Text family

The Samaritan Pentateuch

Also known as Samaritan Torah · SP

hebrew-bibleold-testamenttorahsamaritans

Summary

The first five books, kept by a community that split from Judaism long ago, in their own alphabet — and differing from the Jewish text in thousands of places.

Copied Oldest surviving manuscripts: c. eleventh to thirteenth century AD. The text tradition behind them is far older..
Written in hebrew on parchment.
Kept at The Samaritan community at Nablus; further manuscripts in libraries worldwide.
Contains Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.
Named in 1 of the places your Bible carries a footnote.

A close view of a Torah scroll written in the angular Samaritan alphabet — A detail of the Samaritan community's oldest scroll at Nablus: Library of Congress, public domain

Sources (3)

"The Samaritan and Jewish Versions of the Pentateuch: A Survey", Religions 11, no. 2 (2020): 85 · accessed 2026-08-06Peer-reviewed and open access.
"The Abisha Scroll — 3,000 Years Old?", Biblical Archaeology Review · accessed 2026-08-06The scholarly assessment of the community's traditional dating.
Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Fortress Press, 2012) · accessed 2026-08-06The standard handbook of Hebrew Bible textual criticism.

What it is

The Samaritans keep only the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy, and they write it in Samaritan script, a development of the old palaeo-Hebrew letters rather than the square Hebrew alphabet.

It differs from the Masoretic text in roughly six thousand places. Most are spelling. Some are substantial — including an extra commandment about the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, which is where the community's own worship stands.

Two dates must be kept apart. The text tradition is ancient and is a genuinely important independent witness; the surviving copies are medieval, from about the eleventh to the thirteenth century.

The scroll kept at Nablus, the Abisha Scroll, carries a note presenting itself as written by Aaron's great-grandson in the thirteenth year after Israel entered Canaan — roughly three thousand years ago. That is what the Samaritan community holds, and it is reported here as such. Scholarship has not substantiated it; the scroll's own scribal notation points to AD 1065, and assessments of the surviving material run across the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

The family at a glance

Date: Oldest surviving manuscripts: c. eleventh to thirteenth century AD. The text tradition behind them is far older.
Language: Hebrew
Made at: Preserved continuously by the Samaritan community
Contains: Genesis · Exodus · Leviticus · Numbers · Deuteronomy

Why it matters

A second, independent line of the Torah, copied by people who were not Jews and had no reason to match the Jewish text. Where it agrees with the Masoretic text — which is nearly everywhere that matters — that agreement is worth something precisely because the two communities were rivals.

Where this witness is read

The words used here: Masoretic Text

Masoretic Text: the Hebrew Bible copied and pointed by Jewish scribes, the text the KJV and the ASV translate.

The KJV and the ASV translate the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Where The Samaritan Pentateuch reads differently, the footnote in your Bible is pointing here.

1 John 5:7-8The Three Heavenly Witnesses
What The Samaritan Pentateuch reads
Latin writers, beginning in Spain and North Africa (4th century onward).Where the passage first surfaces. The earliest clear quotation of it as Scripture is in the Liber Apologeticus, a work of the late fourth century associated with Priscillian of Ávila or a follower.

Where the manuscripts differ, all 15 places →Every handwritten copy, shelved and in date order →