THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. 



171 



I have left myself no room to speak of the paper which has been 

 read. But you have all of you heard it. What I do not quite 

 agree with I have criticized. The rest is so excellent that it need 

 no panegyric from me. From p. 145 to the end Dr. Thomson's 

 criticism of the critics is withering. And the members of the 

 Institute as a body will heartily endorse the last six lines, in which 

 those pages are summed up. 



The Eev. A. H. Finn writes : — With the general trend of 

 Dr. Thomson's able paper, and especially with the conclusion at 

 which he arrives on p. 158, I can most heartily agree, but there are 

 some details in the argument which I am unable to accept. 



P. 144 : " For these reasons we assume the claim of the Samaritans 

 to be genuine Israelites to be valid." 



Dr. Thomson sets out very clearly the evidence which seems to 

 indicate that at the deportation of the northern tribes some 

 Israelites were left in the land, but that the present Samaritans 

 are the descendants of these, without any admixture, seems to me 

 very doubtful. It is true that Zerubbabel (Ezra iv, 3) does not 

 reject those who wanted to help in the rebuilding of the Temple 

 on the ground that they were not Israelites, but that is only because 

 they had made no such claim. They had merely asserted "we do 

 seek your God as ye do ; and we do sacrifice unto Him since the days 

 of Esar-haddon, King of Assyria, which brought us up hither " (Ezra 

 iv, 2). In other words, they identify themselves with the Assyrian 

 colonists of 2 Kings, xvii, 24, and it is inconceivable that Israelites 

 would have done this. Nor is it quite accurate to assert that 

 Zerubbabel rejected their help " on the ground alone that only 

 to the Jews was the permission granted." All he says is "we our- 

 selves together will build ... as Cyrus, King of Persia, hath 

 commanded us " ; that is, their building was in accordance 

 with and authorized by Cyrus' command, but it does not assert 

 that the command was issued " only to us to the exclusion of all 

 others." 



Again, the letter of Ezra iv, 7-16, clearly emanated from the 

 colonists whom the " noble Osnapper brought over." There is 

 every probability that the Sanballat who allied himself with 

 Ammonites, Arabians, and Ashdodites to oppose Nehemiah (Neh. iv, 

 7, 8) was similarly of Assyrian descent and not an Israelite, and it 



