Samaritan Hebrew language
| Samaritan Hebrew | |
|---|---|
| עברית ‘Ivrit | |
| Region | Israel and Palestinian territories, predominantly in Nablus and Holon |
| Extinct | ca. 2nd century survives in liturgical use |
|
Afro-Asiatic
|
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| Samaritan abjad | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | sama1313 |
| Linguasphere | 12-AAB |
Samaritan Hebrew (Hebrew: עברית שומרונית) is a reading tradition as used liturgically by the Samaritans for reading the Ancient Hebrew language of the Samaritan Pentateuch, in contrast to Biblical Hebrew (the language of the Masoretic Jewish Pentateuch).
For the Samaritans, Ancient Hebrew as a spoken everyday language became extinct and was succeeded by Samaritan Aramaic, which itself ceased to be a spoken language some time between the 10th and the 12th centuries and succeeded by Arabic (or more specifically Samaritan Palestinian Arabic).
The phonology of Samaritan Hebrew is highly similar to that of Samaritan Arabic, used by the Samaritans in prayer. Today, the spoken vernacular among Samaritans is evenly split between Modern Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic, depending on whether they reside in Holon or in Shechem (i.e. Nablus).
The Samaritan language first became known in detail to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1631 by Jean Morin. In 1616 the traveler Pietro della Valle had purchased a copy of the text in Damascus, and this manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a Parisian library. Between 1815 and 1835, Wilhelm Gesenius wrote his treatises on the original of the Samaritan version, proving that it postdated the Masoretic text.
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