The extant work covers from the creation until the birth of the virgin Mary, in the biblical section, and until year zero,[dubious – discuss] in the history of the non-Jewish peoples.
The redactors of the General estoria were able to ascertain which events happened at the same time in different civilisations thanks to a work by Eusebius of Caesarea, the second part of his Chronicle, known as Canons (Chronikoi kanones).
The Alfonsine redactors did not maintain a strict distinction between historical and non-historical works, and treated mythological material, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as history.
The non-biblical history is much too important to the Alphonsine redactors to occupy only a couple of chapters at the end of a biblical narration, and since the second Part, the outstanding features or figures of the non-biblical world are often given a continuous spell of hundreds of chapters where only the history of this figure (e. g. Hercules, Romulus and Remus) or historical fact (e. g. Trojan War, Theban War) are treated.
These “estorias unadas” (united or unitary stories) are situated at the end of the reign of the current Jewish ruler (following whose time the Alphonsines order, as has been explained, the chronology).
The sources treating the same fact were compared, and their similarities and differences carefully exposed; the narration of some years of the Jewish history always precedes, as said above, the part of the text dedicated to the happenings of the same period in other civilisations.
Nevertheless, it is possible to find some places where this does occur: a very poetic tone appears to be sometimes objectionable, as personifications, metaphors or apostrophes are often not translated; the physical transformations narrated in the Metamorphoses need to be allegorically interpreted; some character traits (cruelty, doubts) are eliminated from the description of kings or powerful men and women.
[6] Since 2016, an international team has been working on a digital edition, with wide-ranging scholarly notes, and translation into English, through the project "The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography".