samaritan pentateuch

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samaritan pentateuch - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

  Samaritan Pentateuch
  On the return from the Exile, the Jews refused the Samaritans
  participation with them in the worship at Jerusalem, and the
  latter separated from all fellowship with them, and built a
  temple for themselves on Mount Gerizim. This temple was razed to
  the ground more than one hundred years B.C. Then a system of
  worship was instituted similar to that of the temple at
  Jerusalem. It was founded on the Law, copies of which had been
  multiplied in Israel as well as in Judah. Thus the Pentateuch
  was preserved among the Samaritans, although they never called
  it by this name, but always "the Law," which they read as one
  book. The division into five books, as we now have it, however,
  was adopted by the Samaritans, as it was by the Jews, in all
  their priests' copies of "the Law," for the sake of convenience.
  This was the only portion of the Old Testament which was
  accepted by the Samaritans as of divine authority.
  
    The form of the letters in the manuscript copies of the
  Samaritan Pentateuch is different from that of the Hebrew
  copies, and is probably the same as that which was in general
  use before the Captivity. There are other peculiarities in the
  writing which need not here be specified.
  
    There are important differences between the Hebrew and the
  Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch in the readings of many
  sentences. In about two thousand instances in which the
  Samaritan and the Jewish texts differ, the LXX. agrees with the
  former. The New Testament also, when quoting from the Old
  Testament, agrees as a rule with the Samaritan text, where that
  differs from the Jewish. Thus Ex. 12:40 in the Samaritan reads,
  "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their
  fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt
  was four hundred and thirty years" (comp. Gal. 3:17). It may be
  noted that the LXX. has the same reading of this text.