The Neo-Aristocratic System (System C)
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priest.41 In late 30 B.C.E. Samaria was brought under direct control of this Jewish king.42 After Herod’s death, Augustus Caesar assigned Samaria to King Archelaus (4 B.C.E.–6 C.E.), the son of Herod the Great.43 Meanwhile, King Herod the Great (36–4 B.C.E.) was supported by the Boethusian Sadducees. He appointed Simon, the son of Boethus, high priest in about 25/24 B.C.E and then, as we have stated above, married Simon’s daughter, Mariamme.44 Mariamme, in turn, became the mother of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great.45 Herod Antipas later became the tetrarch of Galilee. During the Herodian period, the family of Boethus supplied several high priests: Joezer, who filled the office twice;46 Eleazar;47 Simon Kantheras;48 his son Elioneus;49 and Joshua ben Gamaliel, whose wife, Martha, belonged to that house.50 The close political association between the Samaritans and the Boethusians with the family of Herod the Great was strong. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to conclude that, after the Herodians lost power, some of the Samaritans, despite their dislike of the Jerusalem priesthood and the Temple at Jerusalem, fell under the same kind of Pharisaical pressures that affected the Boethusians and other Sadducees. Over the years some of the Samaritans would have found it necessary to make the same kind of compromise that the Boethusians of the first century C.E. had made in their celebration of the Phasekh. Different Samaritan Sects There is no evidence of a continuous tradition among the Samaritans. To the contrary, the Samaritans have undergone many vicissitudes since they were founded.51 The great divergence in Samaritan attitudes began shortly after a period of intellectual stagnation, which occurred “from the time of Hadrian and a little later, when most of the ancient literature of the Samaritans had been irretrievably destroyed.”52 Between the early second and fourth centuries C.E. a number of Samaritan sects emerged, namely, the Dositheans, Gorothenians, Masbothaeans (Sebuaeans), and by the fourth century a faction that was identified with the Essenes.53 Their willingness to compromise is also demonstrated by the fact that Phariseelike eschatological tenets and the dogma of the resurrection (previously denied by the Sadducees and Samaritans) already appeared in full bloom by that time.54 Jos., Antiq., 14:12:1, 14:15:14, Wars, 1:12:3, 1:17:8. Jos., Antiq., 15:7:3; NBD, p. 1132. Jos., Antiq., 17:11:4. Jos., Antiq., 15:9:3, 18:5:4, 19:6:2. Jos., Antiq., 18:5:1. Jos., Antiq., 18:1:1. Jos., Antiq., 17:13:1. Jos., Antiq., 19:6:2. Jos., Antiq., 19:8:1. Yeb., 6:4. THP, pp. 251f. SHDL, p. 3. Eusebius, H.E., 4:22; Epiphanius, Pan., 1:10; Theodoret, Fab., 1:1; John Dam., in EGM, 1:282; Nicetas, 1:35; SEJS, pp. 252–265. 54 SEJS, pp. 239–251. 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53
