with all people because they detest all mankind," in
which he thinks "we may readily recognize here the law of our Sect
requiring the washing of the clothes when they were brought by a Gentile
(because of the contamination), and the prohibition of staying over the
Sabbath in the vicinity of Gentiles" (Introduction, pp. xxiii f.). What
Epiphanius says is that the Dositheans agree with the rest of the
Samaritans in the observance of circumcision and the Sabbath, and in
avoiding contact with any one because they feel that all men (that is, all
gentiles) are unclean. He had already described the customs of all the
Samaritans: They wash themselves and their clothes in water when they come
in contact with a foreigner; for they regard it as a defilement to come in
contact with any one or even to touch a man of another religion.(85) It
is, therefore, not a Dosithean peculiarity, but the general Samaritan
usage which Epiphanius describes, and it is useless to search for remoter
affinities.

The marked hostility to the patriarch Judah with which Eulogius, the
Patriarch of Alexandria (died 607 A.D.), charges Dositheus(86) is natural
enough in a Samaritan heresiarch; in the same sentence Eulogius accuses
him of scorning the prophets of God, which, again, is not peculiar to the
Dositheans, but is the general Samaritan position. It has been remarked
above (p. 353) that our sect gives especial honor to the books of the
prophets "whose words Israel has despised"; and, however unfriendly the
attitude of these seceders to the degenerate Judah of their time, there is
no indication of animosity to the patriarch, as there is none in the
Jubilees.

From a much later time Dr. Schechter has gleaned some notices of a sect of
"Zadokites" in whose tenets also he recognizes resemblances to those of
our sect. Kirkisani, a Karaite author of the tenth century,(87) says:
"Zadok was the first who exposed the Rabbanites and contradicted them
publicly. He revealed a part of the truth, and composed books [a book] in
which he frequently denounced the Rabbanites and criticised them. But he
adduced no proof for anything he said, merely saying it by way of
statement, except in one thing, namely, in his prohibition against
marrying the daughter of the brother and the daughter of the sister. For
he adduced as proof their being analogous to the paternal and maternal
aunt."(88)

This is a matter about which our sectaries are especially fierce in their
denunci