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The Asaṭīr (Arabic:الاساطير,al-Asāṭīr), also known as theSamaritan Book of the Secrets of Moses, is a collection of Samaritan Biblical legends, parallel to the JewishMidrash, and which draws heavily uponoral traditions known among Jews in the 2nd and 3rd centuriesCE.Moses Gaster places its compilation about the middle or end of the third centuryBCE, and rendered a translation of the work in 1927 with theRoyal Asiatic Society in London.[1] Others have said that its language style resembles more the Arabic language used by the scholar Ab Ḥisda [Isda] of Tyre (Abū'l-Ḥasan aṣ-Ṣūrī)[2] in his poems of the eleventh century CE, and place its composition in the second-half of the tenth-century.[3][4] The book's title,Asatir (orAstir), was thought by Gaster to mean "secrets," from which name, he applied to the book its newer title, "The Secrets of Moses." Even so, such an interpretation has nothing to do with the contents of the book, nor with its subject. A more precise translation of the Arabic title of the work,al-Asāṭīr, would be "legends" or "tales," as in the Koranic expressionasāṭīr al-Awwalīn ("the Legends of the Ancients").[5]
The book is written in the form of a chronicle, its narrative covering the whole of the Pentateuch, starting withAdam, the first man, and concluding with the death ofMoses, adding thereto anecdotal material not available in the Hebrew Bible. It deals mainly with the succession of personages from Adam to Moses, some 26 generations. The whole book is written around the story of their lives, as handed down by oral traditions. The book ascribes 2,800 years from the first man, Adam, to Israel's victory over theMidianites.[6]
The book, preserved by theSamaritan community ofNablus, compiled on parchment in late SamaritanAramaic mixed with an antiquated Arabic vernacular, and divided into twelve chapters, was discovered by Gaster in 1907. Its antiquity is attested to by the fact that it was written when the vestiges of a "peculiar Samaritan Hebrew-Aramaic" was still in practice, and Arabic had only begun to supersede it. Since there is no evidence that Moses actually conveyed the oral traditions contained therein, various Samaritan writers merely refer to its author as "the Master of the Asatir," or the "Author of the Asatir" (Baal Asatir), leaving it undecided as to whether Moses had actually conveyed its legends. The book is therefore largely ascribed as beingpseudepigraphic. The account tells of thePharaoh at the time of Moses being from the progeny ofJapheth, rather than ofHam.[7] The Pharaoh at the time of Joseph, the same account says, was from the progeny ofIshmael.
The epithet used to describeNimrod in Genesis 10:8, namely,Gibbor, is rendered by the author ofThe Asatir as "giant," rather than "mighty one."[8] According toThe Asatir, there were several kings, one in succession after the other, one of whose names was Nimrod.Seth is said to have built the city of Antokia (Antioch), one of the cities inhabited before theGreat Deluge, while Noah, after the Great Deluge, is said to have been buried in theTomb of the Patriarchs inHebron, along with Adam, the first man. The alleged burial-place of Adam mirrors that of Jewish tradition.
The Asatir describes the descendants of two of the sons ofShem, viz. Laud (Ld) andAram, as having settled in a region ofAfghanistan formerly known asKhorasan (Charassan), but known by the Arabic-speaking peoples of Afrikia (North Africa) as simply "the isle" (Arabic:Al-gezirah).[9]Elam andAshur are said to have settled in places north ofUr of the Chaldees.
The first half of the 11th chapter contains a description of the borders of the Land of Israel, in which some of the place names mentioned are no longer identifiable. Some suggest that the author's familiarity with the geography of northernErez Israel andSyria leads to the conclusion that he may have lived in this region, where large Samaritan communities then flourished in Acre, Tyre, and Damascus.
While the author ofThe Asatir and Jewish traditions are in general agreement,[10] there are differences in minor details. For example, according toSeder Olam Rabba, there were 340 years from the Great Deluge in the time of Noah (dated at 1656anno mundi) to the Division of the earth (dated at 1996anno mundi) when his sons were sent into their respective countries at the confounding of the languages, only ten years before the death of Noah, when he was aged 940. The Samaritan tradition, as conveyed byThe Asatir, avers differently, that Noah divided the earth among his three sons and their descendants some twenty years before his death, when he was aged 930.[11]
Today, there exists an English translation of the work, made byMoses Gaster. A partial Hebrew translation was later published by Z. Ben-Ḥayyim, in 'The Book of Asatir',Tarbiẕ 14 (1943), 104–125, 174–190;Tarbiẕ 15 (1944), 71–87.[12] An Arabic translation was also made of the text, as also a Samaritan modern Hebrew translation, calledPitron. An English translation of the Samaritan modern Hebrew translation,Pitron, was made by Gaster.
TheAsatir is often cited by 17th and 18th-century Arabic authors, Muslim al-Danār and Ibrahim al-Ayya, in their Bible commentaries.[13]
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