criticism is intrinsic and independent of the rejected literature's potential pro-Judaean or proSamaritan preferences. In the same manner, the Prophets are rejected because 'no prophet like Moses arose in Israel' (Deut. 34.10), judging this literature as untruthful and not stemming from God.71 These statements form part of a discussion about who is the true Israel in a context of who made the correct translation of the Pentateuch into Greek required by Ptolemy I (Soter) or, according to Josephus, Ant. 1.10 and 12.13, Ptolemy Philadelphia. Both Samaritans and Judaeans participated and each made their own version, differing both in content and size.72 The of ten-stated 'critique' of the Samaritans' rejection of the Hebrew Bible and of their recognition of only the Pentateuch needs a clarifying remark. The Samaritan rejection of the Hebrew Bible does not imply that they did not develop their own traditions of chronicles and halakhah. As Jews did not consider the Pentateuch to give answers to all matters of life, so the Samaritans gave a certain credit to tradition and to the interpretation of the Pentateuch. This is explicit in the Arabic Cave 4 do not appear to form a group distinguishable from the other biblical scrolls in either physical features, date, orthography, or textual character. Moreover, though certainty is even more elusive for this contrast, there seems to be no great distinction in any of those four categories between manuscripts copied outside Qumran (or predating Qumran) and manuscripts copied at Qumran.' 69. Crown,'Redating the Schism'. 70. Stenhouse, Kitab al Tarikh, p. 136: p. 109 'our copy of the Law, and theirs as well, would forbid accepting it, as in the verse, "You shall add nothing to it, nor take away from it" which is to say that the law is complete (in itself)'. 71. Stenhouse, Kitab al Tarikh, p. 135. 72. Stenhouse, Kitab al Tarikh, p. 129.

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tractate Kitab al-Tabbakh from late mediaeval times, as well as in several hymns dated to the third to fourth century CE. The passages of interest for the discussion are presented and discussed by Ruahiridh Boid,73 cleared of earlier misunderstandings by Gaster74 and Halkin.75 What differs between the Samaritan and Jewish understanding is the view of the later traditions as given by God. The oral Torah of rabbinical Judaism, considered to have been given to Moses (cf. m. Ab. 1.1) and thus having authority besides and at times beyond the written Torah, could never achieve such a status in Samaritan belief. The Pentateuch alone, written by Moses,76 was the only legitimate Torah. What developed from this Torah remained rooted in the Pentateuch. It could never replace the Torah as such because it was already inherent in it. Nevertheless, since only Moses understood all the implications of the Law, it is necessary to have some written halakhic rules deduced from the Torah and related to tradition. Since the Pentateuch embraces life, tradition and theology, all literature, including commentaries, historical books, philosophical books, grammars, midrashim and halakhot, were written purposely to give insight into the commandments of the Pentateuch and to offer advice on how to live in accordance with them. This is clearly seen in Memar Marqah, probably written in the third to fourth century CE. Based entirely on the Pentateuch it totally lacks contemporary references. Language Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic and Arabic were the languages of the Samaritans. Several texts are thus written in polyglots with Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic in parallel columns. To offer some help with the reading of these texts, a glossary (Ha-Meliz) was made in the tenth to eleventh 73. Ruahiridh Boid (M.N. Saraf), 'Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the Samaritan Tradition', in M.J. Mulder (ed.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (CRINT, 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 595-99. 74. Gaster, Samaritan Escatology (London: Search, 1932), pp. 55-59. 75. A.S. Halkin, 'The Relation of the Samaritans to Saadia Gaon', in Saadia Anniversary Volume (American Academy for Jewish Research, Text and Studies, 2; New York: n. pub., 1943). 76. Samaritan tradition agrees with Jewish tradition in stating that not only Moses but also 6000 Israelites heard God speak from the mountain, when giving the Decalogue (b. Mak. 23b-24a; Sam. Hymn 16, lines 81-85); Kitab al-Tabbakh has 600,000 Israelites.

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century. It included Hebrew and Aramaic, and in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries it was supplemented in Arabic, as Hebrew was used only for ritual purposes at this time. A full manuscript from 1476 is presented by Z. Ben Hayyim. Under the influence of the expansion of Arabic in late mediaeval time superseding the Aramaic, Hebrew came once again into use in everyday language.77 Memar Marqah (Tibat Marqah) This is a collection of six books that exhibit great differences in language and content. In the first five books Memar Marqah offers a midrashic rewriting of the Pentateuch in an epic setting of bene Yisrael's wandering in the desert up to the death of Moses. The sixth book is a midrash of the 22 letters of the alphabet, understood to have originated at the time of creation. The language of Memar Marqah is fourth century CE Aramaic, with some development into later 'Samaritan' influenced by Arabic.78 The work is considered to have been written by the great Samaritan theologian Marqah from the third to fourth century CE and thought to be the most important early text dealing with Samaritan theology. J. Macdonald made an English translation of the work in 1963.79 Unfortunately, this did not use our best manuscript as its foundation and did not recognize many of the text variants, thereby losing many characteristics of the text.80 Liturgical Works The oldest work, called Defter, contains hymns attributed to Marqah's father Amram Darah and to his son Nanah. In the ninth century CE new additions were made, including prayers, confession, advice on liturgical

77. Loewenstamm, 'Samaritans', EncJud, XIV, pp. 752-53. 78. Tal, 'Samaritan Literature', pp. 462-45. 79. J. Macdonald, Memar Marqah, the Teaching of Marqah (BZAW, 84; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1963). For earlier editions, see the introduction, pp. xxiixxiv. 80. Tal, 'Samaritan Literature', p. 463, basing himself on Ben-Hayyim's review of Macdonald, Memar Marqah, in BO 23 (1966), pp. 185-91. His opinions were supported by Boid (Saraf), 'Use, Authority and Exegesis', p. 598 n. 11, who does not even mention Macdonald's work.

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practices and psalms. The edition of Cowley from 1909 is still the standard English version.81 Chronicles^2 Asatir (The Secret of Moses) A work in Aramaic, probably from the eleventh to twelfth century, containing haggadic material from the Old Testament and the Pseudepigrapha. The Samaritans credited the writing of this work to Moses and held it in great honour. M. Gaster, who was the first to publish it, dated it to around 250-200 BCE.83 According to language and content, Macdonald argued for a dating in Byzantine times. If any relationship to Memar Marqah could be established, this seems to be the oldest one.84 The latest translation with commentaries was made by Z. Ben Hayyim in 1943^4.85

81. A.E. Cowley, Samaritan Liturgy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909); See Tal, 'Samaritan Literature', pp. 450-62, for a detailed examination of the material and Cowley's work. 82. I here follow the numbering system of J. Macdonald (Theology, pp. 44-49; Samaritan Chronicle No. H, p. 225) without engaging in the discussion and the critique raised against his system in A.D. Crown, 'The Date and Authenticity of the Samaritan Book of Joshua as Seen in its Territorial Allotments', PEQ 96 (1964), pp. 79-100; idem, 'A Critical Re-evaluation of the Samaritan Sepher Yehoshua' (unpublished PhD dissertation; 3 vols.; University of Sydney, 1966); idem, 'New Light on the Inter-Relationships of Samaritan Chronicles from Some Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library', BJRL 54 (1971-72), pp. 1-32; 55 (1972-73), pp. 281313 (283), which did not agree with Macdonald in this classification, but regards the Samaritan Joshua tradition as the basis of all chronicles. He understands Macdonald's classification as being 'a description of the finished product and does not indicate the process by which these chronicles were enlarged or composed. Nor does it show their true relationship'. See also P. Stenhouse, 'Samaritan Chronicles', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 218-65. 83. M. Gaster, The Asatir, the Samaritan Book of the 'Secrets of Moses' together with the Pitron or Samaritan Commentary and the Samaritan Story of the Death of Moses (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1927). 84. Macdonald, Theology of the Samaritans, p. 44. 85. Z. Ben Hayyim, 'The Book of Asatir, with Translations and Commentary', Tarbitz 14 (1943), pp. 104-25, 128, 174-90; 15 (1944), pp. 71-87 (Hebrew).

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Sepher ha Yamin or the Samaritan Chronicle No. II This work is possibly later than Abu'l Path's Kitab al-Tarikh (see below), which it seems to be dependent on. No standard text, like the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, was ever attempted. The collections of chronicles belonged to the great families, who to some extent wrote their own versions of history. A comparison of Sepher ha-Yamin manuscripts with Sepher Yehoshua and Kitab al-Tarikh clearly demonstrates this. Macdonald characterized the work thus: Sepher ha-Yamin as a title refers to a work which exists in more than one version, e.g. 2 Chronicles or the Jos. part of 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles may have existed originally as a book of Joshua, which is in no way connected with Sepher Yehoshua (4 Chron.), but may have contained large tracts of the Masoretic text. 2 Chronicles, as represented by MS HI is basically a very old chronicle of unknown date, possibly derived from a pre-MT version of the biblical text possessed by one or more North Palestinian (Samaritan) families. There are several clear indications that it is fundamentally a substantial excerpt from the biblical text which could have been held by northern as well as southern Israelites... To the original text underlying 2 Chronicles as we now know it, was later added, perhaps after the fourth century CE reorganisation of life and worship, some of the material in non-biblical classical Hebrew.86

Macdonald used a manuscript from 1616 for his translation, belonging to the Danufi family and copied by Tobiah ben Phinehas from Shechem. The language is classical Hebrew with few Aramaisms or Arabisms, and the composition, exposing lacunae in the text, reflects a later reworking of older material with insertions of secular sources containing heroic material and priestly sources dealing with cult, genealogies, facts, figures and names, and being severely anti-David and anti86. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. H, pp. 7-8. Not everyone agreed to Macdonald's conclusions about the originality of the manuscript. Pummer, 'Samaritan Studies, I', refers among others to 'Kippenberg (Garizim und Synagoge, p. 61 n. 4), who calls for "Eine eingehende Priifung von Macdonalds Aufstellungen"; Gese (review of Macdonald's edition in O.L.Z. Ixix, 1974, p. 156) accepts it as "die altesten von den uns heute zuganglichen erzahlenden Chroniken", whereas BenHayyim (Leshonenu, xxxv, 1970, pp. 292-302) considers it as the most recent one, dating from 1908.' This late dating has also been argued by J.D. Purvis, The Samaritans and Judaism', p. 83: 'I have been informed by several members of the Samaritan community that the document was put together in the late 19th century. It is essentially a modern forgery of an alleged ancient document.' See also M. Baillet, 'Review of Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle no. //', RB 1 (1970), pp. 592-602.

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Solomon.87 The tone is polemical against the MT, and it is generally accepted that the chronicle has changed the MT. However, since the MT is no less polemical, one should not too quickly judge the material on this criterion. The hypothesis of lectio brevior would, in this case, judge the Samaritan material to be older than the Masoretic material in questions of both content and composition, but younger in questions of specific additions about cult places or geography. This reductive principle, therefore, only partly supports a conservative scholarly view on Samaritans as breaking off from Judaism and rewriting their history to fit the new circumstances. A comparison with the LXX does not reveal any direct dependency, although a great many of the variants in ST Joshua are in accord with the LXX, supporting a Shechem/Gerizim tradition clearly disagreeing with the MT.88 The discussion will be raised again in Chapter 6 in the presentation of Samaritan historiography. Here it is enough to quote Macdonald: 'But even if the ST is a later work in extenso, it may contain genuinely ancient traditions which antedate some polemical MT passages.'89 Ha-Tolidah (Genealogy) This text is predominantly written in Hebrew in 1149 by Eleazar ben Amram with additions in 1346 by Jacob ben Ismael and a follow-up on the genealogies in the following centuries. A section of the book is in Aramaic, dealing with the question about the height of Mt Gerizim. With an introduction to the calendar system based on Jubilees, the book enumerates the genealogies from Adam until the entrance into Canaan, together with genealogies of important Samaritan families. A. Neubauer's translation is based on a manuscript from 1859 written by Jacob ben Harun.90 J. Bowman later published a manuscript that he considered original.91

87. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. II, p. 8, who bases his divisions on content and language. 88. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. II, pp. 36-37, 208-209. 89. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. II, p. 15. 90. A. Neubauer, Tolidah, Based on MS Or. 651' (Bodleian Library, Oxford) = A. Neubauer, 'Chronique samaritaine', JA 14 (1869), pp. 385-470. 91. J. Bowman, Transcript of the Original Text of the Samaritan Chronicle Tolidah (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1954).

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Sepher Yehoshua This is usually considered not to be the Old Testament book of Joshua92 but an Arabic work from the thirteenth century CE acquired by Scaliger and translated into Latin with comments by T.G.J. Juynboll in 1848.93 O.T. Crane made an English translation in 1897.94 The book consists of legendary materials dating from the time of the biblical Joshua until the fourth century CE. The earlier versions cover only the period until the coming of Alexander the Great. Only after 1513 were additions concerning later periods made. M. Gaster published a text in 1908 that he considered to be a Hebrew version dating from the exilic/early postexilic period.95 Gaster made this suggestion on the basis of linguistic agreements with the last parts of Ezekiel, parallels with Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles, and Josephus's agreement with them. The critique of his suggestion,96 which argued that the work was part of another chronicle and written around 1900 by Jacob ben Harun, made Gaster strengthen his arguments. On the basis of J. Kennedy's work on the Paseq,91 Gaster gave a more detailed argumentation in his 1924 book98 for a Samaritan proto-Joshua that was earlier than or contemporary with the MT. The markings of text variants in the MT with a Paseq, agreeing with the Samaritan text, and the support of the LXX for the Samaritan reading in the same instances, proved the primacy of the Samaritan text 92. The discussion has engaged such scholars as D. Yellin, 'Das Buch Josua der Samaritaner' (Jerusalem: A.M. Lunen, 1902), pp. 138-55 (Hebrew); M. Gaster, 'Das Buch Josua in hebraisch-samaritanischer Version', ZDMG 62 (1908), pp. 20979; idem, 'On the Newly Discovered Samaritan Book of Joshua', JRAS (1908), pp. 795-809; idem, The Samaritan Hebrew Sources of the Arabic Book of Joshua (1930), pp. 567-99; Crown, 'Date and Authenticity', pp. 79-100, who advocates for a dating before the end of the second century CE; Crown, 'New Light', p. 32. 93. T.G.J. Juynboll, Chronicon samaritanum, arabice conscriptum, cui titulus est Liber Josue. Ex unico codice Scaligeri nunc primum edidit, latine vertit, annotatione instruxit (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1848). 94. O.T. Crane, The Samaritan Chronicle (New York: Alden, 1897). 95. Gaster, 'Das Buch Josua', pp. 209-79. 96. P. Kahle, 'Zum hebraischen Buch Joshua', ZDMG 62 (1908), pp. 494-594 (550-51); D. Yellin, 'A Book of Joshua or a Sepher Hayamim', Jerusalem Yearbook 7.7 (1908), pp. 203-204; S. Yahuda, 'Uber die Unechtheit des Samaritanischen Josuabuches', Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie des Wissenschafts 39 (1908), pp. 887-914; Stenhouse, 'Samaritan Chronicles', p. 220. 97. J. Kennedy, The Note Line in the Hebrew Scriptures, Commonly Called Paseq or Pesiq (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1903). 98. Gaster, Samaritans, pp. 134-40.

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to Caster's satisfaction. J. Macdonald agreed with Gaster on the variants with the MT, but could not confirm the LXX variants." No further conclusions have yet been reached on the matter and may not be possible in further study of the MT. It is necessary that studies of textual variants of biblical texts among DSS and their presentations in early Jewish 'historiographies' around the beginning of the common era be compared with Samaritan historiographies. For such purposes it can be useful to know that Caster's manuscript could be earlier than the Arabic Yoshua manuscript that Scaliger had acquired in 1629, as has been suggested by A.D. Crown.100 Shalshalah or Shalshalat ha-Kohanim (Chain) This is a current genealogy numbering the high priests from the time of Adam until the present, beginning with Eleazar ben Phinehas and for the time being ending with Jacob ben Harun in the twentieth century. Kitab al-Tarikh (Annales) This work is the great chronicle written by Abu'1-Fath in the fourteenth century. An annotated translation was made by P. Stenhouse in 1986.101 According to Stenhouse's foreword this chronicle is believed to be the oldest Samaritan historiography. However, the first safe mention of a manuscript of the work, now known as Ms Bodleian-Hunting don,102 is the one mentioned in Bernhard's Chronologiae from 1691, almost 50 years later than Joannes Hottinger's103 mention of a Samaritan book of Joshua in his dispute with Morinus. Abu'l-Fath's introduction lists the sources underlying the work: Sepher Yehoshua,104 ha-Tolidah plus three incomplete chronicles written in Hebrew. These chronicles had been either lost or damaged providing Abu'1-Fath his reason for compiling a new chronicle at the request of the high priest Phinehas, who left him his collection of old chronicles written in Hebrew and Arabic.105 Abu'l99. Macdonald, Samaritan Chronicle No. II, p. 7. 100. Crown, 'New Light', pp. 1-32. 101. Stenhouse, Kitab al Tarikh; Stenhouse, 'Samaritan Chronicles', pp. 218-65. 102. MS Huntingdon 350 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 103. J.H. Hottinger, Exercitationes Antimorianae: de Pentateucho Samaritano, ejusque authentia (Tiguri: n. pub., 1644). 104. Stenhouse thinks it possible that this is the manuscript Scaliger mentions, and used for Juynboll's Chronicon from 1848, cf. Kitab al Tarikh, p. iii n. 28. 105. AF pp. 1-2. This is the internal indication of page numbers in the chronicle and does not refer to the page numbers of Stenhouse's book.

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Path's introduction, however, seems to be speaking with different voices and offers yet another reason for compiling the work. On p. 4: As to why the slave undertook this task—the reason is that he found himself in a particular country, and its ruler asked him about their Chronicles, and sought them from him; so he compiled the above mentioned Chronicle for him, and presented it to him.

By and large, the foreword seems to have some parallels to the forewords of Ben Sira, 2 Mace. 2.19-32 and the Letter ofAristeas, claiming adherence to the tradition and implying some authorial freedom. P. Stenhouse's introduction offers a brief discussion of the historicity and the authenticity of Abu'l-Fath's 'old chronicles'. Scholarly tradition has placed itself in two distinctive groups. One group considered the chronicle to build on a very old and genuine tradition (M. Gaster; S. Lowy). Another group considered the chronicle to be worthless for understanding the tradition's prehistory (J.W. Nutt; E. Vilmar; J.A. Montgomery).106 Stenhouse's own judgment relates to Abu'l-Fath's 'old chronicles', which, if they had really existed, should have led to a new copy and not to a new 'compilation'. Stenhouse regards the origin of the chronicle as related to a growth of hope in the Samaritan community at that time. He agrees with Vilmar that 'the Samaritan community at the time of Abu'1-Fath regarded the return of the Radwan (also named Rahuta)107 as imminent, and that the Abisha Scroll played an important part in bolstering these expectations. Vilmar considered that it was more than coincidence that the codex of the Pentateuch (allegedly written by Abisha son of Phinehas, son of Eliezer, son of Aaron in the thirteenth year after the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan) should have come to light precisely when it did. Stenhouse, however, does not see it necessary to call the chronicle a forgery as Vilmar had. He rather sees the chronicle as a text produced by necessity of circumstances, having as its purpose to salvage 'what was left of Samaritan traditions'.108

106. Stenhouse, 'Samaritan Chronicles', p. 240. 107. The time when God again blesses his people after the time of wrath (danuta), which began when Eli left Gerizim. 108. Stenhouse, 'Samarian Chronicles', p. 263.

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Chronicle Adler109

Written in Samaritan Hebrew by Abu-Sakhva ben Asad Hadanfi in 1900. It is mainly based on ha-Tolidah and Abu'l-Fath's Ta'rikh and can hardly be regarded as older. Halakhic Literature This consists of several works from late mediaeval time. It is written in Arabic with the purpose of arguing against the halakhic literature of the Karaites, the Rabanites and Islamic legal material.110 The aforementioned Kitab al-Tabbakh belongs to this group. It never achieved and developed a systematic form comparable to what is found in Rabbinic literature. Kitab al-Fara 'id from the thirteenth and fourteenth century is the most important of these; it includes 613 commandments, of which 365 (the days of a year) are prohibitions and 248 (the number of the parts of the body) are prescriptions.111 Commentaries on the Pentateuch These are all from mediaeval times and written in Middle Arabic. With the exception of lexicographic and grammatical material, they exhibit traits of mediaeval thought in philosophy, astronomy, astrology and medicine.

109. After E.N. Adler and M. Seligsohn, 'Une nouvelle chronique samaritaine', REJ 44 (1902), pp. 118-222; REJ 45 (1902), pp. 70-98, 160, 223-54; REJ 46 (1903), pp. 123-46. 110. G. Wedel, 'Halachic Literature', in A.D. Crown (ed.), The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 468-80 (471). 111. EncJud, XIV, pp. 754-55, offers a list of the various works.

Chapter 4 SAMARITANS IN JEWISH, CHRISTIAN AND HELLENISTIC LITERATURE

Rabbinic Judaism in the Light of the Samaritan Question1 An increasing anti-Samaritan attitude developed in the course of rabbinic discussions in the early centuries of this era. From some of the more nuanced discussions and views put forward in texts from the Mishnah to the fourth century CE's Babylonian Talmud, Samaritans underwent the fate of being not only formally excluded from this selfdefined post-biblical Judaism, but eventually were likened to heathens. In the Mishnaic literature, they are termed Cuthaeans, but they are not to be confused with either 'am ha'ares (a different group) or with heathens, who are mentioned separately from both Cuthaeans and 'am ha'ares.2 Because of an increasing association of Samaritans as hea1. On the basis of the following sources: Mishnajot, Die seeks Ordnungen der Misnah, Hebrdischer Text mit Punktation (translated with a commentary by von E. Baneth et al.\ Leipzig: J.C.B. Mohr, 1927); H. Danby, The Misnah, Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 [1993]); the Talmudic tractate Masseket Kutim, translated by J. Montgomery from J.W. Nutt, Fragments of a Samaritan Targum, Edited from a Bodleian Ms., with an Introduction, Containing a Sketch of Samaritan History, Dogma and Literature (London, 1874; repr.; Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1980). 2. Toh. 5.8; Ter. 3.9; Dem. 6.1, 3.4: 'If a man brought his wheat to a miller that was a Samaritan or to a miller that was an Am-haaretz, its condition (after grinding) remains as before in what concerns Tithes and Seventh Year produce; but if he brought it to a miller that was a gentile (after it has been ground) it is accounted demai-produce. If he gave his produce into the keeping of a Samaritan or an Amhaaretz, its condition remains as before in what concerns Tithes and Seventh Year Produce; but if into the keeping of a gentile, it is accounted like to the gentile's own produce (which is not subject to tithes). R. Simeon says: It is accounted demai-produce.' The discussion in fact is about how one can avoid to pay the tithes by grinding or depositing one's wheat by one of the groups mentioned. As it can be seen the Gentiles ranked lowest.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 105 thens, all of these groups come to be commonly called Cuthaeans in Talmudic literature. Prior to this stage, the Misnah as well as the Talmud bear the characteristics of necessity. Religious as well as social coexistence demanded a clear definition of conditions and a demarcation of Samaritans from heathens, who generally had been understood to be different from Samaritans. The literature, without doubt, has clearly defined opinions of the basic distinctions between rabbinical Judaism and Samaritanism. The debatable questions do not deal with identity or theology as such, but concentrate on how these groups, with their different opinions, relate to each other in a practical way on an everyday basis according to food,3 marriage,4 cult practice, religious feasts, trade, circumcision, collection of tithes, and so on. These are the questions that were of greater importance before the fourth century, when Samaritans were still considered to belong to 'the children of Israel'. They are comparable in many instances to those regarding Sadducees and eagerly discussed by the rabbis Akiba, Meir, Simon ben Gamaliel and Eliezer. After a final exclusion of the Samaritans by the rabbis Ame and Assis5 in the beginning of the fourth century such concerns held less importance, and the Samaritan question became related to those regarding Jewish relations with heathens.6 In no period, however, does the discussion reach a consistent agreement concerning the Samaritans. While Rabbi Akiba (second century CE) expressed a liberal attitude in his consideration of the Samaritans as 'genuine converts', whose priests are understood to be as legitimate as the Jewish priests, his contemporary Rabbi Ismael considered the Samaritans to be 'lionconverts', designating that they only adhered to Judaism by necessity, and therefore were considered to rank lower than the Jews.7 The 3. Ber. 7.1, which permits a Samaritan to participate in a Jewish cultic meal and Ber. 8.7, which permits a Samaritan participant in a cultic meal to recite the blessing when it is said in toto. 4. b. Qid. 75a, b; m. Nid. 4.1, 2, 7.4; Mass. Kut. 6, 27. 5. m. Hul. 6.a. 6. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 167. 7. b. Qid. 75a-76a; b. Kam. 38b; b. Sank. 85b; b. Hul. 3b; b. Nid. 56b. Mass. Kut. 27. m. Seb. 8.10, which refers to R. Akiba what R. Eliezer has said: 'Moreover they declared before him that R. Eliezer used to say: He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like one that eats the flesh of swine. He replied: Hold your peace; I will not say to you what R. Eliezer has taught concerning this.' R. Akiba was a former pupil of R. Eliezer (first-second century CE) and he did not want to speak with disrespect about his teacher, as the continuation in m. Seb. 8.11 clearly shows.

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accusation of having been forced to convert is in itself ambiguous, since, during the Hasmonaean period, conquered people had been circumcised by force and forced to 'live by Jewish customs' (cf. Ant. 13.257-58; 13.318-19). The problems of acceptance created by this is given expression in the various parallels to Genesis 34 (see below), as well as in Josephus's calling Herod the Great a half- Jew because of his Edomite origins (Ant. 14.403). The rabbinic accusation against the Samaritans for being 'lion-converts' takes its point of departure from 2 Kings 17, which, similar to later rabbinic literature in its search for aetiologies, considers Samaritans to be schismatics from Judaism. Since no legitimite accusation for heretical behaviour as such was formulated, the explicit judgment based itself on questions of loyalty rather than theology, as can be seen from rabbinic, Christian, Jewish (esp. Josephus) and Samaritan sources. It is interesting to notice that rabbinic literature, no less than Josephus, has its main interest in clarifying the principles for rabbinic Judaism, using the various comparable groups as counterparts in the discussion. It must therefore be kept in mind that specific discussions might not have any reality behind them, but rather belong to interpretative activities of the rabbis, which include the intention of making rules for every imaginable situation. This makes it highly debatable whether questions of heresy and loyalty can be separated or whether 'to confess Jerusalem' implies more than a move of cult place and relationship. The rabbinical tractate Masseket Kutim (About the Samaritans), which is a tosefta to the Babylonian Talmud, illuminates these problems of ambiguity.8 The tractate contains independent material mixed with Talmudic material and baraita of which some were originally applied on heathens, but have here likely become addressed to Samaritans. Masseket Kutim Issues related to disagreements over Gerizim, cult and calendar form the backbone of the tractate. In this respect the question of whether a Samaritan may or may not circumcise a Jew is not explicitly related to questions of clean/unclean, legitimate/non-legitimate, but to confession as the formulation 'in... the name of Mount Gerizim' expresses more than a relationship:

8. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 196-203, presents the full translated text with an indication of its Mishnaic and Talmudic parallels in italics.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 107 Mass. Kut. 12: An Israelite may circumcise a Samaritan, and a Samaritan an Israelite. R. Juda says: A Samaritan is not to circumcise an Israelite because he circumcises him in nothing else than the name of Mount Gerizim (also in b. 'Abod. Zar. 26b-27a).

The parallel Mishnaic discussion on this theme is not quite as distinctive as this of the tractate. The discussion about 'genuine converts', maintained by R. Meir against R. Juda's opinion that 'they are lion converts' leads R. Juda to prefer a heathen to a Samaritan, since the former would not cryptically include the Jew in his own congregation, as could be a risk if a Samaritan performed the circumcision. The underlying theological implications might not be so simplistically rejected as Montgomery has done in his treatment of the material: 'It was not therefore as heretics, or false Israelites, except in minor points that the Samaritans were condemned, but rather as schismatics, who held themselves aloof from the Institute of God's Kingdom.'9 As said before, the rabbinic discussion did not restrict itself to a discussion with those who became understood as schismatics. It in fact included a rejection of all Jewish, Christian and heathen groups that did not submit themselves to the theology put forward in 'pre-canonical' Scriptures outside of the Pentateuch. With an interpretation of the 'old lost Israel', it created a future for the new Israel governed, at least from the second century BCE onwards, by the Pharisees and later by their heirs the rabbis. Thus Judaism's self-assertion of being the 'righteous Judaism', implicitly provided with the authority of control, expresses itself clearly when it is stated: Mass. Kut. 28: When shall we take them back? When they renounce Mount Gerizim, and confess Jerusalem and the resurrection of the dead. From this time forth he that robs a Samaritan shall be as he who robs an Israelite.10

With a reversal of the biblical narrative's chronology, the latter branch of biblical theology, as expressed by David's move of the ark to Jerusalem, has taken on the position of being those who are left by those they left or have excluded. This biblically paradigmatic theme of

9. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 177. 10. It must be noted that Mishnah mentions Gerizim only once (ra. Sot. 7.5), mentioning the blessing and the curse on Gerizim and Ebal, referring to Josh. 8.33 and correcting MT Deut. 11.30, which is brought into accord with the SP (see above Chapter 3).

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the success of the youngest is given further reference in b. Sank. 21b's statement that 'the Samaritans/'am ha'ares kept the old law written in Hebrew character, while the true Israel with Ezra got the new Law written in "Assyrian" characters'. A mediaeval reference to Ezra's participation in the exclusion of the Samaritans falls within the line of this same theme, which with the killing or 'offering of the firstborn' leaves room for the second or younger in line to take the leading role. The mediaeval text, however, does not leave room for a Samaritan return to Jewish beliefs or resurrection, and Judaism's self-assertive role of being the final judge reached its highest level. We shall come back to this discussion in the concluding remarks of Chapter 7. Now we will discuss the tractate keeping the theological implications of the above-mentioned paragraphs 12 and 28 in mind. Calendar issues as such are especially related to the celebration of the pesach as the following passage shows: Mass. Kut. 24: 'We do not buy "bread" from a Samaritan baker at the end of the passover until after three bakings, nor from householders until after three sabbaths, nor from villagers until after three makings. When does this apply? When they have not celebrated the Feast of Unleaven at the same time with Israel, or have anticipated it by a day: but if they celebrate the Feast with Israel, or are a day later, their leaven is permitted. R. Simon forbids it (in general), because they do not know how to observe the feast like Israel' (the text in italic is found also in t. Pes. 2; y. Or. sub. ii, 6).

This calendar disagreement might have an indirect reference in Hezekiah's double celebration of the pesach (2 Chron. 30.18-23). With the invitation of 'a multitude of people from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulon...who had not cleansed themselves and did not know the sanctuary's rules of cleanness' both special permission and a doubling of the feast were required for this symbolic ritual of reconciliation. The disagreement over the calendar as such is neither in 2 Chronicles, nor is it given special interest in Masseket Kutim, but seems to be an accepted fact. The use of the lunar calender by both Jews and Samaritans seems to be of high antiquity, and it is only the calculation of days that brings up problems. The counting of the omer is not related to this, but is a matter of interpretation of the underlying text of Lev. 23.15 that 'you shall count from the morrow after the sabbath', which is understood by Samaritans and Sadducees to be from the Sunday after the sabbath during the week of Unleavened Bread, but which the Jews understand

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 109 to be the first day of Passover, interpreting 'sabbath' as 'feast day'. The main concern in the text of the tractate is therefore, as in 2 Chronicles, a matter of purity. Indirectly, it is said here as in other paragraphs of Masseket Kutim that Jews and Samaritans can share food and meals if Samaritans show no laxity in observing common purity laws: Mass. Kut. 15: 'These are the things we may not sell them: carcasses not ritually slaughtered, or animals with organic disease; unclean animals and reptiles; the abortion of an animal; oil into which a mouse has fallen; an animal that is mortally ill, "or a fetus" although Israelites eat them both, lest the sale lead them into error. And as we do not sell these things to them, so we do not buy from them, as it is written (Deut. 14.21): For thou shalt be a holy people to the Lord thy God. As thou art holy, thou shalt not make another people holier than thyself.' J '

and if food is not prepared in vessels normally used for wine and vinegar.12 The rabbinic point that the Israelites eat what is forbidden for the Samaritans to eat, according to Lev. 7.24, has, along with the added concern about holiness, revealed itself to be a concern of rightousness. If the Samaritans keep their law strictly, the Jews must surpass the Samaritan lawkeeping by not transgressing the Samaritan law in regard to the Samaritans, who, with reference to Deut. 14.21, must be understood to have observed the law against the eating of 'anything that dies of itself. The rabbinic commentary on the metaphorical expression 'You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk' illustrates this implicit self-understanding: that Samaria is Judaea's mother.13 If we are to take these discussions seriously we must conclude that rabbinical literature's dealing with these matters of food, meal, trade 11. The parallels in b. Qid. 76a; b. Ber. 47b; b. Git. lOa all refer to R. Simon ben Gamaliel, 'Every command the Samaritans keep, they are more scrupulous in observing than Israel'. See further y. Ket. 21 a; y. Dem. 9, 'a Samaritan is like a full Jew'. Against this, however, we observe m. Nid. 7.4; Mass. Kut. 16: 'This is the principle: they are not to be believed in any matter in which they are open to suspicion'. 12. This law was originally applied to Gentiles (cf. Mass. Kut. 20, 21, 25). 13. This interpretation in fact is in line with Maimonides' interpretation that 'the command is levelled against idolatry and superstition'. See J.H. Hertz (ed.), The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation with Commentary, II (5 vols.; London: Humphrey Milford; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), ad loc. which also presents some of the more traditional views that the prohibition concerns dietary matters as such.

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and work14 points to a widespread coexistence, and we must be careful about considering all Jews and rabbis to be 'Nehemiah-Jews', who lived in ghettos to avoid any contamination. The judgment regarding the Samaritans ranged from their being heathens to being like Israel as illustrated in Mass. Kut. 1: 'The usage of the Samaritans are in part like those of the Gentiles, in part like those of Israel, but mostly like Israel.' However the sole exception from the sharing of meals given in Mass. Kut. 23, 'If a Samaritan priest, when he is unclean, eats and gives of his food to an Israelite, it is permitted; if he is clean, the Israelite is forbidden to eat of his food', is set in the context of a cultic meal, and with Mass. Kut. 22 it forms a severe criticism of the legacy of the Samaritan priesthood: The priests of Israel may share the priestly dues with the Samaritan priests in the territory of the latter, because they are thus, as it were, rescuing the Samaritans from their priests; but not on Israelite territory, lest they should have a presumption on our priesthood.

What is meant is that an Israelite/Judaean priest can collect tithes in both territories, and that Samaritan residents probably are to pay the Judaean priest if they live 'on Israelite territory'. If, however, the Samaritan priest were allowed to do the same this would give him a recognition that would in fact put him on the same footing as the Israelite priest. Again, the laws here are dealing with questions of religion, and any possible problem of staying or travelling in Samaritan areas, is not within the focus of the text. In fact this seemed not to have been a problem at all. Several rabbinic stories related to discussions between Jews and Samaritans 'while the Jew was on his way and had just passed Shechem' deny that any such problem ever arose. The obvious metaphorical use of the expression holds implicit that 'passed Shechem' is a passing of the Shechem tradition and thus undermines any geographical interest, similar to Mt. 10.5-6's prohibition against going to Samaria (see the following paragraph). Explicit criticism of confession, as in the Mishnaic prohibition of

14. Mass. Kut. 13: 'We may lodge a beast in a Samaritan inn, or hire a Samaritan to go behind our cattle, or hand over our cattle to a Samaritan herdsman. We commit a boy to a Samaritan to teach him a trade. We associate and converse with them anywhere, which is not the case with the Gentiles' (cf. b. 'Abod. Zar. 15b).

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 111 Samaritan and heathen participation in the New Year Offering, by not accepting the payment for it (m, Seq. 1.5), is not mentioned in Masseket Kutim 2, which only indirectly brings this prohibition: We do not accept from them the bird-offerings of men or women having issues, nor the bird-offerings of women after child-birth, nor sin-offerings or guilt-offerings. But we accept from them 'vows and freewill offerings'.

The vows and free will offerings could be given by everyone; they were not part of the prescribed offering rules. As in Mass. Kut. 22 and 23, an acceptance of any of the prescribed offerings would have implied a recognition and an acceptance, which, as is clearly expressed in m. Seq. 1.5, was out of the question: This is the general rule: All that is vowed and freely offered is to be accepted from the givers; all that does not come through vow or freewill offering is not to be accepted from them. And so it is laid down according to Ezra, as it is said (Ezra 4.3): There is nothing in common between you and us in building of a house to our God [ITS nl]^!1? ^} U^7 $b

irnX?]. This authoritative voice given to Ezra is given full expression in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, c.38:15 Ezra, Zerubbabel and Joshua gathered together the whole congregation into the temple of the Lord, with 300 priests, 300 trumpets, 300 scrolls of the Law, and 300 children, and they blew the trumpets and the Levites were singing. And they anathematized, outlawed and excommunicated the Samaritans in the name of the Lord, by a writing upon tablets, and with an anathema of the Upper and Lower Court (i.e. of heaven and earth) as follows: Let no Israelite eat of one morsel of anything that is a Samaritan's; let no Samaritan become a proselyte, and allow them not to have part in the resurrection of the dead. And they sent this curse to all Israel that were in Babylon, who also themselves added their anathema.

Although this anathema is late, it well illustrates that, also for rabbinical literature, well-known techniques of interpretation that antedate an actual problem and authorize the earlier literature for a specific purpose. While most of the paragraphs in Masseket Kutim do not include any such situation of animosity, a few statements deal with question of reliability, as in §§17 and 16: 15. A haggadic work from the eigth century CE, also called Baraita de-Rabbi Eliezer or Haggadah de-Rabbi Eliezer. Translation from Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 194.

112

The Samaritans and Early Judaism A Samaritan may be relied upon to say whether or not there is a tomb (in afield), or whether an animal has had its firstborn or not. The Samaritan is to be relied upon concerning a tree whether it is four years old or is still unclean, and concerning gravestones, but not with the cleanliness of overhanging boughs or protruding boughs; nor concerning the land of Gentiles, nor concerning the bet-peras, because, they are open to suspicion in all these things. This is the principle: they are not to be believed in any matter in which they are open to suspicion. (For the uncircumcised tree, cf. Lev. 19.23; 'overhanging boughs' etc., make precincts that can harbor uncleanliness. Bet-peras is an area of land rendered unclean by the presence of bones.) (The text in italics is found also in m. Nid. 7.4 and Gem. b. Nid. 57a.)

Gemara considers this principle to apply to rules of sabbath and offering of wine. b. RoS. Has. 2.2 relates that it is no longer possible to use chains of torches to signal the appearance of the new moon, but that the messengers 'after the wicked deeds of the Samaritans [DTllDil l^p^p&Q], have to go all the way up to bring the message'. Some Samaritans probably had given wrong messages and the feast began at a wrong time. The purpose of the chain was to signal from Jerusalem via the mountain hills to Babylonia, so that the feast could be inaugurated at the same time. This accusation in fact was not only related to Kutim. In the same text, b. RoS. HaS. 2.1, the same accusation is directed against the Minim QTQn) and Boethusians (D^OirT'O). Any mistrust concerning weapons, which in m. 'Abod. Zar. 1.5 is applied to Gentiles only, in b. Gem. 15b comes to include Samaritans: 'lest they may sell them to the gentiles'. In Mass. Kut. 5 the statement that 'we do not sell them weapons, nor anything that can do damage to the people' is seen in contrast to Mass. Kut. II, 1 6 'which allows a Samaritaness to deliver a Jewess and suckle her son in her quarters'. The prohibition of the Jewess for delivering and nursing a Samaritan son clearly takes this question in a different direction, and is much better seen as a dealing with problems of support and recognition than with questions of trust. Montgomery's wonder that 'it is strange that with all the hostility between the two sects, the Samaritans were not reckoned as enemies of Israel by formal legislation, this passage (b. Gem. 15b) showing that they came to be legally included among the classes hostile to society only by a process of indirection' 17 needs a remark. Such a formal legis-

16. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 174. 17. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 174.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 113 lation would have demanded the existence of a state, but that was never a reality during the development of rabbinic thought. Furthermore, it seems improbable that any part of this literature could obtain legality beyond the acceptance of its recipients in Jewish societies. We therefore still have to ask questions about this literature's function as 'worldcreating literature',18 which does imply that the inherent ideas and statements might never have been actually carried out. E.P. Sanders's very useful study on the pharisaic laws' impact on societal life and the authority of the rabbis severely challenges a literal and restricted reading of rabbinic literature presented in studies by scholars like E. Schiirer and J. Jeremias. With their great influence, they have given us a far too narrow understanding of life and customs in Jewish societies.19 Finally the statement about intermarriage shall be dealt with: Mass. Kut. 6: We do not give them wives, nor do we take wives from them (b. Qid. 75a). 27: Why are the Samaritans forbidden to marry into Israel? Because they are mingled with the priests of the high places. R. Ismael said: They were genuine converts at first. Wherefore were they forbidden? Because of their bastards, and because they do not marry the brother's widow. (The text in italic is found also in b. Qid. 75b.)

The prohibition in Masseket Kutim 6 does not contain any accusation of impurity as does m. Nid. 4.1, which states, 'The Samaritan women are menstruous from the cradle. And the Samaritans defile a bed both below and above, because they have connection with menstruous women, and the latter sit upon every kind of blood', and m. Nid. 7.4: 'The dwelling of the unclean women of the Samaritans defile after the manner of an Ohel, because they bury there their abortions' (Ohel is an unclean place that makes everyone staying there unclean). R. Juda, however, in the same Mishnah article states 'they do not bury'. These statements are in contrast to what we otherwise know about Samaritans' observance of purity laws. It thus seems reasonable to consider the 18. The expression brought by R. Goldenberg, Jewish-Gentile Relations in Antiquity: The Rabbinic Evidence, SBL Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 1996, 'the texts cannot lead to sociological conclusions' and the judgment of the material must seek a distinction between the world of the rabbis and the real world. 19. E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief: 63 BCE-66 CE (London: SCM Press; Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1992), p. 471: '...the genre of early rabbinical legal material becomes clear. It does not consist of set rules that governed societies. It consists of debates.'

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metaphorical character of the language and the implication that the rules about purity/impurity applied on Jewish women are not to be taken into consideration here. Samaritan women are impure par excellence and sexual intercourse with any man would render him unclean anytime. The argument in the Mishnaic discussion in fact falls within the lines of Masseket Kutim, which the conclusion of m. Nid. 7.4 clearly shows, when it reckons Samaritans together with Moabites, Egyptians, Edomites and Nethinim, all of whom are peoples a Jew can not marry. Even more clearly is the expression given in m. Qid. 4.3's placement of Samaritans in a highly improbable context: These are of doubtful stock (i.e. with whom one may not marry): those of unknown parentage (shetuki), foundlings (asufi), and Samaritans (kuti).' The Mishnaic reference to the daughters of the Sadducees as being like the Samaritans when they undertake to walk in the ways of their fathers; if they separate themselves to walk in the way of Israel, then they are like the Israelites. R. Jose said: They are always like women of Israel, until they separate themselves to walk in the way of their fathers' (m. Nid. 4.2)

is expressive of the whole discussion and argumentation against nonpharisaic groups. Montgomery, in his treatment of the question, argued that marriages between various Jewish 'castes'20 would break down the barriers set between them. In fact it would be easier for a Jew to accept a marriage with a proselyte than with a Samaritan, since 'he would become wholly a Jew, whereas the Samaritan in his pride would feel he had no spiritual benefit to receive from the alliance'. Further, as a 'sinful schismatic' he could infect the 'Jewish church' with his sin.21 These conditions become explicit in Mass. Kut. 27, with its reference to cult syncretism, which is denied, so as to allow an accusation of the children being bastards (mamzer). The addition 'that they do not marry the brother's widow' must have been added to save the whole argument, since the law of Levirate marriage of Deut. 25.5-10 is one of the few instances where Samaritans maintain an opinion that deviates from the literal reading of the biblical text. The importance of this 'saving' argument is noted in b. Qid. 75a's excommunication of the Samaritans: 20. Hor. 3.7: The priest is before the Levite, the Levite before the layman, the layman before the Mamzer (i.e. a bastard, or one of uncertain parentage), the Mamzer before the Nethin (The descendant of the ancient temple-slaves or hierodules), the Nethin before the proselyte, the proselyte before the freedman.' 21. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 180-81.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 115 'If the Samaritans be genuine converts, nevertheless they have been excluded because they practice Yibbam only with the betrothed.' The final question in Mass. Kut. 28, 'When shall we take them back?' has showed itself to be a much more complicated matter than the given answer gives reason to believe. The implied disagreements concerning cult place, confession, calendar and genealogy show that 'confess Jerusalem' implies more than a geographical movement. Similarly the rejection of Jerusalem is a rejection of rabbinic Judaism and for Sadducees and Samaritans implicitly an adherence to the 'ways of the fathers'. This is not so much a Kulturkampf between Israel and the nations. This is a Kulturkampf between the 'written' and the 'oral' Torah. The lack of explicit cult criticism in rabbinic, Jewish and New Testament literature reveals the embarrassment of the discussion: that the Samaritans are not accepted because they do not accept rabbinic Judaism, which they have accused of having moved the cult, changed the Pentateuch (by its biblical and non-biblical additions) and instituted the oral Torah. Rabbinic literature's attempts to avoid this discussion creates a problem that needs explanation. A concession to the actuality of this discussion, bringing up the disagreements of the authority of the Pentateuch, would have turned rabbinic Judaism's weapons against itself. We do not know whether Samaritans and Sadducees in fact agreed at some early time to Pharisaic interpretations, but that a calf is younger than its mother we do know. Christianity in the Light of the Jewish-Samaritan Question This concentrates on the New Testament sources for two reasons. First, because the early Church Fathers of the first to second centuries do not add much to the discussion. Their concentration on clarifying principles for Christianity does not include any participation in Jewish controversies over cult and scripture as such. Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4 seems to be reflective of a theology that replaces both Judaism and Samaritanism with Christianity. Christianity's use of the LXX as its foundational source for theological reflection suggests that Christianity forms a variation on the rabbinic disputes over the proper interpretation of biblical Judaism. It is a dispute that takes place within the context of rabbinic-Christian disagreements presupposing a common literary heritage, including the Scriptures that later became canonized by both these groups. Only when gnosticism

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began to influence Christian communities did the Church Fathers make an effort to identify the various Jewish and Samaritan sects. This, however, was often done in so confusing a way that we gain nothing but implicit information of the difficulties of separating religious groups, when they—from an audience's viewpoint—seem fundamentally to belong to the same religious sphere.22 Justin Martyr (from Neapolis, second century CE) illustrates this well when he stated: All the other human races are called Gentiles by the spirit of prophecy; but the Jewish and Samaritan races are called the tribe of Israel and the House of Jacob. And the prophecy in which it was predicted that there should be more believers, from the Gentiles than from the Jews and the Samaritans, we will produce.

In the following I give a brief comment on some of the New Testament texts that relate explicitly to Samaria and Samaritans and partake in the discussions of 'Christian' relationship to Jews and heathens. The New Testament's only reference to Ephraim, Jn 11.54, seems unimportant for this study. No reference is made to Gerizim; Sychar is mentioned in Jn 4.5; and Shechem in Acts 7.16. Matthew 10.5-6 These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'

The interpretation of this charge usually states that Jesus accedes to a well-known Jewish anti-Samaritanism.23 The Gospel of Matthew, however, has no allusion to such an animosity, and the only statement that can be made on the basis of the text is that it separates various groups and that the 'lost sheep of the house of Israel' are opposed to both heathens and Samaritans. The neutrality of the text does not give reason to believe that the disciples should avoid going to the Gentiles or the Samaritans because they were considered to be enemies or schismatics. 22. Since this discussion falls outside of the chronological frame of this study I shall restrict myself to refer to J. Possum's quite extensive article 'Sects and Movements', in A.D. Crown (ed.) The Samaritans (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), pp. 293-389. 23. So also Montgomery, who thought that Jesus here expresses his devotion 'to the community which he regarded as the one true church' (Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 162).

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 117 The focus of the text lies within the expression 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel', and here Samaritans belonged no more than the Canaanite woman in Mt. 15.22-28.24 Literarily we are dealing with the same groups we found in rabbinic literature, and theologically Matthew's argumentation is addressed to those who, standing within the same tradition, rejected Jesus' message and ended up killing him. They are the 'lost sheep', who need education. Only after the final rejection— not in crucifixion, but in lying about the resurrection (Mt. 28.11-15)— does the gospel bring out the commandment of going to the Gentiles (Mt. 28.16-20). The parallel accounts in Mark and Luke do not give the prohibition of Mt. 10.5-6. Luke's possible pro-Samaritan perspective has given reason to discuss whether the gospel has a Samaritan provenance or whether it addressed itself to Samaritan communities. Such a provenance would be at variance with Samaritan theology, which does not accept any other prophet than Moses, and we are probably far better off when we understand that Matthew and Luke are engaged in a dialogue about the Samaritan question, and that Lk. 10.30-37 (the parable of the Good Samaritan) and Lk. 17.11-19 (the cleansing of the ten lepers), together with Lk. 9.51-56, show that the hostile Samaritans form part of this dialogue (belonging to Luke's material). Luke's portrait of the Samaritans is not of those rejecting Jesus because he brings the gospel, but because he is on his way to Jerusalem: When, the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him; but the people would not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem (Lk. 9.51-53).

Jesus' rebuke of the disciples, when they want to destroy the village, must be seen in contrast to his curse of those cities that did not receive the disciples when they brought the kingdom of God (Lk. 10.13-15). The good Samaritan's act, set in contrast to the priest and the Levite, who might have loved God but had forgotten to be a neighbour, is no more reflective of pro-Samaritanism than the Samaritan leper's return 'to praise God' (Lk.17.15-16). The primary function of these stories is to illustrate the stubbornness of the Jews, and, using the most fitting 24. eiq id npoftam id dKoXco^oia oi%oi) 'Iopar|X is found only in these two New Testament texts.

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comparable group, they form the strongest accusation. Calling to mind the story about the Jewish captives whom the Samaritans released because they were 'brothers' (DTIN) from 2 Chron. 28.11-15, Jesus' parable about the 'good Samaritan' gives a radical answer to the lawyer's question, 'Who is my neighbour?' He is the one who did good to you; the one who 'clothed the naked, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, anointed them and carried all the feeble on asses' to bring them to their brothers at Jericho (2 Chron. 28.15). What Jesus is asking for is recognition and reconciliation and an ending of the hatred, which, according to Old Testament Scripture, seems to have arisen from the Syro-Ephraimite war. It is not the place here to deal with the literary and/or historical settings for this episode, but we will return to it in several instances throughout the study. Luke's aim, however, is not to return to any past Judaism as such, but a replacement, which in a 'Christian Judaism' disestablishes the borders between 'the way of the Gentiles', 'the town of the Samaritans' and 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel' as we see it illustrated in the dispersion of Christianity in Acts 1.8; 8.1; 8.5-29; 9.31; 15.3. Acts 7.2-53 Also Stephen's speech in Acts 7.2-53, based primarily on the Pentateuch, led to scholarly discussions about a possible Samaritan provenance25 furthered by the assertion that the quotations reflected a Samaritan text tradition.26 Luke's interest in contrasting the old and the new Israel, symbolized by the father's 'tent of witness' and Solomon's 'house of God', can be seen as a contrast of Jerusalem and Gerizim, although neither of them is mentioned. The Samaritan claim for Gerizim as the true place of worship, however, seems not to fit the perspective of Stephen's speech, which, taking up the problem from 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Kings 8 that man cannot build a house for God, forms a harsh accusation not only against the temple but also against the binding of the Holy Spirit, and here implicitly against any self-established cult. 25. M. Simon, St. Stephen and the Hellenists in the Primitive Church (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1958). 26. W.F. Albright and C.S. Mann, 'Stephen's Samaritan Background', in J. Munck, The Acts of the Apostles (AB, 31; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 18-32. In Chapter 3 of this study it is demonstrated that the distinction between SP and proto-MT cannot be upheld because of the existence of text variants that are not unequivocally Samaritan or Masoretic.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 119 Long before the establishment of David's cult in Jerusalem, the fathers offered sacrifice to the idols and 'rejoice in the works of their hands'. Stephen, however, does not speak with any other voice than the voice of the Old Testament prophets, Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Replacing Damascus in Amos 5.27 with Babylon in Acts 7.43, Stephen addressed his accusation against Jerusalem's priesthood, not for having built a temple as such, but for not having kept the Law 'delivered by angels' (v. 53). If this looks Samaritan to us, it is because Samaritans formed the same accusations, so did writers of Dead Sea Scrolls, and we must now state that Christianity used the same language—a language inherent in the tradition itself.27 It would be hard to argue for a Samaritan context in the use of Old Testament prophets or the defence of those prophets who had 'announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous one'. The quotations from Amos and Isaiah, the most hated prophets in Samaritan tradition, seems unthinkable in this context.28 The character of the speech as a literary discourse based on wellknown texts, which are composed in a way as to present the correct chronology and context, reveals the hand of the author as the creative source of the speech. Any argumentation for a Samaritan provenance must take into consideration the perspective of the whole material and include an examination also of the Gospel of Luke's use of Old Testament material and its relation to the LXX. It is noteworthy that the theological discussions in Kitab al-Tarikh (AF) and Memar Marqah (MM) are based entirely on the Pentateuch. Although these works are later, they might give some information about the context of Samaritan discussions in Luke's days. Acts 8.1-25 The consequence of Stephen's speech is a dispersion of 'the church' from Jerusalem to the villages of all Judaea and Samaria. Acts 8's story about the acts of Simon and Philip in 'a city of Samaria'29 is partly a 27. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, pp. 141-42; R.J. Coggins, 'The Samaritans and Acts', NTS 28 (1982), pp. 423-33, where Coggins rejects Albright's premises of composition, language and content for assuming a Samaritan origin. The article brings a good oversight of the scholarly positions. 28. See Chapter 6 below. 29. The definite article is missing in some manuscripts, for example, C.D.E. Ypsilon and Mehrheitstext, but is found in: Sin. A B, pap. 74. Some scholars believe that 'the city' is Shechem and not Samaria/Sebaste.

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confirmation of authority and partly a correction of where, from and to whom salvation is directed. Here we have another story that contradicts Mt. 10.5-6. In a recognition of the differences between Jews, Samaritans and heathens it invalidates those in the new context. The salvation comes not from Samaritans nor from heathens; not even when it seems that the power of God can be given to a magician from the city (his relationship is not mentioned, cf. 8.9-11), or that Philip is given great power to preach, baptize and perform miracles (8.5, 12-13). Only with the arrival of the apostles from Jerusalem do people receive the Holy Spirit (8.15-18), and after the preaching in many Samaritan villages, a further dispersion both leads to a rejection of the commandment of going 'to the lost sheep of the house of Israel' and to a realization of the commandment of going 'to the nations'. The text's geographical connection with the emerging Christianity, and its rejection of Simon, the false teacher, later called Simon the Magician, early in patristic literature led to the assumption that he was the eponym of gnosticism, belonging to the Samaritan sect, the Dosithaeans. So Justin, Apol. i 25; 56; ii 15, and C. Tryph. 120, which tells us that almost all the Samaritans believed in him. Justin's treatise on Simony (second century CE) probably forms the backbone of Irenasus's treatment of the sect in Haeresis i, 23 and of Hippolyt's Refutatio omnium haeresium (second-third century CE).30 The Samaritan chronicle AF pp. 170-71, does not combine Simon with the Dositheans. This text relates that he fought the Christians with magi, and furthermore sought help from a Jewish philosopher named Philo in Alexandria. He, however, refused to help with the words, otherwise known from Acts 5.39: 'Be at peace. For if this thing comes from God, then no one will be able to wipe it out.' John 4.1-42 John 4.1-42's participation in the dialogue about Judaean-Samaritan relationship restores the Old Testament prophecy that 'there shall be one flock and one shepherd' (Jn 10.16; Ezek. 34.17-31; 37.16-28). John's prophecy, however, must not be confused with Ezekiel's and Jeremiah's national ideology whose aim it is to unify the two kingdoms,31 since the gospel's prophecy is a much more universal messianic expansion of Yahweh's deeds, which will also include both Samaritans 30. Montgomery, Samaritans, pp. 265-69. 31. See Chapter 7.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 121 and Jews. The placement of the Samaritans between Judaea, which Jesus leaves to return to Galilee by passing 'through Samaria', certainly is not merely geographical information, but a signification of the differences between Jerusalem as the heir of the Davidic traditions, Samaria as the heir of the Mosaic traditions and finally Galilee, from where these traditions are given a new orientation. After Jesus' arrival to 'a city of Samaria' (missing in some text variants) called Sychar32 'near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph', a Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water. When Jesus asks her to give him something to drink, her answer reflects her understanding of Jewish-Samaritan relationship: 'How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?' (v. 9). The text here gives the somewhat arbitrary rationalistic information that 'Jews have no dealings with Samaritans'.33 Without any earlier text witnesses, we would—given Jesus' theological answer-—still be able to conclude that this is a late interpolation, and that the Samaritan woman's question is set in the context of 'who has something to give to whom?' After a longer dispute between the woman and Jesus about the character of the water and a reference to the heir from Jacob, Jesus asks her to bring out her husband. Here the woman is in trouble, because she has no husband. Jesus agrees to that and tells her that 'you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly'. Convinced that Jesus is a prophet the woman now asks him about the right place to worship: 'on this mountain' or 'in Jerusalem'? 'Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the

32. Shikar or Shukem in some manuscripts. Situated at the foot of Mt Ebal in the Shechem valley. It probably became the new centre of the Samaritans after Shechem's destruction in the second century BCE (cf. H.M. Schencke, 'Jacobsbrunnen-Josephsusgrab-Sychar', ZDPV84 [1968], pp. 159-84 [159]). 33. Interesting because rabbinic sources seek to advise how the relationship should be dealt with. A possible late redaction is supported by the missing of the sentence in Sin* D abej, but is contradicted by the presence of it in pap. 63, 66, 75, 76 rell (second-fifth century CE), cf. Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Grecae, 26th edn. Montgomery, Samaritans, p. 159 n. 14, refers to the work of J. Lightfoots from 1684: 'the verb sunxrasthai (Joh. 4.9) corresponds to the Talmudiq histappeq, which is used by Rabbi Abbahu in the 4th century in admitting that in earlier days the Jews had dealings with the Samaritans.' Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 139, prefers the translation 'use together with' which would designate that Jews and Samaritans do not use vessels in common.

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place where men ought to worship' (v. 20).34 Jesus' answer is reflective of both Judaism and Christianity, because the place where to 'worship the Father' in the future, expressed by 'the hour is coming',35 is 'neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem' (v. 21). By this a future equivalence is expressed that does not include the past, since the continuation bears the characteristics of well-known Jewish accusations: 'You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews' (v. 22). The continuation points to Christanity's abolition of past disagreements, which has the ability to include Samaritans in this prophetic claim for true worship: 'But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such the Father seeks to worship him' (v. 23).36 The fulfilment we find in v. 39 that 'many Samaritans believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did'". It is important to recognize this composition to understand that the story's primary goal is not to judge between the theology of Samaritans and Jews. This discussion is like an Hegelian thesis/antithesis that allows a new synthesis to sprout from the encounter. The setting of the encounter at Jacob's well as symbolic for the tradition of the fathers is given expression in v. 12's question, 'Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?' When Jesus tells the woman that the water he has to give her for ever will bring her thirst to an end (v. 14), and she therefore asks for some of it, Jesus' answer is not given straightforwardly, but refers to another inequity: her relation to the Law, symbolized by her five husbands and a rejection of her sixth 'husband' (read: law) as not being legal. Thus deprived of both tradition and law, the woman finally sought to attain some clarity about the place of worship. Jesus' answer leads the woman beyond the question and the disagreement, which in a reconciliative context have lost their importance. The same view has been brought forward by E.D. Freed in two arti-

34. oi jccrcepet; fiudov ev TOO opei -coma) TipoaeKiJveaav KOI \)u.eielohe-yisrd'el, might be understood as a substitution of >elohe ha-sdmayim for 'elohe-yisrd'el (Ezra 6.22). Another possibility is to see Ezra 6.22 as a contrast to 1.2 and a demonstration of the success of the rebellious people in Ezra 4.13, who ended up building a house to the god of Israel.147 Both possibilities are implied in the reforms of 147. Th.M. Bolin, 'The Temple of Yahu at Elephantine and Persian Religious Policy', in D.V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph of Elohim (Kampen: Kok, 1995), pp. 127-44 (128), argued that the Jews in Elephantine used a fitting term when they addressed matters to Persian authorities and that the equalization between Yahu/ Yahweh and the supreme Persian god Ahura Mazda was the same as Elah Shamayah in official documents, and had nothing to do with theological considerations 'but like Persian policy itself, is to be attributed to matters of political expediency'. The argument conflicts with various conditions; (1) Ezra's and Nehemiah's connection with Elohe ha-Shamayim and their incorporation in the biblical material; (2) Ezra's connection with Torat Moshe in both biblical and rabbinical literature, whose god explicitly is Yahweh and who holds Elohe ha-Shamayim implicit

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Ezra. In the first case the new community would demand an education in the law of 'eld $emdyd in which the priest and the scribe Ezra is trained according to the Persian decree (Ezra 7.12-26, esp. vv. 12, 21) and that seems to be totally unknown to the people, although it is named the Law of Moses (n2JQ min) and is given by Yhwh- 'eloheyisrd'el in the introduction to this decree (Ezra 7.6). In the second case, the religious practice had to be corrected involving considerable reprisals for those who did not obey (Ezra 10.8).148 Also the god of Nehemiah is >elohe ha-Sdmayim, to whom he prays three times (Neh. 1.4, 5; 2.4), and to whom he refers in his answer to Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem's questions of whether he had been rebelling against the king (Neh. 2.20). And he replied to them, 'Elohe ha-Shamayim will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build; but you have no portion or right or memorial in Jerusalem'. Notice here the echo of Ezra 4.3. These references to 'elohe ha-Mmayim must be read on the background of the few occurrences of the term in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha: Gen. 24.3, 7; Jon. 1.9, where he confesses that he is a Hebrew, fearing >elohe ha-Mmayim who created the sea and the dry land'; 2 Chron. 36.23; Ps. 136.26: 'el ha-Sdmayim; Greek equivalent in Jdt. 5.8; 6.19; 11.7; Tob. 6.18; 7.13; 8.15; 10.11.149 The occurrence of Hecataeus's mention of the strange Jewish people in Diodorus Sicculus might not be a matter of simple coincidence.150 In

in, e.g., Gen. 1.1; (3) Hecataeus of Abdera's utterance 'rather the Heaven that surrounds the earth is alone divine, and rules the universe'. It thus seems more reasonable to assume that the Yahweh worship became a part of Persian religion in a transformation of Yahweh to the inclusive monotheism of Persian religion, which is here given local expression. Elephantine could testify to such a process of development. Cf. also Th.L. Thompson, The Intellectual Matrix of Early Biblical Narrative: Inclusive Monotheism in Persian Period Palestine', in D.V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph ofElohim (Kampen: Kok, 1995), pp. 107-26. 148. Ahlstrom, Ancient Palestine, pp. 857, 886-88. 149. H. Niehr, 'God of Heaven', in Van der Toorn et al. (eds.), Deities and Demons, pp. 702-705; Niehr, Derhochste Gott, pp. 49-51. 150. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, I, p. 20: 'It is noteworthy that there is a conspicious difference between the "Jewish chapter" in the fortieth book of Diodorus, where the Jews appear as foreigners expelled from Egypt, and the first book of Diodorus, where a voluntary emigration of Jews, who were originally Egyptians, is implied. Cf. also F. Gr. His. Ilia, p. 50.'

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 179 Diodorus's account,151 he exposes the same animosity about the Jewish race about whom he states that Antiocus Sidetes was exhorted during the siege of Jerusalem to storm the city and 'wipe out completely the race of the Jews, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people and looked upon all men as their enemies'. It is also stated that the ancestors of the Jews ('Io\)8dioi) had been driven out from Egypt 'as men who were impious and detested by the gods'.152 That we are dealing here with propagandistic material can be seen from the continuation that relates that the Egyptians gathered all persons who had white or leprous marks on their bodies and drove them across the border. The refugees occupied the territory round about Jerusalem and having organized the nation of the Jews had made their hatred of mankind into a tradition and on this account had introduced utterly outlandish laws (vo|iiva TtavTeXcoq e^nAAayueva): not to break bread with any other race, nor to show them any good will at all.

Adding to these accusations, Antiochus Sidetes was also reminded of how his predecessor Antiochus Epiphanes, in the innermost sanctuary of the temple, had found Moses riding on an ass,153 with that book in his hands that contained the xenophobic laws, and how Antiochus Epiphanes 'shocked by such hatred directed against all mankind, had set himself to break down their traditional practices'. Offering swine on the altar in front of the 'image of the founder,' he ordered 'that their holy books containing the xenophobic laws should be sprinkled with the broth of the meat'. Antiochus Sidetes, however, probably found it more profitable to exact a double tribute, dismantle the walls and take hostages instead of following his friends' pressure 'to make an end of the race completely'. This act, which, in Diodorus Sicculus characterized him as 'magnanimous and mild-mannered', in Josephus supplied him with the surname 'the Just' (Ant. 13.244). As mentioned above, Jews seem be centred in later texts around Jerusalem. Agatharcides of Cnidus (around 200 BCE)154 tells that 151. Bibliotheca Historica, 34-35. 1.1-5; (cf. also Josephus, Ant. 13.8.2; 1 Mace. 15-16). 152. Diodorus is here influenced by the anti-Jewish literature emanating from Manetho's history work and traceable in Egytian and Greek literature from the third century BCE (cf. Stern, 'Jews in Greek and Latin Literature', pp. 1111-16). 153. Apion 2.112-14. 154. Apion 1.205-11 with a shorter version in Ant. 12.5-7.

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This led to Ptolemy son of Lagus's155 attack on the city on a sabbath and loss of independence. 'That lesson has taught the whole world, except that nation, the lesson not to resort to dreams and traditional fancies about the law, until the difficulties are such as to baffle human reason.' This critique of the sabbath observation also becomes a current theme and a sort of stock motif in non-Jewish literature in the Roman era. Not only Ptolemy Soter but also Antiochus IV and Pompey are said to have besieged the city on the sabbath day, taking advantage of the Jewish population's lack of defence. Nicolaus of Damascus (c. 64 BCE to the beginning of the first century CE) similarly considers the Jews to inhabit Judaea, which previously was called Canaan. Strabo of Amasia156 relates that Moses, one of the 'Aegyptian' priests, who had held a part of Lower Egypt, led not a few thoughtful men, who believed in his teaching about the Divine Being to a place 'where the settlement of Jerusalem now is'. It is noteworthy that although Strabo157 mentions Samaria together with Idumea, which after the conquest of the Idumaeans (who are said to be Nabataeans) 'joined the Judaeans and shared in the same customs with them', he does not 155. If this is correct then we here have a testimony of strict sabbath observations as early as the end of the fourth century. According to Josephus (Ant. 12.3), Ptolemy was at that time called Soter, a title he seems to have got between 308-306 BCE. However, according to Nodet (Origins of Judaism, Ch. 2), Josephus might have altered his quotation of Agatharchides to fit his purpose of demonstrating the antiquity of this sabbath observation, probably not established before the Hasmonaean period. It is noteworthy that Josephus's conclusion of the attack in Ant. 12.7 (based on Aristeas §13) was a deportation of 'many captives both from the hill country of Judaea and the district round Jerusalem and from Samaria and those on Gerizein...to Egypt and settled there'. 156. Strabo's description of Jews is found in Geographia, Books 16 (and 17). His information mostly derives from his knowledge of diaspora Jews, and he probably never visited Palestine. In Historica Hypomnemata, Strabo described the history from Antiochus IV to the execution of Antigonus in the time of Antonius, around 37 BCE. Only fragments of this book have survived, scattered in, e.g., Josephus's Antiquities, esp. Books 13 and 14. 157. Geog., 16.2.34-46.

4. Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature 181 reckon the inhabitants of Samaria, Galilee, Jericho or Philadelphia to belong to the Jewish stock. They consisted of mixed stocks of people from 'Aegyptian, Arabian and Phoenician tribes'. In contrast, the Judaeans living around the temple in Jerusalem, are said in most reports to be descendants of Egyptians led by Moses. In Josephus's 'citation' of Strabo in his account dealing with John Hyrcanus's campaign against Samaria, Strabo does not mention Jews in Samaria or the existence of a certain Judaism or any temple destruction. Neither does Strabo in his Geographica refer to Samaritans. The whole of the interior is called Judaea or Coele Syria and the population is Coele Syrians, Syrians and Phoenicians mixed with Judaeans, Gazaeans and Ashdodites.158 As can be seen from this brief survey, Judaism, in the eyes of its nonPalestinian neighbours, seems not to have been a widespread religious movement comprising the whole of Palestine, or to have had a continuous history as often is presumed to be presented in the Old Testament, before Josephus wrote his Antiquities and, in Against Apion, made corrections to the various erroneous perceptions about Jews and Judaism. If references should be made to a more widespread Judaism, those are related to religious practices that the Jews shared with the Syrians, probably in the fifth-fourth century BCE (Theophrastus) or to diaspora Judaism in the second-first century BCE to the first century CE, centred around Alexandria, Heliopolis, (Damascus) and Cyprus. While the early Greek authors show a good deal of respect (although mixed with astonishment) for 'Jewish' customs, the accusations of superstition, assworshipping, idleness because of the sabbath rules, and so on, increase remarkably from the second century BCE. It is notable that, while Hecataeus has knowledge of some of the Pentateuch traditions, it is not until the second century BCE that references are given to a monarchical period, and then primarily concerning Solomon, king of Jerusalem, for

158. Geog. 16.2.2. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, I, p. 287 n.: 'this view on ethnoi reflects a situation that existed before the twenties of the second century BCE, since afterwards the Idumeans merged into the Jewish nation. As to Azotus (Ashdod), it constituted an important administrative centre in the Assyrian, Persian and Hellenistic periods. It was also one of the bases for military operations against Judaea in the time of the Hasmonaean revolt. It cannot be stated positively when it was annexed by the Hasmonaeans to Judaea, but it seems that it happened under John Hyrcanus. Gaza was captured by Alexander Jannaeus around 96 BCE.'

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example, in Menander of Ephesos, Dius, Theophilus159 and Laetus.160 Nicolaus of Damascus is the first non-Jewish writer who refers to David.161 This of course is an argument ex silentio since we only have what has come down to us and the material seems to suffer some interdependency. Lack of references to factional conflicts within Judaism, the building of a Samaritan temple and later destruction of the very same might be due to lack of literary sources about such events. This 'lack', however, is demonstrably confirmed in the writings of Josephus, which not only correct non-Jewish but certainly also Jewish misconceptions. The problems of finding evidence in support of Josephus's corrections and efforts of placing Samaritans in a heretical context has become crucial for the establishment of a history of the Samaritans. That Josephus gives voice to an anti-Samaritanism of his own day can be forcefully stated. The ambiguity, however, of second century's placement of Samaritans within Judaism (Letter of Aristeas; 2 Maccabees) and outside of Judaism (the Old Testament evidence; Ben Sira; DSS) cannot be solved on the basis of non-Jewish sources in reference to a Jerusalem-centred Judaism. The most that can be said is that this 'Nehemiah' Judaism seems to have flourished in the third-second century BCE and that other Judaisms had to submit to it. By and large this is exactly what all our sources tell us, including Josephus's various stories about Samaritans, which we now will proceed to examine.

159. Who all speak about Solomon's relationship to King Hinum of Tyre. 160. Who is the first to mention the building of a temple by Solomon. 161. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, I, p. 236.

Chapter 5 SAMARITANS IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS General Introduction to Josephus's Works Flavius Josephus, or Joseph ben Matthias, his name before he was adopted into court of the Roman emperor Vespasian after the first Jewish-Roman war (66-73/74 CE), was born in 37/38 CE. He was the son of one of the old priestly families of Jerusalem and probably a descendant of the Hasmonaeans from his mother's lineage. According to Josephus's own self-description in Life of Josephus, he had made remarkable progress early in his life in the knowledge of Jewish law and Greek literature. Presenting himself as having consulted the major schools of Jewish thought (Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees), and spending three years with the desert hermit Banus (Life 11), he decided to follow the Pharisees 'a sect having points of resemblance to that which the Greek call the Stoic school' (Life 12). In 63-64 CE, at the age of 26, he went on an embassy to Rome. From that time, he seems to have had close connections to leading circles of Rome. Back in Palestine he claims he was forced by his own countrymen to take charge of Jewish troops in southern Galilee who surrendered to the Romans in 67 CE after the conquest of Jotapata. Josephus was taken prisoner by Vespasian, whom he accompanied shortly afterwards in 69-70 CE on a trip to Alexandria. Although Josephus does not mention it, it is quite possible that he acquired some knowledge of Philo's writings in Alexandria, judging from his treatment of the temple (Ant. 3.181-82) and the Law (Apion 2.190-219).J After the fall of Jerusalem, Josephus settled in Rome, 1. E.M. Smallwood ('Philo and Josephus as Historians of the Same Events', in L.H. Feldman and G. Hata [eds.], Josephus, Judaism and Christianity [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987], pp. 114-28 [128]), sought to judge the reliability of both authors by comparison of common material. The examination does not explain the question of dependency. Josephus's assumed dependence on Philo, argued by Thackeray (LCL, 242 [1930], p. xiii) has been rejected by H.W. Attridge

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where he obtained Roman citizenship. He was supported by Flavius, who provided him with a pension. His income was secured through land in the coastal plain of Judaea, given to him by Titus and Vespasian. He was thus free to maintain his literary skills of which Jewish War (75-79 CE), Antiquities of the Jews (93-94 CE) and Against Apion (around 100 CE) are the most substantial products. Life, written somewhat after Antiquities, deals mainly with Josephus's behaviour in the Galilaean uprising, supplemented with biographical notes before and after. Josephus died around 100 CE. H.W. Attridge2 has given an excellent discussion of the disagreements between Josephus's accounts in Life3 and War,4 relating Josephus's role as a military leader in the Jewish-Roman war in Galilee. Being interested in defending himself against accusations from the contemporary historiographer Justus of Tiberias of having acted in a tyrannical and dishonourable manner in the Galilee, he attempts to portray himself as a trustworthy leader of the Jewish people, free of any intention to betray the Galilaeans to the Romans. The 15-20-year time span between these works fully confirms the basic methodological rule of every historiographer: namely, that we know the present, but the past changes every day. This problem also shows itself, when we compare some of Josephus's stories in War with variants from his much later work, Antiquities, from the early nineties which in 20 books describes the Jewish 'history' from creation to the year 66 CE. Josephus's intention to write another history about the war after finishing Antiquities might have just such apologetic motivation.5

'Josephus and his Works', in M. Stone (ed.), Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (CRINT, 1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984), pp. 185-232 (211). 2. Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', pp. 187-92. 3. Composed as an appendix to Antiquities and probably written shortly after 94 CE as a defence against the critique of Josephus's actions in the Galilee during the Jewish war presented in Justus of Tiberias's work. This work is mostly known through Life. 4. Probably written in Rome between 75 and 79 CE and with a possible Aramaic edition in 70-71 CE, cf. War 1.3, 6. See the discussion in P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome (JSOTSup, 2; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), p. 79, who refers to Attridge, Feldman, Hata and Rajak. 5. Readers who have some interest in a different view of the issue and of Josephus's assumed apology in Life may consult Bilde, Flavius Josephus, pp. 43-52, 108-12.

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Jewish War This work begins with Antiochus IVth's siege of Jerusalem in 170-169 BCE. After a short description of events in the Hasmonaean period, it concentrates on the Herodian period and the Roman occupation up to the end of the first Jewish-Roman war in 74 CE. The book was given a certain importance in early Christian circles, because of its handling of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem (Books 5 and 6). Favourable to the Roman leaders, especially the emperor's court, Josephus placed blame for the war entirely on the Jewish rebels, the Zealots and the Sicarii, led by John of Gischala (a rival of Josephus in the Galilee) and Simon bar Giora. Conflicting with the Jewish aristocracy as well as with each other, they both caused a severe famine and set the temple on fire after having plundered it, leaving the Roman soldiers to finish its destruction and that of the city in order to end the Jewish rebellion.6 It is no wonder that Josephus sought affirmation of his works from the highest authorities on both sides: King Agrippa II and the Emperor Titus,7 stressing that Titus was so anxious that 'my volumes should be the sole authority from which the world should learn the facts, that he affixed his own signature to them and gave orders for their publication' (Life 363ff.-Apion l.SOff.). Although Josephus put the blame on the Jewish leaders, he also gave some afterthought to fate's disfavour, and to divine control, which, in their own chronology, make things happen according to their destiny, as it happened when the first temple had been destroyed (cf. War 6.43542; 6.268; 6.288-315). This theme is well known from, for example, 2 Mace. 5.11-20 and the New Testament. In this perspective, Josephus's work also becomes a personal reflection, and the objective history

6. Bilde, Flavins Josephus, pp. 196-203. Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', p. 232 n. 76: 'Note the citations of Josephus in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:1-3:10, where the Jewish historian serves as Eusebius' main source for his tendentious anti-Jewish account of the political history of the first century. Eusebius relies heavily on the lurid accounts of Jewish suffering from the Jewish War in his discussion of the fall of Jerusalem (Hist. Eccl. 3.5, 7.3-8.9) in order to illustrate "how the punishment of God followed close after them (scil. the Jews) for their crime against the Christ of God" (Hist. Eccl. 3.5, 7; cf. 3.7, 1-9).' For references to rabbinic self-criticism, see Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', p. 197 n. 23. 7. See, the introduction to War, LCL, pp. xix-xxii, for Josephus's dependency on sources.

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writing that Josephus claimed to strive for (cf. War 1.9-12; 5.20) did not avoid tragedy's dramatic form or homily's theological reflection.8 Antiquities of the Jews Since most of the material about Samaritans and their position in Judaism is to be found in this work, I give a more detailed introduction to its content, purpose, sources and transmission. The entire work consists of 20 books covering the period from creation to the beginning of the first Jewish-Roman war in 66 CE. It was originally planned together with War, but was delayed for more than 10 years and finished in the thirteenth year of the reign of the emperor Domitian when Josephus was 56, that is, 93-94 CE (Ant. 20.267). The book's rather abrupt ending in 66 CE might be explained by Josephus's plans to 'once more compose a running account of the war up to the present day' (Ant. 20.258-59). Although the book is held in esteem by many theologians and seen as evidence for the reliability of biblical and pseudepigraphical literature's historiographies, it becomes clear that Josephus, in most parts of his work, did not have other sources than those which need verification. The use of Josephus as an authoritative voice does not meet the critique of circular argumentation.9 This problem is especially clear in Books 10-14, covering the period from the Assyrian conquest of Samaria until Herod the Great. The 'accounts' are based on the Prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel), 1 Esdras (Ant. 11.1-158), biblical Ezra (11.159-83, 197-303), the book of Esther with its apocryphal Greek additions (11.184-296), an unknown Alexander source (11.297-47); the Letter of Aristeas (12.11-118), 1 Mace. 1.1-9.22 (12.337-434; 13.1-61, 80-170, 174-214), an unknown Tobiad source (12.154-236), possibly an unknown John Hyrcanus source (cf. 1 Mace. 16.24)10 and a few fragments of other history works: Herodotus, Berossos, Agatharcides, Strabo, Polybius and especially Nicolaus of Damascus, whom Josephus both used and wrote against,11 together with reuse of material from Jewish War.

8. See, further, Bilde, Flavius Josephus, pp. 73-75. 9. Bilde, Flavius Josephus, pp. 123-71, for a survey of 'main trends in modern Josephus research' giving evaluation of the various positions. 10. See OTP, p. xxi. Josephus does not mention this source and W. Whiston's note to Ant. 13.229 must have another foundation 11. Cf. Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', p. 193.

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In this respect, it is remarkable that while the pre-exilic history consists of Books 1-10, the postexilic Persian and Hellenistic histories, until the Roman occupation in 63 BCE and the beginning of the reign of Herod the Great, consist only of Books 11-13, leaving six books for the Roman period until 66 CE. This composition implicitly reveals the difficulty of today's historians. Neither we nor Josephus have sufficient sources for the period from the Babylonian conquest until the Maccabaean revolt. Moreover, neither Josephus nor we have sufficient sources for Josephus's pre-exilic history, and only in glimpses do we get admission to a historical reality behind Josephus's paraphrase of biblical history. As in biblical tradition the Israelites come back from exile as Jews; so also in Josephus! These crucial problems have certainly bothered many scholars, though most of them have not escaped using Josephus as a source. L.L. Grabbe probably comes close to expressing the standard pragmatic attitude towards the use ofJosephus when he declares: If it were not for his writings (sell. Josefus), our knowledge of Jewish history—especially in the Greek and Roman periods—would be drastically reduced. So much we know of persons and events central to Jewish history comes from Josephus and is available from no other source. Even when other sources refer to the person or event in question, it is still usually Josephus who tells us the most. This makes his writings invaluable for much of the history of the Jews over the half millennium from about 400 BCE to almost 100 CE. Nevertheless, Josephus is not necessarily a simple source to use. One of the most fundamental mistakes made by students of this period is to take Josephus's account at face value and repeat it in light paraphrase. To do so ignores the gaps, the biases, the poor quality of some of his authorities, and the fact that his accounts frequently cannot be checked. One of the main reasons Josephus is so valuable is that his works are extant.12

When Grabbe speaks of the 'value' of the text, I would prefer to speak of the 'popularity' of his text. It becomes painfully clear that Josephus provides his readers with a historical continuity and clearness and uses the Persian and Hellenistic periods to present unsubstantiated material. That this material gives us valuable information about persons and events 'central to the Jewish history' needs verification, since it is Josephus's clarity and coherence that makes us believe that they are 'central'. We must ask, for example: Is Josephus's Alexander story, so 12. Grabbe, Judaism, I, p. 4.

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widely accepted as legendary, central to Jewish history? Is the long story about the Jewish tax collector Joseph son of Tobias central to Jewish history? Are the decrees of Antioch III, of which Josephus gives three variations, but none fitting what is found on the stelae he raised,13 central to Jewish history? Are the stories about Esther, Daniel and others living at the Persian court central to Jewish history? I certainly believe that all these stories are central to Jewish self-understanding, even in Josephus's time, but not to history. Grabbe seems to have been aware of this critique inherent to his introduction to Josephus, since he, almost contradicting himself five pages later, states: Once he had finished with the biblical material, Josephus seems to have been at a loss for good sources for a lengthy period of time. The Old Testament literature extends as far as the Persian period, and Josephus filled out his account of the Persian period with the Greek books of 1 Esdras and Esther. Concerning the next two centuries and more, he seems to have had very little information, filling up the space with a few bits and pieces of valuable material but largely with dubious, legendary works. Only when he reached the second century and was able to draw on 1 Maccabees does he seem to have had a reliable, connected source again. This means that most of his account of the Persian period, the conquest of Alexander, and the Ptolemaic rule of Palestine is of little value.14

Grabbe does not take this judgment as a principle for all of Josephus's writings, but, placing himself between Moehring's overall scepticism and Rajak's overall acceptance, takes the position of Cohen, arguing for a differentiated judgment and examination of each section of Josephus's history on its merits.15 13. Y.H. Landau, 'A Greek Inscription Found Near Hefzibah', IEJ 16 (1966), pp. 54-70. 14. Grabbe, Judaism, I, p. 9. 15. Grabbe, Judaism, I, pp. 10-11. H.R. Moehring, 'Review of Josephus in Galilee and Rome. His Vita and Development as a Historian (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969) by S.J.D. Cohen', JJS 31 (1980), pp. 240-42, who rejects Cohen's view that it is possible to separate facts from fiction in Josephus and reconstruct the history. The same has been argued by Bilde, Flavius Josephus, pp. 98-99: 'Once Josephus's literary leanings and professional tendencies have been defined, it is not difficult to separate his editing, and so to speak, extricate the main source from these layers of "wrappings"', and T. Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and his Society (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1983): 'While there are some features which are improbable,

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Books 1-10 follow and interpret Old Testament Scriptures, dedicating Books 1-4 to Pentateuchal material and a paraphrase of the Law in Book 3 (and 4), interestingly not avoiding the Deuteronomistic repetition (Ant. 4.196-301). Books 6-10, mainly based on the biblical historical books, fragmentary use of prophetic material, pseudepigraphical books and citations of Jewish and Greek historians, probably known through Alexander Polyhistor (Ant. 1.240) and Nicolaus of Damascus (Ant. 1.94, 108, 159) paraphrase the remainder of biblical chronology until the fall of Jerusalem in 587. Josephus did not simply translate or present the biblical texts in their Greek form(s).16 He made an interpretation, following the 'rules' for the writing of the LXX. Not limiting himself to the later canonical Scriptures, he made use of the 'historiography and political constitutions translated from the Hebrew records' (Ant. 1.5) as well as 'our Scripture records', which he promised to 'set forth, each in its place' without 'adding or omitting anything' (Ant. 1.17). This concept of 'translation' has close parallels in Ben Sira, 2 Maccabees, New Testament and Greek and Aramaic 'translations' of Hebrew Scriptures. It was only the challenge of Christanity's polemical use of the LXX that seriously questioned this greatly flexible concept and required a 'faithful translation', such as Aquila's literal translation of Hebrew biblical texts.17 Thus one might not, using our standards of source criticism, really speak of Josephus garbling his sources, which

there are none which are impossible and, as long as what Josephus tells us is possible, we have no right to correct it.' 16. Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', p. 211, argues for a use of Greek texts only and ascribes Semitisms in Josephus's writings to derive from his native language. Thackeray (LCL, 242 [1930], p. xii) suggested a Semitic source for the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges and a Greek source for historical books from 1 Sam. to 1 Mace. 17. Bilde, Flavins Josephus, p. 96, which made this the sixth suggestion for incompatibilities between Josephus's text and the biblical texts. Others have suggested that (1) Josephus 'was lying' in Ant. 1.5-17 (Guttmann; Hoffmann; Peter); (2) Josephus employed a well-known literary topos regardless of its content (Attridge; S.J.D. Cohen); (3) Josephus used this topos to emphasize his objectivity and impartiability (van Unnik); (4) Josephus did not distinguish between the oral and written Torah or 'Scripture' (Feldman, Goldenberg, Vermes); (5) Josephus adopted an oriental historiographical tradition, where ancient sacral texts laid the foundation for the history writing similar to Berossus, Manetho (Rajak); cf. Bilde, Flavius Josephus, pp. 95-96.

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even for the biblical texts, might well have been quite different from our MT, SP and LXX, if we are to judge from the diversity of DSS manuscripts, the writings of Eupolemus, and perhaps most illustratively Jubilees' variant reading of the Pentateuch. Josephus's writings might well be seen as a purposeful redaction (cf. Ant. 4.197), aiming at the creation of a coherent work acceptable to his audience in the RomanHellenistic world for the purpose of furthering greater acceptance of the Jewish people and its special character by references to its origin in antiquity,18 its international reputation19 and the philosophical character of its religion. Such purposes are served by Josephus's rhetorical eloquence, his novelistic sketches of figures like Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Herod (among others), and his inserted speeches and documents (cf. Ant. 1.15; 14.186ff., 266, 323; 16.174-78). Both explicitly and implicitly, it is demonstrated that the 'translated texts from the Hebrew Scripture' and 'our documents' are not considered to be quite fit in themselves and that they can raise interest in the Graeco-Roman world only if they speak with the same tongue and are provided with implicit guarantees from the great rulers of the world.20 Omission of reference to circumcision in several instances and to the golden calf episode in Ant. 3.99 serve these purposes as well.21 In the same manner as Vergil wrote his Roman history in an answer to Homer's Greek history, so Josephus modelled and composed his story as a response to the work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who in the time of Augustus wrote the Roman history (Roman Antiquities} in 20 books, referring to a glorious past with the purpose of making it known in the Greek world. Surpassing Dionysius, Josephus carried his

18. Not only earlier than Greek and Roman peoples, but even earlier than the Babylonians and Egyptians, from whom Abraham learned astrology and arithmetic (Ant. 1.166-68). 19. Among others, Alexander the Great, Antiochus III, Julius Caesar and Augustus's respect and admiration for the Jews leading to guarantees of privileges. 20. Bilde, Flavins Josephus, pp. 98-101, for a detailed description; Attridge, Josephus and his Works, p. 266, for the reliability of the documents and their transmission; E.M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletians (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981 [1976]), pp. 558-60. 21. A further study on Josephus's use of 'translation' as a term meaning 'interpretation' in various instances where he defends himself against accusations of not being correct (e.g. Ant. 2.347; 9.208 and 214—which frames the 'abbreviated' Jonah story—10.218; Apion 1.53-54) is needed.

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story 'pure of that unseemly mythology current among others' (Ant. 1.15), past the mythological world of Roman origin to creation.22 Transmission Like most of the literature on which we base our understanding of antiquity, we do not find any comprehensive collections of Josephus before the ninth-eleventh century CE, and then only in few examples. Apion is based on a single manuscript from the eleventh century (Codex L), of which 2.52-113 is missing. The eleventh-fourteenth century brought a few more manuscripts. A single Greek fragment from the third century (pap. P. Graec. Vindob. 29810) comprising War 2.576-79, 582-84 has survived the ravages of time. We are thus obliged for the Greek editions to look to the use of Josephus among the writings of the early Church Fathers: Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origin and especially Eusebius, who quotes long passages of Josephus, not always quite verbatim. Hegesippus made a paraphrasing Latin edition of War in the late fourth century, which is of little value for reconstruction in comparison to Cassiodor's Latin edition from 570, comprising all of Josephus's works. Niese's edition from 1885-95, based on mediaeval manuscripts, is accepted as the most trustworthy edition,23 and is used as the basic manuscript for the Loeb Classical Library's editions from 1930 with several reprints. W. Whiston's English translation from 1736, also with several reprints, certainly has had a great impact on scholarship, although it 'is no longer accepted as the best text. Nor was Whiston the best-equipped translator for the task. The work has many deficiencies'.24 For the French-speaking audience, as well as for studies in rabbinical parallels to Josephus's exposition of the Mosaic code, the French edition from 1900, Oeuvres completes de Flavins Josephe, has been very useful.

22. Attridge, 'Josephus and his Works', p. 217. H.St.J. Thackeray, Introduction to Jewish Antiquities (LCL, 242 [1930]), p. ix. For recent discussions on Josephus's dependency on Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 23. Bilde, Flavins Josephus, pp. 63-64. Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, I, pp. 57-61. 24. From the foreword to the 1960 reprint. This study uses and quotes LCL (recent editions). Critical deviations in Whiston's text will be noted.

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As mentioned earlier, most ofJosephus's material about Samaritans is to be found in Antiquities. Even important events, such as the destruction of the Samaritan temple on Gerizim, is not given any weight in the parallel account in War. It seems reasonable to ask what urged Josephus to insert small stories about a faction of Judaism, apostate Jews or nonJews, marked as Cuthaeans, Sidonians, Shechemites, Medes or Persians in his Jewish 'history' written almost 20 years later. Does Antiquities have a rationalized historiography that not only sought to place Judaism in the Graeco-Roman world but also sought to define the correct form of Judaism similar to the discussions in the New Testament, implicitly revealing that this question was not entirely settled at the time. The consequences of cult centralization brought about by the loss of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem may well have enhanced discussions about the proper role of the Jewish temple. As we shall see, this question is raised by Josephus both before Alexander the Great and Ptolemy Philometor, securing that both the Greek and the Egyptian world had been in agreement on this matter. The aforementioned variant reading of 1 Mace. 10.25-45 (see above, Chapter 2), which in Josephus has 'it shall be in the power of the high priest to take care that no one Jew shall have any other temple for worship but only that at Jerusalem' (Ant. 13.54), could indicate that he had reason for what seems to be a deliberate change. The stress on the one temple, found also in Apion 2.193, might further indicate that cult centralization was still questioned, at least by the non-Jewish world. The different weighting of this matter in Josephus's treatment of the temples on Gerizim and in Heliopolis in War and in Antiquities, together with his use of Heliopolis for settling Samaritan matters, is revealing, as the following examination demonstrates. Antiquities 9.277-21 Josephus's portrait of the Samaritans takes its point of departure from 2 Kgs 17.24-41 concerning the people removed from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath and Sepharvaim, who did not know how to worship the god of the land, and who, according to the Old Testament, have no intention of giving up their own gods, but had introduced a syncretistic religion, using the temple(s)25 made by the Samaritans (2 Kgs 17.29).

25. MT: sing.; LXX, Luc., Syr, Vg: pi.

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When asked to decide which god they will worship, they did not choose to worship Yahweh alone (as did the Israelites in Josh. 24.21-24), but to fear Yahweh and serve their own gods. It is central in the Old Testament text that they did not know how to worship the god of the land (2 Kgs 17.26-27), and that to worship Yahweh is to keep his ordinances (17.36-38). It is not said that they betrayed Yahweh in a manner similar to the Israelites, causing their removal from the country (17.7-24). The situation is the opposite. The Israelites knew how to fear Yahweh, as is clearly said in this paragraph and reiterated in the midrash of the first commandment, presented in the closing paragraph (2 Kgs 17.34-41), but they failed to do so. In contrast, the foreigners did not know and obviously were slow to learn, so these foreigners continued to 'fear Yahweh' after their own manner, thus breaking the first commandment, repeated thrice in vv. 35, 37 and 38. Indirectly, a critique is given of the priest 'carried away from Shomeron', who had settled in Bethel (2 Kgs 17.28). He must be understood to belong to the same stock as those who are claimed to be responsible for the idol worship in the opening paragraph. They did not change at all, since the foreigners continue to do so 'unto this very day', leaving the land as polluted as it was before, anticipating the contrasting fate of Judaea in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Josephus's account of this story in 2 Kings is interpolated in his Hezekiah narrative, using the pious acts of Hezekiah as a contrasting motif to the impious acts of the Israelites, who did not accept Hezekiah's invitation to join the celebration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Jerusalem. They not only laughed at the king's message, as written in the biblical account of 2 Chronicles 30, but, in an elaboration of this narrative, they 'poured scorn upon them (the prophets) and finally seized them and killed them' (Ant. 9.265). This stock motif that frames Josephus's views on Samaritans is reiterated several times in his interpretation of historical events. It should not escape our notice that he made purposeful use of this motif in his judgment of Manasseh's crime, that 'imitating the lawless deeds of the Israelites' he 'killed all the righteous men among the Hebrews, nor did he spare even the prophets, some of whom he slaughtered daily' (Ant. 10.37-38). In Josephus's account, we are first surprised to notice that he has given specific status to one group of the removed people, namely the Cuthaeans (Ant. 9.279), revealing the language of his own day, but conflicting with the biblical account, which neither speaks of Cuthaeans

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nor knows the term elsewhere.26 Probably aware of this problem, Josephus, in accordance with the biblical narrative, mentions that the Cuthaeans originally were five tribes who each worshipped their own god and came from the same Persian region and river valley called Cuthah (Xo\)0d, Ant. 9.288) In Josephus's treatment, the biblical 'lions' have become 'a pestilence' and an oracle advises that worship of the Most High God (TOV jieyioxov 0eov) brings deliverance (aomptov). These are minor changes. It is more important to notice that it was the bringing of 'their own gods' that brought the pestilence. The consequences of the oracle is thus changed, for surprisingly we read: after being instructed in the ordinances and religion of this God, worshipped him with great zeal [. It is revealing that neither here, nor in 11.343-44, do the Sidonians call themselves Samaritans or Cuthaeans. These designations are only employed by Josephus, who also found it necessary to call them 'Medes and Persians'.38 A further descriptive emphasis on how far the Sidonians are from 'the worthiest people and those of noble soul', who did not obey Antiochus's decrees but 'held their country's customs of greater account than their punishment' (Ant. 12.255), is given by their addressing Anthiochus as 'our benefactor and saviour' and by their explicit denial of any adherence to Jewish customs: We therefore petition you as our benefactor and saviour to command Apollonius, the governor of the district [|iepi8dpxri], and Nicanor, the royal agent, not to molest us in any way by attaching to us the charges of which the Jews are guilty, since we are distinct from them both in race and in customs, and we ask that the temple without a name be known as that of Zeus Hellenics [Aioq 'EUriviov] (Ant. 12.260-61).39

With this statement, the discussion of the Alexander story is given explicit clarification, which the death of Alexander had prevented. The naming of the temple is a consequence of the previous decree given to the Jews in Antiochus's second campaign against Jerusalem (Ant. 12.248-56), in an elaboration on 1 Mace. 1.29-64 and, perhaps, also 2 Mace. 6.1-11: 'He compelled them to give up the worship of their own God, and to do reverence to the gods in whom he believed.' According to 2 Mace. 6.1-2, this is a coercive measure that emphasizes the character of apostasy in Josephus's contrasting portrayal of the Sidonians, that they petitioned (CC^IOGO) that the temple without a name (TO dvcovujiov iepov) be known (7ipoaayopet>0f|vai) 'as that of Zeus Hellenics'. The implicit reference to Menelaus and his renegades (12.24041), and 'those of the people who were impious and of bad character' (12.252) must be kept in mind, as well as the fact that Josephus does not mention the naming of the temple in Jerusalem or that the high priest Jason had asked that Jerusalem become a polls and adopt a Greek constitution in 175 BCE, a status that the city was to hold until 168 BCE. The non-naming of the temple falls within Jewish tradition. Because

38. See below for a more detailed analysis of Josephus's terminology. 39. According to 2 Mace. 6.2, a variant reading, 'Zeus Xenios', is suggested (LCL365, p. 135).

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God has no name, a dedication of the temple would be to 'the only god, creator of heaven and earth'. The implicit contrast stressed the Sidonian relationship, since only Judaism had this practice.40 The naming of Jerusalem's temple in 2 Mace. 6.2 does not change its Jewish orientation, since Zeus Olympus is the Greek name for K'DIZ? if^N ('God of heaven').41 Could the same be argued for Zeus Hellenius, and why did Josephus choose this name instead of the 'Dios Xenios' of 2 Maccabees? Several explanations have been suggested, but I will confine myself to the summary given by Rita Egger.42 40. Bickerman, Der Gott der Makkabder, p. 94 n. 3. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, pp. 261-67, gives a detailed overview of the problems involved: 'From this discussion we may conclude that at about the time when Yahweh was identified with Olympian Zeus in Jerusalem, in Greek-educated circles of Jews in Alexandria there were reflections on the problem of the relationship between the God of Israel and the "Zeus" of the philosophers... For Josephus, as for Aristobolus and for Ps. Aristeas, the God of the philosophers is fundamentally also the God of Israel' (pp. 265-66). 41. Bickerman, Der Gott der Makkabder, pp. 96, 112-13 n. 1. 42. R. Egger, Josephus Flavins und die Samaritaner: Eine terminologische Untersuchung zur Identitdtserkldrung der Samaritaner (NTOA, 4; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. I l l n. 296: 'Der Unterschied des Zeus-Attributes zwischen 2 Makk 6,2 und Ant 12,261 ist nicht dermassen gravierend, dass die Menschen die die Forderung der Benennung des Garizim-Heiligtum nach Zeus stellten, nicht mit einander identifiziert werden diirften—Wir nennen noch einige Deutungen der beiden Epitheta, weil diese auf das Vorverstandnis verschiedener Autoren (beziiglich der Samaritaner) Licht werfen: Geiger (in: Eckstein, Geschichte 43 Anm.2) glaubt, Zeus' Beiname "Hellenios" sei von den Samar. gewahlt worden, weil er an "Eljon" erinnere—Schalit, Denkschrift, 114f., bringt dieses Attribut mit dem Wettergott Zeus in Verbindung: Zeus Hellenios sei derjenige gewesen, der auf dem Oros auf Aegina gethront und als Regenbringer gegolten habe. Die Benennung des Garizim-Tempels stehe also mit der Diirre, die in Ant 12,259 die Sabbat Observanz der "Sidonier" begrunde, "in volliger Ubereinstimmung".—Zum Epitheton "Xenios" vermutet Montgomery, aao. 77 Anm.ll, es "may have been suggested by the first syllable of Gerizim, ger, i.e. 'stranger'".—Kippenberg 79f betrachtet "Xenios" aufgrund des griechisch-israelitischen Mischkultes auf dem Garizim "warscheinlicher als Zeus Hellenios"—Alon, Origin 355f., meint, der Name "Xenios" passe zu den Bewohnern des Ortes, da sie Fremde in Land seien.—Nach Pummer, aao.240f, hat Josephus "Xenios" aus polemischen Grilnden, dh. um den synkretischen Charakter der SRG zu unterstreichen, in "Hellenios" verwandelt.' S. Zeitlin (ed.), The Second Book of Maccabees (New York: Harper, 1954): 'The Surname Xenios, given to the temple on Mount Gerizim which was dedicated to

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The explanation possibly has to be based on the character applied to 'Dios Xenios'. This god is normally associated with 'Zeus Hekesios' or Thilios', god of mercy for the poor, foreigners, and those seeking protection. This was exactly what the Jews expelled from Jerusalem did (cf. Ant. 11.346-47). 2 Maccabees 6.2's additional explanation KaGooc; 8T\)y%avov oi TOY TOTCOV oiKOWTec; (which can mean either that the name fitted the people living there, or that the people used to call it such) might be alluded to in Josephus's account. A direct reference, however, would have weakened Josephus's description of the Sidonians of Alexander's time, and raised questions about the authenticity of the present account among those readers familiar with 2 Maccabees. Josephus therefore chose a neutral form 'Dios Hellenics', which cannot be related to any particular god. 'The Greek Zeus' could, in a manner similar to 'Zeus Olympos', be the god Yahweh, already 'residing' in the temple. The ambiguity of the naming, with implicit reference to accusations of Greek orientation and renegade activities is explicitly spelled out in Antiochus's reply. The naming, not the name, is essential to Josephus's account. If the Jews were forced to accept the naming, it was an inevitable fate, but if the Samaritans themselves had asked for the naming and its protection, it was treachery! This point is inherent in Antiochus's reply, which gives the Sidonians more than they asked for: King Antiochus to Nicanor. The Sidonians in Shechem have submitted a memorial which has been filed. Now since the men sent by them have represented to us sitting in council with our friends that they are in no way concerned in the complaints brought against the Jews, but choose to live in accordance with Greek customs, we acquit them of these charges, and permit their temple to be known as that of Zeus Hellenics, as they have petitioned [iV;i(flKacn.] (Ant. 12.262-63).

The letter of the Sidonians did not contain any petition regarding living 'in accordance with Greek customs', but only of being free of 'charges of which the Jews are guilty'. The reply bases itself on a tradition that contrasts Jewish and Greek and expects that the non-Jewish be equivalent to Greek. Josephus has hereby expanded the Samaritan apostasy as both religious and political.

Zeus, was for the purpose of showing that the Samaritans had the right to be protected by Zeus, and they would not be molested.'

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A copy of the letter was sent to Apollonius, 'the district governor, in the hundred and forty-sixth year, on the eighteenth of the month Hekatombaion Hyrcanios', which is the month of July 166 BCE.43 It still remains to decide whether these Sidonians can be equated with 'later' Samaritans/Shechemites as Josephus does, or whether Josephus, intentionally using a text that speaks of Sidonians living at Shechem, intends to deprive the Samaritans of Jewish adherence, both ethnic and confessional on the grounds that they had declared themselves to be 'distinct from them in both race [yevoq] and custom [eGoc;]' (12.261). As with Josephus's use of biblical material, it is not a question of Josephus's sources, but a question of how he used these sources. The interpolation of the story between Josephus's revision of 1 Maccabees 1 and 2 (the account of Mattathias and his sons [cf. Ant. 12.265]) could be seen as an attempt to interpret 2 Mace. 5.23 and 6.1-2, solving both the problem of 2 Maccabees's lack of reference to internal Jewish conflicts and answering the implicit question about whether Samaritans properly shared a destiny with the Jews. In contrast to Josephus's perspective, both 1 and 2 Maccabees understand everyone who did not agree to the Hasmonaean revolt as enemies of true Judaism, whether they belonged to priestly or to popular circles. The division is cast between 'those who had continued in the Jewish faith' (2 Mace. 8.3) and those who did not. Some justification of Josephus's view can be found in 1 Mace. 3.8-10. This contrasts Judaea with Samaria, and probably implies that the army Apollonius gathered from Samaria consisted of 'Samaritans' and Gentiles. What, however, might be expected, if Josephus had had a clear understanding of this text's possible reference to 'his' Samaritans, is a consistent use of it in his further elaboration of Judas's activities (Ant. 12.285-86). In this text, however, he does not contrast Judaeans to Samaritans, but only gives weight to Samaritan animosity implicitly by making Apollonius the governor of Samaria. The 'feebleness' of Josephus's 'Samaritans' in all of his stories hardly fits a picture of a forceful army. Miserable and feckless betrayal seem to be his underlying perspective. The forcefulness of this view finds expression in Josephus's terminology, which is hardly accidental and draws heavily on biblical traditions' explicit accusations of apostasy and deceit.

43. See the commentary on the dating in LCL 365, p. 137.

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Antiquities 13.74-79 Josephus's fifth story about the Samaritans is set in the Alexandrian diaspora during the reign of Ptolemy Philometor (181-146 BCE). It is combined with his account of the building of Onias's temple in Heliopolis (Ant. 13.62-73). The account is anticipated by a summary of what happened to the descendants of the exiled Jews in Egypt who had been taken captive from Judaea, Jerusalem, Samaria and Garizein during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323-285 BCE; cf. Ant. 12.7, 10). Josephus emphasizes that the Jews 'were determined to keep alive their fathers' way of life and customs'. This created quarrels and fights with the Samaritans (£auapEiiaN~l ^) follows immediately after the ending of the conquest. Two different versions recount that a cult place (p£>Q) containing the holiest (B*-D*) and that a temple (^DH) with the tent of meeting (~lUin ^HN) with the ark (mii?n "pIK), the propitiary and the screen ("]DQH fD~l2), as well as all the altars (mrntQn ^D) and all the accoutrements of the sanctuary (ID ^ D1KQ ^D pCBDn '^D) (G*) were erected. AF p. 32 tells that Joshua built a fortress on the mountain to the north of the illustrious peak. The stone altar on Mt Gerizim is already erected after the conquest of Huta (Aj) (cf. p. 14). The references to the cities of refuge in ST §S M* (MT Josh. 20.7-8) declares Shechem to be holy. Joshua 24.1, the setting up of the covenant in Shechem has the addition 'at Mt Gerizim', while 24.25-26 adds 'at the foot of Mt Gerizim'. In ST, the death of Joshua does not end with an Israel left alone without any ruler and with a high priest (Phinehas), as does the Masoretic tradition, where Phinehas's narrative role is absent in most parts and episodes of MT Judges. ST recounts that Joshua casts lots between the

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12 princes of Israel. The lot fell on Nethanael, son of Caleb, from the tribe of Judah, who became king over the Israelites. In the same manner, there is a formal transfer of the office of the high priest Eleazar to his son Phinehas four years after the death of Joshua. This event is opened with a cutting of the covenant in Shechem, followed by a wandering to Gibea, where Phinehas is clothed in the high priestly garments, and where Eleazar is buried 'in Gibea the town of his son Phinehas, which is opposite the holy mountain, the place the lord has chosen, Mt Gerizim, Bethel'.6 MT Judges' patronage versus chaos narrative 'that in these days there was no king in Israel and everyone did, what was right in his own eyes' aiming to prepare the reader for the blessings of the kingship, the establishing of order, the joining of the tribes around a central shrine and a central government has no parallel in ST Judges. Here the good conditions established during Joshua and Eleazar continue. Kings elected by the people in Shechem under the conduct of the high priest do their royal duties and are succeeded by other kings similarly elected. High priests are all unproblematic successors of their fathers. We find no apostasy, no punishment and no deceitful kings similar to MT's Abimelech. The language is more neutral than MT Judges, and without the Deuteronomistic categories, 'the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord', 'the Israelites cried to the Lord', 'the Lord raised up a deliverer', that form the central theme of MT Judges. Statements such as 'whenever the judge died, they turned back and behaved worse than their fathers' (Judg. 2.19) are totally absent in the first part of ST Judges. It is not until the very end of the book, when, after the death of Samson, Eli's usurpation of the high priesthood leads to the apostasy of the people and the cessation of God's favour, that these categories are employed. ST Judges follows the chronology of MT Judges, however, in a more summarised version and with some deletions, and it is only MT Judg. 3.12-13, 20-30; 4.2-3, 12-24; 11.12-33 that are presented verbatim or in a close variant that leave out the most legendary traits of the stories. Added are chronological insertions of the high priests, Phinehas, Abisha, 6. This last paragraph, ST Jos. §§U-W, whose central core is the biblical Josh. 23.1 and parts of Josh. 24 and 14, is in ST Chron. II separated from the former chapters of MT Joshua by an insertion of the Shobach Legend. This legend, dealing with Joshua's war with King Shobach, is judged manifestly late, because of its many Arabisms; see Macdonald, The Samaritan Chronicle No. II, p. 73.

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Shishai, Baghi and Uzzi and their priestly duties and cultic services.7 The wars within Israel are finished after Joshua's conquests, and ST Judges opens with Nethanael's victory over Cushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia (cf. MT Judg. 3.9-10). With the absence of MT Judges 17-21 the account of Samson functions as the bridge to the books of Samuel. This composition is in accord with Josephus, who placed his version of Judges 19-21 after the conquests in MT judges (Ant. 5.136), made Eli the successor of Samson and placed the story of Ruth during his reign (Ant. 5.318). The problem with the assumption of ST's dependency on MT is thus given a broader perspective, and questions of variant texts gain significant importance in judging the material. The Samaritan text is not an abbreviated, rewritten MT version. The dominant theme and message in ST pronounce that Israel prospered as long as the cult was in place on Gerizim and the administration was in Shechem. The counter-message in MT argues that there was no proper cult and no central administration. The problem with this kind of polemic, however, is that the reverse should bring order and prosperity. This does not happen. The movement of ark and cult under David's reign does not solve the problems raised in MT Judges, that it was the lack of a king that allowed the people to do 'everyone what was right in his own eyes'. MT Judges does not provide the contrast story it intended to be and we are probably far better off if we understand MT Judges as a negative anticipation of the traditions of the monarchic period, such as has been suggested by Graham Auld.8 Such an interpretation, however, still carries the reverse of the coin as an unsolved problem. Why is it necessary to denounce the 7. This list is paralleled in Josephus, Ant. 5.361-62; MT 1 Chron. 5.30-31; Ezra 7.4-5; 1 Esd. 8.2. Josephus, however, is the only informant, who explicitly confirms the Samaritan tradition that Eli, being of the Ithamar line, usurped the high priesthood and accordingly broke the Eleazar line until the reign of Solomon. Indirectly, however, the rejection of the house of Eli (1 Kgs 2.27, 35) is given reference in the various lists of high priest in the Old Testament, all of which leaves out Eli and form a continuation from Aron to Seraiah using the names of the Eleazar family members, Meraioth, Amariah, Ahitub, who, according to Josephus (Ant. 8.11-12), lived as private persons during the interim. Josephus's various references to high priests 'confirm' the split, which is furthermore testified in his enumeration of high priests in Ant. 20.229 that the first thirteen high priests until Solomon were descendants of Aaron's two sons. 8. The Deuteronomists between History and Theology', International Organization for the Study of Old Testament congress, Oslo, 1998, forthcoming.

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past in order to capture the future? The question whether MT Judges is a polemic story against Shechem and against an early Shechem tradition remains. To avoid this context the biblical version made the period as chaotic as possible. The judges fight in vain to keep the people from worshipping idols. Proper cult places and priests are nearly entirely absent. MT Judges 9 and MT 1 Kings 12, the people's election of Abimelech, and Rehabeam(!) and Jeroboam in Shechem, may implicitly testify to this tradition, since these kings bear the markers in MT tradition of deceitful kings emanating from Shechem. This is all the more remarkable as no other stories of the Old Testament relate to appointments of kings in Shechem, given the people the privilege of election (cf. Judg. 9.6; !Kgsl2.1,20). As mentioned above, the turning point against the good conditions in ST comes with Eli's and his supporter's move from Shechem to establish a rival cult in Shiloh. The young Eli, son of Jefunneh, of the lineage of Itamar (ST §JP; KS*), is given the honorary office of chancellor of the temple treasures under the leadership of the high priest Uzzi, whose authority he challenges. The quarrel results in Eli's departure from Shechem and his erection of a temple and cult in Shiloh. A variant tradition involves exclusion, and in a paradigmatic use of Genesis 4, it gives the role of Cain to Eli, as the unsuccessful priest, whose offer God rejects because it has not been properly salted (cf. Lev. 2.13; ST §LK*, U*). Eli in MT is not given any genealogy, while Jefunneh's son Caleb is of the tribe of Judah in Num. 13.6. Only in 2 Esdras from the end of the first century CE do Eli and his son Phinehas occur in the Aaron-Eleazar genealogy of Ezra, the scribe. Eli's departure turns the fate of all Israel, which looses its coherence and splits into three separate groups (ST Judg. §LO*-T*; ST 1 Sam. §BA*-F*: AFp. 42): 1. 2.

3.

The Jews, who followed Eli. The Josephites, counting Epraim and Manasseh with some few adherents from other tribes, who followed Uzzi and remained faithful to Gerizim. The rest of the people who later deserted Eli because of the apostasy of his sons, and became idol worshippers.

It is noteworthy that all groups suffer God's anger and that Israel's apostasy is caused by this schism, which, according to Samaritan theology, has not ended yet. The divine favour, Radwan, which began with the patriarchs, reached its climax with the entry into the promised land

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during the time of Joshua and ended with the last judge. The priestly quarrels caused a replacement of this period with a period of God's wrath, Phanutah.9 This period is initiated by an increasing darkness that makes the daily services impossible and ends up enveloping the whole house. Finally a big cave appears. The high priest Uzzi collects the sacred vestments, gold and silver vessels and places them in the cave. After having sealed up the cave, he marks its place, only to find out the next day that it has disappeared without any trace. The grief and selfreproach is endless and the prehistory is re-evaluated in the closing elegy (ST 1 Sam. §BG*-§CGG*; AF pp. 42-45). Not before the return of the Radwan will the hidden objects appear again. The biblical account of the inauguration of Solomon's temple seems to build on a similar tradition. The time of grace has appeared. Yahweh has left the darkness and accepted the temple for his name and spirit (2 Chron. 5.13-6.2; 7.1-2). It is not possible to decide whether this text has a conscious anti-Samaritan bias or whether both texts are using similar themes. It is, however, possible to decide that placement (Mt Mori ah) and acceptance are important to the author of MT Chronicles, thus revealing conflicts of interest.10 Samaritan self-understanding as a minority group from the descendants of Joseph is further testified to in the Samaritan 'books of Samuel and Kings'. The Josephites do not participate in Samuel's trial in Mizpa (cf. 1 Sam. 7.6; ST 1 Sam. §GE*). Nor do they follow Jeroboam's cult but remain faithful to the Law (ST 1 Kgs §EN*-S*). They are not ruled by the kings of northern Israel (who rule over eight tribes of Israel only, cf. ST 1 Kgs §GC*, JA*) and their chronology is the chronology of the Samaritan high priests, who also continue to perform after Saul's destruction of city and temple.

9. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, p. 118: 'It is noteworthy that such a view of world history as being divided into distinctive epochs is characteristic of much Jewish apocalyptic writing (cf. the four world empires of Daniel) and also of Qumran scrolls and the New Testament. Such links may provide a further pointer to the date of the formative period of Samaritanism.' I would say that this world view, although not explicitly expressed in the Old Testament material, is inherent to all our texts, which speak of God's periods of anger and mercy. 10. The placement of Mt Moriah in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 3.1) and Yahweh's acceptance of the temple in 2 Chron. 7.12 reveals that the question of legality had not yet been settled at the redaction of the book.

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The Chronicles dealing with Saul's war with the Josephites in ST 1 Sam. §IB* and AF p. 47 is interesting: Samuel, King Saul, Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, gathered together and gave orders for battle to be made against the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh and all their congregations—namely the congregation of the Samaritan Israelites [Dnown ^Rier ^np],11—at Elon Moreh, for they had refused to have the tribe of Saul the son of Kish over them, and because they had not forsaken Mount Gerizim Bethel or gone over to Shiloh under Samuel's jurisdiction to sacrifice at Shiloh, as Eli the son of Jefunneh had commanded' (ST 1 Sam. §IB*).

The premises for the declaration of war are both political and religious. The balance of power has shifted radically. It is now the former secessionist group who set up the terms. And although the Josephites refer to kinship: 'Why will you make war on us, when we are brothers' and to cooperation in earlier wars against the Philistines, the attack is inevitable. Two different traditions are brought together in this text of ST 2 Chronicles, but this does not affect the outline of the story that the war at Elon Moreh, by Shechem, is inevitable in both versions. The second version opens with a discussion between Saul and the Samaritan Israelites, who refuse to obey Saul because the 'place where Yahweh chose to make his name to dwell is Mount Gerizim Bethel', which is superior to Shiloh. The war, which takes place during the pilgrimage of tabernacles, results in a destruction of the stone altar on Gerizim, the killing of the high priest Shishai, son of Uzzi, the slaughtering of the Samaritan community in Elon Moreh, Shechem, Bethel and the town of Luzah, and a destruction of the houses in the town, which is said to be large. The parallel story in MT Samuel is Saul's victory over the Ammonites (1 Sam. 11.1-11), which, placed as an inclusio between the two elections—in 1 Sam. 10.17-27 in Mispa, and in 11.12-15 in Gilgal— implicitly seeks to answer the question about Saul's authority and strength (1 Sam. 10.27). The MT of 1 Sam. 11.12-13 does not tell clearly who they are who challenge Saul. This information has to be 11. 'those Israelites who keep the Law', DHQ27, which should not be confused with D^inQE?, which is believed to be a gentilicum derived from Shomer/Shomron. D"HQC0 is a Samaritan self-designation after the rejection of Saul and the schisms among the Israelites (ST 1 Sam. §H E*). Macdonald translates the term 'Samaritan Israelites'. Gaster, Samaritans, p. 5, variant form: flQNn ^ D'HQtO (keepers of the truth).

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found in Josephus's Ant. 6.82, where they are called 'Saul's countrymen (6ux)