(printed p. 162 — Book II)
In the same chapter 18 of the thirteenth book, Josephus Flavius included both the adverse and the prosperous fortunes of the Sadducees when he narrated how John Hyrcanus besieged the city of Samaria for a whole year, and finally captured it through his sons Antigonus and Aristobulus, devastated it, and utterly overturned it.
The epitome of Josephus agrees with him, reporting the matter in this way:
Hyrcanus came to Mount Gerizim and captured the fortress of the heretics and Samaritans, and he destroyed that shrine which the heretics had, which was called by them the house of the sanctuary. It had been built with the permission of Alexander, the first king of the Greeks, and Manasseh the priest, brother of Simon the Just, built it. But Hyrcanus the high priest destroyed it two hundred years after it had been built. Then, going on to the city of Samaria, he besieged it. So the city, which was the mother and city of the Samaritans and heretics, was besieged. They were afflicted by Hyrcanus until they ate the corpses of dogs. When the day of the fast of propitiation came, King Hyrcanus hastened to Jerusalem for the duty of the feast, because he was high priest. He appointed over the army Aristobulus, his elder son, and Antigonus, his second son. Meanwhile the Samaritans and heretics
[margin: The adverse fortunes of the Sadducees.]
(printed p. 163)
sent a letter to the king of the Greeks, asking him to come to their aid. Therefore the king of the Greeks came to them with a great force and a strong army. The two boys, the king’s sons, and the army of Israel went out to meet him, striking him so that almost no remnant was left. They killed twenty-one thousand of the strongest men in the battle; the rest fled. Then the boys returned to besiege Samaria.
When their father, King Hyrcanus, heard that the king of the Greeks had gone out to fight, and that his sons had Greeks on one side and Samaritans and heretics on the other, and did not know what had happened, for that sign happened on the ninth day of Tishri, while the king himself was performing the work of the feast day, his heart was anxious for his sons and for Israel. He therefore entered the house of the Holy of Holies to offer incense and implore mercy for his sons and for the army. He heard a voice speaking to him and saying, “Do not set your heart upon your sons and upon the army of Israel. Yesterday the Lord helped them in his mercies and according to the multitude of his piety, because of your fathers. Therefore let your heart be upright and your hands pure.”
So the king came out from the Holy Place and announced this to the people. The next day he sent runners to Samaria. They returned to him and announced that the word had been true. King Hyrcanus was magnified in the eyes of all Israel, for they knew that the blessed Lord had accepted his works, granting him the Holy Spirit and increasing his kingdom and his priesthood.
[margin: The marginal note explains that “Sanctity” here means the Holy of Holies.]
(printed p. 164)
After this the king set out for Samaria. When he had besieged it for a whole year, he captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword. He allowed nothing in which there was breath to live. Then he broke down its wall and palaces and burned the city with fire.
So much for that account.
Yet this was also most fortunate and joyful for the same Sadducees, when the same King Hyrcanus, defecting from the Pharisees, wholly enslaved himself to the Sadducean heresy, on the occasion and in the manner which each Josephus adds. Since I have already touched on this above, and since my Drusius has published the chapter of Gorionides itself in Hebrew and Latin, I shall add only the concluding summary of the whole affair from Flavius:
Jonathan the Sadducee, especially after persuading Hyrcanus, disposed him in such a way that he joined the party of the Sadducees, dissolved the decrees established by the Pharisees among the people, and punished those who observed them.
And the compendium of Gorionides says:
The next day, by the king’s command, it was proclaimed through all the cities of his kingdom that they should stand by the ordinance of Sadoc and Bithus. Anyone who rebelled against their decree, or observed the tradition of the wise men, or obeyed their will, would be killed by the sword. Thus did John the high priest, who exercised the high priesthood for forty years and at the end became a Sadducee. Yet the Israelites did not obey the king’s command; rather, they secretly obeyed the governance of the wise men. The king, however, with all his servants, followed the tradition of the Sadducees. Therefore the king investigated them, and whoever
[margin: The prosperous fortunes of the Sadducees.]
(printed p. 165)
was revealed to him as agreeing with the ordinance of the wise men, he killed. Thus he drew a great people from Israel into this opinion.
Afterward, under Aristobulus and Alexander, sons of the same Hyrcanus, the fortunes of the Sadducees flourished, because these men were hardly friends of the Pharisees; indeed they were so hostile that Alexander crucified very many of them, as was narrated earlier. Josephus, book 18, chapter 2, also touches on how those who were foremost in honors were Sadducees.
It would be possible to refer here that calamity of the Samaritans which befell them at Alexandria when Ptolemy Philometor heard the case about the Garizim temple and the Jerusalem temple, because the Sadducees were their disciples and friends, as was indicated in its proper place. Yet because the Sadducees themselves worshiped the Jerusalem temple, I will not make that evil pass over to them.