SHECHEM AND SAMARIA.
19. Shechem was thirty miles north from Jerusalem and five miles southeast from the city of Samaria. The district of Samaria must be distinguished from the city of Samaria; the latter havingbeen the residence of the kings of Israel, or of the northern kingdom, for many years. At the time of Alexander the Great the Samaritans were expelled from this city because of a mutiny against one of his appointed governors of Syria;but a remnant was permitted to occupy Shechem,[125] where they have dwindled down to the present day.
THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH.
20. One very ancient copy of the Pentateuch, or first five books, called the Law of Moses, remains among this remnant of the Samaritans, at Shechem in Palestine. It is written in the ancient Hebrew letters used before the captivity, and this particular copy is the oldest in the world, so far as is at present known.
It is written in the pure old Hebrew language, but contains only the first five books of the Old Testament in one single roll. It is called the Samaritan,only because it is owned by the Samaritans and has been in their possession from a period several centuries before the Christian era down to the present time.[126]
21. It has been proven that during and after the captivity all the writings of the Scriptures, and especially the books of Moses,were transcribed only into the square forms of Hebrew letters which arenow used in all our Hebrew Bibles.[127] It seems highly probable therefore that this Samaritan manuscript has been in existence ever since the time when, at the request of the Samaritans, the Assyrian king sent back a priest (page 190) to teach them, and “he taught them the fear of the Lord,” 2 Kings 17:28, B. C. 720.
22. But it is proper here to state that this manuscript is thought, by some, to owe its origin to the time when Nehemiah expelled from Jerusalem the grandson of the high-priest, Manasseh by name, because he had married the daughter of Sanballat, their Samaritan enemy. This expulsion of Manasseh took place B. C. 434 (according to Ussher).After this Sanballat built a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim and made Manasseh high-priest.[128] The enmity already existing between the Jews and the Samaritans was made more bitter by this act, and it continued ever after.
23. But although the Samaritans at some time must have obtained their copy of the Law of Moses from the Jews, as the latter say, yet it is not probable that this copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch was obtained from them after this enmity sprang up, and, moreover, because it is written in thoseletters in which Ezra did not write the law after the captivity. If it was written before, then there is at least one manuscript copy which escaped the misfortunes of the captivity and has come down to the present day.
24. This manuscript has been mentioned by several of the early fathers of the third century and has been copied several times during the past three centuries. With the exception of some dates, the variations from the present Hebrew copies are unimportant.