THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 



211 



amongst the Hebrews could be derived from the Bal)ylonians. The 

 Babylonian letters certainly form 500 or 600 combinations of 

 wedges, eacli standing for a syllal)le or entire word. The 

 Bal)ylonians, for a thousand years, were utter strangers, apparently, 

 to anything like alphabetical writing. I state that to show upon 

 what false grounds that higher criticism, as it is called, rests. 



Mr. H. Sefton Jones. — With reference to the passage from a 

 Targum quoted by the previous speaker, the allusion to the 



Babylonian writing " still used by the " unlearned," this must 

 obviously refer not to the cuneiform scripts but to the 

 Phoenician (early Aramaic) characters commonly in use in 

 Mesopotamia from before the exile onwards. The tablets in the 

 British Museum with the text inscribed in cuneiform, and bearing 

 dockets or titles on the end or edge in these Phcienician characters, 

 were familiar instances of the contemporaneous use of both scripts. 



With regard to the point raised by the interesting paper just 

 read regarding the variations in the text of the Decalogue, a very 

 remarkable variant had recently been published, obtained from a 

 Hebrew papyrus fragment found in Egypt. Mr. Stanley A. Cook, 

 in a short paper on this fragment {Soc. BihUmJ Archrrologi/, 

 November, 1902), pointed out that the order of the Commandments 

 agrees with that quoted by Our Saviour, as recorded in Luke 

 xviii, 20, and not as given in our Old Testament. This interesting 

 point tended to show that too much stress should not be laid upon 

 identical wording. 



Professor Langhorxe Orchard. — I think not this Society, only, 

 hut all Bible students are indebted to the learned authors of the 

 papers which have been brought l)efore us. It is deplorable that the 

 obscurantism of the "higher critics" has so long been successful 

 in ignoring or neglecting the Samaritan Pentateuch. The 

 rejection of evidence which conflicts with a favoured hypothesis is 

 neither scientific nor philosophical. There can be no question, after 

 what we have heard this afternoon, as to the great importance and 

 value of these Samaritan MSS. Any attempt, such as was made 

 loy Gesenius, to destroy their authority, whilst leaving unsettled 

 their age and origin, is doomed to failure. With regard to age 

 and origin the Samaritan Pentateuch appears to have been a copy 

 from the Hebrew original of the Mosaic era. As pointed out by 

 Kennicott, copies were, no doubt, taken for the use of the priests 



