The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis.

• Author: Vanderkam, James C.
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis. By INGRID HJELM. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, vol. 303; Copenhagen International Seminar, vol. 7. Sheffield: SHEFFIELD ACADEMIC PRESS, 2000. Pp. 318. $85.

Hjelm wrote this monograph in Danish (1996) and then revised and translated it into English. She has divided her presentation into seven chapters. The first offers a description and assessment of research on the Samaritans by modern scholars from J. A. Montgomery to R. J. Coggins, including M. Gaster, A. Alt, H. H. Rowley, G. Holscher, W. F Albright, M. Smith, F. M. Cross, and H. G. Kippenberg. All of these except Coggins she places under the rubric "the Two-Episode Paradigm," that is, scholars who work within the assumption that there were earlier (eighth century [2 Kings 17]) and later (second century [the time of John Hyrcanus]) breaks between Samaritans and Jews. In the second chapter she deals with what she terms "Radical Alternatives": A. D. Crown's thesis that the Jewish-Samaritan schism occurred after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and E. Nodet's hypothesis that the Samaritans were the original Israelites.

With chapter 3 she begins to study the ancient sources. Here she surveys the surviving Samaritan literature: the Samaritan Pentateuch and the various kinds of texts which came later, such as chronicles, halakhic works, and commentaries. The fourth chapter centers on "Samaritans in Jewish, Christian and Hellenistic Literature," while the fifth explores "Samaritans in the Writings of Josephus" (there is a change from the War to the Antiquities, where Josephus writes more negatively about the Samaritan temple and the Samaritans themselves and in a more Jerusalem-centered way). Included is a summary of archeological evidence and reports regarding a Samaritan temple. The survey of ancient sources ends in chapter 6 with an overview of Samaritan historiography. The conclusions are stated in the seventh chapter which is entitled "From Literacy to Historical Reality."

Hjelm places before the reader at least two competing stories, one told in Samaritan, the other in Jewish sources, regarding the identity of and relations between the two communities, their centers, and their understandings of the past, The debates focus on issues such as who broke away from whom, when, and why. Or, when did the Jerusalem-centric view arise in Judaism? Does the surviving evidence leave the modern reader with no choice but to...