How is it that there are so many different interpretations of the Bible? Surely the original authors could have written more precisely and consistently to avoid this state of affairs. But what if the earliest authors and editors of the biblical texts were working to bring divergent groups with varying traditions and practices into a kind of unity with a book they could all claim as their own? That is the view of several scholars but I will focus on just one of them, the Samaritan scholar Ruairidh MacMhanainn Bóid, in this post.
We now have to reconcile this variation within the halachic tradition with the uniformity of the text of the written Torah, which all Jews and Samaritans accept. If there are no variations in the written text, how is it that there are variations in the halachic tradition? (328 – bolding is mine in all quotations)
It may seem obvious enough that we should assume that interpretations of the text and traditions of practice were once uniform and that over time, through ignorance or carelessness, divergences set in. But this assumption falls apart when one takes the trouble to examine the evidence that informs us about those variations (Bóid 309). There is no evidence for a common tradition among either Samaritans or Jews having ever existed. I did begin to draw venn diagrams to try to grasp an overview of the range and types of disagreements and agreements among the various opinions within and between Samaritan “sects” and Jewish “sects” but the task became simply too monumental. For an overview of these disagreements begin reading at page 309 and again from 328 in the available Google pages. Here I will only point out Bóid’s conclusions.
First of all, it is now known that the Samaritan Torah was originally neither Samaritan nor Jewish, but the common property of both. (The passages commonly considered to be tendentious are discussed below). But aside from this, what concerns us at the moment are the halachic passages in the texts used by the Samaritans and Jews. Now, an examination of the two texts shows that there is very little difference in wording between the Masoretic Torah and the Samaritan one in the halachic passages, that what variants there are do not usually affect the meaning, and that there arc very few halachic differences between Samaritans and Jews that can be related to differences in the text. (329 — I will address a key “commonly considered tendentious” difference below; the specific halachic regulations Bóid is addressing have to do with the various “bodily emissions” of males and females)
So we come back to trying to understand how to explain the particular state of affairs concerning divergent practices and interpretations that arose from a common text (again, see the pages available through Google books, linked above). Bóid’s conclusion is that the different practices and understandings preceded the Torah:
The Torah, both traditional and written, is the possession of all Israel and was intended as such from the time of its composition. It has been accepted by all Israel, the ancestors of all the known and unknown Samaritan and Jewish groups and sects. When edited in its final form it would have had to be acceptable to the bearers of all the existing halachic traditions. This means that the final editors, whether they touched up an existing book, or put a book together out of existing sections, or however they did their work, were faced with the problem of producing an edition that could be used by people following different traditions of halachah. Perhaps there were already several different versions, in which crucial verses had slightly different wording in agreement with one tradition of halachah or another. How was the problem solved? (331)
Bóid finds part of the answer to that question by looking “at the qualities of the text” of the Torah itself:
The text of the halachic sections of the written Torah is normally very precise in its wording, but is cunningly ambiguous or vague on purpose in the verses that lay down a point of halachah about which there is disagreement between different Jewish groups, or different Samaritan groups, or between Jews and Samaritans. The text has been worded very carefully, it is very precisely vague and unequivocally ambiguous so that it will bear a certain number of interpretations and no more, and will agree with all the halachic traditions in mind. (331)
Precise and cunning — sounds like a lawyer.
This way, each tradition can be supported by the text of Scripture. This explains why the text is so vague or uses wording that does not seem completely appropriate in verses on the interpretation of which there is disagreement: the disagreement is older than the present form of the verse. This explains, as well, how it is that the Pharisees (or Rabbanites) can say that the tradition is to be followed in interpreting Scripture even if a verse has to be understood in a way that seems the verse was phrased so as to make their interpretation possible, even if unnatural. It equally well explains how the Karaites and Samaritans (and apparently the Sadducees) can object to the Rabbanite theory, and maintain that their tradition never contradicts Scripture: the text of Scripture is formulated with their traditions (along with everyone else’s) in mind. We see, then, that although the two sides contradict each other over the relationship between written and oral Torah, they are both equally historically correct, and differ only in the expression of their theory. (331 – italics original)
Why not, rather, assume that the different practices arose from a common text that was interpreted differently by the founders of the various factions? Bóid’s answer is twofold:
The first is, as we have said, that differences in practice are often connected with verses the apparent meaning of which does not strongly favour one reading over another. . . .
The second phenomenon is that the verse to which the different traditions are linked and which is interpreted in one way or another is often so obscure or vague that it is hard to see how it could have got past the editors unless the wording is deliberate. The wording of the written Torah is normally very precise. (332)
But surely there are major differences that cannot be harmonized! Think of the Samaritan tenth commandment that orders an altar to be built on Mount Gerizim . . . I’ll discuss that passage in the next post. It will be demonstrated that there is nothing in the Samaritan Pentateuch that is “necessarily unacceptable to Jews, and nothing in the [Jewish Pentateuch] that is necessarily unacceptable to Samaritans.” (Bóid 340).
We conclude . . . that just as the compilation of the Pentateuch brought together and combined whatever forms of the book had been current in different parts of the country or amongst different groups, and produced a book acceptable to the whole nation, the final editors acted in the same spirit and as part of the same movement, and chose a wording in crucial places that would suit the bearers of all the variant sub-traditions of the halachah. The Pentateuch in its completed form had to be a unity in spite of its disparate sources, to fulfil its function as the version that would serve and be acceptable to the whole nation as spiritually (though not politically) united. The compilers did manage to turn the parts into a unity, integrating the different outlooks of both kingdoms [sic – Bóid appears to be assuming a text more ancient than I have been positing in recent posts] and all groups or movements or traditions, and people capable of such a compilation would have had the ability to choose the precise details of the wording of the halachic passages needed to satisfy the same disparate groups of people, and would have seen the need to do so. The compilers were the ones that integrated the sources, and were the final editors as well. (Bóid 340f).
Bóid suggests that such a work would have taken generations. I’m not so sure. It is easier to imagine diverse interests cooperating harmoniously over a shorter time span than a longer one.
Bóid also works to mollify traditionalists who prefer their sacred texts to be very, very ancient:
This is not to deny that the written Torah goes back to time immemorial, or to Moses, depending on the system of terminology: it is simply to say that various books making up the written Torah in different traditions were deliberately combined into one in a form that every Israelite could accept. Rather than suppress or ignore any tradition, the compilers and editors achieved a near-uniformity of wording in the halachic sections, a wording into which could be read (artificially if necessary) the halachah of each tradition. Where uniformity was not reached, the alternatives of wording were either inconsequential and trivial, or were both equally ambiguous . . . . (Bóid 341).
As mentioned earlier, the specific Pentateuchal topic Bóid is addressing is a narrow range of bodily cleanliness regulations. But what of the larger story narratives?
Because of the impossibility of finding an ambiguous wording of historical or chronological statements, existing differences between the source-books would have had to be allowed to stand, so that the final edited written Torah would have had to have several different recensions, according to the source of the historical sections in each case. This would not have been a serious difficulty, since in later times it has always been halachah and basic theology that have divided Israel into sects or religious factions, not disputes over historical details or the chronology of the Patriarchs, and the outlook would presumably have been the same in earlier times. (Bóid 341)
Bóid, Iain Ruairidh MacMhanainn. Principles of Samaritan Halachah. Leiden ; New York: Brill Academic Pub, 1989.