THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 



187 



Will it be said that those from whom they obtained their 

 copy of the Pentateuch made these changes on their own 

 initiative ? Again we ask for an adequate reason for them to 

 have carried it through so successfully and with such unanimity 

 that the translation into the Samaritan dialect follows it closely 

 throughout. We are shut up to Hezekiali's time for the revision. 

 We are no less shut up to the Northern Kingdom for the 

 recension of the Pentateuch which was received. The Samaritan 

 colonists required to know the manner of the God of Northern 

 Israel, not of Judah. That being so, can we believe that those 

 from whom they obtained their Pentateuch gratuitously made 

 these changes ? What could be their motive for such work ? 

 There could be none arising from their own initiative. Why 

 then was it done ? No one can dispute the fact : as men of 

 science we ask the reason. 



Every other reason failing, the real reason and an altogether 

 adequate one was found by me to lie embedded in the appeal 

 of the Samaritan colonists to the Assyrian monarch. They 

 were not likely to have troubled him unnecessarily. Every 

 effort to secure the appeasement of the God of the land, we may 

 be quite sure, was made before the appeal to Caesar. 



From the evidence already mentioned of the revision we 

 know that the Pentateuch existed in the Northern Kingdom. 

 If so, the Samaritans must have been able to procure a copy of 

 some kind. But evidently that copy had not served their 

 purpose. To their mind something must have been omitted or 

 not done rightly, hence the lions were as bad as ever. 



In these circumstances it is certain that if they induced the 

 Assyrian monarch to move at all in their behalf, he would take 

 care that everything would be done to secure authentic teaching, 

 while the after-disappearance of the lions, consequent on the 

 re-occupation of the deserted parts of the devastated country, 

 would set the revised recension of the Pentateuch far above the 

 ancient and authentic one in the estimation of the Samaritans, 

 according to the well-known fallacy of "post hoc ergo yrofter hoc. 

 But had the Assyrian monarch power to effect these changes ? 

 He had Assyrian-Hebrew scholars like Eabshakeh. He could, 

 as we know, get men flayed alive. A twentieth- century critic is 

 quite safe in scoffing at such possibilities. The grim possibility 

 stared the scribes of the Northern Kingdom in the face. We 

 know the gratuitous cruelty of the Assyrian. We know their 

 power to deal with texts. The appointment of Assyrian- 

 Hebrew scholars, then, with full powers to make the unhappy 

 >exile scribes of the Northern Kingdom do their utmost in the 



