The edition is: Part I, ed. Solalinde (Madrid, 1930, henceforth referred to merely as «I» ); Part II, Volume I (referred to as «II, 1»), ed. † Solalinde, Kasten, Oelschläger (Madrid, 1957); Part II, Volume 2 («II, 2»), ed. † Solalinde, Kasten, Oelschläger (Madrid, 1961). Of the remainder of the work, several fragments have been printed, the most extensive (Lamentations, about half of Judith, and some material on Alexander the Great and Plato, all from Part IV) by Solalinde in his Antología de Alfonso X el Sabio (Madrid, 1922-25, reprinted in the Colección Austral, N.º 169, Buenos Aires 1941, and reprints).

I conserve throughout the Spanish distinction between part and book. The General Estoria is henceforth abbreviated GE, the Primera crónica general PCG.

Solalinde, no doubt assuming that the entire work would be published without much delay, did not give in his introduction a description of the remaining parts. As this is of considerable interest, I have thought it appropriate to add the following summary, taken from S. Berger, Les bibles castillanes, Romania, XXVIII, 1899, 364-385, and J. Zarco Cuevas, Catálogo de los manuscritos castellanos de la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, Madrid 1924 to 1929, and supplemented, particularly for Parts V and VI, by Theodore Shoemaker, Alfonso X as Historian, unpublished diss., Wisconsin 1941. Part III begins with Psalms, including, under the heading Psalm 160, several canticles taken from diverse places in the Old Testament. It is followed by the story of the Greeks after the battle of Troy, considerable space being devoted to Ulysses, and the early history of England; King Solomon (from III Kings) and the books traditionally attributed to him (Song of Songs, Proverbs, Wisdom and Ecclesiastes); more on English history, and on the Orient in general and India in particular. A large section of IV Kings is followed by the prophets Joel, Isaiah, Hosea (here manuscript S, sole source of extra-Biblical material for this part, ends), Amos, Jonah, IV Kings continued, Nahum, Micah, Tobit, Job, IV Kings concluded, Ezekiel, Chronicles, and a section of Ecclesiasticus. Part IV, after devoting considerable space to Nebuchadnezzar, continues with the Biblical books of Daniel, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Habakkuk, stops for material on Cambyses and Darius I, then continues with Judith, Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zacariah and Malachi. The remainder of the part is mostly extra-Biblical, consisting of information on the Persians, with the book of Esther inserted at the proper place, then on Alexandrian rulers, with the conclusion of Ecclesiasticus and a final note on Ptolemy Philopator bringing the part to a close. Perhaps it was from this part that Gabriel de Castañeda took information on the early years of Alexander the Great; see his translation of Quintus Curtius (Seville, 1534), note at end of Book 1.

The makeup of Part V is unclear. One MS (Z) is mainly concerned with Jewish history in the period of the Maccabees. Three quarters of MS G, whose beginning is missing, is taken up by a translation of the Pharsalia, and the remainder covers Roman history during the last years of Julius Caesar, Octavian and Tiberius until Christ's birth. Part VI, represented by fragment D, opens with a long doctrinal dissertation, followed by a paragraph each on many prophets, a complete account of the genealogy of the Virgin, the lives of Joachim and Anna, her parents, Zacariah and Elisabeth, parents of John the Baptist, Herod, and Octavius Caesar. From the summary which appears at the beginning of this part it can be seen that it was intended to include all history up to the beginning of Alfonso's reign, including all saints as well as Arabic history.

I am using the name «Alfonso» advisedly. A detailed study of the question of collaborators is outside the scope of this article, but it is clear that King's role in the production of the work was mostly supervisory. Various people can be seen to have contributed, both directly and indirectly, in the editing process. The different styles of translation show this; another bit of evidence is in the changing phrases or tags, such as that used to refer to the Bible. It varies from «cuenta Moysen» to «cuenta Moysen e Jheronimo» and «cuenta Jheronimo» in fairly consistent sections.

This puzzled María Rosa Lida; v. La General Estoria: notas literarias y filológicas (I), RPh, XII, 1958-59, 116. The edition of Godfrey of Viterbo is given below.

I do not understand why María Rosa Lida (Josefo en la General Estoria, Hispanic Studies in Honor of I. González Llubera, Oxford, 1959, 180) regards this type of tag («Josepho e los otros sanctos padres») as a canonization.

Amador de los Ríos (Historia crítica de la literatura española, Madrid 1863, III, 593) cites among Alfonso's sources «la Misnáh, la Cábala y el Talmúd», but I have found only one vague reference to «iudios» (I, 152a), and none to any specific work.

The fact that Petrus Comestor mentions them occasionally, and that they frequently appear together with Origen, points in that direction.

Between Shoemaker, María Rosa Lida and myself, it is unlikely, though not impossible, that some source mentioned in the text may have been overlooked. It should be noted that sometimes sources have been concluded to be indirect on circumstantial evidence, which the defective nature of the only editions of some sources currently available forces one to rely upon. Circumstantial evidence that Alfonso knew an author indirectly could be: 1) he appears only in lists, 2) only one fact from him is mentioned, though his name appears several times, 3) Alfonso makes large mistakes as to his nationality or time period, 4) he is found mentioned in the midst of material taken from a direct source, or 5) he is known to be a source of another direct or indirect source of Alfonso.

The best edition is that of Rudolf Helm, by whose second edition (Berlin, 1956) I quote. Nevertheless, in the form Alfonso knew the work it was prefixed by material for which we must turn to the edition of Schoene. In Volume I of his edition (Berlin, 1875), he includes as appendices an exordium and lists of kings. The exordium apparently furnished Alfonso with some of his chronological lists (I, 70ab, for example, from Appendix Cols. 47-48, though the hundred year differences are curious), and he copied in several places the lists of kings (I, 77ab from Appendix Cols. 25-26; I, 81b from Col. 26; I, 100a from Cols. 3 3-34, etc.)