Samaritan Scroll of the Pentateuch [”Torah Shomronit.”]

(SAMARITAN BIBLE).

Nablus

20th century

Manuscript on paper, written in Samaritan (Paleo-Hebrew) script in 156 columns. Scribe: Joseph son of Ab Hasda, High Priest of Nablus.

While traditional Jews maintain twenty-four Biblical books as canonical, Samaritans accept only the first Five Books of Moses. Moreover, there are a tremendous number of textual differences between the Pentateuch utilized within each tradition. Furthermore, Samaritans write their Scrolls in the so-called ‘paleo-Hebrew’ script, one of the earliest versions of the Hebrew alphabet. Paleo-Hebrew was the only way Hebrew was written, by all groups, until the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. Jews then gradually began to adopt Aramaic as a spoken language and adapted its script to Hebrew. By the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, they had abandoned the paleo-Hebrew script entirely, but the Samaritans continued to use it - as they do to this day - for the writing of Hebrew, Aramaic, and eventually even Arabic. See JTS Catalogue, Scripture and Schism-Samaritan and Karaite Treasures from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (2001).