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MOSES AS KING and PROPHET in SAMARITAN SOURCES Importance of the Samaritan Sources the Figure of Moses Dominates Samaritan Relig

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MOSES AS KING and PROPHET in SAMARITAN SOURCES Importance of the Samaritan Sources the Figure of Moses Dominates Samaritan Relig CHAPTER FIVE MOSES AS KING AND PROPHET IN SAMARITAN SOURCES INTRODUCTION Importance of the Samaritan sources The figure of Moses dominates Samaritan religious literature to an extent scarcely equalled in any circle of Jewish tradition, with the possible exception of Philo. For this reason alone the Samaritan sources demand attention in the present investigation, but their significance is heightened by the fact that the Samaritan traditions, while springing from scriptural roots in large part common also to Judaism and shaped by many of the same environmental influences in Greco-Roman Palestine, yet developed in a distinct line little influenced, if at all, by the consolidation of "normative" Judaism. Furthermore, the eschatology of the Samaritans was certainly not Davidic,1 a point of considerable importance in view of the absence of the Davidic traditions from the christology of the Fourth Gospel. John Macdonald, who has attempted a systematic theology of Samaritanism, declares, "Any claim for Samaritan borrowing from Judaism is nonsense."2 James A. Montgomery, nearly sixty years earlier, assumed the opposite position: "No intellectual inde­ pendence is to be found in our sect; it was content to draw its teachings and stimulus from the Jews, even long after the rupture was final."3 Against the latter view, Macdonald's reaction is perhaps justified, but the Samaritans and Jews were hardly so isolated from each other as he assumes. Both Montgomery and, recently, John Bowman have shown from the references in the Talmud that in the 1 This point is illustrated by Hegisippus' list of the "sects" among "the circumcision" who opposed "the tribe of Judah and the Messiah, as follows: Essenes, Galileans, Hemerobaptists, Masbothei, Samaritans, Sadducees, and Pharisees" (apud Eusebius, HE, IV, xxii, 6, trans. Kirsopp Lake [Loeb], I, 377, emphasis mine). 2 John Macdonald, The Theology of the Samaritans ("The New Testament Library"; London: SCM Press Ltd., 1964) [hereafter cited as Theology], p. 29, cf. p. 452. 3 The Samaritans: The Earliest Jewish Sect; Their History, Theology, and Literature (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co., 1907), p. 205. MOSES AS KING AND PROPHET IN SAMARITAN SOURCES 217 age of the Tannaim "in those places where both sects were found there existed very intimate intercourse between them in many most important matters of life."1 Adalbert Merx,2 Moses Gaster,3 and John Bowman4 have all collected parallels, some of them quite striking, between Rabbinic and Samaritan haggadot. Evidently the developing lines of Samaritan and Jewish traditions had more points of contact than the "common matrix" of Torah and pre-exilic tra­ ditions emphasized by Macdonald.5 For present purposes interest lies only in certain specific features of the Samaritan tradition about Moses and about the eschatological redeemer. Where these coincide with certain Jewish traditions, often in such a way that Jewish and Samaritan versions help to explain one another, there is no reason a priori to exclude historical interaction. The situation in Samaritan studies Samaritan studies are still in their infancy, even on the basic levels of textual criticism and philology. A lexicon of Samaritan Aramaic is still wanting, and no comprehensive study of the dialect's grammar has been attempted since Petermann's brief and not very satisfactory work of I873.6 For many years after European scholars first made contact with modern Samaritans research depended upon letters from the Samaritans and impressions gathered by visits to Samaritan villages. 7 The collection and critical evaluation of manu­ scripts have proceeded slowly, and even today very much remains to be done. Macdonald's critical edition of the Memar Marqah, 1 Ibid., p. 174, cf. John Bowman, B]RL, 40, 298. 2 Der Messias oder Ta'eb der Samaritaner (BZAW, XVII; 1909) [hereafter cited as Ta'eb], 92 pp. 3 The Samaritan Oral Law and Ancient Traditions, Vol. I: The Samaritan Eschatology ([London:] The Search Publishing Company, 1932), 277 pp. [hereafter referred to as Eschatology]; The Asatir; The Samaritan Book of the "Secrets of Moses"; Together with the Pitron or Samaritan Commentary and the Samaritan Story of the Death of Moses ("Oriental Translation Fund," n.s., XXVI; London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1957), 352+ 59 pp. (henceforth: Asatir). 4 "The Exegesis of the Pentateuch among the Samaritans and among the Rabbis," Oudtestamentische Studien, ed. P. A. H. DeBoer, vol. VIII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1950), pp. 230-262. s Macdonald, Theology, p. 29. 6 Cf. Franz Rosenthal, Die aramiiische Forschung seit Th. Noldeke's Ver­ offentlichungen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1939), pp. 133-143, especially p. 137: "Grammatik und Lexikon bleiben aber hier dringlichste Desiderate ... " 7 Cf. Montgomery, pp. 1-12. .
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