(printed p. 153 — Book II)
Samaritans are found in two kinds. Some are alien from the Jewish race and join open idolatry to some worship of the one God, 4 Kings 17:24 and 41. They consisted of about four nations, from which they were named Cuthaeans, Emathites, Avites, and Sepharvaimites; Saint Epiphanius, heresy 8, calls them by similar names. Others arose from these, and among them there were also many from the Jewish race. They had shaken off all open idolatry, yet through ignorance, as Saint Epiphanius says in heresy 9, they still retained something of it, since they turned, whenever they prayed, to
[margin: Sadducees few. High in honors. Intolerable to the people. Harsh and savage. Cruel. Two kinds of Samaritans: earlier and later.]
(printed p. 154)
that mountain in which the idols of those four nations had been buried and hidden, as though it were holy, and called it Garizim. These are the men who held the Garizim temple, obtained from Alexander the Great, as I touched on above from Rabbi Abraham and as Josephus pursues more fully in book 13, last chapter. These are the men who, after the times of this Alexander the Great, are mentioned either in the Gospels or in other sacred and profane writers. Saint Epiphanius describes their doctrines and customs in heresy 9, and what the Arab Geographer narrates about their remnants in the second part of the second climate agrees very closely with these:
After this, he says, comes the island of the Samaritans, which certain Samaritan Jews inhabit. A proof is that each of them says, whenever someone approaches them, “Do not touch.” And by this speech it is recognized that they are from those Jews who are surnamed Samaritans, accomplices of the calf in the age of Moses, upon whom be peace.
They are called accomplices of the calf not because they already existed when the calf was worshiped, but because they show themselves imitators of those men, or seem as if descended from those who sinned by worshiping that calf.
Therefore the Sadducees were not Samaritans of the first kind, as is clear. But they attached themselves to the later kind when Sadoc and Baiethos withdrew from their teacher Antigonus, as was said above.
[margin: Chapter 20. Exodus 32.]
(printed p. 155)
Yet, as usually happens in factions of this kind, they were not entirely Samaritans. Rather, they held certain doctrines and institutions of theirs: those concerning acceptance of the Pentateuch alone, and only of what was written there; contempt for all traditions and interpretations; denial of the resurrection of the dead; and similar things. They changed some things and forged others.
For although the Samaritans offered sacrifices only in their Garizim temple, the Sadducees sacrificed in the Jerusalem temple. Saint Epiphanius says in heresy 9: “The Sadducees were not Samaritans, but Jews, for they sacrificed in Jerusalem.” The Samaritans had no custom, fellowship, gathering, or conversation with the Jews, John 4:9. But the Sadducees lived in Jerusalem, were familiar with the kings of the Jews, and dealt with the priests and Pharisees, and sat in the same senate, Acts 4, 5, and 23. Hence Saint Epiphanius says in the cited place: “They keep all the same things as the Samaritans, but in all other things they act together with the Jews.”
Thus the same Sadducees are sometimes called Samaritans and sometimes distinguished from them, because they were intermediate and, as it were, ambidextrous and amphidoxoi, holding two sides. In the dissension which they had with the Pharisees, the Samaritans followed them, as Gorionides says in book 4, chapter 29.
[margin: Sadducees belong to the later Samaritans, with some distinction.]
(printed p. 156)