A Peculiar fate seems to be hanging over the Samaritan literature. Although it is very old, and parts of it go back to centuries before the Christian era, yet one may say that it remained unknown to our very days. It was a continued discovery, one book after the other turning up haphazard, the first discovery dating only from the end of the sixteenth century. Since Scaliger came in contact with the Samaritan community in Cairo, the knowledge of Samaritans and Samaritan literature began to penetrate into Europe.