THE PENTATEUCH OP THE SAMARITANS. 



169 



my appreciation of the invitation to be present at the lecture of 

 Professor Thomson. Before I proceed in making the few remarks 

 which I deem necessary I should like at once to state that I accept in 

 the main the results arrived at by the Lecturer as far as the antiquity 

 and the independent origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch is concerned. 

 I shall have, of course, to make some reserves, but before doing it, 

 I wish emphatically to express my disagreement with Mr. Wiener's 

 remarks both in tone and substance.* 



We are not discussing here, as Professor Thomson rightly 

 remarked, the character and reliability of the Samaritan Pentateuch, 

 but its antiquity. All scholars are agreed that the text as preserved 

 has undoubtedly been manipulated for sectarian purposes ; and in 

 the Samaritan Literature, of which unfortunately so little is known 

 besides the Pentateuch, we have even a clear indication as to the 

 time when in all probability these changes have been introduced. 

 I say it is unfortunate, for a better knowledge of that Literature 

 would prove of the utmost importance for the exegesis and interpre- 

 tation of the Pentateuch itself, as it represents a somewhat different 

 tradition from that which has been handed down to us, and with which 

 we are more familiar through the Greek, Latin and other Versions. 



It is a pity that Professor Thomson has omitted in his lecture 

 some of the arguments with which he attacked Gesenius' famous 

 thesis, which for close upon a century have decided in the eyes of 

 scholars the character of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and have 

 thus far been the most formidable argument against the assumed 

 independence of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now a fact that, 

 up to that time and until quite recently, our knowledge of that 

 Pentateuch rested solely on the Walton edition, for which only 

 three MSS. had been used, and of these neither the oldest nor the 

 best had been taken as the basis of the edition. It has been a 

 long-standing desideratum to obtain at last a critical edition, and 

 this is happily now being realized. Professor v. Gall has now issued 

 that critical edition, and has used close upon 138 complete and 

 fragmentary MSS. for this monumental work. 



Now this has a direct bearing on the lecture before us. The result 

 of this edition is, that, like the Jewish Massoretic Text, all the 

 Samaritan MSS. go back to one single archetype. We have thus 



* Mr. Wiener's communication, given on pp. 165-167, had already been 

 read. 



M 



