There is every reason for accepting the detailed account which Josephus has given of the quarrel between the high priest Johanan and his brother Joshua which resulted in the murder of the latter within the sacred temple precincts.  Such an opportunity would naturally be improved by the greedy Persian official to impose an onerous tax upon the Jews.  The Elephantine letter establishes the fact that Johanan was high priest in 411 B.C. and that Baghohi (of which Bagoses is the Jewish equivalent) was the Persian satrap.  It thus directly confirms the testimony of Josephus.  References in late Greek writings (Solinus XXXV, 6; Syncellus I, 486) suggest that the Jews about 350 B.C. were involved with the Phoenicians in the rebellion against Persia.  These historians state that at this time Jericho was captured and destroyed and that a part of the Jewish people were transported to the province of Hyrcania at the south of the Caspian Sea.  The rebellion was instigated by Tachos, the ruler of Egypt, who about 362 not only shook off the rule of Persia, but invaded Syria and stirred up the Phoenicians to defy the Persian king.  Artaxerxes iii, popularly known as Ochus, proved, however, the last ruler who was able to revive the waning power of the Persian Empire.  At his accession he slew all the members of the royal family, and throughout his reign (358-337 B.C.) he trusted chiefly to the unsheathed sword to maintain his authority.  In 346 B.C. he finally succeeded in collecting a huge army with which he invaded Syria and besieged Sidon.  Its king betrayed his city into the hands of the Persians, only to be murdered by the treacherous Ochus.  The citizens of Sidon, recognizing that they would receive no mercy from the hands of Their conqueror, shut themselves up in their homes and then burned them Over their heads.  According to the Greek historians forty thousand Phoenicians perished in this revolt.

VI.  The Date of the Samaritan Schism.  Josephus has given an unusually full and detailed account of the final schism between the Jews and Samaritans.  He dates it under the high priesthood of Jaddua, who died shortly after the close of the Persian period.  He implies, therefore, that the schism took place not long before 332 B.C., when Alexander the Great conquered Palestine.  This is also in keeping with the fact that the Elephantine letter written in 411 B.C. knows nothing of a division between Jew and Gentile.  The fact that at the time of the division the defecting priests took from Jerusalem the Pentateuch in its final form strongly confirms the conclusion (as Professor Torrey has pointed out in his Ezra Studies, pp. 324-330) that the Sanballat who ruled over the Samaritan community was not the contemporary of Nehemiah, but his grandson, who as an old man was ruling in Samaria at the time when Alexander conquered the East.