Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

The Samaritan synagogue stands in the Samaritan quarter, the south-western part of the town of Nablus. It is a mean room, with white-washed walls, and a dome with a skylight. A dirty counterpane is hung before a recess, called the Musbah, in which is a cupboard. From behind this veil the manuscripts are produced. At my first visit the high-priest Amram brought out the latest scroll. It is written in black ink on parchment, and rolled on two rollers, enclosed in two cylinders of brass, covered with a florid arabesque of thin silver plates fastened on to the brass. The scroll is kept on a shelf of the cupboard, the other two are locked up. The case is enveloped in a green silk wrapper, embroidered with arabesques. Mr. Drake, who accompanied me, now asked to see the next. The high-priest answered, after affecting great surprise, that his nephew Jacob had the key; he, however, was soon persuaded to send his son to fetch it, and brought out from the locker the second, which is of older appearance, also in a brass case, with huge knobs to the rollers. By means of these rollers the parchment is slipped round, so that each column of the roll is visible in turn. The workmanship in this case is better than that of the first. The cherubim, pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, and other sacred objects, are shown in the arabesque. There is a legend with the date 820 A.H., or 1456 A.D., which gives the name of the maker as Jacob ben Phoki, a Damascene. The writing in this manuscript appears to have been touched up later.

The high-priest and his nephew Jacob now declared that there was no older scroll, but Mr. Drake said he had seen it, and at length they were reduced to saying that being ceremonially unclean they could not touch it. We accordingly stepped behind the veil, the locker was opened, and we saw the famous roll of Abishuah in a solid silver cover of modern workmanship. The greatest reluctance was manifested in showing us this sacred relic; the priests exclaimed, “Permission!” and “In the name of God.” The roll is said to have been written on the skins of about twenty rams, which were slain as thank-offerings, the writing being on the hair side; the handwriting is small and rather irregular, the lines far apart; the ink is faded and of a purplish hue, the parchment much torn, very yellow, and patched in places, and bound at the edges with green silk.

Down the centre of the scroll runs the famous title called Tarîkh or “Inscription,” a sort of acrostic. By thickening one or two letters in each line in a vertical column, the following has been obtained:

“I Abishuah, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, the favour of Jehovah be upon them, for His glory I have written this Holy Torah (copy of the law) in the entrance of the tabernacle of the congregation on Mount Gerizim, even Bethel, in the thirteenth year of the possession by the children of Israel of the land of Canaan and all its boundaries. I thank the Lord.”

My second visit was paid after the death of Amram, in company with Lieutenant Kitchener and Mr. Elkarey the missionary. Jacob, the old man’s nephew, was now high-priest; on the 10th of June, 1875, we repaired again to the synagogue. The high-priest, an eminently handsome man about thirty-five years of age, received us, dressed in robes of dark purple, with the crimson turban; his brown beard long and square, not marred at the corners; his dark eyes with drooping lids, the beautiful olive complexion and delicate aquiline nose, perhaps a little too square at the end, made him a model of beauty of a certain type—the Jewish beauty, for which the priestly family of the Hasmoneans was so famous, and which captivated Herod the Great in Mariamne, the last of her race.

Hastily admitting us, he locked the door, and brought us to the veil now covered over with a gorgeous yellow satin cloth. A younger priest brought out the second manuscript, but was hastily told “not that one;” and the silver case once more appeared, and was placed on a sort of trestle. Whilst we examined it, some urchins got up on the roof and looked through the skylight. The priest was alarmed, he drove them away, replaced the old scroll, unlocked the door, and showed us the other two.

There is a marked difference in the treatment Abishuah’s roll receives at the hands of the priests. It is indeed a Samaritan Fetish, and is only seen by the congregation once a year, when elevated above the priest’s head on the Day of Atonement.

The so-called “Fire-tried Manuscript” belongs to a poor widow in Jerusalem, named Mrs. Ducat. She lent it to a German savant named Dr. Jacob Frederic Kraus, and his essay on the manuscript is kept with it. The whole consists of 217 leaves, containing the Torah or law, from the twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter of Genesis to the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy. Six leaves are added in a smaller hand on parchment at the beginning, the first being almost illegible. The real manuscript only begins at Gen. xi. 11; three leaves are added at the end for protection, after Deut. xxix. 30. The whole is much worn, and measures eleven inches by nine inches, and three inches in thickness. The text is divided into paragraphs, with verses, sentences, and words separated by a single dot; words are not allowed to be broken by the line, but in order to fill up the line the last letters are further apart, unless they form the word Jehovah which is read Elwem. The letters are not so small as those of Abishuah’s roll, nor as large as those of the later roll; the hand is steady and uniform. The Decalogue is not numbered by marginal letters, in this respect it resembles Abishuah’s roll, and so also the paragraphs are neither numbered nor stated in either text. These points seem to show the Fire-tried Manuscript to be ancient.

Some hundreds of the Samaritan copies of the law have the acrostic like Abishuah’s roll, each giving the name, place, and date of the text; but the Fire-tried Manuscript has a note instead at the end of Genesis, to this effect:

“This holy Torah has been made by a wise, valiant, and great son, a good, a beloved, and an understanding leader, a master of all knowledge, by Shelomo, son of Saba, a valiant man, leader of the congregation, by his knowledge and his understanding, and he was a righteous man, an interpreter of the Torah, a father of blessings, of the sons of Nun (may the Lord be merciful to them!); and it was appointed to be dedicated holy to the Lord, that they might read therein with fear and prayer in the House of the High-Priesthood in the seventh month, the tenth day; and this was done before me, and I am Ithamar, son of Aaron, son of Ithamar the High-Priest; may the Lord renew his strength! Amen.”