THE SAMARITAN PEJ^TATEUCH. 



209 



to the author of the paper, that as a final and satisfactory 

 Argumentum ad hominem the " short and easy method " of the 

 higher critics," so called, of the Samaritan Pentateuch, fails. 

 There is no such perspicuous evidence as would rebut the possibility 

 that, if the Pentateuch did arise, as Wellhausen and Kueuen say it 

 arose, the Samaritans might not have adopted it in the Hebrew form 

 which it eventually reached. Hengstenberg himself shows that the 

 Samaritans were heathens, with little, if any Israelitish 1)lood ; that 

 they are, and were, constitutionally, liars ; and that there is evidence 

 of the percolation of both Hebrew and freethinking, if not Alex- 

 andrian ideas amongst them. The Samaritan character in which the 

 Pentateuch is written is not, in itself, a decisive proof of age, for 

 it was probably used by those whom the Talmud calls idiotic, long 

 after the Babylonian script came into fashion with the correct 

 Hebrews. 



Yet, secondly, for all that, the subject is of great interest, and I 

 cannot help feeling that there is something at the bottom of it. 

 After all that has been said by prejudiced and unprejudiced 

 witnesses there remains the impression that at bottom ])oth in the 

 Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX version, an independent text 

 and an old text underlie them, though to reach it seems a matter of 

 much difficulty. The subject is complicated in the Samaritan 

 Pentateuch by two considerations : (1) In 2,000 places the 

 Samaritan agrees, it is said, with the LXX. That has been investi- 

 gated by some gentleman and he puts it down as 2,000. 



The Author. — It agrees with the Septuagint in 1,000 and 1,000 

 in the Hebrew. 



Eev. F. E. Spencer (continuing). — !Pardon me, I think this 

 gentleman says it is 2,000 ; but against this are set a considerable 

 number of divergences — " Quite as often disagree," says Deutsch. 

 Of these divergences and agreements no satisfactory explanation 

 has been made. (2) The Samaritan text has clearly been modernised 

 and made smoother. It has a considerable number of euphemisms, 

 toning down, as they thought, the coarseness of the original. It 

 has a certain amount of alterations in a doctrinal interest, softening- 

 supposed anthropomorphisms and introducing the ministry of 

 angels, as well as the well-known alteration of Ebal in Deut. xxvii, 

 to " Gerizmi and God has chosen, for God will choose. " But that 

 there is an underlying independent ancient text seems probable by 



