THE LAST ISRAELITISH BLOOD SACRIFICE 



23 



The Samaritan religion is closely akin 

 to that of the Jews, the chief differences 

 being that the cult of the former centers 

 about Gerizim, while that of the Jews 

 centers about Zion, and that the Samari- 

 tan canon of Scripture is restricted to the 

 Pentateuch, or "Five Books of Moses." 

 The later writings, including the Prophets 

 and Psalms, the Samaritans repudiate as 

 uninspired. 



In view of the similarity in their be- 

 liefs and practices, it seems strange that 

 there exists and always has existed the 

 fiercest animosity between Jew and Sa- 

 maritan, but it is the animosity that in- 

 variably exists between an original and a 

 schism. 



The Samaritans maintain that they are 

 the remnants and descendants of the once 

 great tribe of Ephraim, and that the split 

 between them and the Jews came about 

 through the maladministration of the 

 priesthood by Eli's sons. Followers of 

 the Jewish Church are looked upon as 

 dissenters from the pure faith of Israel, 

 and the forming of a center of worship 

 in Jerusalem by Judah is condemned 

 upon the ground that the land of Eph- 

 raim, with Shechem and its mountains, 

 figured in the earliest history of the He- 

 brews ; that here the first Israelitish altars 

 were erected, and that these were the only 

 specific parts of the Land of Promise 

 mentioned by Moses in the wilderness. 



THE RENOWNED SAMARITAN SCROLL 

 PHOTOGRAPHED AT EAST 



The most precious document of this 

 sect is the renowned Samaritan scroll 

 Pentateuch. This scroll is some seventy 

 feet long, and toward the end its columns 

 are divided vertically by a small gap, 

 often occurring between the letters of 

 the same word. Into this gap is carried 

 and written any letter that occurs in the 

 lines which fits into the writing of the 

 date, so that when reading the text it fills 

 its place, while on the other hand these 

 separated letters when read collectively 

 from the top of the column to the bot- 

 tom, like the Chinese, spell out the name 

 and date of the writer, etc., thus making 

 it impossible for the date to have*been of 

 a later writing than that of the scroll 

 itself. 



The Samaritans assert that the scroll 



was written by Abishua, the great-grand- 

 son of Aaron, in the early years of the 

 entrance into Canaan, but no impartial 

 student will allow it this very remote ori- 

 gin, although it is believed to be the most 

 ancient copy of the Pentateuch in exist- 

 ence. 



So jealously guarded is this scroll that 

 few non-Samaritans have ever seen it, 

 and many of the Samaritans themselves 

 have not seen it except as it is exhibited 

 on rare occasions at feasts, rolled up and 

 covered with a silken cloth and with but 

 one column exposed. 



The scroll has recently been photo- 

 graphed from end to end, and will soon 

 be published for the benefit of Hebrew 

 scholars. 



It is, of course, impracticable to display 

 this very fragile parchment continually, 

 but it is unfortunate that the modern 

 Samaritans impose upon their guests by 

 showing them a scroll of much later date 

 than the one which all so covet to see. 

 The imposition has gone further, for all 

 photographs made heretofore supposedly 

 of the original Abishua scroll, as it is 

 called, have in reality been of the later 

 copy. 



While the Jews have scattered all over 

 the world since the captivities and have 

 absorbed much that is foreign, in many 

 instances adapting their religious prac- 

 tices to their new environment, the Sa- 

 maritans have during the same lapse of 

 time lived in the land of their fore- 

 fathers, among Semitic peoples akm to 

 the Hebrews, and because of this fact 

 have handed down to the twentieth cen- 

 tury a glimpse of the old Jewish Church 

 almost in its purity. A notable instance 

 of the survival of an ancient religious 

 ceremony is the celebration of the Pass- 

 over Sacrifice. 



One of the distinctive differences be- 

 tween the Samaritan and the Jew lies in 

 their methods of computing the calendar. 

 Instead of adopting the lunar year solely, 

 the Samaritans base their calculations on 

 the moon but they are at the same time 

 also governed by the movement of the 

 sun. The system is so complicated as 

 to form one of the chief studies of the 

 young priests. Basing their authority on 

 the first chapter of Genesis for thus dif- 

 ferentiating from the Hebrew calendar, 



