Samaritan Pentateuch. 7 36a 
and he arrives in Jerusalem about 444 B.c. Under his 
vigorous rule, the walls of the city are commenced, and 
although the Samaritans, under their able leader San- 
ballat, ally themselves with the Arabs, the Ammonites, and 
the Philistines, and dispute the right of the Jews to rebuild 
and fortify their city, by an appeal to arms, Nehemiah 
perseveres and succeeds in the end. 
The Samaritans, who had by degrees winnowed their 
ritual from the old heathen leaven, and brought themselves 
to adopt pure Mosaism, felt it a great grievance to be ex- 
cluded from the temple of Jerusalem, whilst they had no 
sanctuary of their own. After a while an event occurred 
which enabled them to set up a rival temple. Manasseh, 
brother of the High Priest Jaddua, had married Nicaso, 
daughter of Sanaballat the Cuthean, in consequence of 
which he was degraded from the priestly house and exiled 
from Jerusalem. Manasseh had powerful friends at the 
Court of Darius Nothus, who granted him a firman to 
build a rival or Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, near 
Sichem. The invasion of Persia by Alexander, and the 
overthrow of Darius, deferred for a time the execution of 
the edict, but Alexander was induced to give it effect, and 
the Samaritans built their temple, and constituted them- 
selves a Mosaic sect. To prevent the possibility of a sub- 
sequent reunion with the Jews, Manasseh made it a chief 
point to differ widely from the Jews on some important 
matters. All the books of the Bible were rejected, except 
the Pentateuch, and a version of Joshua,* and even the 
* This book of Joshua has nothing in common with the book 
of the same name found in the canon of the Old Testament. The 
only manuscript of the Samaritan “Joshua” known to be in 
Europe, is in the national library at Leyden. In 1584 the learned 
Scaliger obtained it from Cairo, and it was published in 1848. It 
has eight chapters of introduction, followed by a pretendedly his- 
torical account of the conquest of Palestine by Joshua, which 
runs on to the fortieth chapter. The next ten chapters give a 
general account of the vicissitudes of the Samaritans under Nebu- 
chadnezzar, Alexander the Great, and the Roman Emperors. It 
contains not even as much as a reference to David, Solomon, or 
the Hebrew prophets. It is supposed that the contents of the 
book have been drawn from four original sources—one Hebrew, 
and three Arabic. One part of the book is considered to have 
been written in the fourteenth century, and the others at the close 
of the fifteenth century. Its language is Arabic, and the origin of 
the book is not Palestinian, but evidently Egyptian. 
