418 The Samaritan Pentateuch. 
machinery employed in the Samaritan Pentateuch, to es- 
tablish Gerizim as ¢he favoured temple spot, what its real — 
value was, nevertheless thought the opportunity a good one 
to turn the manuscript into a polemical auxiliary. “See,” 
said they,” the folly of these reformers who rely upon the 
bible, and the bible only, and note what a broken staff after 
all this bible is to lean upon, apart from the traditions of 
the holy Apostolical church.” 
For more than a century the controversy raged, but with 
little profit, since the disputants argued like Polemics, and 
patient criticism was discarded. As late as the first quarter 
in the present century, notwithstanding the eclectic labours 
of Le-clerc and Walton, the opinion perversely maintained 
by Houbigant in favour of the superiority of the Samaritan 
pentateuch, was applauded from several theological chairs 
in Europe. But time, which in the end, arbitrates all dis- 
_ putes, capable of being settled by means of archaic and 
philological research, has dealt with this as with the spurious 
book of Jasher, a bold and impudent forgery of the ninth 
century. An award has at length been pronounced on the 
claims of the Samaritan Pentateuch, against which no can- 
did scholar, of what church soever he be, is likely to appeal. 
Mr. Deutsch, of the British Museum, has recently contri- 
buted to “the dictionary of the bible”* a splendid article 
on the “ Samaritan Pentateuch,” and which we have un- 
hesitatingly placed under contribution to the present article. 
In this article Gesenius, one of the greatest Hebrew scholars 
of modern times, is assigned the first prize for the settle- 
ment of the Samaritan Controversy. “So masterly” says 
Mr. Deutsch “so lucid and clear are his arguments and _ his 
proofs, that there has been and will be no further question 
as to the absence of all value in this (Samaritan) recension 
and its pretended emendations. In fact, a glance at the 
systematic variants, of which Gesenius first bethought him- 
self, is quite sufficient to convince the reader at once that 
they are for the most part, mere blunders, arising from an 
imperfect knowledge of the first elements of grammar and 
exegesis.” 
The criticisms of two renowned modern Jewish scholars, 
Luzzatto of Padua, and Korchheim, the author of “The 
Vineyards of Samaria,’ have tended to the same result. 
They have solved a problem long held incapable of 
solution, whether the Samaritan Pentateuch is copied 
'* “The Dictionary of the Bible.” Edited by Dr. Smith. 
