The synagogue of the Samaritans is a small secluded edifice, entered through a walled garden, out of which an enclosed court conducts into the building itself. It is only thirty-seven feet and a few inches in length, and perhaps twenty feet in breadth; the walls are whitewashed and the floor covered with matting. A place is railed off for the Holy Place, in a recess of which the volumes of the law are kept. We were of course anxious to see the famous copy of the Pentateuch, declared to have been written by “Abishua, the great grandson of Aaron, at the door of the Tabernacle in the thirteenth year of the settlement of the children of Israel” in the Holy Land. Though this is recorded in the body of the manuscript itself, the statement is discredited, and the most contradictory opinions are entertained amongst scholars as to its actual date, some ascribing to it a venerable antiquity, and others insisting that it is comparatively modern. Having taken off our shoes at the entrance, Yacoub locked the door, so that none of his co-religionists might enter, and took out from the recess a roll of the law, which he declared to be the one we desired to see. According to his usual custom, however, he was endeavouring to palm off upon us a duplicate instead of the original. He persisted to the last in the assertion that this duplicate was the copy shown to the Prince of Wales and his party in 1853, and there seems reason to believe that this was really the case. The fraud being detected, he, after much hesitation and a promise of liberal backshish, produced the genuine manuscript. It is wrapped in a cover of red satin embroidered with gold, and enclosed in a cylinder of silver, which opens on hinges. [Illustration: CYLINDER ENCLOSING THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH.] [Illustration: TRANSLATION OF THE INSCRIPTIONS ON THE COVER.] Mr. Mills, who resided three months in Nablus in order to acquaint himself thoroughly with the Samaritans, says of it: “The roll itself is of what we should call parchment, but of a material much older than that, written in columns twelve inches deep and seven and a half inches wide. The writing is in a fair hand, but not nearly so large or beautiful as the book-copies which I had previously examined. The writing being rather small, each column contains from seventy to seventy-two lines. The name of the scribe is written in a kind of acrostic, and forms part of the text, running through three columns, and is found in the Book of Deuteronomy. Whether it be the real work of the great grandson of Aaron, as indicated in the writing, I leave the reader to judge; the roll, at all events, has all the appearance of a very high antiquity, and wonderfully well preserved, considering its venerable age.” [Illustration: TWO PAGES OF A BOOK COPY OF THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN FOR THE “PALESTINE EXPLORATION FUND.” ]