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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Samaritan Pentateuch
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Oferyas
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
Would any kind reader please point me in the direction of either an affordable English translation, or (even better!) an on-line version I could read? The very best treat would be a comparative text alongside the MT versions of the same text.
Sadly my Hebrew isn't up to the real thing, as I was judged too thick to do a degree when I was trained 30 years ago!
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Lysdexia Rolls, KO?
Posts: 1038 | From: La France profonde. | Registered: Aug 2008
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Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
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Posted
To the best of my knowledge, Oferyas, there has never been published a full translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) in English. I looked for one a few years ago and drew a blank, and having just scouted around again after your prompt it doesn't look as though anyone has risked putting one out. I suspect there would not enough interest to warrant the cost of a publication.
I have to rely on the critical apparatus in the likes of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or individual studies, usually published in periodicals. Useful material on the text and its use in textural criticism has been published by Shemaryahu Talmon and Emanuel Tov, both associated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Not much use, I'm afraid, but Abraham Tal's edition of the SP is one of the main reference books for the SP text itself. Tal has also published (in English) A Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic.
Google Books have part of an earlier print, by von Gall.
By way of comparing the SP with the MT, a couple of years ago Mark Shoulson published a comparative study, but again without an English translation of the texts themselves.
None of that really helps, I know, unless someone else can come up with a gem out there.
Was there anything in particular you wanted to look up or compare and that we could perhaps help with here?
Posts: 2256 | From: London, UK | Registered: Apr 2006
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Oferyas
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
Thank you for this.
Not really looking for anything very specific at the moment, but even reading the introduction of Shoulson's book on Amazon makes me wish I'd done Hebrew when I had the opportunity!
Oh well, learn Hebrew: there's another project for my retirement!
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Lysdexia Rolls, KO?
Posts: 1038 | From: La France profonde. | Registered: Aug 2008
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Forgive my ignorance but can one of you give a brief description and history of the SP?
Here's the Wikipedia article on it.
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Posts: 7831 | From: Ashburnham, MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
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Posted
I pulled out a few things in summary here from some notes I made, mt, which might be of assistance...
The present form of the SP reflects the ideology of the Samaritans, e.g., referring to the religious sites at Shechem and Mount Gerizim and avoiding references to Jerusalem. The text type of the SP dates from the time of the Hasmoneans. This had tended to count against the Samaritan claim that their documents (and religion) go back to the earliest time of Israel and that it was the Jews who were the splitters.
With the Qumran and Dead Sea discoveries more generally, though, interest in the SP has taken off. Prior to the finds, the earliest known manuscripts of the SP that had survived the ages dated from the Middle Ages (perhaps 12 century AD?). A group of texts that were similar to the SP were found and these have since been distinguished from the SP itself by calling them 'pre-Samaritan.' These texts do not have the ideological layer added in the SP and demonstrate a greater freedom in approach to the biblical text, compared to the later more meticulous copying feature of the SP manuscripts.
Characteristics of the pre-Samaritan texts include: a tendency to make alterations that harmonised the text so as to remove contradictions; linguistic corrections to smooth out unusual forms; and differences in content when compared with the Masoretic Text (e.g., chronology). These pre-Samaritan texts do not exactly match the SP. They lack the specifically Samaritan readings. Still it is possible that one of these pre-Samaritan texts formed the basis for what we now have as the SP. They also provide another layer of variant readings to take into account when considering the origins of the Hebrew Bible.
Not sure if that helps or just muddies Jacob's Well.
Posts: 2256 | From: London, UK | Registered: Apr 2006
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