FURTHER THOUGHTS on the new Deuteronomy (?) fragment with a Samaritan reading in it. A couple of readers have pointed out that the orthography of the phrase "Mount Gerizim," is written as one word (בהרגרזים - HarGerizim), and Menachem Brody notes that this is typically Samaritan and offers further support for a Samaritan provenance for the fragment. This is correct, although we don't know the origin of the spelling and it might well be an old Jewish spelling. Some Septuagint manuscripts have Greek spellings of "Mount -" names transliterated with the "Mount" part (Αρ) attached directly to the name, and the Old Latin has the unseparated spelling Argarzim in 2 Maccabees 5:23 and 6:2 for Mount Gerizim. Note also the unseparated spelling Armagedon (Αρμαγεδων) for "Mount Megiddo" (הר מגידו) in Revelation 16:16. Some LXX papyrus fragments also use the unseparated Greek spelling of Mount Gerizim (αργαριζιμ), although it has been argued that these are also of Samaritan provenance.

For a discussion of this issue which collects the relevant evidence, see R. Pummer, "ΑΡΓΑΡΙΖΙΝ: A Criterion for Samaritan Provenance?" Journal for the Study of Judaism 18 (1987): 18-25. The article should be online here (a paid subscription site), but there's a glitch at present and the page displays articles from the wrong journal. I've e-mailed Ingenta to inform them of the problem.

The fact that this new fragment has both the reading "Mount Gerizim" in this passage and the unseparated spelling of the name does present a pretty good case for a Samaritan provenance, although it's not quite conclusive. The reading could still be an early variant later seized on by the Samaritans to support their own temple on the site, and we don't know for sure how widespread this spelling of the name was in this early period.

If it is a Samaritan fragment, this raises the question of whether the reported Qumran provenance is correct and, if it is, what the Qumran sectarians were doing with a Samaritan manuscript. Given their exclusivist sectarian worldview, it doesn't seem likely that they would have had cordial relations with the Samaritans.

Again, this whole discussion depends on the fragment being genuine, which remains to be demonstrated.