A Literary Analysis JSOT Supplement Series 303. Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.
All tradition is, of course, story.
As such, it involves the coherent retelling of beginnings, other past events, and even future ones, interpreted from the center of a people's experience in the world at a particular time and place. Then again, the story may be told from an outsider's point of view. Hjelm asserts that the origin and history of the Samaritans cannot be drawn at face value from the accounts of Josephus, literature of the prevailing Pharasaic-rabbinic Jewish tradition, the New Testament, or even the Samaritan sources themselves. Rather, a critical evaluation of authorial intent must be made on the basis of all available sources in order to determine where and to what extent authors and editors have accommodated historical realities for ideological purposes. Hjelm's thesis in nuce is that the prevailing view of Samaritan origins and history, often described in terms of questionable heritage, expulsion, and dissidence must be abandoned.