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1. The opening sentence of the Introduction states the aim of the book: to redress the historical injustice that sees the Samaritan religion as a degraded form of Judaism, while in reality, the Samaritans, up to this day centered on Mt. Gerizim, are the direct heirs of the ancient Israelites.

2. The origin and development of Samaritanism and Judaism is a problem-area that has occupied Étienne Nodet for a long time, as some of his other publications show.[2] In this book he aims to show that, despite the meager documentary evidence, the Samaritans have been in Palestine since time immemorial; they have an uninterrupted chain of high priests up to this day; their diaspora was small and their customs are rooted in the Pentateuch. Judaism, on the other hand, was formed in the exile after the mythical era of the kings. It has undergone a long and very complex process of reform lasting to the Hasmonean period. Samaritanism can therefore not be derivative of Judaism. This is the position of the Samaritans, but only a small number of modern authors admit that they are partially right. However, the archaeological excavations on Mt. Gerizim have reopened the question of Samaritan origins. But even so, according to Nodet, the majority opinion is still that Samaritanism is an inferior form of Judaism. As opposed to other scholars who have written on the question of the origin of the Samaritans, Nodet writes on the origin of Judaism.

3. The first chapter, “Preliminaries. The Importance of the Samaritans”, discusses the importance of the Samaritans according to the Samaritan traditions and the works of Flavius Josephus, comparing and contrasting Josephus’ narratives about Joshua with those known from the Masoretic Bible and the Samaritan Book of Joshua, the accounts of Ezra and Nehemiah, and that of the Maccabees. This is followed by an analysis of the New Testament passages that concern the Samaritans, i.e., the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John.

4. The “Period of the Monarchy” is the title of the second chapter. The author warns the reader that it will yield very little that sheds light on the Samaritans. And this despite the fact that the Pentateuch, beginning with Abraham, assigns an important place to Shechem but ignores Jerusalem. The only two allusions to the Samaritans in the Bible are in 2 Kings 17 and in Ezra-Nehemiah.

5. Chapter three is entitled “The Shock of the Maccabean Crisis.” In the subsection on the Maccabean crisis and the Samaritans, immediately preceding the Conclusion of chapter three, Nodet discusses the difficult passage in Josephus about the Samaritans’ statement to be Sidonians by origin whose forefathers adopted the custom of the Sabbath and erected a temple without a name on Mt. Gerizim where they offered the appropriate sacrifices (Ant. 12:258-259). He points out that the term Sidonians is equivalent to the designation Phoenicians which corresponds to the Greek for Canaanites. The connection with antiquity is to be seen in the biblical genealogies where Sidon is said to be the father of Canaan (Gen. 10:15). Contrary to other attempts at an explanation of this statement, Nodet interprets the passage thus: the Samaritans affirm that they have lived here for a very long time in contrast to the revolting Jews who are newcomers originating from Babylon. According to Josephus, the Samaritans/Sidonians state that they are different from the Jews in race and in custom (Ant. 12:261). As far as the rededication of the anonymous temple to Zeus is concerned, Nodet points out that it is a very small concession made by the Samaritans. It is not an act of voluntary Hellenization but a simple indication of good will towards Antiochus IV who was a great devotee of Zeus. Other ancient sources present a similar picture and the excavations on Mt. Gerizim have not found any signs of syncretism in the Yahwistic sanctuary.

In the conclusion to this chapter, the author points out that before the Maccabean time there are signs of harmony among all Israelites whereas the Maccabean crisis signifies a major change in several respects. The Gerizim temple was perceived, even without any hostile actions, as a threat to Jerusalem, and John Hyrcanus made sure that it was destroyed. In conclusion to this section, the author notes that the old religious divide between Israel and Judah must not only have been infinitely small but it is also inexplicable.

6. Chapter four, “The Persian Period”, discusses in detail Josephus’ narrative about Alexander the Great and the Samaritans as well as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Josephus’ account of the marriage of the high priest’s brother, Manasses, to Nikaso, daughter of Sanballat, Samaritan satrap of Samaria and seemingly also high priest without a temple, further the demand of the elders of Jerusalem to divorce Nikaso, and finally Sanballat’s intention to build a temple on Mt. Gerizim (Ant. 11:302-312), must be compared with Nehemiah 13 which Josephus did not know. With the fictitious visit of Alexander to Jerusalem and the description of the marriages to foreign wives, Josephus wanted to emphasize the glory of Jerusalem and the contempt for the Samaritans. In reality, Alexander did not know anything about the Samaritans. The building of the temple is therefore to be seen in connection with Sanballat rather than with Alexander. Although Josephus calls the Samaritans in this pericope Hebrews but not Jews, it remains unclear in what way the two groups differ from each other. The existence of two temples does not mean that there are two different kinds of Yahwism. Josephus uses the terms Jews, Israelites and Hebrews indiscriminately.

7. Chapter five is entitled “Pause”. The first part summarizes the conclusions: 1. The split between Samaritans and Jews was accomplished in the time of the New Testament. 2. Contrary to what 2 Kings 17 insinuates about the origin of the Samaritans as syncretists, the Assyrian colonists were not pagans, but they mixed with the surviving ancient Israelites to such a degree that eventually they became indistinguishable from them. Nevertheless, despite the common Yahwism, nothing points to the origin of one Pentateuch at this early period. 3. In the Maccabean period the Samaritans claim to be part of the indigenous population by calling themselves Sidonians of Shechem. 4. In the first part of the Hellenistic period the split between Jews and Samaritans had become imperceptible, but it reappeared after the Maccabean crisis. The explanation of this phenomenon lies in the literary manipulations of Ezra-Nehemiah which placed the split in the Persian period. The second part of this chapter lists open questions. The final question concerns the silence of the Samaritan sources about the biblical books after Joshua. A possible explanation, according to Nodet, is that the Prophets and the other books became important only after the split between Jews and Samaritans around 150 BCE.

8. In an “Annex”, the author presents the status quaestionis of the problem of the origin of the Samaritans by briefly discussing and evaluating early modern studies, represented by James Purvis’ work, and the recent publications represented by Magnar Kartveit, Reinhard Pummer, Gary Knoppers and Dany Nocquet.

9. Lastly, in a “Postscript” Jan Joosten discusses the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint and the Samareitikon. He is of the opinion that when the Samaritans and the Jews separated, they both had the same Pentateuch. And like the Hebrew Pentateuch, the Greek Pentateuch was common to both branches of Israelite religion before the split.

10. Nodet’s understanding of the history of the Samaritan-Jewish relationship, discussed in this book and in earlier works, differs from most of the current accounts in important respects. In present scholarship most authors speak of Samarians only after the split that developed around the turn of the eras. Before that, they speak of Samaritans or northern Yahwists in distinction from the Southern Yahwists or Jews. Nodet sees the northern Yahwists from the beginning as the Israelites, an identification that the Judeans eventually claimed for themselves. He believes that the Samaritans, i.e., the Yahwists of Samaria, were the older and dominant part in the history of the Israelite religion, and Judaism as it emerged after the Exile was a newcomer whose outlook, close to later rabbinic Judaism, developed in Babylon on the basis of ancestral traditions and was then implanted in Palestine.

11. It is impossible to review here the numerous detailed discussions in the book, but one in particular may be mentioned, viz. the question of what kind of sanctuary the Samaritans had on Mt. Gerizim. Nodet believes that it must have been a roofless temenos. Lately, a number of scholars have argued the opposite – it was a roofed building where the Samaritans worshipped.[3] It is true, of course, that so far there is no archaeological confirmation for this view but several considerations make it unlikely that the sanctuary was an open-air shrine.

As to the format of the book, unfortunately this work of thorough and creative scholarship has some formal imperfections. In the table of contents all page numbers are off by 2 pages, and the end matter contains neither indices nor a bibliography both of which would have made the book more user-friendly.

As always, Nodet’s scholarship is thorough and original. In his subtle and creative argumentations, he draws above all on a great variety of primary sources – apart from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament he analyses the relevant parts of Flavius Josephus, ancient Christian authors and Rabbinic writings, and takes into account the recent archaeological finds. It is a book that will no doubt be a voice to be listened to in the scholarly debates on the importance of the Samaritan tradition.[4]