- Map 2. The Samaritan diaspora of manuscripts. This map, based on three sources listed at the link, is not a complete or exhaustive description of Samaritan manuscripts abroad. Many manuscripts exist in the hands of private collectors. However, in addition to listing what’s known abroad based on the sources, the geocoded resource includes hyperlinks to known online finding aids at the time of publication. (To interact with the map, see https://batchgeo.com/map/9882ff095531b419fb087a080b497b0f.) The objective of this map is to convey a sense of scope about the diaspora and all resources are plotted in relationship to their distance from the Samaritan community in Nablus. As Presner, Shepard, and Kawano write in Hypercities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities, “Mapping is not a one-time thing, and maps are not stable objects that reference, reflect, or correspond to an external reality. Mapping is a verb and bespeaks to an on-going process of picturing, narrating, symbolizing, contesting, re-picturing, re-narrating, re-symbolizing, erasing, and re-inscribing a set of relations” (15). This map especially is not stable and is meant to represent only what’s known at a given time about the location of some Samaritan manuscripts. Over time, this specific mapping resource will change and evolve.
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