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  • From: Polycarp66 AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Samaritan Pentateuch and dating the Hebrew Pentateuch
  • Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 19:57:10 EST


In a message dated 12/18/99 4:41:47 PM Central Daylight Time,
dukerk AT appstate.edu writes:

<<
A recent question about the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) reminded me of a
question that I wanted to post to this group. In various list
discussions on the dating of the composition of the Hebrew Pentateuch
(HP), it is clear that there is a trend to date the HP later and later,
even into the period of Hellenization. In the arguments posted for and
against late dating I don't remember any being advanced from the
perspective of text criticism. As I understand it--again in my limited
way--text criticism (see Waltke, _ABD_) shows that BEFORE the time of
the Chronicler the SP, in comparison to the text type found in the MT,
was modernizing the text. It would seem to me that the presence of a SP
would certainly give us a terminus ad quem for the HP and that a
modernized SP would push the date of the HP back even further. Are
there any text critics who can shed some light on the evidence for
dating the origins of the SP? Any insight into how such evidence
influences our understanding of the date of the HP?
>>

After discussing eight ways in which the SP has been altered from the text
commonly received in its tradition and that of the proto-Masoretic text,
Bruce K. Waltke concludes:

D. Value of the Samaritan Pentateuch

The Sam. Pent. is of little value for establishing original readings. Out of
eighty-five readings where Sanderson thought she could assign preferable
readings involving the MT, LXX, Sam. Pent., and Qm, she found no variants
where the Sam. Pent. uniquely or even with LXX preserves the preferable
reading (1986:85, 88). She found two preferable readings where the Sam. Pent.
agreed with Qm, “both representing small errors on the part of MT”
(1986:58), and four preferable readings where the Sam. Pent., LXX, and Qm
agreed, revealing errors or lapses on the part of MT (1986:75). The chief
textual value of the Sam. Pent. is its indirect witness that MT is “a superb,
disciplined text” (Cross 1964:271).

The Sam. Pent. is of greater interest for literary criticism. First, as Tigay
(1975) noted, the supplemented proto-Samaritan texts and Sam. Pent. give
indirect empirical evidence for the documentary hypothesis. More accurately,
it validates a documentary hypothesis. The phenomenon of sewing formerly
independent documents into a new, unified whole can be observed from the
Gilgamesh Epic through Tatian’s Diatasseron. Before his very eyes the critic
can observe the redactor at work splicing texts together. The resulting work
is not a “crazy patchwork” of sources, as once thought, but a unified whole.
Second, and this has not been previously noted, the modernized Sam. Pent.
along with early Jewish sources suggests that the Pentateuch was begun to be
modernized before the time of the Chronicler, entailing that the archaic
text-type of the Pentateuch preserved in MT must be much older.

Bruce K. Waltke, "Samaritan Pentateuch," Freedman, David Noel, ed., The
Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday) 1997, 1992.

There is an interesting section dealing with certain references in the NT

b. Sam. Pent. and NT. Speakers in the NT depended on a text-type similar to
the Sam. Pent. in several passages. Stephen’s statement that Abraham went to
Canaan after the death of Terah (Acts 7:4), comports with the chronology in
the Sam. Pent. that Terah died at 145 (cf. Gen 11:26; 12:4) and not with the
statement in the MT that he died at 205 (Gen 11:32), 60 years after Abraham
left. In 7:5 Stephen quotes Deut 2:5b using the word kleµronomia, whose
Hebrew equivalent yršh appears only in the Sam. Pent., but not in the MT or
LXX. In that same sermon (7:32) Stephen quotes from the Sam. Pent. of Exod
3:6 and not from the LXX or MT. In v 37 he unexpectedly interpolates a
passage from Deut 18:15 in a way similar to the Sam. Pent. Finally, the
writer of Hebrews (9:3) probably locates with the Sam. Pent. against the MT
and LXX the golden altar of incense behind the veil of the holy of holies.
These agreements between the NT and the Sam. Pent. are best explained as the
use of the proto-Samaritan text-type in some NT literature (Pummer
1976:441–43).

Bruce K. Waltke, "Samaritan Pentateuch," Freedman, David Noel, ed., The
Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday) 1997, 1992.

gfsomsel




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