Endnote 13 – The Abisha Scroll—3,000 Years Old?

I refer here to the older Arabic version (the oldest extant manuscript is dated to the 14th century, but the version may be a century earlier); the Hebrew version is a very late translation from the Arabic (the date of the translation is unknown, but all our manuscripts belong to the late 19th and earliest 20th centuries, and the translation cannot be much earlier than these manuscripts). For published editions, see T.W.J. Juynboll, Chronicon Samaritanum Arabice conscriptum, cui Titulus est Liber Josuae (Leiden, 1848); a translation is published in Oliver T. Crane, The Samaritan Chronicle or the Book of Joshua, the Son of Nun (New York: John Alden, 1890). Quotations from the Arabic version appear in the 15th-century Jewish history Sepher Yuchasin by Abraham Zacuto.