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REV. J. E. H. THOMSON, M.A., D.D., ON 



days of Ahab, about 850 B.C. There are some confusions wLicli 

 seem to be explicable on the idea that the script in use was the 

 earlier form of the angular which is found on a fragment of a 

 bronze dish, which probably is a century older. If this is so, we 

 are back at the time of the division of the kingdom. This 

 implies that the two streams of copying and copyists continued 

 parallel but separate from the days of Solomon. 



On a similar line a peculiarity of the Samaritan script has to 

 be pointed out. The student of Samaritan recognizes at once a 

 clear difference in the mode in which the Samaritan codices are 

 written from that in which ordinary Hebrew manuscripts are. 

 In the Samaritan each word is separated from that which follows 

 by a dot. This peculiarity is seen in the Siloam inscription, 

 and in that on the stela of Mesha. In the inscriptions on the 

 sarcophagi of Ashmunazar and of his father Tabnith the place 

 of the dot is taken by a small character like the letter zain. 

 No device of this kind is found in the Assouan papyri, nor on the 

 Maccabgean coins. Nor is it found in the inscriptions on Jewish 

 tombs of the second century. On the other hand, in all the 

 Samaritan inscriptions, from the earliest, the words are separated, 

 not as in MSS. by a single dot like a period, but by two dots 

 arranged like a colon. 



To estimate the meaning of what has just been said the cir- 

 cumstances must be considered. Let it be supposed that, unlikely 

 as it is, the Samaritans have been so impressed by Manasseh, 

 and by the superiority of the ritual which he has introduced, 

 that they adopted the completed Torah which he has brought from 

 Jerusalem : would not this tend to make everything about the 

 newly-received sacred writing in a sort sacred too ? One would 

 expect that every trick of writing, every peculiarity of spelling, 

 in fact, as the Massoretes, with the copy of the Torah which for 

 some reason they took as their model, even the very blunders of 

 the sacred text, would be carefully reproduced, and mystical 

 reasons found for them. But this is not the case. In fact, it 

 is with Deutsch represented as if it were a reproach to it that 

 the Samaritan Torah has no suspended letters, no majuscules or 

 minuscules. As we have said above, the two streams of manuscript 

 descent have kept quite distinct. 



Having considered the differences which distinguish the writing 

 of the Samaritans from that of the Jews, and made deductions 

 from them as to the date of the separation of the two recensions, 

 a difference of another kind claims attention. The Samaritans 



