The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah preserved by the Samaritan community, distinct from the Masoretic Text traditionally upheld within Rabbinic Judaism. Although the Samaritan Pentateuch shares much in common with the Masoretic Text, it contains approximately 6,000 differences. Many of these are minor, involving spelling variations or grammar, but others have significant theological and ritual implications. One such substantive difference is the emphasis on Mount Gerizim as the divinely chosen place of worship. More precisely, the Torah in the Masoretic Text centralizes worship at "the place" God will choose without naming Jerusalem inside the Pentateuch; later Jewish Scripture and rabbinic tradition identify that chosen place with Jerusalem and reject Gerizim as a rival sanctuary.

The Samaritan Tenth Commandment

A particularly striking feature of the Samaritan Pentateuch is its version of the Decalogue, where the Gerizim altar command functions as the tenth commandment in Samaritan enumeration. This is not an eleventh commandment added after the Ten; it is part of a different counting and arrangement of the Decalogue. The wording is a harmonizing composition drawn largely from Deuteronomy 11:29-30 and 27:2-7: Israel is commanded, after crossing the Jordan, to set up plastered stones, write the words of the law, and build an altar of unhewn stones on Mount Gerizim. In the Masoretic Text, these materials are not part of the Decalogue, and Deuteronomy 27:4 locates the stones on Mount Ebal. The Samaritan form therefore gives Decalogue-level authority to Gerizim as the rightful center of worship.

Deuteronomy 27:4 and the Gerizim Reading

One of the key textual variants between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text is found in Deuteronomy 27:4. The Masoretic Text instructs the Israelites to set up stones on Mount Ebal, whereas the Samaritan Pentateuch reads Mount Gerizim. This should not be reduced to an obvious copyist's slip on either side. The Masoretic reading is supported by the received Jewish textual tradition and by Joshua 8:30-35, where Joshua builds an altar on Mount Ebal. The Samaritan reading, however, has its own contextual logic: Deuteronomy 11:29 associates Gerizim with blessing and Ebal with curse, so an altar on Gerizim is theologically intelligible. The variant therefore marks a real dispute over sacred geography and over how the centralizing language of Deuteronomy should be read.

The external evidence must be stated carefully. Qumran manuscripts such as 4QpaleoExod-m are important because they show that a "pre-Samaritan" or harmonizing textual tradition of the Pentateuch existed before the medieval Samaritan manuscripts; they do not, by themselves, prove the Gerizim reading in Deuteronomy 27:4. At Deuteronomy 27:4, the major Septuagint tradition agrees with the Masoretic Text in reading Ebal, while the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Old Latin attest Gerizim; a Qumran Deuteronomy fragment has also been discussed in this connection, but its reconstruction is not as straightforward as a complete manuscript reading. The safer conclusion is that the Samaritan Pentateuch preserves an ancient textual profile in many places, while the specific Gerizim/Ebal variant remains a debated case rather than a settled one.

Jewish and Academic Assessments

Traditional Jewish assessment has generally treated the Samaritan Pentateuch's Gerizim emphasis as sectarian, especially where it diverges from the received Torah text on the place of the altar. Rabbinic literature discusses the Samaritans, often called Kutim, as a related but separate community, and texts such as Mishnah Sotah 7:5 preserve the Jewish arrangement of Gerizim and Ebal rather than the Samaritan one. Medieval Jewish commentators normally read Deuteronomy 27:4 according to the Masoretic Text and within the broader Jewish canonical movement toward Zion/Jerusalem. From this perspective, the Samaritan elevation of Gerizim is not an equally authoritative Torah tradition but a rival claim to sacred space.

Modern academic scholarship often separates the broader textual profile of the Samaritan Pentateuch from the smaller set of explicitly Samaritan ideological readings. Many agreements between the Samaritan Pentateuch and Qumran "pre-Samaritan" texts concern harmonization, expansion, spelling, or grammar, showing that not everything distinctive in the Samaritan Pentateuch was invented late for sectarian reasons. The Gerizim material is more contested: some scholars regard parts of it as preserving an older northern or Shechem-centered tradition, while others see the Decalogue insertion and related Gerizim emphasis as Samaritan ideological development built on older biblical language.

It is better to distinguish the scholars' claims. Emanuel Tov is often associated with the category of "pre-Samaritan" texts: manuscripts whose harmonizing features resemble the Samaritan Pentateuch but lack the later Samaritan community's full ideological profile. James Charlesworth and others have argued more positively for the antiquity of the Gerizim reading in Deuteronomy 27:4. Other textual critics remain cautious, especially because the Masoretic Text and the main Septuagint tradition support Ebal there. The shared point is not that the Samaritan reading is automatically original, but that it deserves textual and historical analysis rather than dismissal.

Conclusion

The differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text, especially regarding Mount Gerizim, reflect deep historical and theological divergences. The Jewish reading has serious textual and canonical support: the Masoretic tradition, the main Septuagint reading of Deuteronomy 27:4, and the later Jewish identification of the chosen place with Zion/Jerusalem all reinforce a non-Gerizim sanctuary theology. The Samaritan reading also has real evidence behind it, including its own ancient community tradition, the Old Latin support for Gerizim in Deuteronomy 27:4, and the broader existence of pre-Samaritan textual forms at Qumran. The responsible conclusion is therefore balanced: Gerizim is not a trivial late scribal oddity, but neither is it a settled disproof of the Jewish Masoretic tradition. The Samaritan Pentateuch remains essential for studying the textual transmission of the Torah and the diverse sacred geographies of ancient Israel.