Tebat Marqe and Early Samaritan Piyyut

The corpus of early Samaritan religious poems comprises altogether 55

pieces, all written in Samaritan Aramaic and attributed to the authors

Amram Dare, Marqe, and Ninna. Like the midrashic collection "Tebat

Marqe", these poems originate in the 4th century CE. Both corpora, the

poems and the midrashic collection "Tebat Marqe", provide the oldest

more substantial sources for Samaritan exegesis of the Torah, Samaritan

theology, and a general world view, that is distinctively Samaritan. The

reconstruction of early Samaritan thinking, therefore, has to rely upon

insights gained from both corpora, and to combine them. However, the

different literary and linguistic character of midrash versus piyyut

implies that many motivs, concepts, formulations, and arguments became

manifest in only one of the two corpora, or that they became manifest in

both corpora in very different ways. This leads to constraints and

challenges, in terms of methodology and topics, for the reconstruction

of early Samaritan thinking. The paper will analyse and describe this

problems, in order to provide an introduction into the accessibility,

usability and significance of the sources in question in relation to

this task.