On Samaritan Language, Literary Technique and Exegesis in the Midrash Tībåt Mårqe

Tībåt Mårqe is a collection of Samaritan midrashim from Late Antiquity written in Samaritan Aramaic. It is one of the earliest distinctly Samaritan texts and important for assessing the world view of the Samaritans, who formed a substantial part of the population of Palestine in the Byzantine period. The work has been easily accessible since 1988, when Zeev Ben-Ḥayyim produced a reliable edition with a Hebrew translation. Ben-Ḥayyim’s philological work has made it clear that the composition exists in two very different recension, but the earlier one was by then only partially known and consequently could not be published in full. In his new book, Abraham Tal has prepared an edition of all known parts of the earlier recension, complete with an English translation and
comments. This article offers supplementary notes and analyses on the new Samaritan Aramaic material published by Tal, touching on various aspects of language, style, genre, and exegetical traditions in Tībåt Mårqe.