1. Cf. Marc Bloch,The Historian's Craft, (New York, 1964), 14–18.
2. See most recently Joseph Sievers,The Hasmoneans and Their Supporters from Mattathias to John Hyrcanus I (Atlanta, 1990), 142–3; Sievers himself qualifies, not to say contradicts, this view on pp.144–5. Cf. B. Hall,The Samaritans, ed. A. Crown (Tübingen, 1989), 34 — a more cautious view.
3. I provisionally retain the traditional dating of this event. Coins discovered in the recent excavations on Gerizim suggest that the city was destroyed at a later date: see I. Magen, “Har Gerizim-cIr Mikdash,”Kadmoniot 1990, 87 and 90. However, the latest coins of a hoard found amid evidence of destruction in the vicinity of what Magen believes to be the temple precinct date to the reign of Alexander Zebinas (128-123 BCE) — which is more or less consistent with the traditional dating. Finds at other sites include not only Seleucid coins from the 110s, but also coins of “Yehohanan the High Priest” (clearly John Hyrcanus I) and Alexander Jannaeus, which suggests that they were left behind by occupying troops, or Judaean colonists, or the like (see Magen, 90). Magen's judgement (87) that the coins “prove unambiguously that John did not attack the Samaritans immediately after the death of Sidetes” is premature.
4. On the other hand, we are also never told of Samaritans serving as courtiers or administrators under the Hasmoneans. However, Josephus provides so little information about such matters that his silence in this case proves nothing. The only Hasmonean courtiers Josephus identifies as members of one of the Judaized nations are the Idumaean ancestors of Herod, and if it had not been for the abnormal ruthlessness of Antipater, father of Herod, we would never have heard of him or his father, Antipas, either. However, Josephusdoes mention some apparent Samaritans associated with the Herodian family: Antipater son of Herod had a steward (perhaps a slave: Herod extracted testimony from him under torture; but this is not decisive: cf.Jewish War 1.584) named Antipater who was a Σαμαρεiτης, which probably means “Samaritan” (War 1.592/Antiquities 17.69). Herod had a wife, mother of Antipas and Archelaus, “of the nation of the Samarians” (Antiquities 17.20; thus presumably “Samaritan”: an inhabitant of the city of Samaria was not a member of the “Samarian nation”). The future Agrippa I, while at Rome, was bailed out of debt to Antonia Minor by an imperial freedman who wasSamareus genos, i.e., a “Samarian by birth” or “by race” (and therefore, it is implied, especially inclined to do Agrippa a favor). In this case it is impossible to tell whether the freedman was a Samaritan or a former inhabitant of the city of Samaria.
5. “The Samaritans at Shechem,”HTR 55 (1962), 357–66, andShechem: The Biography of a Biblical City (New York, 1965), especially 170–84.