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THE BIBLE CANON : M. M. NINAN<br />
Yitzhaq ben Amram ben Shalma ben Tabia, the High Priest of the Samaritans,<br />
Nablus, c. 1920. Interior of the Samaritan Synagogue.<br />
Samaritans believe that God authored their Pentateuch and gave Moses the first copy along<br />
with the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments. They believe their copies preserve<br />
this divinely composed text uncorrupted to the present day. Samaritans commonly refer to<br />
their Pentateuch as קושטה ("The Truth"). They trace their descent via the northern Kingdom<br />
of Israel, which had parted ways with the southern Kingdom of Judah after the death of<br />
King Solomon (see 1 Kings 12). Jews have traditionally connected their origin with the later<br />
events described in 2 Kings 17:24-41.<br />
Modern scholarship connects the formation of the Samaritan community and their<br />
Pentateuch as a distinctive sectarian textual tradition with events which followed the<br />
Babylonian Captivity. According to The Interpreter's <strong>Bible</strong> (Volume 1),<br />
The usual assumption is that it was made somewhere around 432 B.C., when<br />
Manasseh, the son-in-law of Sanballat, went off to found a community in Samaria, as<br />
related in Neh. 13:28 and Josephus Antiquities XI.7.2; 8.2. Josephus himself,<br />
however, dates this event in the days of Alexander the Great,<br />
Samaritan alphabet is derived from the paleo-Hebrew alphabet used by the Israelite<br />
community prior to the Babylonian captivity. Afterwards Jews adopted a script based on the<br />
Aramaic alphabet that developed into the Hebrew alphabet<br />
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