I can tell you how I ended up befriending anyone worth befriending in the field of Samaritan studies. I stumbled upon John MacDonald's English translation of the Memar Marqah back when I still living in Toronto. It quite simply changed my life.
Then I started noticing - and reading that other scholars documented - uncanny parallels between the Samaritan writings of Mark (Marqe) and the Christian writings of the New Testament canon and especially the Pauline texts.
I would of course go one step further and say 'the Marcionite recension' of those writings, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.
I don't think that people who are unfamiliar with these Samaritan writings can understand what we are talking about here. Mark is a revelation from the moment you look at his writings.
It is simply so unlike anything that any of us are familiar with it is astounding.
The Samaritans must have had hundreds of generations of Biblical exegetes BEFORE the time of Mark. Yet Mark never mention any previous interpretations of the Torah (I think there is allusion to a figure named 'ben Eden' but it is difficult to tell what this means).
As I have noted many times before, Mark was nothing short of a messiah within Samaritanism. His knowledge of the inner meaning of Moses' intention in writing the Torah makes manifest what appears elsewhere in the writings of the Samaritans - he was a messianic figure 'like Moses.' [Deut 18:18]
The question however which has raged through Samaritan studies is deciding upon a date for Mark. Here is MacDonald's overview of that discussion (I have substituted the more familiar 'Mark' for Marqah throughout):
the Samaritan themselves for centuries have regarded Mark as the man of the greatest possible distinction, whom they revered as they revered no other outside of their Bible. From the 14th century on liturgical compositions were often modeled on Mark's style ... [his] family must have lived in the time of the Roman government of Syria (Syria = Palestine, Lebanon, Syria of today).
As far as dating the Memar is concerned therefore he have several factors that indicate the 2nd - 4th centuries A.D. - The use of Greek words, the Aramaized Roman names of Mark's family, the ideological outlook, the midrashic material, the philosophical and scientific passages, the language and style, and, as we shall see below, the long textual tradition. All this is in addition to the inescapable fact that Mark does not betray any definite signs of the Islamic influences so prominent in later Samaritanism. The Samaritan chronicles themselves especially from the 11th century, place Mark at about that time. In addition there is the fact that of all the hundreds of Samaritan family names known to us, only Mark, Nanah (a diminutive form of John), and Tite (Titus) are Roman.
Perhaps in the future it will be possible to trace the history of Christianity in Samaria more exactly so that we may discover why Mark shows some knowledge of St. John's gospel while later writers use it in such a way to prove actual dependence at times verbatim, on it. [MacDonald Memar Marqah p. xxi]
Of course the Samaritan Mark never borrowed from 'John' any more than 'Paul.' I have argued elsewhere that one and the same Mark wrote Samaritan and Christian writings and those Christian writings included a Diatessaron-like single long gospel which was the source for the separated texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
MacDonald's student Alexander Broadie has presented important evidence for connecting Mark's writings to those of Philo of Alexandria. My best friend in the world Rory Boid - and the leading expert on the Samaritans - is writing a text dating Mark to the late first century/early second century.
In my mind the fact that Mark alludes to the establishing of proselytes proves a date earlier than the Bar Kochba revolt. But that's another story ...
