The Hebrew text of the Pentateuch as preserved by the Samaritans, a non-Jewish sect centered around a sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, claiming descent from the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. Apart from a few sectarian elements, the text is based on a type of manuscript found among Jews in the Second Temple period, and is slightly different from other forms of the Pentateuch text, such as the one apparently used by the Septuagint translators or the Pentateuch as preserved by the Masoretic (traditional) Hebrew text. Many of its differences may be attributed to the fact that the Pentateuch appears to have circulated in slightly different “editions” in late antiquity.
For the Samaritans, only the first five books of the Bible (= the Torah) are canonized. Their Pentateuch establishes the location of the Temple and the qualifications for the priesthood and the priestly hierarchy; the status of the Samaritan priests derived mainly from their interpretation of their Pentateuch. An analysis of the Samaritan Pentateuch shows about six thousand instances where it and the Masoretic text differ; in about two thousand of these instances, however, the Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan version. This has led scholars to wonder about the value of the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch for any critical study into the origin of the Hebrew Bible, but after the discovery of the Qumran documents, it was seen that the variant readings in the text, the forms of its script, and the orthography in the text all date the Samaritan Pentateuch to a period not earlier than the Hasmoneans (142–53 b.c.e.). The Samaritan Pentateuch then evolved away from the Torah following this period but evidence from the Qumran scrolls demonstrate that correspondences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Torah persisted into the first century c.e.

Most Samaritan Pentateuchs are written in Hebrew, and many have adjacent columns written in Aramaic or Arabic, or even both languages. Some manuscripts exist in only Aramaic or Arabic. The oldest manuscripts are written in the Samaritan alphabet, which differs from the post-exilic Hebrew alphabet, and some authorities believe it to be an orthographic form that bridges paleo-Hebrew and the post-exilic Hebrew letter forms. The existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch became known in Europe in 1616, when a traveler named Pietro della Valle purchased a copy of the text in Damascus and brought it to Italy. This copy made its way to Paris in 1623, where it excited close interest. In 1645, an edited copy of the text was published in Paris. Several versions have been published during the last three centuries. While printed copies are available, handwritten copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch are scarce. The total number of surviving handwritten manuscripts is approximately one hundred and fifty; however, many of these texts exist only in fragmentary form. Copies date from about the ninth century c.e. to the twentieth century, with the majority being from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most significant collections can be found at the synagogue at Nablus, Israel, and at the Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, the British Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Michigan State University, and a few private collections.