As above noted, there are two Targums or interpretations of the Samaritan Pentateuch, an Aramaic and an Arabic. The Aramaic is a dialect related to the Western Aramaic, in which the Jewish Targums were written, sometimes called Chaldee. It has in it many strange words, some of which may be due to the language of the Assyrian colonists, but many are the result of blunders of copyists ignorant of the language. It is pretty close to the original and is little given to paraphrase. Much the same may be said of the Arabic Targum. It is usually attributed to Abu Said of the 13th century, but according to Dr. Cowley only revised by him from the Targum of Abulhassan of the 11th century. There is reference occasionally in the Fathers to a Samaritikon which has been taken to mean a Greek version. No indubitable quotations from it survive--what seem to be so being really translations of the text of the Samaritan recension. There is in Arabic a wordy chronicle called "The Book of Joshua." It has been edited by Juynboll. It may be dated in the 13th century. More recently a "Book of Joshua" in Hebrew and written in Samaritan characters was alleged to be discovered. It is, however, a manifest forgery; the characters in which it is written are very late. It is partly borrowed rom the canonical Josh, and partly from the older Samaritan Book of Joshua with fabulous additions. The Chronicle of Abulfatach is a tolerably accurate account of the history of the Samaritans after Alexander the Great to the 4th century AD.
LITERATURE.
The text in the Samaritan script is found in the polyglots--Paris and London. Walton's text in the London Polyglot is transcribed in square characters by Blayney, Oxford, 1790. The English works of importance of recent times are Mills, Nablus and the Samaritans, London, 1864; Nutt, Fragments of a Samaritan Targum, London, 1874; Montgomery, The Samaritans, Philadelphia, 1907 (this has a very full bibliography which includes articles in periodicals); Iverach Munro. The Samaritan Pentateuch and Modern Criticism, 1911, London. In Germany, Gesenius' dissertation, De Pentateuchi Samaritani origine, etc., Jena, 1815, has not quite lost its value; Kohn, De Pentateucho Samaritano, Leipzig, 1865; Petermann, Versuch einer hebr. Formenlehre nach der Aussprache der heutigen Samaritaner, Leipzig, 1868. There are besides articles on this in the various Biblical Dictionaries and Encyclodedias. In the numerous religious and theological periodicals there have been articles on the Samaritan Pentateuch of varying worth. The Aramaic Targum has been transcribed in square characters and edited by Brull (Frankfort, 1875).
J. E. H. Thompson