[b-hebrew] Samaritans

Gabe Eisenstein gabe at cascadeaccess.com
Sat Jan 31 14:38:42 EST 2009


This post addresses issues that have come up in three recent threads:

1. The assertion that the northern Israelites were all exiled in 722 
BC,"never to return", and that the Yahwism of Samaria was a re-creation 
rather than direct inheritance.
2. The argument over whether Jerusalem was devoid of all humans and 
livestock for 70 years.
3. The idea that the Biblical text was fixed by 300 or 200 BC.

All three assertions are belied by the reality of the Samaritans, who 
are the actual descendants of the northern Israelites, and who preserve 
an ancient Torah text that differs from the Masoretic. There is by now a 
large body of scholarship (and DNA evidence!) authenticating the basic 
claims of the Samaritans as against the Jews.

With regard to both (1) and (2) we need to appreciate  the ancient 
practice of hyperbole with regard to claims of annihilation. Assyrian 
monuments often speak of  the same enemy being annihilated ... 
repeatedly on multiple occasions! The same hyperbole is used by Biblical 
writers with regard to both Israel  and Judah. We know that Israel was 
not completely evacuated in 722 because
a) The Assyrian records indicate the deportation of 27,000 Israelites, 
whereas archaeology shows that the population was about 300,000. (In any 
case the Assyrian practice was to deport the elite classes only, 
anything else being logistically infeasible.)
b) The Bible reports subsequent dealings between Jerusalemites and 
northern Yahwists, in which the former regard the latter as true Israelites.
Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the same hyperbole was applied 
with regard to Judah, and that many Yahwists remained there in the 6th 
century. (The hyperbole may also be influenced by conflicts between 
Babylonian returnees and the peasantry that Ezra wanted to exclude from 
the new community.)
(And by the way, the "never to return" bit about the Israelites is also 
Biblically incorrect, since Jeremiah and Ezekiel assure us that Judah 
and Israel will be reunited.)

With regard to (3): As George Athas has implied, the scholarly textual 
studies (by Tov and others) find multiple families of text-types 
existing in the period from 200 BC to 100 AD -- one of these being the 
Samaritan Torah. It has both similarities and differences with the other 
families (DSS, LXX, Masoretic Text, Targums). When it agrees with other 
sources but not MT, there are often good reasons to prefer its reading. 
(On the other hand there is a layer of the Samaritan Torah that contains 
ideological emendations which are surely late.)
(And on a side note, the assertion of fixity by 200 BC also ignores the 
fact that the Talmud contains many Torah variants indicating that they 
did not have our MT.)
One implication of Tov's work is that the proto-MT was probably brought 
to Jerusalem from Babylonia around the time of Hillel, and that the 
Samaritan version is closer to what had been the dominant text-type in 
the previous period.


Gabe Eisenstein




More information about the b-hebrew mailing list