It emphasises Stephen's asceticism and thaumaturgy (miracle-working), but is also a rich source for the history of Palestine in the eighth century.
[2] After suffering blasphemous thoughts for two years, which he attributes to a demon, he was healed and even saved from suicide by the spiritual tutelage of Stephen.
[2] The complete text is known only from an Arabic translation made from the Greek by Anbā Yanna ibn Iṣṭafān al-Fākhūrī at Mar Saba in March 903.
Both the Georgian and Arabic texts were discovered by Gérard Garitte at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Sinai in the 1950s.
[8] It is a valuable historical source on Palestinian Christianity, the Holy Land pilgrimage and Christian–Muslim relations under the early Abbasid Caliphate.
[9] He records one instance in which a Muslim converted to Christianity after witnessing a miraculous healing by Stephen.
[2][5] Although the miracles are typically downplayed by modern scholars more interested in the details of daily life among the Melkite monastics of Islamic Palestine, they formed the core story for Leontius and his original audience.
[9] Referring to the decline of monasticism that occurred in the wake of "great earthquake", he also openly addresses the question whether it is better to be a Christian in the world or a monk in the desert in his day.