618th ordinary GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, S.W., on MONDAY, APRIL 12th, 1920 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



Dr. T. G. Pinches, M.R.A.S.. ix the Chaie. 



The Minutes of the previous meeting were read, confirmed and signed. 



The Hon. Secretary announced the Election of the following Members 

 and Associates : — Members : Miss Pelham-Burn, William P. Annear, Esq., 

 F.C.LS., Alexander Ross, Esq., Colonel W. Sidebottom, J.P., Lieut.-Col. 

 F. A. Molony, O.B.E., and J. Norman Holmes, Esq. Associates : Lieut.- 

 Col. Arthur Ford-Moore, Frederick J. Bramall, Esq., Robert McCormack, 

 Esq., the Rev. Ivo F. H. Carr-Gregg, and the Rev. George B. Macgarr. 



The Chairman then called on the Rev. J. E. H. Thomson, M.A., D.D., 

 to read his paper on " The Samaritan Pentateuch." He requested his 

 friend the Rev. Donald Ross, Stratford, to read it for him as his voice was 

 weakened with bronchial catarrh, which Mr. Ross accordingly did. 



THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS : WHEN 

 THE! GOT IT, AND WHENCE. By the Rev. J. E. H. 

 Thomson, M.A., D.D. 



WHO are the Samaritans ? At the present time in an 

 obscm-e quarter of the city of Xablus there are 

 collected together in mean dwellings some 150 souls 

 who claim to be Samaritans — the descendants of the EjDhraimite 

 Tribes of Israel. As late as the first half of the seventeenth 

 century there were wealthy communities of Samaritans all over 

 Syria and Egypt. These, however, have all disappeared save this 

 one diminishing, poverty-stricken group. Are they then what they 

 claim to be, genuine Israelites ? The orthodox Jewish opinion 

 is that this claim is false ; it is maintained that they are the 

 descendants of the Mesopotamian colonists sent by the successive 

 Sargonid Princes of Nineveh to supply the place of the deported 

 Israelites. Many Christians agree with them in this opinion. 

 It is maintained that it is supported by 2 Kings xvii. A\Tien 

 this chapter is carefully read it will be found that the e\adence 

 it gives in support of this conclusion is not so clear nor undubit- 

 able as is thought. Although deportation is asserted, there is 

 nothing said about its being total. All that is asserted is that 

 " God rejected all the seed of Israel until He had cast them out 

 of His sight " (1 Kings xvii, 20) ; this refers rather to spiritual 



