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[CBR 3.1 (2004) 9-59]ISSN 1476-993XWHAT DO SAMARITANS AND JEWS HAVE IN COMMON?RECENT TRENDS IN SAMARITAN STUDIESIngrid HjelmThe Carsten Niebuhr Department, University of Copenhagenihj@hum.ku.dkABSTRACTApart from the later period of the Hasmonaean kingdom, Samaritans andJews were always separate peoples who had either Gerizim or Jerusalem astheir main cult place. While Jewish perspectives on Samaritan origin andhistory still prevail in recent research, future research will have to broadenthe perspective and take into consideration Samaritan claims for authenticity in respect to origin, belief and traditions. These claims have recentlybeen substantiated by excavations on Mount Gerizim, which have unearthedstructures of a major Persian Period cult place that may date as early as thesixth century BCE. These finds, as well as finds of about 400 inscriptionsand 13,000 coins, have just begun to be published. The present article presents the most recent development in research on Samaritan history andliterature, in order to offer a base for the necessary rewriting of both Samaritan and Jewish history.IntroductionAs the title indicates, this article does not promise to give a detailed accountof Samaritan studies since the first impact of Samaritan tradition and history on biblical studies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For this,I rather refer to works of Pummer (1976, 1977, 1992), Egger (1986), deRobert (1988), Macuch (1988a, 1991), Noja (1989), Dexinger (1992) andHjelm (2000a). Of the works mentioned, Pummer’s is the most comprehensive, while de Robert, Macuch and Noja concentrate on research onlinguistics and literature, and Egger, Dexinger and Hjelm mainly discussresearch on the origin and early history of the Samaritans. Although 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi)

10Currents in Biblical Research 3.1 (2004)Samaritan studies are still in their infancy, compared to Jewish and biblical research, the field has increased considerably in the last three decades.It is no longer possible to give a comprehensive account, covering allfields of samaritanology, for which the latest updated bibliography (Crown1993) lists 3,653 entries, about 850 titles more than the 2,806 entries listedin the first edition of the book (1984). A third, updated and annotatededition by Crown and Pummer is forthcoming (2005), which will add yetanother thousand entries, making a total of 4,700 entries. The last twodecades have nearly doubled the number of articles and books on Samaritan matters, covering vast areas of research and supplying scholars with anincreased number of tools for textual, linguistic and historical studies. Themain impetus for this increase are, on the one hand, a heightened effort bythe Samaritans themselves—now about 670 people living in polon and onMt. Gerizim—to study and convey the knowledge of their traditions andhistory to the Western scholar; and, on the other hand, the establishment ofthe Société d’Études Samaritaines (henceforth SÉS) in 1985 at the initiative of André Caquot, Jean-Pierre Rothschild, Jean Margain and Guy D.Sixdenier (Macuch 1991: 13).The Samaritan contribution comprises A.B. The Samaritan News, a biweekly newspaper established in 1969 by the brothers Benyamim andYefet b. Ratson Tsedaka, which keeps members of the community andresearchers updated in four languages (Samaritan Hebrew, Hebrew,Arabic and English) with latest news about the community’s life, as wellas scholarly achievements by the foremost researchers in the field ofsamaritanology: articles and congress papers, book reviews, and so on(see B. Tsedaka 1995). In addition to this, the Samaritan Research Institute (the A.-B. Institute of Samaritan Studies in honour of the late Yefetb. Abraham Tsedaka) was established in 1981 in polon for the purposeof supplying scholars with guidance and literary sources from theirlibrary of ancient and modern literature of and on Samaritans, as well asconducting their own research in Samaritan studies, concerning manuscripts, language, genealogy, demography, history, cult, religion, sociallife, art, music, and so on (B. Tsedaka 1995, 2000; Tsedaka and Tsedaka2001). The institute operates a publishing house, the main publications ofwhich are The Samaritan Torah Fully Punctuated According to Samaritan Readings (I. Tsedaka 2000), A Summary of the History of theSamaritan Israelites (B. Tsedaka 2001), prayer books in three volumes,containing ancient prayers, catalogues of the world-wide dispersed Samaritan manuscripts, in addition to films, music, student papers (BA and MA),calendars, cook books, and so on. Still available is Jewish and Samaritan

HJELM What do Samaritans and Jews have in Common?11Versions of the Pentateuch—With Particular Stress on the Differencebetween Both Texts by A.N. Tsedaka and R. Tsedaka (1961–65). Recentaccomplishments by the Samaritans are the websites The Israelite Samaritans (www.mystae.com/samaritans.html), and The Samaritan Update(www.the-samaritans.com).The SÉS was constituted in Paris in 1985 (see Rothschild and Sixdenier1988). The organization has arranged several congresses (Tel Aviv 1988,Oxford 1990, Paris 1992, Milan 1996, Helsinki 2000 [the next meeting isscheduled for Haifa in 2004]). Congress papers have been published exeventu in Tal and Florentin (1991), Crown and Davey (1995) and Morabito,Crown and Davey (2000). Papers from Helsinki 2000 have not yet beenpublished. In addition, the most comprehensive collection of articles,presenting the prevailing views of its time on Samaritan research in thefields of history, literature, language, theology, liturgy, diaspora, and so on,is still Crown’s The Samaritans, which appeared in 1989. The aim of TheSamaritans was not to supply its reader with simple answers, but to stimulate further research and serve as a replacement for the still widely usedbook by Montgomery (1907, reprinted as late as 1968 and still availablethrough Good Books’ Scholarly Reprints). Montgomery’s book, valuablefor its comprehensiveness, does not represent the present state of knowledge of Samaritan matters, and unfortunately presents misleading opinionsabout the kind of ‘sect’ the Samaritans supposedly are. The counterpart toMontgomery’s ‘Jewish’ perspective on Samaritan origin and history,which is based on biblical narratives and Josephus, and relegates Samaritan traditions to a secondary status, is Gaster’s similarly comprehensivebook (1925 [reprinted 1980]), which seeks to harmonize Samaritantraditions about the history of the Samaritans with biblical traditions. Boththese books are indeed useful for understanding the parameters for scholarly research on Samaritanism, but not for their results, most of which arebased on the historicist reading of biblical narratives that dominated OldTestament studies prior to the 1960s.A Hebrew companion to Crown’s The Samaritans is the recent bookedited by Stern and Eshel, Sefer Hashomronim (The Book of the Samaritans [2002]), which consists mainly of thirty-one translated and updated(until 1996) articles published in earlier works. The book is divided intofour parts, dealing with Samaritan history in Assyrian, Babylonian andPersian periods; Samaritans in the Hellenistic period; Samaritans in theRoman and Byzantine periods; and, finally, Samaritans during the MiddleAges and the modern period. The book is offered as a supplement andupdating corrective to the Sefer Hashomronim by ben Zvi, published in

12Currents in Biblical Research 3.1 (2004)1935 with revised editions in 1970 and 1977 (Stern and Eshel 2002: 1).Unfortunately, I did not get the book in time to integrate it with this article. From the table of contents, the book appears to supplement Crown(1989) and Dexinger and Pummer (1992). It is more oriented towardarchaeology and epigraphy (e.g. Ayalon; Barkay; Dar; Eph’al; Eshel andEshel; Magen; Meshorer and Qedar; Naveh; Reich; and Stern) and political conditions (e.g. Kedar; Rabello; Schur; and di Segni) than these books,and seems to be fairly updated with recent achievements in these fields. Asthe majority of authors belong to Israeli scholarship, the book is an important source to the history on Samaritan research among Israeli scholars.Unfortunately, one looks almost in vain for clear bibliographic referencesto sources of the translated and revised articles. The book includesfootnotes and a combined subject and author index, which is a great help,especially as it has no bibliography or English summary.To date, Crown’s The Samaritans (1989), supplemented by the small‘encyclopaedic dictionary’: A Companion to Samaritan Studies edited byCrown, Pummer and Tal (1993); Crown’s A Bibliography of the Samaritans (1984; rev. edn, 1993); Dexinger and Pummer’s Die Samaritaner(1992); and Stern and Eshel’s Sefer Hashomronim (2002), are the basictools with which to enter, but not to stay, in the manifold world of Samaritan studies. This world, once centred on the history, cult and theology ofthe Samaritans, has become far more occupied with manuscripts andlinguistics (Noja 1989), aiming at giving access to the huge collections ofSamaritan biblical and non-biblical manuscripts (Robertson 1938, 1962;Shunnar 1974; Anderson 1977; Shehadeh 1981, 1988, 1991; Rothschild1985, 1989; Crown 2001; Jamgotchian 2001, 2003), held in custody inquite a number of libraries all over the world (cf. ‘The Internet Resourcefor Samaritan Manuscripts and Inscriptions, including Internet websites:www.the-samaritans.com, providing links to updated worldwide collections and catalogues of Hebrew, Aramaic and Samaritan manuscripts).Most of the Samaritan manuscripts date from the tenth century CE onwards,but reflect discussions that are known from other sources to have takenplace in the centuries around the turn of the era. As partakers in thesediscussions, and as witnesses to the textual development of Jewish biblical traditions and manuscripts, most of which likewise date from medieval times, the literary tradition of the Samaritans has far greater importancefor biblical studies than hitherto assumed (Hjelm 2000a; 2004a). Beforestepping into this development, which becomes most apparent in the articles published in the SÉS volumes, we will take a look at what is new inresearch on the ancient history of the Samaritans.

HJELM What do Samaritans and Jews have in Common?13From Montgomery’s ‘Jewish Offshoot’to Gaster’s ‘Samaritan Israelites’The changes in both these fields (samaritanology and biblical studies) reston several new approaches to both the history of the formation of themanuscripts of the Jewish biblical canon, and to theories of the origins ofJews and Samaritans in post-exilic time. These provide little place for abiblical Israel’s common origin from eponymous lines of fathers, leaders,priests and kings in a distant past. This origin tradition, shared by Samaritans and Jews alike in the traditions of the Pentateuch (Samaritan Pentateuch [SP] and the Masoretic Text [MT]), seeks to create a common originrather than to offer historical information. Using that departure, other narratives in the Samaritan chronicles, and the biblical Former Prophets andbook of Chronicles, have been generated to explain the existence of suchdistinct geo-political and religious entities as schisms (Coggins 1975;Kalimi 2000, 2002; Hjelm 2003b, 2004a). These include Samaritan narratives about Eli’s departure from the original cult on Gerizim to Shiloh inAF (.LW E DO 7DU NK by EÔ tO )DW ), chs ix-x, pp. 40-46 (ET Stenhouse1985); Juynboll, Liber Josuae, ch. xliv (1848; ET 1890); Saul and David’schoice of Jerusalem as a cult place (AF, ch. x, pp. 46-47 [ET Stenhouse1985]); and Jeroboam’s establishment of cult places in Samaria and Dan(AF ch. xiv, p. 57 [ET Stenhouse 1985]). Also relevant are biblical narratives about David’s removal of the ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6); thedivision of the Davidic–Solomonic kingdom (1 Kgs 12); the displacementof the Northern Israelites as a result of the Assyrian conquest (2 Kgs 17),with its partial confirmation in the book of Ezra’s return narrative (Ezra 4—counterparts of which are found in the return narratives of the Samaritanchronicles [AF chs xviii-xix, pp. 67-79 (ET Stenhouse 1985)]; B. Tsedaka1991: 193); and quarrel and expulsion narratives about Jerusalemite priests(Neh. 13), most of which have been elaborated in Josephus’s narrativesabout Samaritan origins in Jerusalem, and are held together in a chain ofnarratives in which Josephus presents the Samaritans (called Cuthaeans inJosephus’s biblically related narratives) as apostates (Hjelm 2000a: 192238; 2000b).A theory of a pre-exilic origin of Samaritans as foreigners who adoptedan Israelite-Jewish faith (2 Kgs 17) has been for the most part abandoned.Alternative proposals favour a pre-exilic origin, either as: ‘proto-Samaritans’ (Dexinger 1981; 1992; Mor 1989; Zsengellér 1998); ‘descendantsfrom the ten tribes of Israel’ (Schur 1989: 23); ‘the remnant of Ephraim

14Currents in Biblical Research 3.1 (2004)and Manasseh’ (Talmon 1974; cf. Corinaldi 2000: 2.88; Schur 1995: 28990, based on Eph’al 1991 and Na’aman 1988); ‘true descendants of theB’nay Yisrael’ (i.e. the non-exiled Israelites and Judaeans; Crown 1995);or a Persian-Hellenistic origin as dissident priests (Kippenberg 1971: 5759; Böhm 1999: 63-64). An idea still taken seriously is that of a schism ineither Persian or Hellenistic times, followed by a final split, from whichthe Samaritans arose as a distinct ‘Jewish sect’ (Dexinger 1995) in thesecond-first century BCE, as a result either of the replacement of theZadokite priesthood in Jerusalem by the Hasmonaeans (Kippenberg 1971:92-93; Dexinger 1981; Böhm 1999: 84), or of the alleged destruction ofthe Samaritan temple on Gerizim by John Hyrcanus and the production ofthe SP (Dexinger 1992: 136; Purvis 1968, 1981: ‘an ironic anomaly—ananti-Jewish sect’; and Mor 1989: 18: ‘a sect outside Judaism’).Although this ‘two-episode paradigm’ (Hjelm 2000a: 30) of a first anda second split had been severely criticized by Coggins as early as 1975,Cross’s reassessment of Josephus’s Alexander legend about the buildingof the Samaritan temple in the course of the Persian-Greek transition(Cross 1966, 1969, 1975) won the day, in spite of its obvious shortcomings (Widengren 1977: 507-509; Grabbe 1987; Williamson 1978, 1992;Hjelm 2000a: 43-45). Where one might have expected a revision of the‘evidence’ from the Bible and from Josephus in light of new material(Samaria Papyri), Cross smooths away the contradictions introduced bythis material in even more fanciful reconstructions of five generations ofSanballats, created on the basis of the sons of Sanballat mentioned in theElephantine and Samaria Papyri, and a hypothesis of two sons of Judaeanhigh priests, carrying the name of Yojada/Yaddua, who marry two daughters of Sanballats (Cross 1975: 6-7). The primary purpose of Cross’s listis not to establish the house of Sanballat as governors of Samaria in thePersian period, but to create evidence for the historicity of Neh. 13.28 andJos. Ant. 11.302-303, both of which tell different stories about the marriage of a son (Neh. 13.28) or a brother (Jos. Ant. 11.302-303, 322) of theJudaean high priest Yojada/Yaddua with a daughter of Sanballat. Neitherof them tells both stories and neither offers evidence of the succession ofthe Sanballats. Josephus, in fact, simply ‘transferred’ the name Sanballatto his Alexander legend and did not use it for his Nehemiah narratives inAnt. 11.159-83 [174-83] (Hjelm 2000a: 43). Unfortunately, such a tendency of harmonization still encourages scholars to write SamaritanJewish history by adding ‘evidence’ to their paraphrase of Josephus, ratherthan being skeptical about his goals and accuracy (Hjelm 2000a: 200-206,227).

HJELM What do Samaritans and Jews have in Common?15While the classical ‘two-episode paradigm’ is based on theory of cultcentralization and a biblically based Judaism as early as the sixth-fifth century BCE (Hjelm 2000a: 45), this has generally been abandoned in favourof a development of Samaritanism from Judaism’s formative period, fromthe third century BCE onwards. In Coggins’s opinion, the context for thisdevelopment was, for Samaritanism, similar to what it had been for otherfactions and currents within Judaism: disagreements over cult, belief andsociety, which resulted in the formation of Jewish communities outside ofJerusalem: Qumran, Leontopolis, Elephantine, Araq-el-Emir, and so on.The Deuteronomistic cult centralization probably was practised in a lessrestricted manner than had been assumed earlier, and final breaks did notoccur until centuries later (Coggins 1975: 163, based on Smith 1971).Against this background, the term ‘schism’ has been misleading, presuming both an earlier unity, and an orthodox norm, neither of which waspresent in Judaism until the Christian era (Coggins 1975: 163, with ref.to Ackroyd 1970). Assuming a closure of the composition of most of thebooks of the Tanak before 250 BCE, Coggins concludes thatthere is no reference to the Samaritans in the Hebrew Old Testament. Someof the allusions in the work of the Chronicler may point to a situation,which would later develop into Judaeo-Samaritan hostility, but that is themost that can be said. (1975: 163; re-asserted 1993)One effect of Coggins’s conclusion was a growing interest in Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, DSS and other writings from at least the third centuryBCE until well into early rabbinic times as sources for understandingSamaritan-Judaean relationships. It is only in the last decade of scholarship that increased studies in DSS have reminded us that the Jewish canonization of scripture and text belongs to the Common Era. In the formative periods of these texts, the Samaritans were as much part of Palestine’sintellectual milieu as were other religious and political groups (Crown1989; Schur 1989: 39-56, 1995: 289; Nodet 1992, 1997 [see below];Hjelm 2004a). Neither Samaritan ‘narrowing of the Samaritan community’from, first, all Israel to the ten tribes, and second, the ten tribes to the tribesof Ephraim and Manasseh, nor Josephus’s attribution of his post-722 BCEpopulation of the Assyrian province of Samaria to his Kuthaean nation onGerizim, reflects pre-fifth century CE reality. For both, the decimation isbased, on the one hand, on a biblical remnant theology, and, on the otherhand, on a pars pro toto pattern, in which the cult place and ethnic andreligious exclusivity are made the foci of the overall dispute (Hjelm 2000a:254; 2003a).

16Currents in Biblical Research 3.1 (2004)Coggins’s position of a schism in the first-third century CE has beentaken up by Dexinger (1981), Schiffman (1985), Crown (1991), and Grabbe(1993). Dexinger (1992) instead places this event in

JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, . SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series SNTU Studien zum Neuen Testament und sei