This book aims to provide the critical tools to help scholars in their use of Samaritan manuscripts. The basic codicological tools is a series of complementary data-bases compiled from typological studies of the physical properties of manuscripts. Each typology is in effect a diachronic profile created by painstaking comparison and analysis of the physical properties of manuscripts of known provenance and/or date. Using these typologies or diachronic profiles it is possible to evaluate the chronology of the physical characteristics of any manuscript - the quire or gathering structure, ink, ruling, spacing of the text on the folio, sewing of the sections ... Naturally, the more information available about the physical properties of any manuscript the better the chance of making correlations between the typologies of different properties. The basic rule in palaeography and codicology is that the researcher works on an inductive basis from as wide a sample as possible of dated manuscripts. It is hoped that in the studies in this volume, evidence has been provided which will serve as a guide both to the appearance and the nature of Samaritan manuscripts and to the evaluative process that one would employ in examining them for codicological purposes. The reader should be able to apply the criteria provided here to the evaluation of whatever data can be retrieved from any undated Samaritan manuscripts with which he is confronted. Alan D. Crown in the preface

Many Bible readers will think that chapter 17 of the second book of Kings refers to the origin of the Samaritans. This understanding of the chapter has its earliest attestation in the works of Josephus. The present book evaluates the methods often used for finding the origin of the Samaritans, makes an assessment of well known and new material, and ventures into some uncharted territory. It is suggested that the moment of birth of the Samaritans was the construction of the temple on Mount Gerizim. This happened in the first part of the fourth century b.c.e. in accordance with the original commandment of Moses in Deut 27:4.

The present volume of documents relating to Samaritan history, religion, and life is intended as a companion to 'The Samaritan Problem', Pittsburgh Monograph Series, Number 4, as giving translations of texts by Samaritan authors mentioned therein. But this is not the only aim of this work. It attempts to make accessible, in English, examples from a variety of Samaritan documents which provide us with a firsthand picture of Samaritan views about their history, their religion, and hopes for the future.

Levy-Rubin came across the document while researching her dissertation on Jerusalem during the early Muslim period, and decided later to translate it. Whether or not it really is a continuation of Abu l- Fath's (fl. 1355 AD) Samaritan chronicle, it is a colorful and detailed portrait of Palestine and its environs up the reign of al-Radi (d. 322/934). A photographic reproduction of the single surviving manuscript follows the highly annotated translation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)