Finally dawned on me that this group might be interested in seeing this...
I just got a copy of a Samaritan Pentateuch: that is, the Samaritan
version of the books, printed in Samaritan script. The Samaritans use a
version of the paleo-Hebrew script, whereas Jewish Hebrew (as used in
Modern Hebrew, and Jewish Hebrew writing since the Dead Sea Scrolls and
before) in is an Aramaic alphabet. I've uploaded a scan of the first
page to the qalam files site (called SPscan_small.png). Note that
spaces are not used to separate words (instead they're used to line
things up in pretty columns), they're separated by dots (in the absence
of other punctuation). This book is also fully pointed(!) in the
Samaritan style of pointing (somewhat adapted and expanded, according to
the end-notes), and punctuated with the traditional
punctuation/accents. The pages are numbered in Hebrew fashion, using
the letters for numbers, but without the usual peculiarity of using
"9-6" and "9-7" for 15 and 16 instead of "10-5" and "10-6". *
Hope you like it!
~mark
* Might as well explain this in case it isn't well-known... Like Greek
and Arabic and others, Hebrew letters also have numerical values and are
used to number things (there's evidence that the Greeks came up with
this idea and the Semites got it from them). The first ten letters are
1-10, then comes 20, 30, ... 100, then 200, 300, 400, and then they run
out of letters. There are some versions that use the final letters to
supply 500-900, but nobody ever actually uses them. The quirk is in the
teens: 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4, 9-6, 9-7, 10-7, 10-8... Why? Well, you
see, 10 is the letter YUD and five is the letter HE, thus fifteen would
be YOD HE, which is one of the names of God ("Yah"), and 16 would be YOD
VAV, which is also a contraction of the tetragrammaton, so those are
avoided. This style of numbering is still used today, even in
non-religious settings, and even in completely secular contexts 15 and
16 are still written "superstitiously". The Samaritans, who probably
came to this style of numbers more recently, never bothered fretting
about this, apparently.
The number-letters occasionally find their way into speech as well.
Just yesterday (Tuesday) was a minor holiday, essentially Arbor Day
("New Year for Trees"). It's commonly called "Tu BiShvat". "Shvat" is
the name of the month. "Tu" isn't a word, it's a way of pronouncing the
date: TET-VAV, or 9-6, i.e. the fifteenth of Shvat. The holiday of Lag
Ba`omer has a similar derivation, being the 33rd day of the Omer
(LAMED-GIMEL)