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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
All the elements are missing for even a moderate attempt at establishing definite rules for Samaritan Palæography. Of all the MSS. of the Pentateuch known in Europe only a few specimens have hitherto been published in facsimile, and, as far as I am aware, not one of them dated. The same holds good for all other Samaritan documents, prayer-books, letters, etc. There is therefore practically nothing to go upon, except personal experience, and the examination as far as possible of the materials available to as large an extent as circumstances allow. It is the course which I have endeavoured to pursue, but as will be seen the examination of MSS. hitherto known does not lead us further back than the eleventh or twelfth century. With all modesty I may claim to have seen most of the Samaritan MSS. in England and in Nablus. In the rest of Europe they are an almost negligible quantity: possibly the oldest dated fragment of a scroll of the Bible is in rny possession. I have seen all the scrolls in the Kinsha in Nablus, inclusive of the famous one ascribed to Abisha, grandson of Eliezar, the son of Ahron the priest, and I have obtained copies of the Tarikh, or as they call it of the Teshkul (pronounced Tesh'ul), i.e. the date of most of them. I have taken a photo of the scroll of 1140, and done my best to get an insight into Samaritan palæography, intimately bound up as it is with the history of the Bible. If anywhere, it is among the Samaritans that the ancient traditions have been fossilized, and their scribes betray a most touching anxiety to imitate the originals as closely as possible.
page 77 note 1 The 
in this Samaritan alphabet is quite characteristic, with the exception of the Emmaus inscription, where the resembles a circle; in all the other Samaritan documents and monuments the has the form of a triangle. Now it may be a mere coincidence, but in Christian iconography we often find a triangle depicted either on the altar or on the porch outside the church with a human eye inside and the rays of light shining out from the three sides; sometimes the Hebrew tetragrammaton is written either inside or over this triangle. It is clear that this picture is intended to represent the eye of God inside this triangle, which probably stands as a symbol for the Trinity. The connexion, however, between the triangle and the eye is not so clear. But if we look at the Samaritan writing we shall find this very letter is such a triangle, only with the apex downwards. The name of that letter is in Samaritan as well as Hebrew 'ayin, which means “eye”. Now the connexion is obvious. The triangle is the letter , which means “eye”, that very eye which is painted within, and the word of the Psalm thus applied to it, “Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him” (Ps. xxxiii, 18), and the commentary to it is thus pictorially expressed. On another occasion I may be able to show the close connexion which exists between the Samaritan teaching and practice and primitive Christianity, when the explanation of ancient symbolism will not appear as a mere fortuitous coincidence.