If it is decided not to encode a separate Samaritan Pentateuch sign, I would suggest giving an alternative name of "Samaritan shin" as well as "Samaritan Pentateuch sign", to avoid confusing scholars who may use this name. I also wonder if its use is strictly restricted to indicating the Samaritan Pentateuch, or if it may sometimes be used to refer to other Samaritan texts, or to the Samaritan script, dialect or religious tradition more generally. I was trying to check whether any of the samples in the SIL proposal have a wider reference, but scripts.sil.org is currently offline.
In BHS, the Samaritan shan/shin is used in isolation to indicate the Samaritan Pentateuch, but is used in combination with other symbols to indicate other Samaritan texts:
@^Ms(s)^
codex manuscriptus (codices manuscripti)
secundum apparatum criticum Galli @^T^
Targum Samaritanum @^W^
Pentateuchi textus Hebraeo-Samaritanus
secundum polyglottam Londinensem B. Waltonii,
vol. I 1654All of these are related back to the Samaritan Pentateuch (the Targum is an idiomatic Samaritan-Aramaic translation), so this suggests to me that SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH SYMBOL is probably okay as a name. If other uses, not related to the Samaritan Pentateuch, are found, perhaps a more generic SAMARITAN TEXT SYMBOL or SAMARITAN SOURCE SYMBOL might be appropriate.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What was venerated as style was nothing more than
an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
- Orhan Pamuk, _My name is red_
