(printed p. 130 — Book II)
Especially notable was the disgrace which King and High Priest John Hyrcanus brought upon them. For when he had invited them, as his teachers and friends, to a magnificent banquet, and had been assailed by one of them, Eleazar, who had a more insolent character and tongue,
(printed p. 131)
he became so enraged that, with the king’s friend Jonathan, a Sadducee by sect, adding oil especially to the furnace, he annulled all the statutes and decrees of the Pharisees, punished those who observed them, and himself, although up to that point he had been a Pharisee, passed over to the Sadducees. In narrating this history, Josephus says in book 13, chapter 18, that he “departed from the Pharisees.” This happened, as Rabbi Abraham says in the historical Kabbalah and as the Compendium of Josephus Gorionides says, after Hyrcanus had administered the high priesthood for forty years, although both Flavius Josephus and Gorionides, and the latter’s Compendium, attribute to him only thirty-one years of rule in all.
But the son of this Hyrcanus, King Alexander, after he had taken the city Bethome, which we shall soon see is Bethsames, and had led away many captives from it, crucified about eight hundred of them in his own sight while he was feasting with his concubines. Before this, however, he had already inflicted another death upon them, killing their dearest children and wives before their eyes while they were still alive. So Josephus says in book 13, chapter 22.
That these were Pharisees is indeed inferred from chapter 24 of the same book, where the Pharisees demanded punishment for those responsible for the death of those eight hundred, and killed a certain Diogenes and many others among them.
[margin: John Hyrcanus becomes a Sadducee. His son likewise. Eight hundred Pharisees crucified.]
(printed p. 132)
But so that no inference is needed, the epitome of Josephus Gorionides makes the matter plain when it narrates that tragedy in this way:
Once King Alexander had been confirmed and had returned to his kingdom, the fleeing Pharisees came into Bethshemes, fortifying themselves against the king. But the king, gathering his army, set out against them, and after the city had been undermined he seized eight hundred of the leading Pharisees, bound them in iron, and brought them into Jerusalem. Then he made a banquet for all his servants on the roof of his palace in a high place, where they ate and drank and became drunk with him, along with the nobles and the learned men. With a glad heart he ordered the eight hundred bound men, who were among the greater Pharisees, to be brought out; and all were hanged on gibbets before him. Seeing this, he drank and laughed.
Rabbi Abraham says this about the same Alexander in the historical Kabbalah: “He too was infected with hatred for the wise men, and struck them with a great slaughter. He spared only Simeon son of Sata, because he was the brother of his wife. But Joshua son of Peraia, the companion of the preceding Simeon Sata, fled to Alexandria in Egypt until Simeon son of Sata obtained his return from the king by supplication.” This is also reported in tractate Taanith, chapters 10 and 11, tractate Sanhedrin, chapter Chelek, and the tractate on betrothals.
At this time, the same Rabbi Abraham narrates, occurred what the impious Talmudists in chapter Chelek most falsely fabricate about Jesus the Nazarene:
(printed p. 133)
that he used that Joshua as his teacher, fled with him into Egypt, looked too wantonly on the beauty of a woman, was therefore cast out by his teacher, set up idols, deceived many by magical arts, and at last was fastened to a cross. They most shamelessly transfer the crimes of some other man to Christ the Lord and Savior, or, in the reckoning of times, most wickedly, or at least most ignorantly, confuse more than one hundred and ten years, dull and disgraceful men as they are.
King Herod, when six thousand Pharisees refused to swear loyalty to him, first fined them in money; then, when he learned that the wife of his brother Pheroras had paid that fine, he killed many of them, as is found in Josephus, book 17, chapter 3.
Those whom he mentions in chapter 8 seem to have been from the same order: most learned interpreters of the ancestral laws, and most dear to all because of their constant instruction of the youth, Judas son of Sariphaeus and Matthias son of Margaloth. They were burned alive by him because, at their urging and impulse, the youth, many of whom were also executed, had set out to pull down the golden eagle which Herod had set above the great gate of the temple and to break it apart with axes. They did this because they judged an offering of this kind to be against the law, which forbids setting up images and undertaking the display of certain living creatures before those who live according to it.
[margin: Many Pharisees killed by Herod. Others burned alive by the same man.]
(printed p. 134)