416 The Samaritans and the 
these books from the Samaritan canon in no way proves 
that they were not in existence when that correction was 
made. What it does prove is that there must have been 
some especial object for excluding them, and this object is 
plainly revealed through the fact that the excluded books 
abound in references to Jerusalem as the seat of the 
national temple, whilst the chief aim of the Samaritans was 
to make it appear that the appointed favoured spot had 
been the Mount Gerizim. As far as the assertion goes 
that the Jé7z, or Samaritan Hebrew character is older than 
the n ws or square Hebrew letter in which the Bibles of 
later times have been written, there is no denying the fact. 
But it is an error to suppose that the /évz or Samaritan 
character ceased to be employed after the Babylonian cap- 
tivity. Even Luzzatto, whose theory is that the Jewish 
people saw fit to change the alphabet when the Samaritans 
set up a rival temple in Gerizim, is obliged to admit that 
for a considerable time after Ezra and Nehemiah, and even 
down to a late period of the Maccabees, the Samaritan 
character was in use. All the coins that have come down 
to us from the Maccabean era bear testimony to this fact. 
Prideaux, De Wette, Gesenius, Hengstenburg, and others 
attribute the composition of the work to the schismatic 
Manasseh, which would give it a date about 407 B.C.; 
whilst Frankel, a very high authority, who holds the work 
to be made up out of the Masoretic text and the glosses of 
the Septuagint, would assign to it an age as recent as the 
fifth or sixth century of the present era. Amidst such 
widely opposite opinions every conclusion must be simply 
conjectural. Yet, as the oldest Samaritan manuscript of 
which there is any trustworthy mention does not ascend 
any higher than 4000 A.M., we do not think it unsafe to 
assume that the date of the Samaritan Pentateuch ranges 
between 96 B.c. and 240 A.C. 
It would be superfluous to mention all the changes and 
additions found in the Samaritan Pentateuch. Its writer, 
or more probably its writers, have designedly falsified the 
original text to make it square with the preconceived notion 
that Gerizim is exalted above Moriah, and the Temple of 
Manasseh above that of Jerusalem, To effect this object 
it was needful to find in the Mosaic Pentateuch some espe- 
cial mention of Gerizim as the site of the national temple. — 
This has been done, like the Romish tampering with _— 
Josephus, in a very clumsy manner. Still the forgeries are 
remarkably few. The principal changes are intended— 
