Samaritan Genesis 33:18

Samaritan Penteteuch
Samaritan

16 So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir. 17 And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. 18 And Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-aram; and pitched his tent before the city. 19 And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money. 20 And he erected there an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel.

LXX Genesis 33:18

Septuagint

16 Then Esau turned back on that day to his way to Seir. 17 And Iakob was set- ting out for Tents, and he made himself dwellings there and made tents for his cattle; therefore he called the name of that place Tents. 18 And Iakob came to Salem, a city of Sikima, which is in the land of Chanaan, when he came from Mesopotamia of Syria, and he encamped fac- ing the city. 19 And from Hemmora, Sychem’s fa- ther, he acquired for one hundred lambs the por- tion of the field, there where he had set up his tent, 20 and there he set up an altar and invoked the God of Israel.

 Notes and References

"... It is also possible that there was a tradition that located Salem near Shechem (perhaps near the modern Arabic village called Salim 5 km east from modern Balata, the ancient Shechem) ... Salim is a common Arabic toponym. Therefore, it may be that Salem/Salim originally was a town (not Jerusalem), which was under the influence of Shechem. However, according to the biblical tradition, Salem is equated with Jerusalem (Psalm 76:3; see also 1QapGen XXII, 13 as well as Targum Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 14:18) ... Thus, the only reference to Salem in Jubilees is Salem beside Shechem in Jubilees 30:1! However, since in the same (admittedly reconstructed) passage Abraham is to “return” to where he had been before, i.e., Hebron before he meets Melchizedek, it, thus, seems plausible that the author did not depict Melchizedek’s Salem as the same Salem in the vicinity of Shechem in the north, as in Jubilees 30:1. Magnar Kartveit has recently argued that the original text of Pseudo-Eupolemos was written by a Hellenising Jew, and that the identification of Mt. Gerizim in the text is a later Samaritan addition when the text was “Samaritanized.” ..."

Tanskanen, Topias K. E. Jacob, the Torah, and the Abrahamic Promise: Studies on the Use and Interpretation of the Jacob Story in the Book of Jubilees (pp. 102-103) Åbo Akademi University, 2023

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.