New Datum on the Dositheans

I thought this paragraph from my latest review might be useful. See the bit at the end.

P. 94, on ms. p. 243. Arabic: بل الدستان منعوا من الصلاه الى ما انتهوا من تلبية الكتاب Translation printed: “But the Dositheans were prevented from [joining in] the prayer until they were excluded even from the recitation (?) of the book (i.e. the Torah)”. This is impossible. The words muni‘û min aṣ-ṣalât can only mean “were restrained from praying”. The word intahû does not mean “they were excluded”. The words ilâ mâ are not the same as ilâ an. There is no Arabic word corresponding to the word “even” in the translation, and nothing to indicate any gradation of the restriction. Arabic words (other than technical terms) don’t acquire new meanings by virtue of being in a Samaritan text. The translation is illogical. Dositheans would not have wanted to join in the same service as their religious opponents. The explanation is self-evident. If both parties or denominations were assembled on the top of the Mountain, loud recitation of hymns or the Torah by one party would have been disruptive to the other party. Correct translation: “But the Dositheans were restrained from praying till they (from the context those that were not Dositheans) had finished the antiphonal recitation of the Torah”. The word talbiyah could have been found (in its aramaised form) in the glossary in Cowley’s edition of the Samaritan liturgy. (Tal’s dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic is strangely inadequate here). Obviously it would have been beyond the author’s resources to do this, but as said at the start of this review, guessing is unnecessary. Someone could have been asked where to look, or could simply have been asked what this very common word meant, what it referred to in the order of service for the Festivals, and what an antiphon is in the context of the Samaritan liturgy. The antiphonal recitation of the Torah is not the same as antiphonal singing or chanting of hymns, but this is not the place to explain. The Arabic word has nothing strange about it: it is the normal gerund of labbâ Stem II and expresses the normal meaning of the verb, though with the specialised meaning of an antiphon. It is not a word unique to the Samaritans. The author does refer to an article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam and quotes the meaning “psalmody”, but the precise meaning of this English word seems to have been missed. The guesses that it might have something to do with the word labbayka in the Islamic liturgy and the Samaritans might have taken the expression over are off the track for reasons that are obvious without elaboration. This passage in the history is extremely important, in that it shows that Dositheans did go up the Mountain on the three Pilgrim Festivals. There are explicit statements by Abu ’l-Fatḥ that the Dosithean reformer Sakta, who set up the Pavilion described above some time before the third c. A.D., denied the applicability of the observance of the three Pilgrimages (Hebrew חג ‘ag) in the time of the Fanûta as laid down by the Torah. On the other hand, it is not said that he abolished the observance --- which would have been impossible anyway --- but that he modified it. There is a statement that he never went up the Mountain in his life. This can be interpreted to mean he never observed the full requirements of the Torah that he considered only applicable in the Rûûta (the Time of Favour), but that he did go up and did perform a religious service marking the occasion. Unlike their opponents, he and his followers probably had the same order of service for an observance in a synagogue and on the Mountain, or else had a special order of service on the Mountain pointedly mentioning the present status of the Mountain and praying for the restoration of its holiness with the manifestation of the occulted Tabernacle. Now although this line of interpretation of the dicta reported of him and the comment by Abu ’l-Fatḥ, or more exactly by the ancient heresiology read by Abu’l-Fatḥ, is compelling, it needed an explicit statement that Dositheans really did go up the Mountain on the Pilgrim Festivals. Now we have that explicit statement.