Pentateuch, Leviticus, in Samaritan, manuscript on vellum [Near East (Levantine coast, perhaps Egypt), probably late twelfth century]

provenance

Maggs, cat.1073 (1987), no.3; Schøyen MS 201.

text

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the Neanderthal of Biblical fossils. The Samaritans claim that they are descendants of the northern Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who split from the other tribes to establish a tabernacle on Mount Gerizim separate from that established by Moses in the desert. Certainly, there was a temple on Gerizim to rival that in Jerusalem from c.330 BC at least. Samaritan scriptures comprise only the Pentateuch, which may suggest divergence at a very early date. The text differs in many places from the Masoretic version, often preserving demonstrably more primitive readings. It was used by Origen (Hexapla ad Num.13:1), Eusebius of Caesarea (Chronicon) and Jerome in his translation of the Vulgate. It was long suspected that the Samaritan Pentateuch might be the most ancient of biblical writings, and European interest in the text was re-kindled from the late sixteenth century. This interest burned brightly through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when European travellers brought back books or fragments of them as Biblical curiosities.

The present leaves comprise Leviticus 13:56 to15:15. Alan Crown (1932-2010) identified the scribe as Ab Hasta, son of Ab Nefuscha, who names himself in the colophon of Bodleian, Or.699, dated 1189, and whose hand also occurs in BnF. Sam.3 and Istanbul, Topkapi Museum G.i.101 (Crown, Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts, 2001, pp.50 and 392), putting this among the earliest extant witnesses to the text. The oldest Samaritan codex is Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1846, dating to c.1149, and the earliest scroll is the Abisha scroll at Nablus, parts of which date to the eleventh century.