The articles in this volume originated from lectures given in two meetings devoted to the Samaritans. The first was the sixth conference of the SociA(c)tA(c) da (TM)Etudes Samaritaines, which took place at the University of Haifa in July 2004. The second meeting was part of the SBL International Conference in Vienna, July 2007.The volume reflects the current state of research on the Samaritans. It presents a wide spectrum of approaches, including historical questions, the political, religious and social context of the Samaritans in the past and present, linguistic approaches, the role of the Samaritans in the Talmudic literature, and questions of identity of the Samaritans up to now, to name just a few.

The essays in this compendium examine Late-Biblical writings dating from the Hellenistic period that relate to religion and society. A focus is placed on threat scenarios and on the drawing of differences to the Hellenistic environment and the question of identity for believers during the pre-Christian centuries.

Because of different versions in Hebrew and Greek manuscripts pertaining to Ben Sira, the text editions in common use partly conform to the Greek text, but some of them restore the original organization or use a new enumeration. The intention behind this synoptic enumeration is to dispel the confusion caused by differing enumerations. The synopsis is based on a reconceptualized multilingual text edition (Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, and Latin) with continuous numbering that essentially adopts and complements the Greek text in accordance with Ziegler's classic edition. This book integrates Greek editions (Ziegler, Swete, and Rahlfs), the Hebrew editions (Sefer, Beentjes), the Syriac edition (de Largarde, Mossul, Ambrosianus, Calduch-Benages, and Liesen, Peshitta-Institut in Leiden), the Latin edition (Rome and Stuttgart), the standard translation, the revised Luther text, the New Revised English Standard Version, and Sauer/JSHRZ.

The volume presents a collection of the studies produced by the exegetist Friedrich V. Reiterer (Salzburg) from his many years of intensive work on The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus). The individual studies have been revised and the numbering of the passages brought in line with the "ZAhlsynopse zum Buch Ben Sira" (Colometric Synopsis of the Wisdom of Ben Sira) edited by Reiterer in 2002.