sank completely into paganism, and so their opposition to Judaism and Christianity increased into fanatical hatred and horrid calumniation.[34] § 25.2. =The Samaritan Heresiarchs.= (a) =Dositheus= was according to Origen a contemporary of Jesus and the Apostles, and gave himself out as the prophet promised in Deut. xviii. 18. He insisted upon a curiously strict observance of the Sabbath, and according to Epiphanius he perished miserably in a cave in consequence of an ostentatiously prolonged fast. Purely fabulous are the stories of the Pseudo-Clementine writings (§ 28, 3) which bring him into contact with John the Baptist as his scholar and successor, and with Simon Magus as his defeated rival. More credible is the account of an Arabic-Samaritan Chronicle,[35] according to which the sect of the Dostanians at the time of Simon Maccabæus traced their descent from a Samaritan tribe, while also the Catholic heresiologies (§ 26, 4) reckon the Dositheans among the pre-Christian sects. According to a statement of Eulogius of Alexandria recorded by Photius, the Dositheans and Samaritans in Egypt in A.D. 588 disputed as to the meaning of Deut. xviii. 18. (b) =Simon Magus=, born, according to Justin Martyr, at Gitta in Samaria, appeared in his native country as a soothsayer with such success that the infatuated people hailed him as the δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ καλουμένη μεγάλη. When Philip the Deacon preached the gospel in Samaria, Simon also received baptism from him, but was sternly denounced by Peter from whom he wished to buy the gift of communicating the Spirit (Acts viii). As to the identity of this man with Simon the Magician, according to Josephus hailing from Cyprus, who induced the Herodian Drusilla to quit her husband and become the wife of the Governor Felix (Acts xxiv. 24), it can scarcely claim to be more than a probability. A vast collection of fabulous legends soon grew up around the name of Simon Magus, not only from the Gentile-Christian and Catholic side, but also from the Jewish-Christian and heretical side; the latter to be still met with in the _Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions_, while in the _Acta Petri et Pauli_, we have the Catholic revision and reproduction of the no longer extant Ebionistic _Acts of Peter_ (§ 32, 6). These Judaizing heretics particularly amused themselves by making a very slightly veiled vile caricature of the great Apostle of the Gentiles by transferring to the name of the magician many distorted representations of occurrences in the life and works of the Apostle Paul. This representation, however, was recognised