In the days of Nehemiah, that is, during the fifth century B.C., one Manasseh, grandson of Eliashib, the Jewish high priest, married Nicaso, the daughter of the Samaritan leader Sanballat (cf. Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, XI, viii, 2). Since even at that early date the Jewish authorities were strongly opposed to the Samaritans on both political and religious grounds (II Kings 17:24, 34; Ezra 4:4f.; Neh. 4:1–8), Manasseh's action led to his summary expulsion from the priesthood (Neh. 13:28). Thereupon, he and his father-in-law, Sanballat, established a rival temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, and there Manasseh exercised the priestly functions which had been denied him on Mount Zion. Moreover, it is now generally accepted that when he left Jerusalem, he took with him a copy of the sacred Hebrew "Torah," or "book of the law," usually described in English as the "Pentateuch" (Genesis through Deuteronomy), and this became the only sacred scripture of the Samaritan community, being now commonly known as the "Samaritan Pentateuch." The Samaritans, then, for more than twenty-three hundred years, have accepted only these five books, and take no account of the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, including the Prophets, Psalms, and other writings.
One of the interesting characteristics of this Samaritan Version is that it retains to this day an early and primitive form of Hebrew script, which seems to date from the time when the original manuscript was first removed from Jerusalem by Manasseh, whereas the Hebrew Scriptures, as preserved by the orthodox Jews, are written in the so-called "square" or "Assyrian" Hebrew characters, which are still in use.
At Nablus (the ancient Shechem), in Samaria, there is a colony of some two or three hundred Samaritans, who still cherish a manuscript of great antiquity, written in the archaic Hebrew characters, and comprising the Book of the Law by which their ancestors laid such store.
