Samaritan Pentateuch Textual Variants and Joshua’s Altar on Mt. Gerizim

While inherently speculative, the Samaritans may have built their Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim to venerate Joshua’s Altar! In other words, the location of the Samaritan temple depended upon the location of Joshua’s Altar. The Samaritan Pentateuch instructed Joshua to build his altar on Mt. Gerizim in Deut 27:4. This explains why the Samaritan Pentateuch is variant with both the Masoretic and Septuagint texts on which mountain Joshua was to build his altar on.

The Dispute Between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal

The Samaritan argument is as follows: “Stop and think that Israel’s first altar after crossing the Jordan was to build on the mountain of curses-impossible! It had to be built on the mountain of blessings.” However, it makes good sense that the altar was built to atone for the curses on Mt. Ebal, as altars are not built to atone for blessings. Everyone assumed the Samaritans changed the text from Mt. Ebal to Mt. Gerizim until the recent discovery of a 2100-year-old Hebrew “Dead Sea Scroll F.154” might validate the Samaritan Pentateuch against the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Nevertheless, the problem is that DSS F.154 is most likely a forgery and a fraud.

Ezra’s Deliberate Anti-Samaritan Variants

For all the bad stuff the Samaritans represented as half-breed Jews, their ancient paleo-Hebrew Torah may preserve the original reading for Joshua’s altar on Mt. Gerizim and Ezra the Jew may have changed the text. The Samaritan Pentateuch is in paleo-Hebrew and is a copy of the book of the Law Josiah found in 623 BC. Ezra’s Deliberate Anti-Samaritan Variants in the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) show specific changes that impacted the interpretation of the scripture.

Key Variants in the Masoretic Text

• Ezra’s Variant 1: Ezra’s Anti-Samaritan Variants in the Quattuordecim (XIV).
• Ezra’s Variant 2: Change of tense from past “has chosen” to future “will chose”.
• Ezra’s Variant 3: Lev 26:31 change of singular “sanctuary” to plural “sanctuaries”.
• Ezra’s Variant 4: Deut 11:30 Deleted words “opposite Shechem”.

Geographical Confusion and Archaeology

We do need to explore the historical smoke and confusion surrounding the locations of Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. The LXX (Septuagint) and the Madaba map mark two sets of the mountains near Shechem and Jericho. This is bizarre because we know from the book of Judges that Mt. Gerizim was beside Shechem. Adam Zertal is on record as saying that the Samaritans chose the wrong location for the true Mt. Gerizim and the original Mt. Gerizim was a third unoccupied peak to the east of Mt. Ebal.

Today, we know Zertal was wrong and the Samaritans built their temple on the right Mt. Gerizim. The Hebrew rectangular altar structure on Mt. Ebal, that was found buried, dates to 1250 BC which is 150 years too late to be the actual altar Joshua built in 1406 BC. The idea that the Samaritans chose the wrong location for Mt. Gerizim is as absurd as the idea that they simply changed the text to avoid the mountain of curses.